The Survivors by Will Weaver Read Free Book Online Page A

arm around her. He, too, is covered in dust and looks twenty years older.
    â€œSorta like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory but without the chocolate,” Sarah says, looking away.
    â€œWelcome to the Machine,” Miles calls out. He loves old Pink Floyd music.
    â€œDid you meet anybody?” Nat inquires.
    Sarah thinks first of Ray, then of Mackenzie and her gang. “Not really,” she says. She thinks of the thin girl with dark eyes. “I have to milk Emily, and then she and I are heading down to the river for a swim,” Sarah says. “A little privacy, all right?”
    â€œSure. And when you’re done, Miles could use some help in the saw shack,” her father says.
    Sarah mumbles something she’s lucky no one hears and goes to the cabin for the little milk pail. Miles has made a small wooden stanchion and platform inside the corral; and when Sarah returns, Emily is standing on the boards, head between the two vertical boards, ready to be milked.
    â€œWhat a good Emily!” Sarah gives her a treat—a handful of grass—and then loops the short rope around the stanchion’s top. The vertical boards squeeze—but do not pinch—Emily’s neck and ensure that she doesn’t jerk or jump and race off while Sarah is milking her. Sarah kneels and, with a wet cloth, washes Emily’s two little teats; after that, in a downward pull, she strokes a squirt of milk from each one. That first squirt is to the side, to the ground; it’s to remove any bacteria on the teat end or in the teat itself. Once that’s done, Sarah hangs the little stainless steel pail on her left wrist and milks with her right hand. She always leans her forehead into the little valley between Emily’s rib cage and her hip bone, a soft indentation, and closes her eyes as she works. Emily’s chewing makes a faint, faraway rocking motion, and Sarah falls into the rhythm of milking: stroke, tingy-ting , stroke, tingy-ting .
    Gradually the tingy-ting of milk hitting the bottom of the pail softens to tungy-shush, tungy-shush , and soon it’s shush-shush, shush-shush, shush-shush .
    Milking takes only five minutes. Soon they are done. Holding the pail handle tightly, she releases Emily—who hops away and races playfully about the corral.
    â€œYes, yes, yes,” Sarah says. “I’ll be right back—hang on.”
    She goes to the river and to Miles’s homemade refrigerator, a wire cage weighed down by two stones, that sits in the cool water. Floating inside are two glass jars—former peanut butter jars—full of milk; for now Emily has more milk than they can drink in a day. Sarah pours the milk from the pail into two more clean jars and slips the warm ones into the cold river water and the cage. She makes sure to arrange the jars in order of freshness. They all drink goat’s milk, which at first made her gag; it is yellower, heavier, and way thicker than regular milk. Now she is not sure she could drink cow’s milk from a store.
    After her chores are complete, she goes to get Emily for her daily outing. On the short leash, Emily hops and jumps—which always makes Sarah laugh—and they head to the river, Emily nipping off bites of thin grass along the way.
    The warmth of the day has collected along the riverbank, and though it’s now the first week of September, the water is still warm from the summer. She goes just around the bend, peeking back at the cabin to make sure no one can see, then hangs her towel on a branch. In her little changing stall she slips off her clothes. Skinny-dipping is something she could never do back in the suburbs; maybe it’s one reward for living like the Swiss Family Robinson. Though when it gets cold, she might have to join a sports team so she can shower at school.
    With Emily grazing along the bank, Sarah wades into the water until it’s knee-deep, then lies down in the cool flow. Using a bar of