Read After and Again for Free Online Page B

side and the light went out. A switch, of course.
      With the sun fully set Zack set the light down beside him and continued going through his pack. He took out the chewing gum package, which actually had six smaller packages inside and opened it. He opened one of the smaller packages and could smell mint like his mother grew in the rear yard and used in tea. There were twelve more packages inside that turned out to be individually wrapped pieces of some sort of candy. It said “chewing gum” so he opened one and chewed it. It tasted wonderful, but no matter how much he chewed, it never got any smaller or broke down. “Ha, chewing gum,” he said aloud to no one.
      Finally Zack took the pistol box out of the backpack, setting it on the bedroll that he had laid out to sit on and opened the box. He removed the pistol and held it up, looking closely at the plain black finish. He thought of killing the men who murdered most of his townsfolk and kidnapped his mother and Emily. Probably kidnapped them, Toby Martins voice spoke in his head. He believed that they were both still alive. He had to believe it. Setting the pistol in his lap, he took the small book out of the box and began to read it. The cover said: “Instructions for the use and care of your Remington automatic pistol.” Zack spent the next hour reading the manual. Once, the light started going dim and he had to crank the handle until it was bright again. He then spent another hour putting into practice what he had read. He did everything outside of firing the pistol, occasionally referring to the book. He dismantled the pistol as if he was going to clean it, he removed the magazine and loaded it with cartridges from one of the boxes that he had brought. He tested the safety mechanism. Feeling comfortable with the weapon but wishing that he could test fire it (he didn’t in fear that it would be heard across the plains) he re-packed everything back in the pistol box except for the pistol itself and stowed the box back in the pack. The pistol he kept out, wishing that he had a holster like the Wild West Cowboy had that performed in Payne’s Station that time when he was younger.
      Zack, beginning to grow tired now, pushed the pack up by the saddle, laid the pistol on the blanket from his bedroll and got up and kicked apart the already dying campfire. He walked a ways away from his camp to do his necessary, burying it when he was finished like his father had taught him. “Vermin leave their scat laying about, Zackary, not men. Remember that.” His father had said that to him on their first hunting trip together. He walked back toward the camp in the darkness using the fading campfire embers as a reference point. Grace chuffed and he saw her silhouetted near the camp, foraging done for the night. He walked to her and stroked her neck for a few moments and talked to her softly before moving back to his bedroll. He sat down, removed his boots, and leaned over to set them next to the saddle when he noticed a green glow coming from his backpack. It was the small plastic/metal box that he had hooked to the pack. He had forgotten about it with everything that had happened and somehow had missed it hanging there when he had gone through the pack earlier. There was a tiny green light glowing brightly on the metal side of the object. He touched the light and jumped up suddenly, his heart beating wildly in his chest: A voice was coming from the box.
      “Greetings my new friend, how exciting it is not knowing whether someone picked up this device an hour from now, a year from now, or a hundred years from now. Who knows, maybe a thousand years from now. Of course recently I have discovered, sadly at the expense of most of the human race, that time is, well… A little more flexible than I once imagined. There is also the possibility that no one has found it at all and I am leaving this message for naught, but the law of probabilities dictates that someone will find it