The Long Loud Silence

13

HE HAD to find something to eat.

Three days without food were racking his stomach with pain, causing his guts to rumble and ache. The air of the cave was foul and dead from his refuse, blurring his wits and creating a dangerous drowsiness. A bucket for drinking water in the rear of the cave contained a scant half inch of liquid — he could make that stretch another day if need be, but he had to have something to eat soon. The last of the few edible roots he had ripped from the frozen ground were gone and if he delayed longer, he would be too weak and dulled to fight.

Gary picked up his .22 rifle and crawled to the mouth of the cave to search the snow-covered plain.

In earlier years he had favored the shotgun or the heavier rifle, along with many men who wanted or needed the greater distance and more powerful shell. But other men who clung stubbornly to those heavier rifles were no longer alive. The crack of a heavy carries a long distance — too long a distance across the silent, watchful land. The crack of a gun meant man, and a man fired only to bring down food. He had quickly discovered what a smaller gun could do, discovered that it carried a far less betraying noise but, if he were near enough, could bring down a man just as easily. Gary let the other hunters with heavy rifles stalk the game and reveal their presence — and then eliminated them with the .22. There was so little food to be had that no one hesitated to close another mouth.

The plain before him was clear, white and bright with fresh-fallen snow. Nothing moved across his vision.

He carefully parted the brush and wriggled through the mouth of the cave, pausing every few inches to look and listen and sniff the air. The hillside was barren of life or movement as he emerged into the open, and he rose to his knees the better to search the field below and the rising slope of the hill behind him. A man had very nearly killed him there, three or four years before. The man had lain for days above the cave mouth waiting for him to emerge, slashing down with a rusted bayonet as his head and neck protruded through the opening. His only mistake was that he was too slow, his long hunger robbing his mind and muscles of concerted action. Gary caught the hand that held the bayonet and yanked him down. Afterwards he strung the hill with concealed wires.

Moving guardedly down the hill, he paused to look back at his revealing tracks in the snow. They disclosed his hiding place, advertised his presence, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It would mean the use of extra caution when returning to the cave, but meanwhile the snow would also reveal any other living thing that moved, would reveal an intruder. Snow usually brought into the open what few rabbits that remained, snow betrayed the tracks and trails of chipmunk, grey squirrel, field mice — anything edible. He set traps when he could; ammunition was scarce, valuable. He had managed to loot and steal barely enough to last him through the winter.

At the base of the hill Gary settled down against the white frozen ground, unmoving, listening, his taut nostrils held to the wintry air. There was nothing, no one beside himself. A part of him hungered for the past when there had been others, other men and women moving around without danger to themselves so long as they took reasonable precautions. He liked to remember a winter and a farmhouse in Wisconsin, a family who lived in the old familiar way, a radio, a little girl. And three meals a day. That had been a long time ago, many years ago when he was younger and ate more regularly than he did now. Now he counted himself fortunate when he had something to eat two or three times in the same week and now that enforced hunger was leaving its marks on his body. Now he bitterly resented a competing mouth, and that other mouth resented his.

The snowy plain remained empty and silent, dead. An old concrete highway crossed the middle of it, crumbling away.

There had been but one car on that highway in the past… how many years? Perhaps ten? How long had it been since he had awakened in that dimly remembered hotel to find the world poisoned around him? How long since the winter on the Florida beach, that other winter in the Wisconsin farmhouse, the brief, unhappy excursion across the Mississippi into the land of the living? All of ten years, surely. But there had been a car creeping along that vacant highway since then, since he had taken to living in the cave. A heavily armored truck that reminded him of the mail truck, that rumbled through the valley searching for someone, anyone. The noise of the approaching motor had excited him, made him want to rush down to it, but common sense forced him to hide in the brush and watch it pass. It finally vanished into the distant afternoon sunlight and had not come back.

There was nothing on the plain. He stood up from his cramped position and slowly moved around the base of the hill, rifle at ready.

A brook, doubtless frozen now, wound among the rocks on the far side of the hill and that was his immediate goal, for animals — and sometimes men — stopped there to drink. A few scattered trees gave scant cover as he neared it and he dropped to his belly, searching the area for tracks. There would be no man-tracks here, only those of animals. A man would have smelled the promised snow the night before, would have lain up on the hillside to observe the water hole or would have hidden himself in the trees overhead.

Gary could see nothing among the trees and directed his eyes toward the hill, raising his nostrils to the air. There were no telltale odors; ground and wind alike were bare. Approaching the frozen stream, he studied the snow but it was smooth and without marks. There was no game there.

