Flare by Jonathan Maas Page B

note to start a fire tonight so he could burn off the smaller spines later. He thought about taking one more pad but decided against it. He could take enough cactus for a decent meal, but not enough to kill the plant, because he knew he might have to come back here one day. Never count on the world to put more plants in front of you. Not even cactus.
    Zeke then took several clippings from the shrubs around him and found another patch of cactus, with small thorns like wool. He grabbed three ball-like pieces and put them in his bag.
    After twenty minutes he looked at what he had gathered, and nothing looked too promising. His bag looked like it was filled with yard waste. He could leave some of the cactus in the brown water, and let them sit in the flare to make tea, but that didn’t seem like it was going to carry him through the next day.
    Cactus, shrubs and brown water won’t kill me , but I need more to survive.
    Zeke was about to head back to his tent when he saw a mound in the distance, and it appeared to be a dead animal. He approached it cautiously, and found that it was indeed dead and had been some sort of ungulate, perhaps a small deer or even a domesticated goat.
    He decided that he would drag this creature into the tent tonight. The sun had turned the meat to jerky, and although it would surely taste of rubber, it would be clean. It was pure protein, much of it surely denatured and useless, but it would keep him full and it wouldn’t make him sick.
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    After the sun rose Zeke wrapped his hand in cloth and pushed a plastic jar out of the tent under a flap, and the small crease flooded the tent with blinding light. He closed the flap, withdrew his hand and it was dark again. He waited five minutes, and then ten just in case the plastic of the jars had some protective quality. The water was still brown but he took a small sip nonetheless, and though it tasted of metal, he was tempted to drink more. Just wait, he reminded himself. If you’re healthy after a day, this method might work. If you’re sick, you’d be a lot sicker if you drank the whole jar.
    Zeke put the rest of the jars out of the tent and decided he’d wait twenty minutes before bringing them in. If he was healthy by this time tomorrow, the technique would be a success. He’d still have to be careful because there might be a superbug that thrives in the sun’s overpowering radiation, and though he was dark-skinned and covered in clothing, putting his hand outside was still dangerous.
    He took out a small hand-cranked flashlight he had found and inspected the dead animal in the darkness. It smelled musty but clean, like cured leather. He didn’t quite feel comfortable eating flesh, and this was the first bit of meat that he had ever eaten. But there was food all around now, and you didn’t need to hunt, let alone kill anything. The animals died and were cooked in the sun until their muscles hardened and then came off their bones in strips, with the help of a knife or even without. This meal was grim, and Zeke took no pleasure in feasting off of any animal’s misfortune, but the flare had given him meat, and it would stave off his appetite much better than cactus.
    Zeke inspected each bite thoroughly before eating, because he had seen a lot of insects in this area. They had somehow found a way to survive the sun, and they often hid in dead flesh. The flare prevented decomposition, but Zeke had seen a few bodies half-eaten, with stomachs gnawed by tiny mandibles and eggs laid delicately in lifeless mouths.
    The creature I’m eating is whole and untouched though. That means it may have died recently .
    But it couldn’t have died recently—could it? Zeke knew some animals had found a way to survive the flare, but wild animals on the desert plains? He’d seen cats in the suburbs, and even a few dogs, but he’d not seen much outside of where humans lived, at least not any mammals. He looked at the face of the creature, and from its long snout