Surviving the Fog (25 page)

Her thoughts were giving way to panic again,
when he returned.  He was holding a skinned rabbit.  Lily
watched as he built a fire, and a spit, and roasted the rabbit.
 When it was thoroughly cooked, he doused the fire and left.
 She waited a long time.  She looked at the rabbit on the
spit over the remains of the fire.

Is it a trap?
 Finally she stood, and she moved away from
her stronghold while gripping the club tightly.  When she
reached the rabbit, she grabbed the spit and hurried back to her
place of safety.  She held the club between her knees as she
tore into the rabbit.  It tasted wonderful.  He had
stuffed the rabbit with some kind of leaves that gave it a spicy
aroma.

Lily didn’t actually mean to
eat it all.  As she finished eating the rabbit, he returned.
 She tensed.  She had eaten his food.
 
He’ll be angry and
hungry
, she thought.  She wondered if
she should apologize.  
No, I won’t
apologize.
 
If
he’s angry because I ate his food; well, tough.  Maybe he’ll
realize I’m not a nice person.
Maybe, he
would leave her alone.

He didn't say anything, and
he didn't seem angry or surprised that she had eaten his rabbit.
 
It was another
bribe
.  Night fell.  She leaned
against the tree and covered herself with the blankets.  She
only pretended to sleep, but her eyes were heavy with
fatigue.

Jacob found a soft spot on the ground without
tree roots.  He spread out his backpack and mummy bag and lay
down on the sleeping bag, using his backpack as a pillow.  He
waited.  The woman was pretending to sleep, but her body was
still tense.  Jacob enjoyed the twilight.  The wind was
soft, and occasionally the leaves of the trees would rustle.
 He listened to the sounds of the nightlife around him.
 Crickets were chirping.

He wondered about the woman.
 S
he must be from Eagle’s
Retreat
.  
She
might know something about the conditions at that place.
 He hoped he could obtain some information
about the conditions there, but he had never seen, other than on
television, someone so terrified.  
Things must be bad at that Retreat.

Presently, he rose and looked at the woman.
 She was breathing deeply now, and he was certain that the
exhausted woman was asleep.  He picked up his mummy bag and
tiptoed over to her.  Carefully, he removed her club from her
open fingers.  If she suddenly awoke, he did not want her to
strike him accidentally, or on purpose.  She did not awaken.
 He regretted the need to awaken her, but the night was going
to be cold, so he had no choice.

Taking a firm grasp on her blankets, he
yanked them away from her.  With a cry of alarm, she woke.
 She saw him with her blankets, and more importantly, he was
holding her club.  Incoherent cries came from her mouth as she
shrank away from him, pressing against the trees behind her.
 Her hands curled into claws as she awaited his attack.

Jacob tossed his mummy bag at her feet, and
he walked away.  He placed the club by his backpack, and then
he laid one of her blankets on the ground.  He lay down on
that blanket, and he wrapped himself in the other blanket.

After a while, Lily realized that he was not
going to attack her, at least not yet.  The pounding of her
heart slowed, and she regained her senses.  Relief was
followed by tears.  She put her head between her legs, and she
silently wept.  She wept from fear.  She wept out of
anger.  She wept because she was so tired and so alone.
 She wept for her friends who had died naturally and for those
who had been murdered.

After a long time, she
collected herself.  She saw the mummy bag.
 
This is another
bribe
.  Having no other choice, she
crawled into the bag and slept. Lily awoke to the smell of food
cooking.  The sun was just over the horizon.  She sat up
and rubbed her eyes.  The young man was roasting a fat grouse
over the fire.  He looked at her when she stirred.

"It's ready," he said.

She got out of the bag.
 It was a sunny day.  A yellow faced warbler flew down
from the green canopy, snatched something on the ground, and fled
back to the sky.  Lily stood there trying to decide what to
do.  Finally, she walked to the fire and sat down.  The
young man tore a piece off of the bird.  
No, he’s an older teenager,
she
remembered.

