This Shattered Land - 02 Read Free Page A

prospect of having dinner
with the little family tomorrow night. I knew it was probably not a good idea
to be too trusting too soon, but I was tired of only having Gabe around for
company. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good and loyal friend, but anyone gets
tiresome if you have to spend too much time around them.
    I
made the mistake of hiding my gear a little too well, and it took me a few
minutes to find it in the thick patch of foliage where I had stashed it
earlier. When I returned to the camp, Gabriel was showing Tom and Brian how to
tie their tarp full of food up in the boughs of a tree to keep the multitude of
brown bears in the area from getting into it. Sarah stiffened a bit when she
saw the high-tech assault rifle hanging from my chest on its tactical sling. I
hadn’t really noticed it before, probably because I was distracted by the rifle
she was pointing at me, but Sarah was actually quite pretty. She looked to be
in her mid-thirties, with bright red hair, blue eyes, and cute little dimples
in her cheeks. Tom was a lucky man.
    We
exchanged a brief round of goodbyes and handshakes. Some of Sarah’s suspicion
of us seemed to have waned a bit, and she even managed a smile as she bid us a
good day. Gabriel told them to fire three shots into the air if they ran into
any trouble before we came to see them tomorrow. Tom promised they would, and
we set off to finish the hike back to our cabin.
    “So
what do you think?” Gabe asked once we were well out of earshot of the camp.
    I
shrugged. “They seem nice enough.”
    Gabe
nodded. “They’ve managed to survive this long out here on their own, so I think
it’s safe to say they’re not stupid.”
    We
were silent for a little while farther on our walk before something occurred to
me. “Do you think there might be other people around here? I mean, we live less
than three miles from those folks, and we didn’t even know they were here.
Couldn’t there be other people around that we don’t know about?”
    Gabe
considered the idea for a moment. “I hate to say it, but you have a good point.
It’s big country around here with lots of places to hide. I know a lot of folks
that survived the Outbreak fled to the mountains to get away from the infected.
We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled.”
    The
rest of the hike back to the cabin passed in silence. We didn’t run into any
infected for a change, which was nice. Chores around our property kept us busy
and our thoughts occupied us for the rest of the afternoon and on into the
evening. Just as the sun was beginning to set, I grabbed a fishing pole and a
tackle box and spent an hour fishing in the stream that flowed around the base
of the mountain. A couple of fair sized brook trout took the bait and gave me a
good fight before I landed them. That put a smile on my face; brook trout are
good eating. The fish went on the grill over the fire pit in the front yard
after Gabe helped me scale and clean them. My big friend was more pensive than
usual as we ate.
    “Something
on your mind?” I asked.
    Gabe
pulled a bone from his filet and tossed it into the fire. “It just seems like a
shame for those folks to sleep out in the cold tonight, what with them having a
kid and all. We got plenty of room here. Maybe we should let them stay with us
until we leave for Colorado.”
    I
looked across the fire at him. “You sure that’s a good idea? We just met those
people. I’m not sure we should trust them that much yet.”
    Gabe
was quiet for a moment before he replied. “They seem like good people. I don’t
think they would try anything stupid. Besides, we ain’t gonna need this place
much longer.”
    Deep
down, I agreed with him, but I still wasn’t willing to take an unnecessary
risk.
    “We’ll
see how things go tomorrow.” I said.
    A
little after dawn the next day, just as we were making breakfast, we heard a
single gunshot reverberate around the hills to the south. Birds took flight in
the distance under the hazy yellow