Z for Zachariah (21 page)

Even worse than hunger was the monotony of my days. In daylight I could not go anywhere without the fear of being seen and shot at, so mostly I stayed hidden at this end of the valley. I slept quite a lot, for it was cool and shady here even during the hottest days. I worried, of course, that Mr Loomis might use Faro to lead him to my new hiding place and trap me here while I was sleeping. But the drone of the tractor was reassuring. Mr Loomis seemed finally to have realized that someone had to harvest the crops; since he would not let me do it, he would have to do it himself. Or maybe he was just waiting for me to get too confident, and relax my guard.

Sometimes when I was sitting in the woods, waiting for dark to fall so that I could go out safely, I thought about my book. I remembered the stories that had been my favourites, and sometimes I could even remember the exact words an author had written in some special scene. But I also remembered how I had found the book that night when I had gone back to the cave after he had burned my things. That memory stirred my harshest feelings towards Mr Loomis. I am not sure I have ever hated anyone—as a child I was taught that hatred was wrong—yet I admit that I wanted to hurt him, and cause him grief. He deliberately ruined the thing I prized most. Stealing the safe-suit will be my revenge.

I thought about the plan a lot. Still, as miserable as my life was, I could not bring myself to set the plan in motion, or even to make the first move. I suppose it was fear that held me back, and the fact that, for the moment, Mr Loomis was leaving me alone. Yet it was only a question of time: autumn was only a month away, and my food sources would be gone; and Mr Loomis would not wait forever.

As it was, it was he who set the plan in motion, without knowing what he was doing, and without my knowing it either. On a warm afternoon I had grown bored and decided, against my better judgment, to go to the east ridge of the valley to gather berries. They were plentiful and delicious and I ate almost as many as I picked, stooping behind the bushes to keep out of sight. At one point I glanced downwards over the farm and seemed to notice something different, but my eyes came back to the blackberry bush, and it was not until I looked a second time that I realized what it was. The front door to the store was wide open.

I could not believe my eyes. At first I thought that Mr Loomis must be inside the store, gathering supplies for himself. I shrank lower behind the brush and waited for him to emerge. I waited for a long time, but there was no sign of him. Then suddenly I thought: What if it is an accident? Suppose he simply meant to lock it, and forgot? The longer I waited, the more I became convinced that it was true. He had gone into the store before lunch to get some things he needed, and in his hurry he had forgotten to fasten the padlock. The heavy door had swung open. He had gone down the road to the house without looking back.

I was beside myself with excitement. My mind flooded quickly with the tastes and smells of food I had not eaten for the past month: tinned meat, beans, soup, biscuits. I thought of supplies that I needed for the trip: more clothes, a better knife, torch batteries, a compass. I would not get another chance to go into the store; I had to take the risk now. Warily I began to creep forward, always staying behind the brush. In the valley nothing moved.

I came to a place where the brush stopped, so that there was nothing for me to hide behind. The field, with the pond, stretched to my right; ahead of me, the road and the store. I walked slowly along the fence row, turning to look on every side. All was quiet. I felt braver and braver. I was only fifty yards from the road. Suddenly a rabbit exploded from underneath my feet, and I leapt backwards in surprise and fear. Something moved in the window of the store and a shot rang out. I turned and ran. He fired again, but the shot missed widely, and I thought I heard him curse. Faro barked. I made it up the hill into the trees and hid.

I had walked into the trap. I was too shaken to consider my own foolishness; it was only the rabbit, and Mr Loomis's impatience, that had saved me. But it was not over yet, for no sooner had I got into the trees than he was out of the store, the gun under one arm and Faro on die leash. He crossed the road into the field, and Faro found my trail almost immediately. He began to whine and bark. I turned and ran through the woods towards the west ridge. I knew what I had to do.