"It's hot," he warned, as he handed the meat
to her.

Gingerly she took the hot piece and ate it.
 He handed her another piece, and she ate that too.
 Soon, she realized that she had eaten all of the bird.
 She looked at Jacob who was peeling a hardboiled egg.

"Want some?" he asked.

Lily shook her head,
no
.  Jacob fished
another piece of bread from his pack, and he offered it to her.
 She accepted and ate it.  When they were finished
eating, Jacob rolled up her blankets and tied them with a piece of
dried vine.  Then to her surprise, he handed the club to her.
 He pointed down the trail in the direction she had been
traveling.

"That way," he said, and started down the
path without looking back.

What should I
do
?  
Do I
follow him?
 
If I don't, will he follow me again?
 She decided to follow him for the moment.  She
could decide later if she should sneak away.

They walked until she was tired.  She
was about to ask him to stop when he paused.  He sat down, and
she did the same.  He waited for ten minutes, and then he
stood and resumed their journey with her following close behind.
 After a few hours, she was tired again.  Before she
could ask, he stopped and they rested again.  At noon they
stopped, while he hunted.  He caught another bird and roasted
it.  They ate, and then they resumed their journey.  They
walked and then they stopped and rested, and this pattern continued
for the rest of the day.

When night drew near, Jacob found the stump
of a dead tree that had been hit by lightning.  It was hollow,
but there was no way in, until Jacob made one with his knife and
with his boot.  They crawled through the hole that he had
made.  Jacob shared his food with Lily, and afterwards he
started to unroll the bedding.

Lily tensed.  All day
she had been dreading this moment.  
What will he do
?  His bribes had
been generous, she had to grant.  She was beginning to
understand why other women at the Retreat had gradually succumbed
to the subtle and to the not so subtle pressure from the men.
 She imagined a woman from the far distant past talking to
her.

"This is the way it
is,
" the woman would say.
 
"A man finds you.  He decides
that he wants you.  He feeds you and he shelters you and he
protects you.  In return, he expects to use your body for his
pleasure."

"I won't have sex with you willingly," Lily
said abruptly. "You'll have to force me."

Chapter Ten Lily

Jacob glanced at her as he continued his
task.  "I'm not going to have sex with you," he said.

His words startled Lily.

"Why not?" she asked, and
then she furiously berated herself.  
You idiot, Lily.  What does it matter?  It looks
like you might be safe for another night.

"For one thing, I don't think it would be all
that comfortable to have sex right here,” Jacob said as he finished
untying his bag.  “For another thing, I'm not allowed to have
sex before I'm sixteen.  I won't be sixteen until August.
 But mainly, I’m not going to have sex with you, because you
don't want me to have sex with you."

For some reason, Lily's mind
focused on his second reason.  
He’s
not allowed to have sex before he's sixteen?
 Lily looked at him.  He was young.  He was
much younger than she had originally guessed.
 
He must be fifteen.

"Who are you?" she asked.  She found it
unbelievable that she had not asked him this until now.
 "Where are you from?"

"I'm Jacob," the boy replied.  "I'm from
a camp about five days away from here."

Lily thought about that.  "What kind of
camp?" she asked.

"It was supposed to be a camp about birth
control for kids," replied Jacob.  "There are kids there from
all over California and some from Nevada, too.  But then the
Fog came.  The adults all left except for one lady.  Then
she was killed by some bad guys."

Lily gaped at him.  "You come from a
camp of kids?  There are no adults there?"

"There are two adults.  Hector is a man
from a logging camp who found us and stayed with us.  Jean is
a Forest Ranger," Jacob replied.  He frowned.  "I guess
you could count Mrs. Brown as the third adult.  She lives on a
farm not far from us."

Lily's mind was reeling. "What do you mean,
the Fog came?"

Abruptly Jacob stopped what he was doing and
stared at her.

"You don't know about the Fog?" he asked.
 Lily shook her head.

