Cadence and Dog Read online

  CH

  Everything had calmed down since the initial outburst. Humans had survived but barely, huddling in little communities behind walls of rocks and steel. In the beginning cities had burned, planes fell, cars crashed, people panicked. The satellites falling looked like shooting stars. Daddy woke her up to watch them fall. Said this was the end of the 21th century. Everything had been crazy, and loud. Those people who had been half mad already had pillaged and destroyed. Someone threw the switches at the prisons and let all the inmates out, adding to the confusion and making the streets that much worse. Cadence and her family ran from the city and fast as they could. They ran west, away from the power stations, and big cities. But when they got separated Cadence got hungry and started looking for houses and food. It took her into the path of a wandering madman. Running did her no good since her legs were shorter than his. If dog had not come, she may well be dead.

  “The rain”, daddy had told her, “isn't gonna be safe for a while. When the nuclear plants blow it will fall on the immediate area. Then the air and clouds will pick it up and the rain will let it fall on the rest of the land. Acid rain, radiation rain, it isn’t good for little girls or anything else for that matter. Stay out of the rain.” Made her wonder how the madman could stand in it. The animals had migrated out of the affected areas. They were smart. They are also immune to the madness. Doesn’t mean the madmen left them alone, meat is meat.  So, the animals adapted, those that can hide do, those that can’t… fight. Some of those happy fuzzy little animals from her movies had turned into very dangerous things. The woods could make her safe from the madmen, but it would put her in almost as much danger. The woods also offered little to no protection from the rain.

  As days turned to weeks, her cross-bow practice continued. Slowly she stopped shaking as she pulled back the bow, her aim improved, and she could focus her sight to distances she hadn’t thought of before with stunning accuracy. One week became two and she could shoot across the store without thinking and make her target. She began seeing fewer mad men outside, and those she did always went the same direction. “Where do you think they go?” as another made its way out of town. “They all seem to be headed to the same place, or maybe there is no smell of food the other way.” Dog tilted his head and watched it walk away. He didn’t know where they went but if it was him it would be towards food.

  Cadence spent most of her time reading. Her father had read to her every night, teaching her to love books as much as he did. He had taken her to a library near their home, it was her favorite pace in the world. On her 2nd day of exploration of the store, she came across their little library. She found books on hunting and taking care of herself. Books on first aid and animal training. How to turn animals into food, or clothes and many other useful things. Rope knots and something called ‘hacks’. But as her 3rd month in the store began to shorten to a close, her food supply also began to shorten. The decision to head out wasn’t hard to make. She packed her new “All Terrain” wagon and Dog’s backpack, unlocked the doors, and started out. In the opposite direction the mad men had been wandering.  She didn’t know how but she wanted to find her father, her only family left. He had said west. So west was the way she would go.

  The choice of roads or highway was a harder one.

  The highway had better visibility but while the madmen couldn’t hide neither could she. It had fewer places to stop and rest, fewer resources along the way. The road and houses gave shelter and scavenging, but madmen had more places to hide. The streets were quiet. The first few months screams and panic and fear were the norm. Now the world was just as quiet and eerie as it was loud and chaotic before. But the quiet meant that there weren’t any madmen hunting. However, they could be down any side street. One or hundreds could be around any corner.

  Cadence saw what she believed to be an old friend’s house and tried not to cry at the ruin that sat in its place. The windows shattered, roof caved in from a fire, walls just ending as though half built. The yard she had played in was a mass of trash and broken furniture. The swing had fallen over and something unrecognizable had been impaled on an upturned leg. She would not look closer; instead she looked at the ground. She began to wonder if it was the right house until she saw her own hand print in the sidewalk under the rubble. With tears rolling down her face, they turned away and looked for some place that wasn’t destroyed. But from one house to the next the scene was the same with very little variation. Fire had swept from one house to house. In the chaos that always comes with the changing of the world no one had been there to put it out. The whole block had burned. By the time she had passed the last husk of a building she was in a trance, focusing her sights inward so she wouldn’t see out.

  Dog saw something move in one yard and dropped into his hunting posture.  Tail stiff, ears forward, shoulders rolling with each careful step. He eased forward cautiously. Came upon a koi pond over grown with algae and plant life with one thin flopping koi on the ground beside it as if something pulled it out and left. The orange and white fish gasped and gaped. Dog sniffed at it when it finally stopped moving. He picked up the poor dead creature to take back to The Girl when he saw the movement again. The shadows were still, then suddenly a streak of shadow flew between his legs toward the street. He was after it a second later dropping the now forgotten fish as he spun around to chase. He heard his girl squeal as the thing dodged past her, and again when he did the same. He could almost catch it. But with every leap he made to close the distance it seems to know a second beforehand to evade or ramp up speed. He began to slow down realizing it was only a cat, and he was getting too far away from The Girl. Upon his return he was pleased to find the still chilly guts from the fish. Girl had seen it and decided to go ahead and try cleaning it.

