Hide and Seek

We let the moment plant its seed deep, knowing there might never be a

harvest. Her smile was a little rueful, but mostly it was glad. She

came slowly, gently into my arms.

"I never want to see that dog again," she said, "but I'll take what we

don't know over what we do."

"Same old Casey."

I held her close and then released her. There was almost a pain, a

physical pain, at the parting.

I took the flashlight from her and located Steven's axe handle in the

beam. Without a word she picked it up. Then we turned and touched

hands and slowly we moved on.

We had not been the first to come through there.

They lay waiting for us in the passageway. A pair of human skeletons,

rags falling away to scraps over cracked broken bones, lying in the

dark.

Whether the dog had killed them or had only gotten them after death we

couldn't tell. But it was easy to see where the bones had been scraped

and gnawed. On one of them the legs had been separated from the torso

and dragged a few feet away. The shinbone on the left leg was gnawed

clear through. It was splintered like a piece of green wood. The

skulls bore teeth marks too.

I'm told the brain is a choice morsel.

So Ben and Mary had finally yielded- up their secrets, some of them.

Fled with a pet or two. One of whom had grown very big and very old

and had tasted human flesh.

Fled through a hole in the wall. Used it, probably, to gather supplies

now and then. And when it was sealed up, cut it open again.

They had lived like animals here. It was easy to imagine a life of

scrounging, gathering, hiding. Scavenging the beaches. At night

perhaps, the ghost crabs scurrying sideways underfoot, pale as wax in

the light of the moon. A captured gull's nest. Hidden traps along the

shoreline. A stray cat. A stray dog. And always, hiding. The world

outside the proven implacable enemy. Their entire army a pair of

black, powerful jaws.

The skeletons were somewhat on the small side. One of them in scraps

of denim.

Kids, probably. No older than us, and maybe younger.