"Something has happened to the world,” Jacob
said. “I guess it's all over the world.  Some kind of fog is
surrounding us.  The only land that's not covered, is above
six thousand seven hundred feet.”

Lily looked at him as if he was addled.
 "A fog," she said.  "A fog that covers the whole world
up to almost seven thousand feet."

"Yes.  What did you think happened?"
Jacob asked.

"I saw what happened," she insisted.
 "Some men took over the Eagle’s Retreat where I was staying.
 That was last year.  They started mistreating people.
 They killed some people.  They started raping women, and
they intimidated other women into having sex with them.  They
control the phones, they disconnected the TV's, and somehow they’re
blocking the satellite cable, and they did it all so they could set
up their own little kingdom, here in the mountains."

"How's their food situation?" Jacob
asked.

Lily ducked her head.  "Not good," she
said. "We had a lot in the beginning.  That's the other reason
I escaped.  I could see we were running out of food.  I
don't know why they haven't resupplied.  Maybe they’re afraid
that someone is going to find out what they’re doing.  They
tried to kill a sheep and eat it, but everyone who ate the meat got
sick.”

Jacob didn't say anything.
 
She’ll find out the truth soon
enough.  I wonder how she’ll feel then.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"I'm Lily," she replied.

After that, they slept.  When Lily
awoke, she felt mentally rested for the first time in a year.
 Once again, she followed Jacob when he left.

As they traveled, Lily took over the cooking
chores.  When Jacob caught something, Lily prepared it and
cleaned up afterwards.  She tried to give Jacob his mummy bag
and to take her blankets back, but Jacob was firm if gentle.
 The answer was, "no."  She didn't press it.  She
was alive, and she was free, at least for the moment, and Jacob
seemed intent on keeping her that way.  She still didn't quite
believe that the bad times were over, but at least he had not tried
to force her to have sex with him.

Once, he asked her how old she was, and she
told him that she was twenty one.  He responded by saying that
she would be the third adult in their camp.

She didn't tell him that she
had no intention of staying in their camp, and that she was heading
down the mountain as soon as possible.  She knew that he was
making up much of what he told her, but she did not know why.
 
How will he explain the fantasy when
we get to where we are going, wherever that is?

On the third day of their travels together,
they came to a stream.  Jacob turned towards the west, and
they followed the water.  The next day, the stream grew larger
and faster as it gathered the waters from tributaries, and the day
after that, it became a small river.  About noon, Jacob
stopped. Behind him, Lily stopped also.  She could tell that
Jacob was alert and listening.

For a moment her fear returned, but then
Jacob said in a loud voice, "It's Jacob."

Minutes later, she saw two boys come out of
the woods and hail Jacob.  The smaller boy was
African-American.  The other boy was lighter but not by
much.

"Hey, Bro," the younger boy said.
 "You're back early."  His eyes were filled with reserve
as he examined Lily.

"Change of plans," said Jacob. "This is Lily.
 She's from the Retreat."  He pointed to the younger boy.
 "That's Eric.  And that's Ahmad."

For a moment, Lily stared at the two boys,
and then she looked back at Jacob.  She was startled by the
realization that he had already known about the Retreat.  She
kept silent, waiting to see what would happen.

"Do you want one of us to run down and tell
the Chief?" Ahmad asked.

"No need.  We'll be there soon enough,"
Jacob answered.

"How's your food?" Eric asked. "You
hungry?"

"Nah, we've been eating.  What have you
got to drink?"

"Mrs. Brown sent us a whole canister of
Kool-Aid," Eric said. "The Chief is saving it for the patrols, but
you can have some."

"Cool," Jacob replied, his eyes lighting
up.

Eric handed him a thermos.  Jacob took
it and ignoring the screw-on cup, drank straight from the thermos.
 Then he looked guiltily at Lily.

"Want some?" he asked, indicating that she
could use the cup.

Typical
boy
.  "No, thank you," she answered
and took a drink from her water bottle.