  “Did you catch whatever that was? I bet it was some stray cat if it’s the one who pulled this fish out. Maybe we should see if there are any more in there.” They returned to the little plastic pond to find the scum trying to slide back into place. Cadence used a nearby stick to scrape the thick green/brown cover out and onto the grass. There were bones but no other fish under the surface. It seemed the last survivor had turned cannibal to survive. As Cadence turned to leave a glimmer caught her eye. In the bottom of the pool, among the rocks and debris something shone. She reached into the chilly water, feeling the cold seep into her flesh and bone. She shifted the pebbles. Looking for the glimmer again. Picking through the bones and silt along the bottom of the pond until her fingers brushed against something different. It was smooth, but not like a stone or glass bead. Not like anything she had ever encountered in her life. It began to vibrate ever so softly when she picked it up as if it purred. The vibration faded in and out almost like breathing. With the sun hidden behind the clouds, everything was in shade except the small roughly round thing in her fingers. It wasn’t glowing really, just not dark in a place where everything else was. ‘It wants to be seen’. Her hand floating just beneath the water’s surface wasn’t cold anymore. She hadn’t notice before. But since she touched it a warmth had begun in her fingers under her strange find. Spreading up her wrist and arm until she was warm all over. She could have been inside wrapped up in a blanket for as comfortable as she was hold this thing. Fascinated by the sensations she stared, bringing her face closer. The color shifted from white to the palest blue, then fading to pink and on to green. One by one every color she had ever seen made its way onto and out of its surface. All pale. All so slow to change that they all seemed to be one color. Her balance finally gave in. She had tilted too far and had to catch herself before going face first into the water. As she righted herself, she bought the hand holding the strange thing up out of the water.

   It was a normal stone. White lan
dscaping rock, not perfectly round but a little oddly shaped, with nothing special about it. And it was cold! Her whole arm was freezing from being held in the water. She got up and dried her arm. Looking at the rock again, trying to focus as she had in the pond, she saw nothing. No shimmery color changing glow, felt no warmth. But as she started to toss it back into the water her hand did a curious thing. It put the rock in her pocket! She looked down at her hand in her pocket, pulled it out and tried again. As soon as the stone reach the end of her fingers where it might fall to the ground, her hand closed around it and went back into her pocket. Cadence picked up an identical rock off the ground and rolled it out of her hand as she had tried to do with the pond stone. Watched it fall and bounce a little on the ground next to her foot. Repeated the process with the same result. But her left hand wouldn’t let the pond stone fall. Neither would her right. After the 4th time of having this strange stone be returned to her pocket she left it there.

  “I guess I’m supposed to hold onto it.”

  As they wandered in and through the destroyed city working her way west and somewhat south, she saw no one. Dog saw all manner of small prey, as one would normally find in city limits, and the slightly bigger hunters that eat them. He followed The Girl with his nose constantly sweeping back and forth across his path. Ears perked forward scanning the area. His eyes marking shapes and shadows and filing them away with the other information. He used every sense and instinct to fill in his picture of the world around them. To us it would look almost like 3D radar only there was so much more information in the scan than we could even understand. He knew where food could be found, which houses had animals or had had them living inside. He had learned the smell of those things that looked like men but weren’t, and kept a special part of his mind focused on tracking that sent. They wandered through what had once been busy working suburb and saw places where nature was already reclaiming its territory. Thin trees growing up out of a moon roof in a car. Windows smashed in from storms or riots had never been repaired. Wildflowers were using a beautiful lace curtain as an anchor to pull themselves up to be kissed by the sunlight. A raccoon watched Dog wearily from under a desk, tossed aimlessly into a yard. Its papers lost to the wind.

  A dog's mind is a file cabinet of smells and sounds. But they don’t just know what we know. There are worlds beyond our own, beyond what most humans are capable of knowing. However, dogs, cats, even some children are aware of these worlds. Dog knew. As he knew the building on the left had a family of rats in the wall, he knew that there was a person who use to be alive sitting and staring at that wall. Even ghosts had a smell. We would equate it to the smell of old dry buildings, left empty for too long. Cadence didn’t know of these things. She could have guessed about the rats though, this being a less than wealthy neighborhood as her father would say.  As they walked, her wagon dragging along behind, she thought about the map tucked away in with the rest of her things. She didn’t want to pull it out again. The compass told her she was still heading west. But every time she looked at the map, she felt like she had barely moved. Even the numbers on the houses or businesses didn’t seem to change very fast.

