Dead & Gone Read Online Free Page B

are you?” she yelled. “Where are you?”
    The wind answered with a whisper of sand across the landscape.
    She grabbed the cans and ran back to the Explorer.
    She was laughing.
    She was weeping.
    She wasn’t going to die today.

10
    It was so hard to resist the temptation to open all three cans and have a feast, but that would be a bad choice. She gave it some thought, forcing herself to work it through before she took any action. That caution had kept her alive until now.
    The meat would keep as long as the can stayed sealed and out of direct sunlight. To open it now, in this heat, without any means of keeping it cold, would mean that she would have to eat it within a day or so before it spoiled. The fruit, as much fun as it would be to taste something cool and sweet, had no protein.
    The beans were the smarter choice. She could eat them throughout the day, and they would keep her going as she continued on toward the town.
    It would mean leaving this place, and leaving whoever had left the food for her.
    She half believed that it was one of the loners. There were a few of them even out here in the desert—people who could not abide company, who preferred the absolute stillness of a world on the brink of death. Most of the loners were crazy, and a lot of them were downright murderous. There were so many tales—not all of them tall—aboutloners who trapped unwary wanderers and killed them. Sometimes in order to loot their supplies. Sometimes to enforce their own isolation. And, if some of the tales were to be believed, because a lone traveler was a handy source of food.
    It hurt the girl’s mind to think that anyone would turn to cannibalism in a world where everyone who died had been reborn as a flesh-eating monster. But the stories were there, and many of them were told by people who weren’t prone to exaggeration. That made them all the more frightening. These weren’t scary stories told in the dark to frighten children. These were firsthand accounts by hardened travelers who had nothing to gain by making up such tales.
    Avoiding loners was a smart habit of anyone who traveled the wastelands.
    And yet leaving her three cans of vittles was not an act of cruelty or hostility. Not unless the cans were tampered with or poisoned, and the girl had examined every inch of them under the stark light of the morning sun. No pinholes, no evidence that the cans had been opened and somehow resealed.
    No, someone had given her the cans as an act of charity.
    After weighing it all out and eliminating the risks, she took the can opener from her pack and carefully worked its sharp hook around the edge of the can of beans. She did it slowly, with great control, making sure not to spill a single drop of the sauce.
    She set the lid aside and looked at the nutrition information on the can. High in protein, low in sodium. The first was a good thing; the latter wasn’t. Not in the desert, where the heat leached water from the body. Sodiumhelped retain water. Lots of iron, though, and she needed that.
    Sitting in the shade of the Explorer she ate half the beans. Taking her time, chewing them one at a time, almost weeping from the wonderful taste. Licking the sauce from her fingers.
    It took an incredible amount of willpower not to eat the whole can. Once she started, her mind conjured a hundred reasons why she should continue on and clean out every last bean, every last drop of rich red sauce.
    “Don’t be a hog,” she told herself, speaking the words out loud. “Like as not we’ll be wanting those beans afore long.”
    Her scolding voice sounded just a bit like her father’s, and that made her smile as she wrapped the can in the plastic she’d used to gather morning dew. It went into her pack along with the other cans.
    She could already feel the effect of the food. When she pulled herself to her feet, there was strength in her legs. When she took a breath, she could feel her lungs fill all the way.
    “I’m obliged to you,”