Walt knifed feet-first into the water. An icy fist closed over his head. The cold of the water crushed him, clamping his muscles; he gasped, plastering his palm across his mouth and nose. He thrashed his feet but couldn't tell which way was up. His head throbbed. He burst from the water just before his lungs began to sear.
Behind him, the ferry's slow bulk drifted away, engines gurgling and rumbling and burbling. Walt slipped below a wave, gasped, and kicked out of his shoes. They sank unseen into the sea. Wonderful: shoeless in Manhattan. If he didn't die by drowning, he'd die of gangrenous AIDS-feet.
Paddling, he forced his shallow pants into long, regular breaths. Muscle by muscle, he willed himself to relax. He started kicking for the dark towers of the city.
Shouts carried over the water behind him. A minute later, the searchlight of a small vessel bobbed on the water just past the ferry terminal. Walt laughed bitterly. The docks of Brooklyn looked a zillion miles away. He swung right anyway, angling away from the direct line between the ferry and the boat dispatched to track him down, pacing his kicks. He'd always been a strong swimmer, taking lessons at the country club when he was five, then transitioning to a beach rat a few years later, talking his parents into driving him to the shore every weekend he could. Things changed in his late teens when a mounting dread of the creatures lurking beneath the foamy waves drove him back to their backyard pool. He hadn't been over his head in a lake, river, or ocean since he was 19.
The bay yawned beneath him, a miles-wide mouth of cold black water.
The ferry chortled into the distance. Walt swam on, salt in his mouth, limbs clumsied by the cold. His neck strained from tipping back his chin. His loose shirt billowed in the swells, caressing him like a supple, grasping hand. The scattered lights of Brooklyn waited. How far? A mile? A mile he could walk in 15 minutes. How long would it take him to swim? Half an hour? Was that another way of saying he might have as little as thirty minutes to live? Like a man out of a precognitive sci-fi story, he knew more or less the precise time he would die, but the information was totally useless. He wasn't in position to make the most of his dwindling minutes by hopping on a roller coaster or the classiest hooker in the yellow pages. He would spend his final minutes swimming, skin frozen while his muscles and lungs burned, salt dripping in his eyes, pitched by swells.
Roughly halfway to shore, he was certain he wouldn't make it. His arms felt like overcooked ramen. He couldn't catch his breath. Salt seeped down his nose into his throat, sickening and thirsting.
He kicked and stroked and swam. He swam until his arms and legs seemed like the property of another body. He swam until he couldn't think of anything besides keeping his head above the waves, of riding the inward ebb of the current, of inhaling when the water dropped away and exhaling when its icy hold clambered up his neck to his mouth.
He swam.
And with the pilings rising and falling from the water some three hundred yards away, he decided he'd come too far to die. Maybe the hypothermia would get him shivering on the docks. Maybe he'd be eaten by rats or starving survivors. But he wouldn't drown. Not with Brooklyn so close. Drowning now would only prove what he already knew: jumping from the ferry had been the stupidest idea of his life.
He kicked and paddled, nose blowing bubbles in the waves. In the moonlight, a dark, tilted slab stood on narrow wooden pilings a few feet above the water; beside it, a tall steel dock rose twenty feet above the soft waves, skeletal and pitted. He pushed for the slab. His muscles felt like ten thousand ants withering in a fire. His breath gushed out of him in ragged huffs. The pilings swung close enough to bash his brains out. He reached out, plunging beneath the water as he lifted his arms, and grabbed the slippery wood. Splinters and barnacles shredded his palms, a dull burn beside the total pain of his body. He hugged himself to the piling and rested there in the motionless cold until he found the strength to lift his arms above his head. The plank above him groaned under his weight. Arms shaking like they were ready to fall apart, he hauled himself up to the platform's lip, wormed his weight over its edge, and flopped onto a pile of loose, fish-stinking boards. He shivered there for a while.
A breeze swept goosebumps across his skin. The night wasn't that cold—if he hadn't been carrying 900 gallons of seawater in and on his skin, he could have survived in a light jacket—but he felt like he would die if he stayed there and slept. A narrow gangway led to an ocean-rotted wooden ladder up the side of the metal dock. He yanked on the rung above his head. It held. He climbed hand over hand, resting both feet on each rung before moving on. Rust clogged his nostrils. Corroded metal rods projected from the dock's rectangular frame. At the top, Walt crawled across the gappy planks to a crumbling factory. Glassless windows stared dumbly out to sea.
