Gray (Book 1) by Lou Cadle Read Free Book Online Page A

emergency kit. The untangled line she secured carefully to the reel, knotting it onto three grommets; she couldn’t afford to lose it. She had enough line so that she could cast across the stream now.
    If, that is, she could find any living fish. After a half-hour or so of no luck, she gathered her gear and went downstream to try another likely spot.
    All that day, she stopped every so often to cast her line in the stream. No fins broke the murky surface, no bubbles told of rising trout. In the muddy melt water, swirls that would have given away feeding fish were impossible to see. When she could spot a rock, she fished the eddies behind it where fish were likely to hide from the current.
    Once, at a shallow bend in the stream, she waded into the water to cast into the pools at the bottom of the far bank. The coldness of the water numbed her flesh within minutes and she walked out on deadened legs, shivering for the first time in weeks. Shivering probably burned calories she didn’t have to spare. After that, she kept to the banks.
    That day, she moved on as far as she could manage while continuing to fish from time to time. The temperature kept dropping, easing off from its high of several days ago, until at night she finally felt comfortable. Sleep came easier than it had in a week.
    The next morning, which she thought might be the ninth since The Event, though she knew she had lost track , she set off again, but her energy was low. She often felt as if she were struggling for breath, despite the flatness of the terrain here. As she walked on without food, she could feel her clothes grow looser each day. She stopped often to cast her line into the stream.
    When she got her first bite, she was so surprised, she reacted too slowly. She reeled in her line but the little eggs were gone, stolen by a quick fish. Her heart tripped with excitement. She slid more of the slick red eggs onto the hook and cast again to the same spot, staring at the line and willing it to move. When fishing had been something she did for fun, it had been pleasant and slow, a meditation, and it didn’t matter if she caught fish or not. Today, knowing she was battling starvation, each cast was something else entirely, a life-and-death drama.
    What felt like an eternity later, she felt another twitch in the line. She held her breath and waited, her hands quivering on the rod. Take it, fish, take it. The line jerked and she snapped her wrist, setting the hook. She reeled in the fish quickly against its slight struggles. It was a tiny trout, not even as long as her hand.
    She dug out her knife and slit the fish open, scooping out the guts with her fingertips and flicking them to the ground. Slicing between the bones and skin, she laid open the meat on one side of the fish, stripping off half of one fillet. She bit into the raw orange flesh, scraping meat from the skin with her teeth and swallowing without chewing. The cramp in her belly as the food hit it felt half painful, half pleasurable. She ate the other fillet, then took the center of the fish and sucked the remaining bits of flesh off the bones, then scraped with her teeth, getting every bit she could.
    The fish was gone quickly, much too soon—even the head she ate, the eyes, then the skin, cut into strips and choked down, everything but the bones and guts. She tossed the bones down and slid more red eggs onto the hook.
    As she waited for another bite on her line, she used one hand to squeeze out the fish’s stomach, hoping to get a clue about what better lure or bait to use. She saw a few midges, immature mayflies, nothing she had on hand as bait or lure. The fish had been hungry, too.
    Coral caught four more trout with the red egg bait, eating two more and keeping the two largest fish for later. Her mind told her that she could eat a dozen more fish, but her stomach might not hold more yet. The rest of her body, deprived of food for days now, wanted more and more fuel, but she knew it might