Gary picked up his .22 rifle and crawled to the mouth of the cave to search the snow-covered plain.
In earlier years he had favored the shotgun or the heavier rifle, along with many men who wanted or needed the greater distance and more powerful shell. But other men who clung stubbornly to those heavier rifles were no longer alive. The crack of a heavy carries a long distance — too long a distance across the silent, watchful land. The crack of a gun meant man, and a man fired only to bring down food. He had quickly discovered what a smaller gun could do, discovered that it carried a far less betraying noise but, if he were near enough, could bring down a man just as easily. Gary let the other hunters with heavy rifles stalk the game and reveal their presence — and then eliminated them with the .22. There was so little food to be had that no one hesitated to close another mouth.
The plain before him was clear, white and bright with fresh-fallen snow. Nothing moved across his vision.
He carefully parted the brush and wriggled through the mouth of the cave, pausing every few inches to look and listen and sniff the air. The hillside was barren of life or movement as he emerged into the open, and he rose to his knees the better to search the field below and the rising slope of the hill behind him. A man had very nearly killed him there, three or four years before. The man had lain for days above the cave mouth waiting for him to emerge, slashing down with a rusted bayonet as his head and neck protruded through the opening. His only mistake was that he was too slow, his long hunger robbing his mind and muscles of concerted action. Gary caught the hand that held the bayonet and yanked him down. Afterwards he strung the hill with concealed wires.
Moving guardedly down the hill, he paused to look back at his revealing tracks in the snow. They disclosed his hiding place, advertised his presence, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It would mean the use of extra caution when returning to the cave, but meanwhile the snow would also reveal any other living thing that moved, would reveal an intruder. Snow usually brought into the open what few rabbits that remained, snow betrayed the tracks and trails of chipmunk, grey squirrel, field mice — anything edible. He set traps when he could; ammunition was scarce, valuable. He had managed to loot and steal barely enough to last him through the winter.
At the base of the hill Gary settled down against the white frozen ground, unmoving, listening, his taut nostrils held to the wintry air. There was nothing, no one beside himself. A part of him hungered for the past when there had been others, other men and women moving around without danger to themselves so long as they took reasonable precautions. He liked to remember a winter and a farmhouse in Wisconsin, a family who lived in the old familiar way, a radio, a little girl. And three meals a day. That had been a long time ago, many years ago when he was younger and ate more regularly than he did now. Now he counted himself fortunate when he had something to eat two or three times in the same week and now that enforced hunger was leaving its marks on his body. Now he bitterly resented a competing mouth, and that other mouth resented his.
The snowy plain remained empty and silent, dead. An old concrete highway crossed the middle of it, crumbling away.
There had been but one car on that highway in the past… how many years? Perhaps ten? How long had it been since he had awakened in that dimly remembered hotel to find the world poisoned around him? How long since the winter on the Florida beach, that other winter in the Wisconsin farmhouse, the brief, unhappy excursion across the Mississippi into the land of the living? All of ten years, surely. But there had been a car creeping along that vacant highway since then, since he had taken to living in the cave. A heavily armored truck that reminded him of the mail truck, that rumbled through the valley searching for someone, anyone. The noise of the approaching motor had excited him, made him want to rush down to it, but common sense forced him to hide in the brush and watch it pass. It finally vanished into the distant afternoon sunlight and had not come back.
There was nothing on the plain. He stood up from his cramped position and slowly moved around the base of the hill, rifle at ready.
A brook, doubtless frozen now, wound among the rocks on the far side of the hill and that was his immediate goal, for animals — and sometimes men — stopped there to drink. A few scattered trees gave scant cover as he neared it and he dropped to his belly, searching the area for tracks. There would be no man-tracks here, only those of animals. A man would have smelled the promised snow the night before, would have lain up on the hillside to observe the water hole or would have hidden himself in the trees overhead.
Gary could see nothing among the trees and directed his eyes toward the hill, raising his nostrils to the air. There were no telltale odors; ground and wind alike were bare. Approaching the frozen stream, he studied the snow but it was smooth and without marks. There was no game there.
In the far distance a gun boomed, vibrating the air.
Startled, surprised and yet pleased, he dropped quickly to the ground and searched the horizon.
It had been a medium rifle of some kind — the sound was too far off for easy identification. They had not been aware of him, else they wouldn't have fired at that distance. The thought of someone else near-by, of possible food there for the taking quickened the pangs of hunger in his stomach. He waited only long enough to scan the fields around and behind him, to see if another man had heard the shot and was moving to investigate, before leaping to his feet. Gary set off at a fast trot for the white horizon, the world empty about him.
The sound of the gun had seemed to come from somewhere near the town — always a deadly trap.
Men still loved towns, were still fascinated by them, still dreamed of them. Uncautious men sometimes visited the towns and died in them — the prey of others who waited there and waylaid them. A few who were wiser, more experienced like Gary, often waited outside the towns for the unwary visitor and stopped them in their tracks before they could enter. Once they entered they fared no better. But sometimes a town was actually empty and remained that way because men in the vicinity only thought there were others within.
Two hours of moving swiftly across the snow brought Gary near the town. Suddenly there, he found the new trail.
He crouched down again, making himself a small and almost unnoticeable hump in the snow as he studied the prints of the man who had passed that way. It had been a small person, light of weight and light of step — short and measured paces. Surprisingly, the shoes were in fair repair. He was evidently well-fed and clear of mind because his steps marched the ground without faltering. The right foot was sunk a trifle deeper than the left, indicating perhaps that the traveler was carrying something on that side. He had made no effort to cover his tracks.
Gary pursed his lips. Another trap.
Only the dumb, the unskilled or the overeager would follow the inviting footprints of the well-fed traveler. Only a desperately starving man would rush headlong after the steps, seeking their wealthy owner. He would never live to find him of course. The trail would lead into a town, or the tracker would circle around and double back on his own tracks to wait for the unlucky man following them. Well-fed men stayed that way by living on the hopes of those whose misfortune it was to have trailed them.