In the far distance a gun boomed, vibrating the air.

Startled, surprised and yet pleased, he dropped quickly to the ground and searched the horizon.

It had been a medium rifle of some kind — the sound was too far off for easy identification. They had not been aware of him, else they wouldn't have fired at that distance. The thought of someone else near-by, of possible food there for the taking quickened the pangs of hunger in his stomach. He waited only long enough to scan the fields around and behind him, to see if another man had heard the shot and was moving to investigate, before leaping to his feet. Gary set off at a fast trot for the white horizon, the world empty about him.

The sound of the gun had seemed to come from somewhere near the town — always a deadly trap.

Men still loved towns, were still fascinated by them, still dreamed of them. Uncautious men sometimes visited the towns and died in them — the prey of others who waited there and waylaid them. A few who were wiser, more experienced like Gary, often waited outside the towns for the unwary visitor and stopped them in their tracks before they could enter. Once they entered they fared no better. But sometimes a town was actually empty and remained that way because men in the vicinity only thought there were others within.

Two hours of moving swiftly across the snow brought Gary near the town. Suddenly there, he found the new trail.

He crouched down again, making himself a small and almost unnoticeable hump in the snow as he studied the prints of the man who had passed that way. It had been a small person, light of weight and light of step — short and measured paces. Surprisingly, the shoes were in fair repair. He was evidently well-fed and clear of mind because his steps marched the ground without faltering. The right foot was sunk a trifle deeper than the left, indicating perhaps that the traveler was carrying something on that side. He had made no effort to cover his tracks.

Gary pursed his lips. Another trap.

Only the dumb, the unskilled or the overeager would follow the inviting footprints of the well-fed traveler. Only a desperately starving man would rush headlong after the steps, seeking their wealthy owner. He would never live to find him of course. The trail would lead into a town, or the tracker would circle around and double back on his own tracks to wait for the unlucky man following them. Well-fed men stayed that way by living on the hopes of those whose misfortune it was to have trailed them.

These footprints led into the town.

Gary crept nearer and stretched out flat on his belly to study the place. Nothing moved along its streets and there was no betraying curl of smoke from any chimney. An hour went by, and then another. He heard no sound of moving doors, no scraping of shoes on wood, no noise whatever. Toward noon the wind shifted, bringing the smell of the town to him and also bringing the promise of more snow. Carefully he raised his head to sniff the wind. There was no odor of fresh blood, of newly killed game. The firing of the rifle had been but a part of the trap.

The well-fed traveler, new to this region, had journeyed across the plain and left his visible marks behind him. He had fired the rifle to attract attention of any who might be in the vicinity and was now lying in ambush for anyone who stupidly followed. Gary searched the area around him but there was no one other than himself reaching for the bait.

He waited without movement for the snow that was coming.

In midafternoon it began to fall, lightly at first and then the flakes grew heavier and larger, falling with a steadiness that indicated it would continue for some time. It was not too cold. The clouded sky darkened and shortly before the unseen sunset a heavy fall began in earnest. The lump he made on the ground was soon blanketed over, merging into the white surrounding night. From a distance — the distance to the nearest building — his body was no more than a shapeless bulge in the snow.

Patiently, Gary waited for sight or sound or smell of the bait.

The scent brought him fully awake.

The snow had long since stopped and the utter darkness of late night engulfed the world, leaving only that faint illumination close to the ground. Gary had been dozing, almost sleeping with his eyes warily open and his face twisted to catch the vagrant drift of wind, when the scent came. It floated to him downwind from the town and he shut his eyes in an effort to force identification. There was no surface memory to name it, no quick cataloguing to identify the scent displayed by the bait. It remained elusive, tantalizing.

He recognized it as none of the variety of clothes or skins man now wore to cover his body, none of the combustibles used for fire, no possible kind of food he had ever smelled or sampled. It was not the peculiar odorous fumes given off by that lone truck traversing the highway, nor was it of any animal across the face of the silent land. The scent had come suddenly, as if emerging from a doorway, and after a few brief moments it had gone away again, as if behind a closed door. Oddly, there had been no mingling scents, no accompanying smell of leather or wool clothing, no smoke of tobacco, nothing but it alone.

Then, in the next half hour, came wood smoke.

Gary continued to watch and wait but the smoke was invisible in the night air. The peculiar scent did not come again.

He realized it would be foolish to wait until dawn for then he could only retreat from the town; if anything was to be gained, if he was to go in after the bait at all, he would have to do it now under cover of darkness. And if the bait knew he was waiting, the queer scent and the wood smoke were designed to draw him in quickly. If it did not know, it was sheer carelessness. Gary listened only a moment longer to his demanding stomach, and moved forward.