He walked inside to a grimy concrete platform. His shirt was wet. He needed to be not-wet. He peeled his shirt off, shivering hard enough to snap his neck. On his bare stomach, his closed knife wound was hot and pink and ticked by stitches. Walt grabbed the shirt at its hem and strained, trying to tear it in half, but his biceps quivered like a scared dog. He took the hem in his teeth and yanked. It gave way with a wet rip.
He stuck a foot inside each sleeve and knotted the sopping fabric around his ankles. They weren't good shoes. In fact, they were shit. Cold, wet shit that threatened to fall off his feet just a few steps into the dark factory. He reknotted them and shuffled on. On a dusty shelf, he found a pile of burlap sacks. The corners shredded easily. He stuck his arms through the holes and crouched down in a ball until he stopped shaking.
The front doors were held by a heavy iron chain. He swung his legs out a window and dropped down to the street.
Graffitied, rust-colored factories flanked a wide, weedy street. Walt ducked through a hole clipped through the chain link fence, scratching his ribs on a sharp wire. He straightened, gritting his teeth. A dog trotted down the street, nails clicking, tags jingling. It had been days since the world stopped working. Had the pet tasted blood yet?
Down the block, Walt opened a newspaper dispenser and stuffed his burlap shirt with wadded pages of the Village Voice. Metal shutters sealed the corner bodega. He swore, dropped to the gutter, and scooped his palm into the stagnant, cool water there. It tasted like dirt and sweetness and life. He allowed himself three palms full, then gargled out the last of the salt.
He walked on. Smelled decay and bad meat. A lumpy, blanketed body sprawled from the stoop of an apartment. Brown blood crusted the top step. The paint around the door handle had been scraped down to the wood. Walt lifted the burlap over his nose and untied the dead man's running shoes. He smelled death, sour and rotting and hot as a sleeping baby. When Walt pulled the second shoe free, a glistening tube of foot-skin gave way with a wet slurp.
He scrabbled back and vomited into the street.
The right shoe fit. The left, he couldn't squeeze over his heel. He tied his shirt back over his unshod foot and limped on.
He hadn't had much of a plan till then—"Don't drown or freeze to death," yes, but given that was high on everyone's daily goals, he didn't think that counted. He was somewhere on the western shore of Brooklyn. The bridge into Manhattan would be a few miles north; his apartment a couple miles further up from that. He knew there was an R-train around here somewhere. With luck, it would still be operational, and he could ride into the Village, grab his stuff out of the apartment, take another train up into the Bronx, and start the long march west. With no luck, or rather the standard of luck to which he'd become accustomed in the last few weeks, he'd have to hoof it the whole way.
He didn't know if he could handle that just now. He'd made it the few blocks from the docks on a cocktail of I-almost-died adrenaline and the need to get moving and warm. He could feel the weakness, though, the worn-out tremor of his calves and thighs. He'd need to rest soon. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with clean water.
Thin clouds skeined the sky above the silent streets. Drapes flapped from open windows. Black gum spots stained the sidewalks. T
he cars clung to their parking spots, motionless, forgotten. If Walt had come from another time, he might have mistaken them for cramped metal huts.
Beneath a raised highway, Walt could actually hear the traffic light click from red to green. His shirt-shoe squished across the asphalt with wet, irregular tracks. He walked past a VFW, a sporting goods store, a Greek cafe, one- and two-story storefronts with hand-lettered signs and exhaust-grayed paint. He didn't know where he was. Without the towers of Manhattan to guide him or the Citibank skyscraper rising in blue glass loneliness from the middle of Queens, he could have wandered away into Long Island.
There was a logic to New York, though, one that ran deeper than its numbered grid. Live there for a few years and every neighborhood starts to feel familiar. Walt may not have known precisely where he was going; the wrong turn, and he could easily stumble into a block of weedy lots, blank brick walls kudzued by old graffiti, and suspicious-eyed locals who looked teleported straight out of Soviet Russia. But soon enough, Walt would get where he was going. At times, the city felt like a dreaming giant. Walk through its mind for long enough, and it starts to tell you where to go.
He spotted the subway station two blocks later. The marine green rails, the black board with the bright yellow alphabet of the routes, the hole in the sidewalk to the platforms that, under normal circumstances, smelled pleasantly of laundry and unpleasantly of urine.