I ran to the hollow tree and got my gun. I doubled back along my own trail and moved north, crawling through thick brush and saplings. I could hear Faro's barking on the hill below me, but I knew that it would be a time before he would catch up with me; there were many scents to sort through, and my trail was winding. After a short while the brush thinned, and I ran through the woods until I reached the banks of Burden Creek. I had spent many hours here, fishing for brook trout with David and Joseph, and although there were no fish left since the war, I remembered the course of the stream bed. I walked partway across the water on a series of flat stones, then jumped across a narrow pool on to a smooth, shallow ridge of rock that connected with the opposite bank. I hurried across the ridge and through more trees, and hid behind a stone. I could see the crossing place clearly, though I was some distance away. I balanced the gun across my knee, and sighted it.

I did not wait long. I was too far away to hear the sound of his crashing through the brush, so that his sudden appearance, with Faro, near the stream's edge almost caught me off guard. The dog was straining on the leash and was in the water almost before Mr Loomis knew what was happening. Then suddenly he remembered, and jerked back on the leash. At that moment I aimed the gun above his head and fired.

He had not known I had the gun, and I think he really could not believe it when he heard the shot. He stood still for about ten seconds, then he yelled and leapt to one side. He released the dog and ran into a grove of trees. I fired again, but he had disappeared from sight, and I guessed from the motion of the brush that he had headed downhill, back towards the house.

Faro was swimming in Burden Creek. He had found my scent but, instead of following my trail on the rocks, he had plunged into the water. It was well over his head, and he had to fight the current. All in all he was probably in the stream for more than five minutes. Then he found the ridge where I had walked and jumped on to it, and on to the other bank. In a few more minutes he was by my side.

I hid behind the stone until dark. By then I was sure that Mr Loomis would have left the hillside and gone into the house. I led Faro to my camp and fed him some dried mushrooms and offered him my own dinner of vegetables, but he was not much interested in that. He slept beside me all night and was sick in the morning. I expected he would be sick for several days—I remembered the course of illness in Mr Loomis—but I suppose dogs react differently from human beings, for by nightfall he was dead.

Now I am ready. I start my plan before daybreak tomorrow morning. It may be I will not write in this journal again. I know that if Mr Loomis catches me with the safe-suit he will shoot to kill.

It is sad when I think how happy I felt when I was ploughing the field.

Chapter Twenty-Five

August 7th

I am writing this at the top of Burden Hill. I am wearing the safe-suit. I have already taken the cart and my supplies out of the valley down the road towards Ogdentown. I have come back for one last confrontation with Mr Loomis. I must talk to him. I cannot just walk away from him, from this valley, from all that I hoped for, without a word. I know there is danger in this. He will come searching for me and he will have a gun; but I have a gun too, and from where I sit, hidden at the edge of the deadness, I can see the whole valley spread out before me. I will see him before he sees me. I will make him stop and drop his gun.

And if he refuses—I try not to think. I know I could not kill him. I will try to run into the brush before he can shoot, to hide in the deadness where he cannot come to search.

While I wait for him I will finish my account of what happened to me in this valley.

I could not bury Faro; I had no shovel. I carried his body to the east ridge of the valley and laid it on the ground, and covered it with stones. I knew then that I could not stay in the valley any longer. I was too sad and angry, and did not want to think of Mr Loomis, or see him again.

Last night I slept in the valley for the last time. I lay awake for a long time, thinking of the plan and the hard, dangerous work of putting it into action. I knew that the risks were grave, but there was no reason to wait any longer. In setting the trap for Faro I had exposed an important secret: I had a gun, and bullets. Mr Loomis could not ignore that. He would be afraid to work outdoors, and would do nothing until he had thought of a scheme to catch me, or at least to get the gun. He would be very careful, and more dangerous than ever before.

Yet there was one thing that was on my side. I remember when I was a little girl, on Sunday afternoons my father and I would sit at the kitchen table playing chess. Usually my father won; he had been playing the game for many years, and had the benefit of experience. But there were a few times when I mounted an attack in such a way that every move my father made was in his own defence, so that he did not have time to effect any organized plan against me. My father called this "taking the offensive", and he said it was the way to win. It seemed to me that in my relationship with Mr Loomis I had finally reached the point where I could "take the offensive". I had caught him off guard, and frightened him. I had to take advantage of that.

