The Dog Hunters: An Apocalyptic Ice Age Story Read online

  He wondered if that was what had happened to the two cars ahead.

  He shifted into park.

  “What are we going to do, Dad?” Robert asked.

  “We can’t turn back,” he said and he scanned the trees for danger.

  “Why can’t we turn back?” Robert asked.

  “Shut up,” Clayton snapped again.

  It would have been good if the station wagon had been able to keep up with him. Three men backing each other up would have had a better chance investigating this than one man alone.

  He reached in back and got the M1A rifle. A magazine was in it. The setup had cost him twenty thousand dollars, twelve cases of contraband food, and a set of tires last May. It was easy to part with the tires. There wasn’t enough gasoline available to any one person to wear a set out anymore. But he was lucky to get the rifle when he did. Now you couldn’t get any rifle for less than fifty thousand, and one as good as an M1A could not be had for money at all. Mr. Wheaton said that before the ice age started a rifle like this had cost two thousand dollars, tops.

  He reluctantly opened the door and grabbed a bandoleer of loaded magazines that he slung over his shoulder. He stepped down onto the road.

  The air was brittle.

  “Get behind the wheel and turn the van around,” he said to Emily. “Get it in reverse and back it up as I approach the cars. Stay behind me so I can see both sides of the road. But keep pace with me. If you hear anything suspicious on the CB, toot the horn. If there’s any shooting, give me a chance to jump in, then drive like hell back the other way.”

  “Drive where?” she snapped.

  “Just drive, goddamn it,” he yelled.

  Emily knew he was scared.

  He checked the breech while Emily turned the van around. He wouldn’t make the same kind of mistake he had made with the revolver. It was loaded. The safety was off.

  He stepped to the north side of the road and looked along the ditch. There was no one there. He crossed to the south side and checked the ditch there. Nothing. He started to walk along the shoulder, the rifle ready. But if there was a sniper out there in one of those stands of trees, he was a dead man already. Emily put the van in reverse and kept pace with him.

  They got closer to the cars and Clayton yelled, “Stop.”

  She stopped and the van idled. He covered the last fifty yards alone.

  The first person he saw was a woman lying on the ground beside the Ford. Her dress was hiked up over her waist, her underpants tangled around one ankle. She had been shot through the forehead.

  In the car, a man lay dead across the front seat. Two young boys were dead in back. All were the victims of head-shot wounds.

  In the Accord that rested across the eastbound lane, a man of about twenty lay dead on the front seat, a hole neatly punched through his driver’s side window and his brains spattered across the car’s interior. A bra was on the seat beside him. There was no woman.

  In the back seat a baby lay in a carrier. Clayton leaned closer and could see it was breathing. It was sleeping. He watched for a few moments. Then he checked the cars. Both had been ransacked. The batteries were gone. He knelt behind the Accord and tapped its tank with the muzzle of his rifle. From the hollow ring he knew it had already been drained. From the state of the bodies and the fact that the baby was still alive, he figured the ambush had happened this morning.

  He turned and walked back to the van.

  “Get back in your seat,” he said.

  Emily climbed over the engine compartment and Clayton put the rifle and bandoleer back behind his seat. He turned the van around and drove slowly past the two vehicles. Emily sat forward and rolled her window down.

  “There’s a baby crying,” she said.

  She looked at Clayton as the van picked up speed.

  “There’s a baby back there,” she repeated. “Stop the van.”

  He clutched the wheel and stared ahead at the road.

  She lunged for the wheel and he pushed her back against the passenger’s door.

  “Stop! You bastard, stop the van!” she screamed.

  “No.”

  “Stop! For the love of God, stop!”

  He drove on.

  She buried her hands, crying in spasms. “You bastard,” she said. “You fucking, miserable, hateful, shit-eating bastard.”

  Without thinking, he backhanded her. It was the first time he had ever heard her use those words. “Shut up, you bitch!” he screamed, then he hit her again.

  Danielle lunged across the back of the front seat and started pummeling her father. “You leave Mommy alone!” she shrieked. She began to claw her father’s face as he drove.

  Emily suddenly had her hands and was pushing Danielle back into her seat.

  “Leave your father alone!” she yelled.

  “Tell him to keep his hands off of you!” Danielle yelled back.

  “If you ever touch Mommy again…”

  “What? What are you going to do?” he asked glaring at her in the mirror.

  “I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

  They drove on.

  Fucking? Shit-eating? Bastard? He was sure he had never heard Emily use any of those words before. His daughter had never threatened him before.

  Emily leaned against her door and stifled back her sobs. He turned up the volume on the CB. Let Jesus keep you warm. Let Jesus drown out her crying.

  “Will that baby be okay?” Robert asked.

  “Shut up!” Clayton yelled, “Just shut up. I want everyone to shut up.”

  If only the baby hadn’t woken he thought. He began to wish he had taken it. It was a mistake to leave it. Every mile drove the truth in deeper. And every mile made turning back more time-consuming, more gas-consuming, more dangerous.

  The radio hissed, Whoops slept, and they traveled closer to the coast without speaking until Clayton said, “I told you right from the beginning, it could only be us, no one else. We can’t be pissing away our chances with every sorry soul we see.”

