April Fool’s Day, a year later.
They made it through another twelve months. Between fishing and careful rationing of the old man’s scavenged food, they had survived. They had not seen another person in all that year. The two of them seemed to be alone in the world, and to Coral’s mind, that was okay.
Even better, yesterday they had seen the first day above freezing they’d seen in twenty months. Not much had melted, but for a couple hours, a water bottle could be left outside without freezing. They celebrated with baths and laundry.
Coral had left mid-morning to go ice fishing, and she’d caught six tiny fish. The fish were getting smaller, but this was enough for another day’s survival, so she quit for the day. The ice was still solid. One afternoon of warm weather had not made any difference there. But today felt warmer, too. She unzipped her jacket as she turned down the path toward the cabin.
Benjamin was there, stacking fuel. He stood and watched her coming, waiting for her. He smiled at her—which he had been inclined to do more and more in the past year—and she held up the line of fish.
“Not bad, not bad,” he said.
It was the middle of the afternoon now, a good time to put on water for fish stew, and she was standing, holding the line of fish, debating whether or not to open one of the last jars of home-canned beets from the root cellar for supper, too, when he said, “Stop. Coral, look,” in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Where?” Her heart skipped a beat. After all this time alone, was there an enemy nearby?
He read her mind—or her posture. “No, nothing’s wrong. Look at your feet. Look down!”
She did. “What?” Her feet looked normal in the thrice-patched boots.
“There’s a shadow.” She looked up at him, and his eyes were wide with childlike delight. “The air must be starting to clear. I can see your shadow.” He held his arms up into the gray sky, in benediction, or in gratitude. That’s when she saw. He was casting a shadow, with two dim lines from his arms drawn on the snow, pointing from him to her.
Coral stared at those lines. Life lines. A return of light meant plants would grow. Insects would emerge. The fish would eat them and grow bigger and lay eggs. If the sun came back, they would survive.
They would survive.
She stared harder, afraid the shadows would melt away, prove to be nothing more than a mirage.
But they weren’t a mirage. They were real. Light and shadow. So simple. So rare. So precious.
She dropped the line of fish and ran to him.
Thank you to all the readers who have sent me notes about enjoying this series and about liking Coral and Benjamin. Nearly every day I have a reason to smile at one of these messages. I appreciate each and every one of you and am happy you had the chance to share this journey.
Thank you to my volunteer proofreading team, Peg and Liz. Thank you to Deranged Doctor Designs for all the new covers and ongoing support.
Some of my survival skills were learned many years ago from the book
Outdoor Survival Skills
by Larry Dean Olsen. I’ve made useful cordage, shelters, and snares from those instructions (though I confess that my own bows, unlike Coral’s, were good only for kindling). And thank you to Ricki for the severed feet that start the novel, which is one of those truths that are almost too strange for fiction.
Sign up for my mailing list at
http://www.loucadle.com/
for new releases and sales alerts. I will have a new stand-alone disaster novel in April and will begin releasing a new series in June or July of 2016. For now, I’m moving away from Coral and Benjamin, but I do have an idea for another story about their lives, so we’ll see what the future holds.
Indie writers, not having the machine of big publicity behind their books, depend on word of mouth and reviews to find our readers. If you have told any of your friends and family about the Gray series, I am more grateful than I can say, and when you post a review on Goodreads or Amazon of even a line or two, that is helpful. (If you hesitate to review any book because you think you don’t know how, I have suggestions on writing a quick review
here
.) Thank you for taking the time to do that.
Other books of mine include these stand-alone natural disaster thrillers:
Quake
Erupt
Storm