I slept restlessly, and woke several hours before dawn. I got up quickly and ate, and reviewed the order of events to come. There was no time to waste in fear or doubt. I gathered the few things I would take with me—an extra shirt, the torch, a knife, my notebook and pencil—and put them in the burlap sack. I added a bottle for water: once I had stolen the wagon there would not be time to stop at the pond, but I knew there was a device inside the wagon that would purify water from radioactive streams and wells. I put in the remaining boxes of bullets, the binoculars, and a little packet of dried berries and mushrooms I had picked. Finally I picked up the sack, and with the gun under my arm, I left the cave. It was dark on the ridge, and I did not look back.

I walked along the ridge and through the woods. The sky was filled with stars and the moon was full and lighted the tops of the trees ahead of me. I came to a clear space: the floor of the valley was thick with darkness, but the pond shone as round and clear as a mirror. It was a kind of beauty that was strange to me, and although I was still in the valley, I began to feel that the journey had begun. I descended from the hill.

At the pond I filled the water bottle. I would have to drink sparingly; the water would have to last until I came to another stream or creek outside the valley. I came to the road and walked north. My load was heavy now: the sack, the gun, the filled bottle; and it was hard to see in the dark. I followed the road to the top of Burden Hill. I hid my burdens in the ravine beside the road, and covered them with brush. I marked the spot with an upright branch, then turned and followed the road back the way I had come.

I knew that there were many ways the plan could fail. There was a chance that Mr Loomis would see my approach from the window, and shoot at me; I would have to be closer to the house than I had been since the day I was wounded. He might see through the ruse, and refuse to leave the house. He might pretend to go and then turn back, and catch me in the act of stealing the cart and suit. He would surely kill me then. I was frightened, but I forced myself to keep walking.

I came in sight of the house. It was only a dark square in the half-light; there were no lights on, and to a casual traveller on the road, no sign of life. I left the road and circled round the back. I found a heavy, round stone under the walnut tree, and took the folded paper from my pocket. I had worked for hours on the note, choosing my words, rehearsing the message. Now those words were barely visible. I slipped along the side of the house and on to the front porch. I unfolded the note and laid it in front of the door, and set the rock on top to hold it down. There was no way he could miss it. I retreated to a hiding place near the creek.

The note said this:

I am tired of hiding. If you will come to the south end of the valley, I will meet you at the flat rock where the road curves. We will talk. Come on foot. Leave your gun on the front porch. I will be watching you—I will not harm an unarmed man.

Lying in the tall grass under the willows, I watched the sun rise. The sky above the hills turned grey and the stars faded slowly, one by one. Slowly the land began to resume its shape and colour. The sky in the east turned orange, and then the sun appeared above the ridge. Tomorrow I will watch it from a strange place.

Then, almost before I was ready for it to happen, he was there. The front door opened and he stepped out on to the porch. He looked around him and saw the note almost immediately. He snatched it up and gave a hurried look around, and retreated into the house to read it. He stayed inside the house for quite a while. I lay in the grass with my eyes on the door. I tried to imagine what he was thinking. I remembered the first time I had seen him close up, when he was lying sick in the tent. He looked much better now: his face had grown brown from working in the fields, and he looked stronger, yet there was still that tense quality in his face that I had first regarded as poetic, and later as a sign of madness. I had not been so close to him for a long time, and thinking about that made me tremble with fear.

But the plan worked. The next time Mr Loomis emerged from the house, he had the gun under one arm. Again he looked all round, but this time his gaze was higher and more direct; he knew that I was hiding, watching him, from somewhere in the distance. He laid the gun on the porch hesitantly, as if he thought he were making a mistake. Again he looked around. For a moment I thought he was going to call out, but he did not call. He walked to the road and turned left, heading for the south end of the valley.