Red Rock

Chapter 13: One more for the crowd (Part 1)

Chapter 13 One more for the crowd

"Get your stuff, we're leaving," Jacob said sternly, packing his bag with as much as he could.

"Let's talk this out, Jacob. We have more than one option here," Daire rebutted, trying to slow him down.

"You did well back there, Daire. I thought we were dead for sure. That was some quick thinking on your feet. But we have to think survival now, and the only way we're going to live past week's end is by leaving."

"I think we should stay."

Jacob looked at Daire like he was crazy. "They'll kill us as soon as they get back, and we better not be here when they do."

"What about the rations?"

Jacob stopped and thought for a moment. "We leave them here, come back when it's almost winter and take as much as we can."

"You know that's suicide, Jacob! They're not going to let those rations get away that easily. Do you know how many rainy days those rations will last them for?"

"A long time," Jacob said, already thinking of the same scenario. "But that's still better than being here when they come back for everything."

"We'll only give them half the rations as stated in the deal."

"It won't matter to them. They'll come here and take the one hundred pounds of jerky, if we somehow can miraculously produce that much in a week, then torture us until we tell them where the rest of the rations are."

"If we leave here like you say, where would we go? We'd wander around on borrowed time in the wilderness until the cannibals or some other deranged thieves find and kill us. And even if we somehow find a way to escape those threats, we'd have no food for the winter. We'd have to risk our lives again to come back here and what? Dig up thirty, maybe forty kilograms of packets each before we can't carry any more. If we leave here, we'll die. If we stay, we have a shot at a comfortable living."

Jacob paused for another moment. "Finally thinking like a survivalist, huh?"'

Daire shook his head. "I'm just thinking socially. It's in their best interest to keep us around."

Jacob still didn't seem one hundred percent convinced, but thought of no better alternative. "Alright, we'll give this a shot. Go grab the traps. We've got some hard work ahead of us."

*

Daire set the last of the twenty-three traps in a faraway forest. For clear visibility, he marked them by burying an erect branch into the ground twenty meters in front of the woods. The sets of trees weren't too hard to find anyway, each forest with traps was adjacent to the next, making navigation between them straightforward, but one couldn't be too safe. Jacob decided to try his luck with the bow to get something bigger after filleting and salting the squirrels he had caught the day before.

Daire and Jacob arrived back at the cabin simultaneously, talking loudly of their day of trapping and hunting. "Didn't catch a thing," Jacob started. "Never hunted anything larger than a beaver before, doesn't help that I've barely used a bow before either."

"When have you ever shot a bow? Was your Dad part native too?" Daire mocked.

"More of an outdoor enthusiast. He'd even knap stones for arrow heads and make his own arrows. Cheap bastard."

"I never truly listened to my uncle growing up. Can't say I learned too much from him, besides of what was going on with the economy or the political system."