Willow's Town by Alice Sabo

Author:Alice Sabo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dystopian Fiction for Adults, Post Apocalyptic Novels, Fantasy Adventure, Strong Female Protagonist, Near Future Fantasy, Apocalyptic Magic, Telepath Fantasy
Publisher: Alice Sabo
Published: 2022-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Jake had Garden practice driving the surrey home. Sasha was sobbing in the back seat with Max trying to comfort her. They hadn’t been able to save the cow. She’d been in terrible pain. The gouges had torn out her stomach. An injury like that was almost always fatal, but she’d also lost a tremendous amount of blood by the time they arrived.

The bloody paw prints had shown pads even larger than the animal who had attacked the horses. Jake was worried. If there were two, there could be a whole lot more. But the thing that worried him the most was that the predator hadn’t fed. It was one thing for a big cat or wolf to take an animal if it was hungry, but he hadn’t seen indications of that. This, like the lethal damage done by the wolvers, had just been pointless.

They traveled in aching silence back to Sweet Grass. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop the pain,” Jake said quietly. His mind still throbbed from the cow’s misery. She’d been terrified and in agony. He’d known at a glance that they were too late. All he could do was try to calm her and ease her into the final sleep.

“She was hurting really bad,” Sasha agreed. “I think she knew it was the end.”

Jake wondered if she was simply intuitive or had a knack like his. “It’s hard to let them go,” he said sadly. “Even when you know there’s nothing more that can be done.”

“How did you do that?” Garden asked.

“I gave her a special poison,” Jake said. He never let people know that he had poppy in the hospital. Better for people to think it was a dangerous poison. “It just makes them sleep and slows down the heart until it’s over.”

“It was soft,” Sasha said. “She wasn’t scared anymore.”

Jake knew then that Sasha must have the same kind of abilities that he did. They came into the courtyard, and the dogs burst out of the field with tails wagging. Jake’s clothes were stiff with blood. He climbed down from the surrey to hug all his dogs. Their happy affection was a balm on his raw nerves.

Until Thunder reminded him that he still had a job to do.

“Sasha and Max, help me unhitch the horses. Garden can you clean the tools in the satchel and replace any medicines that we used?”

He started on Tinker while Max and Sasha worked on Thunder. He pointed at the buckles and clasps for them to undo them. After the horses went into the meadow, he showed the kids where to store the harnesses. Then pointing at his blood-spattered clothes, he said, “This is why you need more than one set of clothes.”

He stripped off in the bunkhouse and changed into clean jeans and a t-shirt. Then he saw that Sasha was changing also and realized he was going to have to rethink the bunkhouse if he was going to have girls, too.

After astonishing them all with the washing machine, he told them to relax for a bit.

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