  Emily still stared out her window. She wouldn’t acknowledge him.

  “I’m not the one that killed its parents,” he said of the baby, thinking at first it was a point in his favor. But with each passing mile he wished he hadn’t said that, either. Unless someone else stopped, he had just killed the baby.

  Danielle sat in the backseat holding onto her sister as if she was never going to let her go.

  “Why are we slowing down?” Robert asked.

  Clayton had reduced his speed and was scouting both sides of the road. “We’ve got to find a place to camp pretty soon. I don’t want to be looking for a campsite after dark.” He didn’t want to be driving after dark either; headlights were a giveaway from far away.

  He drove even slower.

  “Help me look for a good camping place,” he said to all of them.

  Emily sat stiffly in her seat saying nothing and they drove until Clayton saw a dirt road that left OR-42 going south, where it disappeared in the trees over the top of a hill. There was no snow on the road, so they wouldn’t leave tracks. It would be a good camping area, out of sight of anyone going by, and the high ground if they needed it.

  He pulled off the highway and drove cautiously along the dirt hoping he wouldn’t find someone else already up there. He stopped before the crest of the hill.

  “Take the wheel and wait until I signal you,” he said.

  Emily stared out her window and didn’t move.

  “Take the wheel,” he repeated deliberately.

  She slowly turned to him and, when he got out, she crawled over the console, again, and got in the driver’s seat.

  He walked ahead with the rifle while the van idled behind him.

  He reached a point where the road dropped off. Beyond that there was a field. It would be a good place to hide for the night. He walked part way down the hill to make sure they’d be alone. Then he returned to the crest and signaled Emily to follow.

  They parked in the trees
and set up camp.

  Night was already setting in. They ate their supper in silence, then Clayton got their sleeping bags from the van. So there would be room to stretch out, he told Emily that she, Danielle, and Whoops would sleep inside the van and he and Robert would sleep in the tent. What he really wanted was to get away from the scorn of Emily and Danielle—and the cries of the baby if she woke.

  At bedtime, he laid the M1A inside the tent alongside his sleeping bag and glanced at the thermometer he’d attached to the tent flap. It was twenty-eight degrees outside.

  He lay back on his sleeping bag and stared at the tent ceiling. The sound of Whoops crying in the van was muffled and distant.

  Robert sat quietly on his sleeping bag lost in thought. “How long can you live out here with nothing?” he suddenly asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  “Like the people we hear about who get robbed.”

  “You mean, ‘How long could someone last this time of year?’”

  “Yeah,” Robert said.

  Clayton thought about it.

  “A day. Maybe two. They’d freeze to death during the night unless they kept walking. But you’ve got to figure they wouldn’t find anything to eat. And you know no one is going to help them.

  “No one can afford to,” he added, hoping Robert would understand why he had left the family in the station wagon, and then the baby in the car. “They’d live two or three days at most,” he said.

  Robert thought about the answer for a while.

  “What if our car busts like the one this morning did?”

  “They just blew a hose,” he said. “I can fix that.”

  “How come you told mom there was nothing we can do for them?”

  “If I can fix it, so can they,” Clayton said sharply.

  A long silence followed and Clayton wished he had seen where the questioning had been leading. He could have avoided yelling at his son.

  “Does it hurt to freeze to death?” Robert asked.

  “Talk about something else,” Clayton said.

  “Okay.”

  The boy was quiet for a while, but he was obviously thinking.

  “What if someone tries to take our stuff away?” he asked.

  Clayton was deliberate this time. “We’ve got the guns,” he said. “We’ll be okay.”

  Robert smiled. He took some toy soldiers from his pocket and started playing with them. Clayton stared at the ceiling of the tent again.

  “Will Charlie be all right?” Robert asked.

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “The boy who was in the station wagon,” Robert replied.

  “He’s all right,” Clayton said.

  “How do you know?”

  Clayton didn’t answer him.

  Chapter 2

  August 25

  In the morning, Clayton woke late to the distant sound of barking dogs. He snapped the rifle’s safety off and pushed back the flap of the tent with its muzzle. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground and the thermometer read seventeen degrees. It was August twenty‑fifth. Across the field he saw a pack of dogs. They were stalking a skinny cow and her calf. The dogs circled as Clayton watched. The calf crowded helplessly against its mother.

  A German shepherd antagonized the cow and she lowered her head and charged. The calf tried to keep up with her but a large mongrel rushed in and grabbed its rear leg. The calf broke loose. The dogs were in a frenzy now and the cow panicked. It started to run, lumbering across the field. She and her calf were separated again and the shepherd brought the calf down. The cow turned and drove the dogs off once more. She stood over the calf and waited for it to rise again. Its leg was broken. She waited several minutes watching the calf struggle while the dogs harassed her. Then she turned and bolted off. In a fury the dogs tore into the calf until it stopped struggling. The cow stood at a distance and watched. Then she moved on.

  “What is it, Dad?” Robert asked from back in the tent.

  Clayton hadn’t realized he was awake. “Nothing,” he said and let the tent flap drop.