  She would wonder if she was the last human, then remind herself of the man who had wandered into her hide away.  She would see fires off in the distance, but never thought to go towards them. The mad men had probably tried to eat a car or something else flammable. If people were around, they didn’t make themselves known. Although she wasn’t sure she really wanted to find anyone except for her family. But she had no idea where to look. Daddy had said to head west, away from the power plants and big cities. She was trying, but this city was so big! Every time she came to the end of a block or what she thought was an end, there was always another.

  But let us investigate those fires since our heroine has other plans. While the fires may look close, they are actually miles off. A strong hold. Mile high walls of steal and rock. Topped by pits of gas and tar like parapets of old castles. There were many of these type places. Although most were communities of people trying to survive through cooperation and keeping each other well and safe. No one had figured out the madmen’s motives. Why they had taken some people hostage and just eaten others. Why were there great paths of land they have seemed to ignore? Not that you can think of much when you’re running for your lives. So, what scientist have survived have theories, many opposing theories, but not a lot of evidence or anything to work against. Most of those settlements were made in the places the madmen have avoided. Minus the one or two deliberately built in the cities to be in a constant fight against the enemy. The one Cadence had seen on the horizon was a place like this. Our heroine will come across another such place, but we will learn about it later.

  Every day as the sun started to touch the horizon, they began to search out a place to sleep. Cadence had stopped being afraid of the dark when she was 5, but somehow being out after dark wasn’t the same anymore. When life had been normal, she enjoyed sitting next to her father by the fire pit. He had even let her add logs to it once or twice. He would have one of his rare beers, and she drank an equally rare root beer. Grandma would sit in her chair and sometimes tell stories. The lightning bugs would float and blink, the crickets chirped, birds rustled. Those nights were her idea of heaven. But the fire she sat next to tonight was nothing like home. She was getting better about making her fires from scratch. But she had a secret, she always had a fire going. In a cast iron pot, she kept a small little glowing ember, feeding it throughout the day to keep it going. And if she couldn’t start a fire on her own, if it was wet or to windy, she would cook and warm over the cheat pot. She had no way of knowing this was a trick used by Native Americans, Inuit and all the way back to our nomadic cave dwelling ancestors. Although we should be quite thankful that she never set anything in her little wagon/cart on fire.

  Water was becoming scarce. The more houses she looked in the more she began to realize that leaving her sanctuary in the hunting store might not have been smart. Had Cadence seen the poster on the front of her convenient outdoor store, she might have had a better understanding of why the houses didn’t have running water. Why what was there was old and slimy.

  “Ask us about our self-contained water recycling system! And how you can install one in your own home today! Don’t be dependent on anyone! Be in control of your own recourse’s! Solar powered! Thermal power! The choice is yours! Ask about our big self-contained home bundle with power generators, water purification, waste recycling, food storage and inventorying, and so much more!”

  A big promotion had been going on not long before the day of madness hit the US. The stores had each been slated to get one, and maybe half had. But she had never gone out front, hadn’t gone out at all except to leave. That was a good idea since the mad men were out and looking for food. Eventually she ran out of houses and had to depend on her cross bow and her plant book. While she did not starve, she rarely felt full. The city was slowly letting on to the country and the houses became farther apart.

  The miles passed under her feet, she grew tired less but restless more. Her life had become a blur of broken glass and desolate buildings. Hunger was becoming more and more common. She was unaccustomed to pain. Her family hadn’t been rich, but she had never needed for anything. Forced to grow up to soon she wandered. Trying to think like a grown up, trying to think survival. There had been nothing in her life before to prepare her for being on her own. Wandering vaguely south across along some back road she saw a small almost square building.

  The building was tall for a country building. Its roof was steep turning into a spire, with a tall metal cross stabbing up, if slightly crooked, into the sky. Cadence thought it looked like the school houses in Daddies old west movies. She could imagine a sweet young woman with a bell standing at the door calling kids to class. As she walked around the outside, she saw what had become a common feature, broken windows. So common in f
act that seeing the intact ones on the other side, she reached her hand up to touch them. The stained glass higher up was also whole and she went inside to see the light shine through. The stained glass was always her favorite part about church. The light of the mid-afternoon sun through the glass was every bit as beautiful as she had hoped. She looked across the inside of the small church and it was for the most part a normal church. Wooden pews and a little podium on the little stage where the choir would sing. A tall piano on one side and something that looked like a piano only with big pipes coming out of the top of it on the other side. Having never seen a pipe organ she couldn’t have known it was the more impressive of the two. Most modern churches she was accustom to had done away with these because the maintenance on them was far too expensive. The bibles were tucked into the pockets on the back of the pews next to the hymnals where they belonged. A quaint little place just waiting for mass. Except for the left side. Most of the pews had fallen over, the piano in the front had been tipped as well. It looked like a great wave had smashed its way through the left side. Some of the right side had been disturbed but not to the same extent. Cadence moved along the back of the church, down the right side, and sat.