Now it smelled like death.
Walt waited at the top of the steps for the better part of a minute. Faint, buzzing light illuminated the grimy steps. He didn't know what he was waiting for: the rumble of a train, the crank of a turnstile, or maybe just a wise vagrant to pass by, roll his prophet-bright eyes, and warn him to move on. Finally, it came to him. A weapon. You don't descend into dark underground places without a weapon. He glanced down the street. A few spindly trees bordered by tight black iron fences. Wire trash can chained to the traffic light. Hamburger wrapper. More gum stains. Parking signs. A shuttered fried chicken joint. Out front, a green sandwich board resting on its side, white chalk lunch specials half-erased. He shuffled over, grabbed one of its legs, and yanked. He gave his three-foot club a swing, lashing the air, enjoying the hiss. Would probably break the first time it hit anything of person-level density. Still. Better than nothing.
The handrail along the stairs was greasy with humidity and the ongoing touch of thousands of passengers. Crunchy, rusty stains tracked a thick line down the center of the stairs. The stench had been gaggable at street level, but halfway down, he had to draw his burlap shirt over his nose again. It didn't help. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, burlap scratching his lips. The glass of the token booth was spiderwebbed with cracks. A fluorescent bulb buzzed, casting flickering pale light over the concrete and turnstiles. If he'd had the energy, he would have jumped them just for kicks; instead, he scuffed along through the wide-open metal-banded door to the platform.
The air was still and close and hot, so thick with stink it felt like it would coat his skin and stick inside his throat. Flies whined. He swallowed down warm bile. Something rustled in the mud and puddles along the dimly gleaming tracks. Walt raised his stick and edged out onto the platform. To his left, fat black bags mounded the platform to shoulder height.
A viscous brown puddle collected around the pile's base. The bags on the lower strata looked like proper thick body bags, but those on top were black plastic garbage sacks. Arms and bloated yellow faces protruded from the rips and holes. Brown blood smeared split lips and blackened noses. Dozens of bodies had spilled from the pile onto the tracks, a rotting landslide of the dead. A second mound rested on the opposite platform, stretching away into the darkness.
Walt backed away, gagging. He banged his hip into the metal door and collapsed on his ass. He scrabbled backwards until his palm skidded through a crusted smear of brown slime. Hastily, he wiped his hand on the tiled wall and ran up the steps to the damp, cool air of the street. He ran around a corner and slumped against an apartment block until he no longer smelled the sludge of former people.
Eight million people had populated New York City proper. Most—90%? 99?—were now dead. They'd had to store the bodies somewhere.
He didn't know when the last semblance of law had left the city, but he guessed it had been right around the same time they started stuffing the subway tunnels full of corpses. Yet as desolate as the streets looked, he knew he wasn't alone. He'd survived the virus. So had the dozens of survivors the military had cooped up and ferried off to Staten Island. There had to be others out there. He had no intention of spending the night anywhere but his home.
The corner bodega was locked but unshuttered. Walt bashed in the glass door with his stick. Spilled couscous gritted the floor. Jars of pickles lay smashed across an aisle, the briny juice smelling like a withered sea. The shelves had been stripped of everything but a few candy bars, some freeze-dried lunch noodles, scattered cans of off-brand soda. Walt ate a Snickers in big chewy bites and walked to the back where "I HEART NEW YORK" shirts and hoodies hung from the wall. He stripped naked and toweled down his damp crotch and thighs, then pulled a t-shirt and a hoodie over his chest. He found the extra-larges and stepped into a shirt, pulling the sleeves over his legs, then did the same with a navy blue sweatshirt, his balls dangling in the hood. From a third sweatshirt he reeled out the drawstring and belted it around the loose fabric at his waist. Dressed, if rather unfashionably, he cracked a fizzing can of soda and chugged until the last drops slid from the can's mouth. He crumpled it and dropped it on the tile. A series of belches foamed up his throat.
The dried salt still scummed his skin and hair, but he felt refreshed, capable of at least attempting the trip back. Briefly, he considered trying to steal a car, but nobody in this city would have left their keys in the ignition, and besides, on the empty streets, it would be an awful lot of attention. He'd take a bike if he found one.
He wasn't banking on that, though. He found a canvas bag behind the register and filled it with sodas and 3 Musketeers and jars of peanuts. He found a baseball bat there, too, but no guns. Just as well. All he knew about guns was they had a trigger and they went bang.