  Robert scooted by and looked out. Clayton started to tell him to get back in, but thought better of it.

  Robert, he reminded himself, was young and still adaptable. He also had to understand what survival was all about.

  After several minutes, Robert let the tent flap drop and he played with his soldiers. Finally, he asked, “Could you have stopped that?”

  “The dogs have got to live, too,” Clayton replied.

  Robert continued to play with his soldiers and they heard the door of the van open. Clayton crawled out of the tent followed by Robert. Emily was standing there holding the baby. He knew she’d seen what happened to the calf and she would be silent now.

  “Let’s put away the sleeping bags and the tent,” he said to Robert.

  They rolled up their sleeping bags then took the tent down and returned all the gear to the van. Clayton got the camp stove going and Emily made a pan of some kind of ground wheat mush for breakfast. She mixed some dry milk with baby food and warmed it. She had tried to nurse but stress or something had dried her up. Somehow, Clayton was sure, she could have continued if she’d done it right and they wouldn’t have needed to trade for the dry milk to feed the baby. The dry milk had been dear. It had cost him several boxes of the 7.62 ammo that came with his M1A and some of the gasoline he’d had stashed. It was one more of her failings.

  While Emily watched the stove, he topped off the van’s tank again. When he was finished, breakfast was ready and they sat down to eat in silence.

  “What time is it?” Emily finally asked.

  He looked at his watch. “Eight‑thirty.”

  She retreated back into her envelope of silence. Unspoken anger. It was her way.

  “Let’s load up,” he said.

  They wiped their dishes clean and packed the stove and dishes. By nine o’clock they were driving down the dirt road toward OR-42 and Clayton hit the brakes when he saw a car going by on the highway.

  “We’ll wait a little while,” he said and turned the engine off. “I hope they didn’t see us,” he added

  Whoops cried as they watched the car travel out of sight. The crying was getting on his nerves.

  “Check her diaper,” he ordered Danielle.

  “I just changed her,” she said defiantly in her half-woman voice.

  “Well, see if she’s still hungry.”

  “She ate.”

  “Then rock her!” Clayton yelled.

  “I am!” Danielle yelled back. But as she rocked her, she leaned toward her sister’s face and whispered, “Sissy isn’t going to leave you out in the cold to die.”

  It was just loud enough for Clayton to hear and he exploded and turned in his seat and jabbed his finger in the air as if stabbing at her. “You watch what you say, you little bitch, or I’ll smack you again. And you’d better get rid of that filthy shirt.”

  “I’ll wear whatever I want!” she screamed and clutching the baby she lunged over Robert and grabbed the handle on the side door. “Let me out of this fucking van.”

  “She needs to be burped!” Emily screamed. “She just needs to be burped.” She turned, kneeled on her seat, and reached back to get Whoops. Danielle held back tears as she handed her mother the baby, and Emily turned and put the baby over her shoulder and patted her back. In seconds Whoops burped and stopped crying. “Close the door,” she said to Danielle.

  Danielle stared at the door, now cast ajar. Opening it further or closing it was now a major decision. But where would she go? With a slumping of her shoulders, she closed it.

  “Don’t think I wouldn’t have left you,” her father barked. It drove her crazy that everything he wanted had to be a demand or threat.

  Clayton then looked at Emily. Running through his mind was that she could have said the baby needed to be burped from the beginning. That’s all she had to say. What was she trying to prove, that he was wrong again?

 
He started the engine and in a shower of dirt and gravel they rocketed forward onto the highway and headed west.

  Danielle looked out the window and stared at the passing scenery without seeing any of it.

  Her father went on about her insolence and “the boyfriend” he’d never met and how she didn’t show any respect because he never came around and showed his face..

  Once, she looked back at the backs of her parents’s heads to see him jabbering and her mother sulking.

  Her mother, forever brooding, rarely protested, criticized, or pointed out what displeased her. Worse, she never said what she really wanted; Danielle couldn’t believe it was limited only to what he father told her she wanted.

  And why, she asked herself, did he have to control everyone around him? Anyone he couldn’t control, he was sure was trying to take advantage of him.

  She thought about “the boyfriend,” four years older, who had proved to be no less controlling. “If you love me, you’ll do this,” and, “If you love me, you’ll do that.” So she did “this” and “that,” though she was frequently reluctant, often silently angry as her mother was with her father, and sometimes she was even ashamed. But she did as he insisted to prove she was worthy, afraid he’d find someone better, until she realized it was, and always would be: “To prove you love me, you must do as I say.” In a moment of epiphany, she realized the motives behind his demands had not been fueled by love, they had been driven by selfishness and testosterone. That awakening was a week and a half ago and she stopped seeing him but told no one because she wasn’t sure the breakup was permanent. Now, of course, that decision had been made for her. She didn’t like decisions being made for her.

  She’d decided men were crazy, selfish, controlling, and manipulative. Yet, she craved their approval. She hated this contradiction in herself. She looked down at the shirt. It had been his. She kept it when they broke up.

  She stared back out the window. Though she loved her parents—probably her mother more, she had to get away from them or she’d go crazy. She’d “escape” when they reached Southern California. She’d take care of herself.