Coyote by David L. Foster Page B

moment, then put his hands up in surrender. “Well, I guess I don’t have any better ideas.”
    “Coyote,” said Bait, turning to her, “Let’s bring the Professor and his friend along, huh? Just wait a few minutes for us, and we’ll scout the house, get them some gear.”
    “The Professor?” she asked.
    “Well, yeah.” It seemed Bait had named the man. “The Professor and…” he looked at the other woman.
    “If you call me Marianne, I’ll kill you,” she said, frowning.
    Bait looked away from the other woman. “Well, we’ll give her a name later, huh? Seems like you two should get along fine, what with the friendly attitudes and all.” He smiled as he spoke, to take the sting out of his words.
    “They will most likely die,” she replied, creating a collective stunned silence.
    Bait didn’t stay stunned for long, though. “Yeah, the way they are now, but we’re going to go to the house, get them some better clothes, find some food, maybe even a weapon or two. Then we’ll take them along, right?”
              He had misunderstood her meaning. “Not today, and perhaps not tomorrow. But still, they will likely die.”
    Bait turned to the others. “She says ‘OK, good idea,’” he said, smiling. Nobody else looked convinced, but they didn’t argue the point. They all gathered what they had, and headed out of the barn, toward the house.
    On the way out barn door, the Mule looked at her, standing in the barn with her rifle over her shoulder and her pack on the ground. The dog sat next to her.
    “Are you coming?” he asked.
    “No, she is not,” she said.
    He looked at her for a moment. “Ten minutes, OK? Wait ten minutes.” Then he was out the door before giving her a chance to reply.
    She looked at the dog. Why should she wait? She had no need of these others, and she knew they would only make her slower. Besides, a group of people was a louder, more attractive target to whatever they might meet out there. She should not wait. She should move on.
    She crossed to an old tractor tire, abandoned on the other side of the barn, and sat.
    “She should move on,” she said to the dog. The dog did not respond.
    And yet, she did wait. Ten minutes, and even a little more.
    They were gone for quite some time. Finally she stood, preparing to leave, when the dog began to growl. Instantly, she was alert. She heard a scraping outside the barn door, like footsteps—heavy ones. She looked to her rifle, on the other side of the room. It was too far away, and she would have to cross the doorway to get it. Instead she drew her knife from the sheath at her belt, and adopted a sideways stance: knees bent, knife-hand away from the door, ready for stabbing.
    “Potichu,” she said to the dog, and it went almost silent. There was still a low rumbling in its chest, so quiet that she felt it more than she heard it.
    Soon a shadow fell across the doorway—a large one. It was followed by an even larger man. He was tall, but beyond that, he was just big. Hugely fat, he must have weighed close to 400 pounds, wrapped up in dirt-stained overalls and a ragged-looking long-sleeved shirt. It looked like neither man nor clothes had been washed for quite some time. She suspected maybe he had looked this way even before the Fall.
    He carried a shotgun in one hand. Looking strangely small in his great paw, it dangled down toward the dirt at his side.
    The man took great, rolling steps into the barn. Seeing her and the dog there watching him, he gave a small, high-pitched laugh, all the more disconcerting since it was coming from such a large man. Then he smiled. “Oh,” he said in an eerie falsetto, “A girl and her dog. How precious!”
    She did not know how to respond, so she stood her ground, remaining silent.
    The man took a few more steps toward her, looking her up and down, leering. “We’re going to have a good time together,” he said, smiling, as he reached both hands down to point at his crotch.