He still wasn't too jazzed about his shoes. He had something like 3000 miles of walking between himself and Los Angeles. He didn't much feel like ruining his feet before he'd left Manhattan.
The door to the four-story walkup beside the bodega was locked. Walt circled around to the side where a chain link fence walled off a small garden. He scaled the fence and dropped into the yard. A rake leaned against the back porch. He used it to unhook the fire escape and snag its lower rung. The stairs swung down with a metal creak. On the second-story landing, he smashed in the window and crouched out of sight. After a minute of silence, he cleared the jagged glass with the baseball bat and clambered inside.
After the stink of the subway, the rot inside the apartment was a nasal Sunday drive. A fat body moldered in the bed, yellow underwear clinging to its crotch. Walt opened the closet. The dead man's loafers were three sizes too big. Walt slipped on three pairs of gold-toed socks. The loafer fit.
In the kitchen, he took a paring knife and a box of matches and climbed back down to the street. He saw his first person five minutes later, a short, thin figure that scooted across the asphalt a block ahead. With the Brooklyn Bridge bobbing above the walkups, something growled from a stoop. Walt jumped back, bat in hand. A German Shepherd's eyes glinted in the gloom. Walt backed away and walked on.
He was used to a New Yorkerly rush, but he forced himself to stick to a light pace that barely upped his breathing. A door slammed and Walt hid in the shadow of a tree. Far off, a car engine purred, followed by a single gunshot. He passed a body every few blocks. Some sat upright in alcoves; two lay in the middle of the sidewalk; others rested behind car wheels or slumped against apartment windows. For the most part he didn't see them at all. He supposed most had died in their homes, or been gathered up and burned or stored in the subways. As fast as the Panha
ndler had flashfired through the world, it hadn't struck people dead on their feet. It had given them just enough time to hide away.
A rhythmic whapping echoed down a side street. Walt got out his knife and snuck forward. A man leaned over the hood of a car, pants around his ankles, hem of his shirt halfway down his pale, tensing buttocks. Beneath him, legs and arms lolled across the car's hood. Slapping flesh echoed from the brownstone fronts. Walt moved on.
Lacking his cell phone, he wasn't sure how long it took him to reach the base of the spidery Brooklyn Bridge. A couple hours, he guessed. Long enough for his feet to hurt. Blister on his left pinky toe, he thought. His shoe was too tight. He stopped for another candy bar, a couple handfuls of peanuts, a soda. His teeth felt fuzzy. He must remember to take a toothbrush with him.
Dead cars scattered the lanes below the footbridge. He leaned up the curving ramp. Cables webbed him in on either side. The twin gates of the bridge loomed ahead, silhouettes of skyscrapers rising behind them. He had a bad feeling. Manhattan was an island. If you controlled the bridges, you controlled Manhattan—for whatever that was worth when there was nothing left to control.
The white line dividing nonexistent bike traffic from nonexistent foot traffic carried him to the tall brick gates. Walt paused where the boardwalk split, meaning to pop off his shoes and give his feet a rub. The waves of the East River capped and rolled. Walt heard a metal click.
A thin man in a leather jacket moved sideways from the huge stone pillar. He held a black pistol. The pistol pointed at Walt's head.
"Your money."
"Does it look like I've got any money?" Walt laughed, surprising himself. "My balls are in a fucking hoodie."
The man stepped forward. A thin brown beard fuzzed his cheeks. "Nobody crosses the bridge without paying the troll."
"Trolls are supposed to live under bridges."
"Trolls with guns live wherever the fuck they want. Drop the bat and put up your hands."
Walt let the bat go. It clattered, wood on wood, and rolled toward the steel cables at the side of the bridge. "I'm just trying to get home here."
The man flicked his gun in a come-on motion. "Give me the bag."
"Fine. Hope you like candy bars."
Walt lobbed it at the man's feet. The man knelt down, keeping his gun trained on Walt's chest, and pawed open the plastic sacks. Silver wrappers winked in the moonlight.
"This is all you got?"
"I had to take a swim across the bay earlier tonight. That meant leaving my gold bricks at home."
The man switched his gun to his left hand, biting his lip. "Take down your pants."
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"I said take down your pants or this bullet will take you down."
"Just because the world's over doesn't mean we have to turn into a pack of rapists!"
"One more chance. Then I shoot out your knees and make you get down on them."
