Hunger and Thirst by Wayne Wightman

way, I'll always be with you, and you with me.” She placed her uninjured hand under the lower swell of her abdomen. “Thank you. If you come back this way, stop for tea and we can share memories. Goodbye, Jack. I'll miss you terribly. But goodbye.”
    Without turning around, she glided backward, away from him, into the dark, and was gone faster than he could realize she was no longer there.
    After a stunned half-minute, Jack refocused his attention on Artie, who was still growling mauling something on the ground.
    “She's gone, Artie! Give it a break. Artie!”
    He knelt down and saw that Artie had several of her fingers, bloody, chewed and dirty. He recognized her nails, even ripped half off. He moaned.
    “Come on, Arthur.” He tried pushing the cat away, but it wasn't working. “Let's go.” He tried picking him up by the scruff, but Artie went berserk and had to be dropped. He went back to the fingers and growled over them.
    “California's this way, Artie. Come on, pal.” Jack walked till he couldn't see Artie. “Artie! God damn it!”
    In the pale moon light, he saw Artie dutifully coming toward him holding one of her fingers in his mouth. He dropped it near Jack's feet and then trotted back out of sight. Momentarily he returned with another finger, dropped it, pawed at it, picked it up again and dropped it a closer to the other one. He glanced up at Jack and disappeared again.
    “Artie! Leave that stuff behind. Artie!”
    The cat almost bounded up to him and dropped the third blood- and dirt-crusted finger at his feet.
    Jack let his pack slide off and sat on it. Artie also sat. Artie looked at the fingers and then he looked at Jack. Back and forth.
    “You know it, don't you, beast that you are. She's got us. She got us both.”
    Artie seemed to either agree or not care or both.
    “All right, Arthur.” Jack took a rag out of his pack and flicked the bloody, sand-crusted fingers onto it with a twig. Then he stopped.
    He picked each one up and lightly brushed the dirt off it. “I've kissed these fingers a hundred times. I've loved this woman's hands. I've held these fingers over my heart.” He cleaned them, wrapped them carefully, and put them alone in a separate pocket. “ Between the two of you, I never had a prayer, did I.” He lifted the cat into the sling. “Let's go. We can get another five or six hours closer to the Pacific.”
    Artie looked up at him out of the sling. He yawned.
    “Just another day in the animal world.”
    He put one foot in front of the other, heading west.
    After a few minutes, he had enough of his marbles in a row that he could give a thought to what she had said, that he would always be with her — and where she had placed her hand. It hit him.
    She was pregnant.
    He stopped in his tracks. Go back? Go on? He trudged on. Maybe someday he would go back. But Natalie had expected him to travel on. She had needed him, and now he could leave.
    It was part of the plan.
    ....
    Four days later, Jack could look behind him, look below him, and see the deceptive wastes of Nevada spread to the east. The upslope into the Sierra was sudden and unsubtle and his legs ached, so he had stopped at a flat area and built a small fire to heat water for a packet of rice.
    He was aimlessly stirring it with a small stick when he first heard the dogs — and they were already close. Artie was on his feet, had scanned the area, and had undoubtedly selected the nearest tree.
    Jack was on his feet, but there was nothing to do, nowhere to run. There was roadside rubble on both sides and any nearby trees had no branches for thirty feet up. Artie had already vanished when Jack saw the first one, a blunt-nosed labrador-hound.
    All he thought he might have going for him was his human authority. Perhaps they remembered being ordered around by animals like him. And he had the finger bones. He dug them out of their pocket. They were clean, fleshless bones now. He had stripped them and in doing so had horrified