“Transportation,” he replied. There were horses there. He remembered seeing them from the highway this summer, grazing lazily in the sun, a sight so common in that old life it had faded into the low static of daily background noise.
“North it is,” she agreed, aiming her gloved hand before them. “You do know how to ride a horse, don’t you?”
“They don’t call me Cowboy Nate for nothing.” Nobody called him Cowboy Nate. But it was true. He had ridden a horse once or twice, nearly twenty years ago. He also knew there was no sense fretting over details before they got there. One of his favorite quotes by Mark Twain summed it up rather nicely. Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.
They turned off Blackhawk onto what, in warmer times, would have been a gravel country road. This was the dividing line between two radically different worlds, the urban and the rural. On one side, the top end of a mesh livestock fence poked just above the snowline. Beyond that stood a former pasture, now only a desolate field of blowing white powder. On the other side was a tree line broken only occasionally by the vague opening of a driveway. Since they had veered off, they had yet to see a single tire track. Could it be that the folks with nearby farms had opted to stay home and protect their property come what might? Had they ridden to Rockford themselves? Or had they already succumbed?
As they passed one property, Nate peered through the loose screen of trees, recognizing a red barn far in the distance. “This is it,” he told her.
The lane was unbelievably long, and shaped like a giant question mark, winding around a clump of evergreens before finally arriving at the house. The structure itself was quaint. White, two-level with a wide wraparound porch and a stone chimney. He pointed. “No smoke.”
Dakota nodded.
Approaching, they saw no sign of any vehicles. He conceded they could be buried beneath several feet of freshly fallen snow. Regardless, Nate was on his way to the front door when Dakota called him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean what am I doing?”
“You said you wanted horses,” she replied, her voice tinged with a hint of disbelief. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Isn’t the barn back that way?”
“It is, but I’m not a thief. Remember those friends of yours, the ones who threw you into that cage? I refuse to become one of them.”
Dakota snickered. “I didn’t mean steal, I meant borrow.”
She was fighting him, at least on the outside. He could see that. She was part of a generation that had grown up downloading pirated copies of movies, books, music and software. What was stealing a few horses to someone not very well versed in the notion of property and ownership? Behind the snicker, however, Nate suspected Dakota knew he was right.
Nate climbed onto the porch and rapped at the door several times. Dakota stood back, staring out toward the road.
He was about to knock again when he followed her gaze and saw what she had been looking at. Fifty yards out stood the wolf. It was standing inside the tracks they’d made, eyeing them intently. The sight made Nate’s pulse quicken.
“What do you think Shadow wants?” Dakota asked.
“Shadow? I thought you said he didn’t belong to you?”
“You can’t own a wild animal,” she replied, her eyes never leaving the beast. “Not the way people own a poodle or a turtle. We were also cell mates, don’t forget. Sure, it wasn’t for more than a few hours, but we developed a kind of bond, I guess. I named him the minute I saw the dark patches of fur around his eyes.”
Nate was looking into those feral eyes right now and not entirely sure what to think. Was the creature stalking them? Waiting for the weather to weaken them? Or was it hoping for something else?
Reluctantly, Nate turned his back for one final assault on the door. He decided to knock the way cops do when carrying out an arrest warrant.
Several minutes passed with still no result. Nate swung around to find Dakota, bobbing up and down, trying to stay warm. “All right, you win. Let’s go check out the barn.”
The more he thought of it, the simpler the argument in favor of liberating the horses became. Without a doubt, anything left behind in Byron was going to die—if not by starvation, then by the constant bombardment of radiation in the atmosphere. Regardless of what people might have told themselves, once you left town, there was no coming back.
Nate scanned the snowline for the wolf. He was nowhere to be seen. It seemed Shadow was living up to the name Dakota had given him.
Once they reached the barn, Nate was relieved to see the door was a large side slider rather than the kind you opened by pulling outward, a task that would have wasted precious time and energy given the depth of the snow piled up against it.
Both Nate and Dakota leaned against the side of the structure and pushed with all their might, grunting from the effort. Slowly, the door began to move. Soon enough, they had created enough space for a tractor to come and go.
Upon entering, they were hit at once by the smell of hay mixed with the pungent odor of manure. Dakota plugged her nose with the end of her mitten. “Oh, that’s strong.”
Nate laughed. “It’s not that bad. Besides, I’ll gladly put up with a bit of stink if it gets us to Rockford in one piece.”
He got no argument there. The only sound came from the stalls where three horses were whinnying. Two of them stuck their heads out, eyeing the newcomers with uncertainty. They were used to seeing the farmer, Nate assumed, not a couple of strangers wrapped from head to foot. Nate removed his beanie and gloves and approached a chestnut mare closest to them. He held out his hand, palm up. The horse’s nimble lips searched for food, tickling him with her whiskers.
“Give him one of these,” Dakota said, ripping open a bag of carrots on a nearby table and bringing him one.
“It’s a she, not a he,” Nate corrected her as he took the carrot, offered it to the mare. He grinned as she gobbled it down greedily. “Be careful your fingers don’t get nipped. Hold your hand flat like this when you feed them.”
Dakota approached a male Appaloosa, a popular breed created long ago by the Nez Perce Indian tribe. Like the mare, the Appaloosa eagerly took the carrot from Dakota’s hand. She giggled with glee. She then fed the third horse, an aging draft animal that looked old and maybe a little grouchy.
“Watch that last one,” Nate warned. “An angry horse is a dangerous horse, no matter how old they are.”
But even Nate’s caution couldn’t wipe the enthusiasm from the young girl’s face. “Oh, my God, his teeth look just like my grandma’s. She used to grind them at night until they got real flat. Wow, I never knew humans could have horse teeth too.”
Nate rolled back on his heels, laughing. The levity, however, was cut short by the sound of a shotgun being racked.
He spun, attempting to swing the AR around.
“Try it and it’ll be the last thing you do,” the man barked. He had both barrels trained on the center of Nate’s chest.
Dakota was slowly reaching into her pocket where she kept the Glock she’d taken off Gabby. Nate signaled for her to stop.
“Same goes for you, missy,” the man said.
Dakota raised her arms, scowling.
“Now, you wanna tell me what you’re doing on my property?” His eyes were road-mapped with red lines. His skin was deathly pale.
“Are you feeling all right?” Nate asked, genuinely concerned. “You don’t look so well.”
“Never mind that,” the farmer shouted. “I don’t believe you broke in just to feed my horses.”
“We tried knocking at the door,” Nate replied in an attempt to explain.