Aurora Quest

“Think it’s better to get shot at when you do expect it?” he said, trying to lighten her depression and failing.

“Not funny, Jim. Not some fucking space-mess joke! I’m getting real tired.”

“So am I. Think I’m not?”

“Then couldn’t we stop awhile? For the winter. Find us a cabin in the hills inland. Must be plenty of them unwrecked if we search hard enough. We can hunt food. See out the dark days and then, if we want, look for Aurora in the spring.”

He sighed and put his hand on her shoulder. “Sure. Sure, we could do that, Carrie. But what’s the point? Folks alone in this new world are totally alone. No chance of ever taking a single step forward.”

“That bad, is it?”

“I think so. We might make it to join up with old Zelig and whatever kind of outfit he’s got up there. Wherever ‘there’ is. The more I know about these Hunters of the Sun, the less I like them. And the more I think we have to make the right choice.”

“Cross the line on the sand that Travis drew with his sword at the Alamo,” she said, part bitter, part smiling.

“Something like that. Hit a lick for what’s right.”

Carrie took his hand from her shoulder, pulled it to her mouth and pressed her lips to his palm. “Most of me knows that you’re right. Just that I sort of forget it now and again, Are we staying here for the night?”

“I’d rather move on, but if the snows come again and we get trapped out in the open…”

“Night by the fire. Could be worse, Jim.”

“Could be,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

SHE HAD TAKEN the first watch, with Jim picking it up after about three hours.

It was dusk, with the snow once again starting to fall steadily.

There was a temptation to sit down in the doorway with the heat of the fire at his back and look out onto the late afternoon. The light was fading quickly as the shrouded sun vanished far over the Pacific.

But Jim knew that he’d already been careless enough for one day.

One of the things that he’d been taught on the survival course was that someone in a lit house could see virtually nothing that was going on outside.

The lecturer on that part of the course had been a petite black-haired New Yorker. They’d been staying in a log-built hostel with a long picture window and she’d gone out into the blackness, telling them to watch out for her. Despite trying to shade their eyes against the reflections on the glass, all they’d been able to make out was a pale blur, almost invisible. When she came in, she’d been grinning wolfishly. “You honcho studs been whispering about wanting to see my tits. I just showed them to you and you didn’t see a thing, did you?” The next morning she’d casually broken the wrist of one of the younger men on the survivalist course when he’d made the big mistake of trying to “accidentally” touch her on the buttocks.

Jim tugged up the hood of his anorak and stepped out into the blizzard, giving a last glance behind him at the snug scene inside the abandoned hut.

Sly was fast asleep, flat on his back, hugging his wooden doll to his broad chest. Heather Hilton was sitting with her back against the corner of the cabin, looking at the fire. She caught her father’s glance and gave him a quick wave of the hand. At that moment be felt one of those inexplicable surges of love for his daughter and he waved back to her, smiling.

Carrie saw the movement and also raised a hand to him. She was busily breaking up some of the pile of kindling that they’d all accumulated before the light began to go.

There was little wind, and the snow was starting to lie where it fell, particularly in the hollows and against stones. A clear strip lay close to the edge of the sea where the salt prevented it from settling.

Jim shuddered and hunched his shoulders. “Someone walking over my grave,” he muttered to himself. He’d buckled the Ruger outside the waterproof coat in case he needed to get at it quickly.

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