Page 14 of Hollow Valley

“Ryder, what the fuck man?”Murphy yelled at him, and xe shoved him hard in the chest.“You were supposed to be keeping watch!”

“I’m sorry!”Ryder shouted plaintively, but his head hung low.“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.I was just more tired than I thought.”

“Well, what matters the most was that nobody was hurt,” Boden said, as he grabbed the lantern to survey the carnage of our belongings.“But that doesn’t negate the bad news.A lot of the packs and bags were ripped and torn, and it looks like the bear ate a good chunk of our provisions.”

“Does that mean we should head back to the house?”Bianka asked.

“There’s nothing back at the house for us,” Leandro said.“We took all the meat with us.We’ll have to go on a hunting trip to replenish.”

The rest of the night was filled with fitful attempts at rest, and at first light, we set about our plans to fix the mess of our situation.

Too many people out on a hunt scared the prey away, so Boden, Murphy, Leandro, and Ryder split off into two groups, tracking down rabbits and elk.Cole needed the extra rest, so he stayed back at the camp, and Bianka and I stayed with him, mending the packs and salvaging food and supplies as we could.

“I’ve never been any good on a hunt,” Bianka explained after the others had gone.The two of us were sitting near the firepits, patching up the bags, and Cole was sleeping on his bedroll on the other side.

“I’ve never really been on one,” I admitted.“Boden or other people in our group have always handled it.I used to do foraging, back before we lived on a boat.”

“I’m not even any good at foraging,” Bianka said with a laugh.“There is no way I would’ve survived this long if it hadn’t been for Murphy.”

“How long have the two of you been together?”I asked.

“Oh, gosh.”She tilted her head, thinking.“Three years now?It’s hard to keep track of time these days, though, so maybe I’m off by a year.”

“Yeah, I do know how that goes,” I agreed grimly.“If it wasn’t for my daughter growing so fast, I think I’d have no idea at all.”

“You have a daughter?”Bianka asked, startled and wide-eyed.I hadn’t been hiding her from the others, exactly, but it hadn’t come up yet.

“Rafaella,” I said with a proud smile.“We mostly call her Fae.She’s twenty-one-months old now.”

“Wow.”Then she lowered her voice and leaned in a bit closer, even though we were alone.“Is… is Boden the father?”

I wrinkled my nose.“Ew, no.He’s more like an older brother to me, and Fae calls him uncle.”And then, because I knew she would ask, “Fae’s father died.”

Her expression turned sympathetic, and she put a comforting hand on my arm.“We’ve all lost so much.It ain’t easy surviving anymore.But at least we got each other, right?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I really don’t know what I would’ve done if Murphy hadn’t found me.I think, even in a perfect world, I’d be a mess by myself, and this is certainly not a perfect world,” Bianka added with a laugh.

“Murphy seems like xe could survive most anything,” I commented.“I mean, xe used to be a soldier at Cold Shore, right?”

Bianka nodded.“Technically, xe was called a ‘special officer’ in the Shore Guard or something like that, but yeah, basically.A soldier.”

“Is Cold Shore still around?”I asked.

“Oh, yeah, it’s not going anywhere,” she answered with certainty.“It was built to survive the end of the world, and they got enough people and precautions in place to endure damn near anything.”

“Why did Murphy leave then?”I asked.

“Xe was with Cold Shore for a few years, but xe doesn’t like talking about it much,” Bianka confirmed what I’d already noticed.

On more than one occasion, I’d tried pressing Murphy for more info, but xe was so evasive.Bianka was such an open book, she seemed like the better avenue.

“Why not?”I asked.

Bianka pursed her lips and stared off into the trees around us.“Xe said it was bleak and unyielding because it had to be, but sometimes, they took it too far.And it wasn’t a good space for xe to be anymore, so xe left.”

Cole stirred on the other side of firepit.He’d been resting, but now he spoke up softly, “Out here, at least you can breathe.Even when you’re scared, you get to decide which direction you’re running.”