"No." Walt took a step. The man jerked his gun to aim between Walt's eyes. "You will take nothing from me. I'll die first." His hands shook. His heart felt divorced from his body, a crated dog hurling itself against the bars.
The thin man edged back. "I can make that happen."
"Promise me you will."
"I solemnly swear."
The tip of his trigger finger twitched. Walt ducked and bowled forward, plowing into his ribs. The gun crashed. They staggered back together, reeling over the boards. Walt jammed him into the steel cables with a hard jolt. The pistol fired again, stinging the side of his face and dazzling his ears. He wriggled his elbow against the man's neck, grabbed his belt, and toppled him over the side.
The man screamed. The gun fired a third time, the bullet whirring crazily as it ricocheted from the bridge. The man hit the road below with a thick squelch, gun flying one way, guts another. His arm raised, wavery as a puppy, then collapsed against his smashed chest.
Walt spit over the edge. To his surprise, he felt no guilt. Just a vague sense of disappointment he pinned down at once: he was still alive.
That and a tug on his side from his old stab wound. He lifted his shirts. Saw no blood. Just a warm pink line. Once his heart and breathing slowed, he walked on.
The bridge dropped him into a downtown as deserted as Brooklyn. The steeple-like crown of city hall rose above the darkness. Red X's crossed the doors of apartment buildings and hotels. On the corner, a scorched Humvee rested on its side, dead soldiers slumped behind its cracked windshield. A block further, the stench of corpses roiled from a subway entrance. He tucked his mouth below his sweatshirt hem and crossed the street. Ten minutes ago, he'd killed a man. His own life—no different than before. The event may as well have never happened. What did that mean? That if a tree chopped down another tree in the forest and no one was around to see it, the first tree didn't have to feel sorry? If emotions were created for social creatures, did they cease to exist as soon as society disappeared?
He got home without incident. Past the front door's red X, the lobby's smell of dust was a welcome change from the putrefying meat of the street. Walt stripped naked and lowered himself to the couch. From nowhere, he began to cry. Vanessa was dead, and he wanted to be.
He woke with late afternoon sunlight slashing the dust motes in front of the window. He showered and soaked his feet in saltwater and bandaged his blisters. His apartment had gone untouched; his bags of food and gear were still ready to go. He moved with a cold momentum, in no particular hurry, stiff and sore, intending to keep out of the streets until after sunset. To his bags he added two paring knives, a long meat knife, tennis shoes and sandals, three pairs of shoelaces looted from Vanessa's old shoes, a second box of Band-Aids, a printed Google map of the United States, and a metal bowl. He guessed anything metal would have great utility from here on out.
A couple shots of whiskey passed the time. He added a few more to his stomach's collection and opened the window to listen to the silent city. When the sun faded to nothing, he put on his coat and slung a backpack from each shoulder.
He descended to the building foyer, opened the front door, and stepped outside.
The humidity had him sweating three blocks later. He didn't see another living person until he reached Washington Square, where a man on a bench stirred beneath his blanket. Walt drew his knife and came up close.
"What are you doing?"
The man blinked and sat up straight, tugging his blanket around his neck. "I don't want trouble. I'm not bothering anybody."
Walt gestured at the red brick walkups lining the north of the park. "You think anyone lives there anymore? What are you doing sleeping in the park?"
The man scratched his black beard, wrinkling his forehead. "Being stupid, I suppose."
"Good luck." Walt walked on. The man waved and stood up.
Every few blocks, silhouettes stirred behind windows; a couple times an hour, shoes scraped the pavement, dark figures ducking into doorways or behind parked cars. In total, he saw evidence of a couple dozen survivors between the Village and the hotels of Midtown. No doubt more were hiding or had fled. Still, how few did that leave throughout the city—five thousand? Ten? On 53rd Street, the white walls of a tower were scorched black. Beyond, the charred rubble of a skyscraper mounded the street, wafting the faint smells of smoke and cooked meat. Walt made a quick detour, then cut north at a light jog. On the south front of Central Park, a horse lay in a stiff-legged heap, still reined to its hansom.
He leaned against a glass-faced storefront and scanned the park. Water. Arable land. Would it become a co-op farm? Or a tribal battleground, its waist-high stone walls converted into perimeters, the plaza above the lake raised into a keep? He wouldn't see it, would he? After nearly a decade, the full run of his adult life, he was leaving New York. Even if his foolish quest succeeded and later that year he found the cool Pacific washing over his ankles, he doubted he'd ever see his city again.
