Empty - Chapter 4
Having a source of comfort during the good times and the bad is what keeps us going.
He stopped in the city park for lunch, gratefully dropping the heavy bags by a picnic table near the small creek that split the town. But Rachel the raccoon plushy never left his side. He set it on the scarred surface of the table and retrieved on of the MREs from his packsack. He sat down at the table and examined the package.
"Vegetable Lasagna." he mused aloud in a voice unused to speech. He tore open the package and let the contents fall out on the table. The main entrée was enclosed in a heavy foil wrapper. A heavy plastic pouch, empty. The chemical heating pack. Moist towlett, a small foil pack containing chocolate candies, plastic spork, tiny bottle of hot sauce. That one tickled him for some reason. Two sticks of chewing gum, spearmint flavored. And... a small roll of toilet paper. That didn't bode well.
He found instructions printed on the empty plastic pouch and examined them briefly, then slid the foil wrapped entrée into the pouch and took them down to the water, telling the Rachel he would be right back without really knowing he was saying it. He filled the pouch and returned, grabbing a fair sized rock on the way before seating himself once more. Propping the pouch upright with the rock, he slid the chemical pack into the water, and settled down to wait. Thirty seconds later, to his alarm, the whole set-up started smoking. He yelped, snatched up Rachel in one paw, and promptly fell backwards off the bench, landing hard on his tail.
When he realized what was happening, he started chuckling, and the chuckle became a full-blown laugh. It wasn't smoke, it was steam! And of coarse that's what it would be doing, because he put a heating pack in there. He flopped backward onto the leaf-strewn ground, Rachel clasped under one arm, still laughing. And oh, how good it felt to do so!
When the laughter subsided, he held the plush up in front of his face. "It's because of you...", he whispered. "You are the reason I'm felling better."
All the toy did was stare back at him.
He hauled himself up off the ground and seated himself once more on the bench, clutching Rachel to his chest, waiting for his lunch.
Fifteen minutes or so later, he fished the food out of the pouch without burning his pads or dumping boiling water on himself and began to eat.
It's not bad, he thought to himself, sporking noodles and vegetable sauce into his muzzle. Certainly better than the canned food he had been subsisting on so far.
He finished off the lasagna in record time, and the chocolate candies in less, and sighed contentedly when they too, were gone.
He spent awhile staring off into space, absent-mindedly stroking Rachel's fake fur with a bandaged paw. With a belly full of hot food and his new friend, he was, for the first time in two years, truly at peace.
*~*
The rest of that day passed quickly. After returning home and storing away his 'purchases', he and Rachel took his clothes, a tin washtub, and several boxes of powdered soap back down to the park to do laundry. Rachel watched on from a nearby bench, as if with amusement as he stepped gingerly into the tub, which was filled to the brim with fabric and gray, frothy water and began stomping back and forth. He fancied he looked quite the ridiculous sight, and imagined he heard a soft giggle from the plush.
"Yeah, yeah. Keep laughing and I'll put you in here next." He growled good-naturedly, and the burst of laughter he heard in his mind set him off as well, and soon he was roaring with laughter, still stomping around in the tub and coming close to falling on his rump.
It took several changes of water before he was satisfied, and began rinsing the mound of laundry. When he finished, he piled everything back into the washtub and taking it home, Rachel tucked safely under his arm.
After hanging his washing from the clothesline in his back yard to dry in the early afternoon sun. By then, he was exhausted and hungry, but still feeling good.
He looked up onto the flawless blue sky, Rachel held against his chest, and smiled.
~*~
He woke that night with a start and a strangled cry. Sitting bolt upright, whimpering in fear, his paws scrambled across the bed in search of his friend. He found her and crushed her to him, still keening and eyeing the shadows mistrustfully, looking for all the world like a small and scared puppy with his favorite toy. It was that dream again, the one he had off and on since that day two years ago. When everything became... this. The dream of when the world had ended.
He sat there in the dark, taking comfort from Rachel's faux fur until he calmed slightly. Shakily, he lay down again, holding the raccoon to him.
He tried to sleep, but the images of that day still surged back and forth in his mind. After a time, he propped his friend on his chest and stared into her false eyes, the soft moonlight reflecting off of the glass and enhancing that strange sense of awareness he had seen back in the toy store.
He began to speak, relaying to the plush the events of that day. The tale of what had happened to put him in the position he was in now. At first, the words were halting, hesitant, but the more he spoke, the easier it became. He told her of the fear, the pain. He told her of picking up the pieces and using them to fashion a new life for himself in this not-so-brave new world. And he told her of the loneliness and uncertainty he had felt in the aftermath.
Through the words and the tears that poured forth, Rachel looked on, a sympathy reflected in those strange brown eyes.
When at last he finished speaking, he hugged the raccoon to him again, drowsiness creeping over him.
Two last words escaped his muzzle before he drifted back into sleep.
"Thank you..."