The great forest, even as dead as it was, was still breathtaking as it stretched out over the silent hills. To Calvin, the trees looked like ghosts, tall and pale, arranged into silent watching crowds. It was spooky, yes, but at this point anything was better than the Ashen Plain. They hadn't seen any more monsters like the one that had attacked them, but he still didn't trust that wasteland. It almost felt like, if they'd stayed there much longer, the dust would have gotten into their bones and sucked away their moisture from the inside out. Stupid, of course. But all the same he was glad to be out of there.

"Spooky," Hobbes said, looking around as Calvin drove the jeep down the old dirt road through the hills, probably the only road left for miles and miles around. Calvin grunted. "They're just trees, Hobbes. They can't hurt us." Hobbes held up a paw. "Well… you do remember that one time at the Greenwell Outpost, don't you?"

Being reminded of that particular incident still made Calvin feel like shuddering, but he didn't want to look scared, so he held it in. "Well, these trees are dead. They're just husks. Completely devoid of life of any kind."

Hobbes looked around doubtfully. "Wasn't the Ashen Plain also supposed to be devoid of life?"

Galvin hmmfd and said nothing else. He hated when Hobbes had a point.

A growl came from Hobbes's furry tummy. He said "Just out of curiosity, I don't suppose we're anywhere near a place to stop for food?"

Calvin shook his head. "I want to get through some more of the forest before we stop. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we reach the Toksha settlement."

A pause, and then Hobbes asked "Do you think there will be anyone left there? The last time we went by, the population was rather scant."

Calvin shrugged. "I don't know. But we need to get more supplies somewhere, and Toksha is the closest chance we have."

Hobbes glanced back at the food bags in the back of the jeep, which to him looked pitifully empty. "I'd definitely agree about needing more supplies."

Calvin said "At least in some places we can hunt or pick our food, scarce as those places are. But clothes, and gas for the jeep… those things, we'll need to buy, or trade."

They drove on. As they passed the uncountable numbers of dead trees, Calvin wondered how these forests looked in their prime, in the days before what he called in his head "the Big Blowout". When he was younger, he no doubt would have scoffed at such a simple name and would have demanded one that better conveyed the scale of the destruction and corruption and rot and disaster. But now, he accepted the fact that no phrase could convey the mindless devastation of it all. And anyway, no need to spend extra time dwelling on the past anyway. The present required too much worry as it was.


Eventually, the path took them up another hill, and at the top they came across a clearing. Here Calvin stopped the jeep, and they both got out. "Snack time?" asked Hobbes, his dark eyes shining with eagerness. "Uh huh," Calvin said as he went to the back of the jeep and bent over, getting out a lumpy bag full of small edibles.

As he and Hobbes sat down, Calvin said "Now remember, we don't want to eat too much. It's still almost a two-day drive to Toksha. And that's assuming we have a clear path where nothing goes wrong."

Hobbes reached over and pulled a small snack out of the bag. It looked a little like an extremely burnt, gray, crusty cookie. He picked a little chunk off and looked at it in a not-particularly-appetized way. "They didn't exactly send us the choicest of delicacies, did they?"

Calvin snorted as he bit into his. "Hey, with the kind of food in THAT market, just be glad that it isn't moving."

They both ate their rations in the day's orange glow. Hobbes looked over at Calvin's and remarked "Say, I think yours are all slightly bigger than mine."

Calvin looked down at his own crust-cookies. "What? No they're not. You're just imagining." He took another bite.

Hobbes reached over and snatched one. "Hey!" Calvin cried. Hobbes held up Calvin's crust alongside his own, to compare them. "See? Yours is clearly bigger than mine. I call for a redistribution of the rations so that both parties get an equal share." He reached for more of Calvin's crusts. Calvin pulled them away and said "That doesn't prove anything! Those particular two just happen to be different sizes. Leave mine alone!"

Hobbes, now on all fours, crawled over as he kept trying to reach them. "I think," he said as his claws swiped towards the food, "that your judgement is compromised, and as such I will be taking over temporarily as the chief snack distributor. And with my authority, I declare an immediate emergency re-rationing!"

By this point, Calvin was batting Hobbes's paws away as Hobbes grappled for the rations. Hobbes leaped forward, mouth open for a desperate bite, and before they knew it the two were wrestling around in the dull dry grass. Hobbes was a big feline mutant, but Calvin had made himself impressively fit during his ongoing quest to survive. The two rolled and wrestled and clawed and growled.

Eventually, Calvin cried "Time out! Time out! Let go of me." The two separated, and sat there panting and massaging their aches.

Calvin said, "Fine, redistribute them however you want, just make sure we both get an equal number."

"Okay," said Hobbes, and happily went about doing so, any trace of animosity gone now that he was handling a snack. Calvin sighed and looked around idly.

"There," Hobbes finally said, and pointed at two piles. "This pile is mine, and that pile is yours. They both have equal amounts of small and large."

Calvin didn't see how the two new piles looked any difference from the piles they had had before, but it wasn't worth the trouble to say anything about it, so he grabbed a handful from his pile and started to chow down on them.

Time passed, and the two ate. Calvin had just swallowed a crust when he saw something. Something that wasn't trees or sky.

He put down his food and pointed. "Hobbes, look!"

