Fear (A Gone Novel)

One

65 HOURS, 11 MINUTES

SHE WORE A pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt over a black T-shirt several sizes too big.

A leather belt made two turns around her waist. It was a man's belt, and a big man at that. But it was sturdy and bore the weight of the. 38 revolver, the machete, and her water bottle.

Her backpack was dirty and the seams were all frayed, but it sat comfortably on her thin shoulders. In the pack she had three precious vacuum packs of dehydrated macaroni liberated from distant campsites. Just add water. She also had most of a cooked pigeon in a Tupperware container, a dozen wild green onions, a bottle of vitamins—she allowed herself one every three days—as well as pencil and paper, three books, a small bag of pot and a small pipe, needle and thread, two Bic lighters, and a spare water bottle. There was also a medicine pouch: a few Band-Aids, a mostly used tube of Neosporin and a dozen precious Tylenol, and infinitely more precious tampons.

Astrid Ellison had changed.

Her blond hair was short, hacked off crudely with a knife and without benefit of a mirror. Her face was deeply tanned. Her hands were calloused and scarred from the innumerable small cuts she'd gotten from prying open mussels. One fingernail had been torn completely off when she slipped down an abrupt hill and ended up saving herself only by clawing madly at rocks and shrubs.

Astrid swung the pack off her shoulders, loosened the drawstring, and extracted a pair of heavy gloves sized for a grown man.

She surveyed the blackberry bramble for ripe berries. They didn't all ripen at once, and she never allowed herself to take any before they were fully developed. This was her blackberry patch, the only one she'd located, and she was determined not to be greedy.

Astrid's stomach rumbled as she dealt with the incredibly sharp thorns—so sharp they sometimes went right through the gloves—and pried berries loose. She took two dozen: dessert for later.

She was at the northern edge of the FAYZ, up where the barrier cut through the Stefano Rey National Park. Here the trees—redwoods, black oak, quaking aspen, ash—grew tall. Some were cut through by the barrier. In places branches went into the barrier. She wondered if they came out the other side.

She wasn't far inland, just a quarter mile or maybe a little more from the shore, where she often searched for oysters, clams, mussels, and crabs no bigger than large roaches.

Astrid was usually hungry. But she wasn't starving.

Water was a bigger concern. She'd found a water tank at the ranger station, and she'd found a tiny stream of what seemed like clean, fresh water fed from some underground aquifer, but neither was close to her camp. And since water weighed a lot to carry, she had to watch every drop and—

A sound.

Astrid crouched, swung her shotgun off her shoulder, raised it, sighted along the barrels, all in one fluid, long-practiced move.

She listened. Listened hard. She heard her heart pounding and willed it to slow, slow, quiet so she could listen.

Her breath was ragged but she calmed it a little, at least.

She scanned slowly, turning her upper body left to right, then back, covering the trees where she thought the sound had come from. She listened hard in all directions.

Nothing.

Sound!

Dry leaves and damp earth. Not heavy, whatever it was. It wasn't a heavy sound. Not a Drake sound. Not even a coyote.

Astrid relaxed a little. Her shoulders were tight. She rolled them, hoping to avoid a cramp.

Something small scuttled away. Probably a possum or a skunk.