The Training Run, Part 2

            What we had to be fearful of was the Dealers. They were the scary ones. When you were on the hunt, you had to have at least three men with you. Two would be in charge of the prey. The third man was perhaps the most important. He made sure the team did not become the prey. This worked for turkeys; for deer you needed more manpower.

            When you were on the hunt, something else probably was, too.

            The Dealers were the tribe that patrolled the edge of city that used to be the hospital. The group of six or seven (we were never sure of the exact numbers within other tribes) had exhausted their few rations of food much too quickly. We did not know how they survived the attack, but they had and because they had, and were not as resourceful as we were, made their way in this new world order as a hunter of anything they could find. They did not discriminate, and killed on sight.

            We decided long ago that would never be an option for us. We would live off what we could, hunt for anything we could run down, and never sacrifice our morality in the process. We did not know what the rest of the world was up to so when we met our end we wanted it to be with as clean a conscience as possible. We hunted; starvation had not been an issue for the last twenty-two months.

We were survivors.

            The first few hunts were disasters. We had no patience and were not desperate enough to realize that the reason people lived like this before technology was because they absolutely had to—they learned how to do everything the hard way. There were not controlled studies 30,000 years ago that fed one caveman and starved another. There was hunger in stomachs, and someone figured out that if things were put into one’s mouth and swallowed, the hunger went away. We had all been taught that food was important and had all been lucky enough to have it readily available… until the bombs started falling. After that, we were of the Red Oak Woods as much as the rest of God’s creatures. The hunger was there—the demand.

Our supply had vanished.

            We were alone, hungry, and clueless. We adapted. We made spears. We chased immediately. We sprang traps like children playing hide and go seek—no patience or skill. We were nervous children giggling in the closet because no one had ever thought to look there. However, these were no longer kids’ games. This was life, and as real as it could get. Find food or die.

*  *  *  *  *

            It took three days for one of us to break.

            Everyone you ever cared about was most likely dead. Most of us became accepting of this the moment we realized Novak had abandoned us. People sure can show their true colors when life became death. We were scared for our friends of course, and saddened at the apparent fate of our extended families. Yet none of us possessed the ability to love like our stud miler, Tresser. Pain is not the right word—maybe heartache. However, it never went away. Tresser had once upon a time been a good Catholic boy, and had been engaged to his high school sweetheart since he was twenty. While the reason and analytical skills he received in college corrected his monotheistic tendencies, his folks were still very much believers and therefore planning a big church wedding. Not that it mattered now. He had moved from Virginia to join the training group leaving behind his fiancée who was finishing a Bachelor’s Degree at William & Mary.

            On the night before Day Four, we found him in a field one half-mile from Haven screaming to Polaris. He knew he could not go to find her. He knew what he would find if he could. We each make our peace with things in our own way. This was Tresser’s. He had been betrayed more than the rest of us. He had enough faith left to have some choice words with his Creator. While the rest of us barely thought about the opposite sex other than the chase and occasional hook-up, Tresser had been giving the notion of sharing his life with someone for a long time. Unlike the rest of us, he knew what he was going to be doing after his running career was over. As we selfishly tried to silence his cries to keep ourselves hidden from others, I think each of us accepted our fate. Even though we were among the few survivors, we hoped there was someone out there who missed us as much as Tresser missed his most certainly gone Fiona.