Rising up from the ground he crept nearer the town, taking care not to dislodge the snow clinging to his back. The smell of smoke grew stronger as he approached the buildings and presently he located the source, the tumbling chimney of an old brick house situated on the very edge of the field he was crossing. Briefly thankful that he did not have to enter the town proper, he came up close to the house, circled it, watched it, listened to it.

At the door he found prints in the snow, prints placed there since the fall had ceased. They were small, narrow prints of bare feet — much smaller than the shoes which had left the trail the day before. Gary backed away from them, crept around to the far side of the house again and paused at the chimney. The bricks were warm, absorbing the heat of the crackling fire within. Presently he detected another sound, a fainter one that after long minutes of study revealed itself as boiling water. A fire in the fireplace and a pot of boiling water — and who would prepare a meal in the dead of night? Who would betray themselves with wood smoke, who would stand barefoot in the snow and let that strange scent mingle with the wind?

Moving cautiously along to a boarded-up window, Gary put his nostrils to the cracks.

Fire, warmth, excretion, no discernible odor from the bubbling pot — and very strongly, that puzzling scent.

A woman wearing perfume.

Abruptly there was a movement within the room and he fell to the ground, poorly covered because the snow no longer clung to him. He readied the rifle and waited.

Very slowly, very cautiously the door opened again and he knew those naked feet were standing in the doorway once more, perhaps stepping out into the snow itself so that she might better search the field where he had lain — and so that he might gain a better view and scent of her. The bait was quite aware that he had followed, and had prepared herself accordingly.

He inched along silently toward the corner of the house, working a heavy-handled knife out of his belt and stopping just out of sight at the corner until she should close the door again, until those naked feet should return to the fireplace for warmth. Until her back was turned and she was off guard. Gary flung a swift glance around to search for possible movement — he was convinced the town was empty, else something would have happened when she first exposed herself. He and a strange woman, alone in the town, alone in the loud silence — how long had it been since that last occurred?

He snapped to attention. There was a soft whisper of sound as the door closed, the faint slap of her bare feet moving across the floor.

He jumped from his crouch at the corner of the house and sped for the door, holding the knife by its long wicked blade. He knew where she would be, knew she would be coming to a stop just before the fireplace, her back to him. With a leap and a swing of his foot he kicked the door open, threw the reversed knife at the same instant and dropped prone across the sill, to prevent the door from closing on the rebound. The hilt thudded against the back of her skull.

The woman fell without a sound escaping her lips, her rifle clattering to the floor beside the limp body.

Again Gary swung around to search the street and the town behind him, but nothing stirred. He scrambled inside, shut and barred the door. Crossing over to the woman, he seized the rifle and emptied it of its ammunition, tossing the now useless weapon at her feet. Finally, stepping over her prone body, he spilled the kettle of boiling water onto the fire, dousing the telltale heat and smoke.

Only then did he step back to look at her.

Her clothing had been neatly piled beside the fireplace, her shoes and a heavy black bag rested on the floor beside them. Gary moved swiftly over to the bag, seized his knife from the floor and slit a long gash in its side. The raw, partly frozen remains of a rabbit tumbled through the slit and he promptly scooped it up, to sink his teeth into the cold flesh. Following the exit of the rabbit, a thin trickle of sparkling glass beads dribbled out of the bag. Astonished, Gary dug his fingers into the interior and pulled out a fistful of the things, shiny pebbles that gleamed dully in the darkened room.

He moved across to the woman's body, turned her over on her back to stare down into her quiet face.

She was much older than nineteen now.

After a while he went to the door and got snow to rub in her face, to bring her back to consciousness. While he waited for her to revive, gently massaging her head and the back of her neck, he speculated on their future together. She could be of high value in the struggle to stay alive, could be the most tempting bait possible to trap men — as she had only recently demonstrated. She could be of very great use to him. And if she did her job well, perhaps he would forgive her the kettle of boiling water she had prepared. And there was that angle — it wouldn't be safe for him to let her grow hungry again.

He glanced down into her face, seeing her lids aflutter with the slow return of consciousness. Gary reflected that he'd have to find a new place to live — she'd certainly object to the cave. He grinned at the girl but it was lost in his heavy beard.

Her eyes were the same wide, brilliant blue they had been the first time he'd seen them, her face the same frightened image he had first known. Only her body had changed in the ten years.

“Hello, nineteen… remember me?”