In one sense, that was already true. If he stayed, he'd never again stand on a subw
ay platform and feel the warm, moist breeze of an incoming train. He'd never taste the flag-like pizza slices with their sweet marinara; the absurd, delicious fusions of curried lamb BLTs with cumin mayonnaise; the endless pots of tea, perfect for a hangover, before and after his kung pao at Suzy's. He'd never again see the sidewalks that glittered like the open sea on 3rd Avenue. Never sneak down from the nosebleed seats during a Mets game. Never get woken up by those fucking trucks banging over those fucking metal plates.
And rather than the devouring sadness of the loss of Vanessa, the sadness of this loss felt sweet. He'd had good times. He'd known a place. Now, that place was gone. For all he hadn't done—the Statue of Liberty, closed since 9/11; a Jets game, too far in Jersey—he couldn't have asked for more.
He rested on the corner of the park, listening to the wind shuffle the leaves and eating a bagel that had grown hard in the days since the army had extracted him from his home. He wished it had lox. He'd probably never taste lox again, too.
He walked through the white baroque facades of the Upper East Side, the brownstone walkups of Harlem. The bridge to the Bronx was clogged with empty cars. Walt slunk along the gnarled, bolted metal girders. His feet were sore again and so was pretty much the rest of him. The train tracks lifted from underground to elevated rails; beneath their shadows, he smelled urine and decay. No trolls this time.
Alongside the flags at the front of Yankee Stadium, a woman's body dangled from a light pole. Walt was glad he'd never had kids.
The air took on the warm, moist smell of approaching morning. Walt hurried for the George Washington Bridge, resolving to steal a watch at his next opportunity. Dawn broke across his back in the suburbs of New Jersey. Between townships, he tromped a few hundred yards into the woods, plunked down beneath a tree, and discovered he'd done something very stupid: forgotten to pack a blanket.
A blanket. A watch. And something to eat besides these damn bagels. He had a lot to learn.
He rose the next afternoon, thighs and hips and feet sore, toes and soles blistered. He shadowed the road to the outskirts of a town, then waited for darkness to sweep over the quiet green streets. The lights stayed out. On the far edge of town, the blank white walls of a Wal-Mart stood like a modern castle in the black moat of its lot. Walt clicked on his flashlight and stepped over the broken glass carpeting the entrance. He wandered past baskets of blue-fuzzed tomatoes and bins of spinach and cilantro collapsed in their own deep green juices.
In sporting goods, he found a large duffel bag and filled it with the contents of one backpack. The battery racks were bare of AAs and Cs, but he found some by the registers. He bypassed the digital watches in favor of an analog—digital didn't feel right anymore. He wandered back to the sports aisles and stuffed the duffel with a lightweight sleeping bag and a crinkly emergency blanket. He grabbed a few sleeves of Pringles, a plastic bottle of orange juice, the last bag of beef jerky in the store, and as many tins of almonds and cashews as he could fit in his backpack. On his way out of the dark store, he turned around and replaced a couple jars of peanuts with a couple rolls of toilet paper.
Walking gave him something to think about besides Vanessa. When he had to stop to rest or pop a blister, he remembered her smile, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, her easy elegance whether sheathed in a black dress or lounging in a pair of cutoff jean shorts. He'd always have those memories. Then why bother with this journey at all? Even if he made it to Los Angeles, what would he do then—shoot himself? Why not cut to the chase?
Every day he woke up, thought the same thoughts, packed up his camp, and walked on.
The endless townships of Jersey gave way to open, empty forests of short pines and broad-leafed oaks. Somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, following the highway along the rolling hills, with the daytime humidity lending soft edges to the ridges and skies, he ran out of food.
He wandered off the highway into the woods, roughly paralleling the road as he searched for—well, he didn't know. Something that looked like it could sit in his belly without being violently ejected a few minutes later. That ruled out mushrooms. But walnuts, strawberries, wild carrots? Would he know a wild carrot if he saw it? He didn't think he would.
A gunshot cracked the sky, echoing among the hills. Walt shrunk down, hand scraping the rough bark of a tree. He counted down a minute before rising.
"Got to be around here somewhere," called a high, rasping voice downhill. "What do you want to do with 'em when we find 'em?"
"Leave him on the border," replied a clear baritone. "Let everybody else know to stay the hell out."
11