Hobbes frowned and raised an eyebrow. "Aha, trying to make me look away so you can steal some of mine, huh? Well, nothing doing, buster!"

"No seriously, you moron, look!"

Reluctantly, Hobbes did. He stared. He set down the crusts in his paws, which definitely meant that what they were looking at had all his attention.

"Is that smoke?"

Calvin nodded. "Yeah. I think it's coming from the other side of that hill, there."

Hobbes looked back at Calvin, concerned. "A forest fire?"

Calvin shook his head. "I don't think so. It looks too small and contained, see? Unless the forest fire just happened to be starting, it looks like…"

He paused. Hobbes finished for him. "A contained fire. A fire a person would make."

They looked at each other. Then without saying a word, they both jumped up and raced over into the jeep.


They drove down the hill and through the forest, weaving around the corpse-trees and through whatever clearing they could find in pursuit of that distant ribbon of smoke in the sky. Neither of them spoke, they each felt like nothing should be said until they saw for themselves just what was at the bottom of it.

Eventually they were at the top of the hill and could see down the other side. They couldn't make out the source of the smoke through the trees, but they knew that it was close, right near the bottom. Down they went, and soon they found themselves exiting the white dead trees and coming into an open at the foot of the hill.

As soon as they came out into the open, they immediately saw the house. Calvin sped up towards it without even meaning to. It was the first sign of human habitation that either of them had seen for weeks.

The house was more like a fancy cabin, with a two-floor height of sturdy brown wood. The smoke was coming out of its stone chimney.

Calvin slowed and stopped the jeep as they approached the porch. He and Hobbes looked at each other. "What do you think?" asked Hobbes.

Calvin got out of the jeep. "Let's check it out. Can't hurt," he added, even though they both knew that this wasn't exactly true. Hobbes got out, and Calvin felt underneath his jacket, to make sure that the gun was still there.

They walked towards the porch. While the smoke was still coming out of the chimney, the two didn't see any other signs of anyone else. The windows looked dark, and empty.

They reached the porch steps and went up. The wood creaked beneath them. On the porch was a rocking chair, rocking ever so slightly in the breeze. Calvin found the sight a little spooky.

He glanced over at Hobbes. "Well, let's see if somebody's home." Hobbes nodded.

They both took a step forward on the porch. And then, suddenly, there was a loud cracking crash, and they were both tumbling down through the air. They each hit hard dirt ground, face-down.

Calvin sat up, grunting and spiting dirt out of his mouth. Besides him, Hobbes arched his back as he did the same. "What was that?"

Calvin looked up. A few feet above him, he could see the roof of the porch in the sunlight. He looked around. He and Hobbes were in a hole, only a few feet wide, that had been dug beneath the porch.

"Some sort of booby trap, I guess. The boards were thin and fragile, and wouldn't hold much weight, but they were placed just right so that we didn't notice something was wrong with the porch floor until we were on them already."

"Pretty smart," said Hobbes, getting up and smoothing down his fur. Calvin got up too. "I think we can climb out, thought. Here, give me a boost, will ya?"

Hobbes bent over and cupped his paws, giving Calvin a leg up. With Hobbes's support, he was able to haul his skinny frame up over the rim of the hole. With some grunts, and grimacing from the pain of the wood scraping against his abdomen, he pulled himself back out onto the porch. Once out, on his hands and knees he turned around and reached down for Hobbes. The tiger mutant used the claws and grip on his legs to scrabble his way up the wall of the pit until Calvin was able to pull him out.

They both shook themselves off and got up. Hobbes said "We'll have to watch our step." "Yes," said Calvin, and everything else too."

They walked over to the door and slowly opened it. Inside they saw the cabin's large main room. It was brightly lit from the many windows, and dust particles swam through the sunbeams, but they were the only moving things the two saw. No one was in sight.

"Look around," said Calvin, "see if you can spot any more traps."

"There," said Hobbes, pointing. Calvin followed his gaze and saw, down on the floor just beyond the doorway, a large loop of rope. If they had taken a step in without looking, someone could have easily pulled on the rope and tripped them. Calvin looked around. The rope trailed off into behind a door in the wall that was only open a crack.

"Come on," Calvin said, as they both entered and stepped around the loop of rope. Calvin called out, in the direction of the door, "Hello? Is anybody in here? We don't want any trouble, it's just been a really long time since we've seen anybody else. We were wondering if you had any supplies you could loan us."

"Especially food," called Hobbes. "Food that doesn't taste like charred ash crumbs would be very nice."

Calvin kicked him in the knee. "Shut up, you moron," he hissed. He called back out "Like I said, we don't want any trouble. We just want to talk. We didn't know anybody lived out here."

There was a moment of silence. Both of them took another slow step forward, watching the thin opening into the dark room behind the door.

Suddenly the door slammed all the way open with such unexpected force that Calvin jumped back, nearly bumping into Hobbes who also jumped. Faster than Calvin had been able to process, faster than he had been able to move his hand to his gun, someone with long red hair and jumped out of the darkened room and pointed something at them. It had been a while since he'd seen one in person, but Calvin could still recognize what a double-barreled shotgun looked like.

"If either of you takes one more step," said the girl holding the gun, "your brains will be all over the floor." She had long messy red hair, and a wild and fierce look in her eyes. She couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen.