Worth Saving Read Free

tones as they migrated with the great herds.  A place filled with un-placated ghosts.
    I’d left the mountains on my eighteenth birthday two weeks earlier after spending five years up there on my own. Ignoring everything my father had said on his death bed. Disregarding the three black and white marbled notebooks crammed with dictated information passed along by a dying man who knew he was leaving his son all alone in the world. Books filled with everything from how to dress a deer to changing a flat tire, all of the things he thought I’d need to survive in this new world.  The pages interlaced with a single message – Avoid people at all costs.
    After five years I couldn’t take it any longer. I didn’t care.  I couldn’t stay there all alone anymore, living like a hermit. Something inside my gut pushed me. An unknown force was driving me to stretch the limits, to break some rules, to ignore what was smart and do what felt good instead. To hell with the consequences. Maybe it was hormones. I don’t know and there wasn’t anybody to ask.
    So without really thinking about it I’d left our small farm on a tree covered mountain and sneaked into the deserted city hoping to find other people.  This was not what I expected.
    I sat there on the ledge sixty feet above the deserted street, my feet dangled over the side as my mind drifted to the past. The plague was pretty efficient, leaving five people for every 10,000 it took. It’d come out of some Mid-East war and spread across the world in less than a month. Most people had time to make it home and crawl into bed before dying an agonizing death. Not everyone had chosen that path of course as the pews in the church below demonstrated. Old white bones covered in old clothes were the iconic image of this new age.
    Movement caught the corner of my eye; a pack of feral dogs was hunting near the park. Their noses close to the ground, sweeping back and forth as they searched for that elusive scent which would signal dinner.  I shivered. It hadn’t taken long after the illness swept through before they’d gotten used to human flesh; there’d been a full course meal on every corner.
    My mind flashed back a couple of months ago to Mrs. Jacobson on the side of the road. It looked like some wild dogs or a wolf pack had caught her too far away from her house. I don’t think I’ll ever get that sight out of my mind. She’d been the last person I knew from before the plague. In fact, she was the last person I knew period.  A sweet lady like her shouldn’t have had to worry about wild dogs.
    She’d stop by and make sure I was alright. Even tried to take me in after my dad died. I’d always found some excuse not to. Maybe if I was there she wouldn’t have been taken like that.
    As I watched, the dogs caught a scent and tore into the park, baying in full throated glory.  A doe sprang from the bushes and scampered across the park’s meadow and into the trees. The dogs had her scent though and wouldn’t give up easily. A large German Shepherd raced to the front of the pack while a beautiful Red Irish setter turned to the left, trying to herd the deer back towards the shepherd.
    I had a bird’s eye view and watched, fascinated when the dogs trapped the young deer by a chain link fence, her path cut at every turn. She turned to face her enemies, frantic, still searching for that escape. I felt sorry for her, it was hopeless.
    The dogs moved in cautiously, knowing they had her trapped. Working together they turned the dear and the shepherd got in close to hamstring her. As he held her heel the big red setter got her by the throat. In an instance she was down.
    I couldn’t pull my eyes away as the dogs tore into the tawny hide and began to feast, snapping and snarling at each other over the choicer parts.
    Without thinking, I reached for my bow and quiver making sure they were close. Even at sixty feet above the scene a disquieting sliver of fear crept up my spine. I’d