He was hungry, too, hungrier than he'd ever been, including that time he'd gone fishing for the day with Billy, setting out before dawn without breakfast. Their food had fallen in the first stream they'd crossed and been ruined. They'd kept going; they'd eat fish for lunch, wouldn't they? Sure, they would!

They'd crawled home, endless hours later, their bellies empty and aching, filled with nothing more than gulps of teeth-numbingly cold water, and Dan's father had taken one look at him, swept his hand around in a blow Dan had been too exhausted to dodge, and sent him to bed hungry for coming back too late to help with the chores. Waking the next day, he'd been dizzy and sick, his hearing fading in and out, until breakfast had put the heart back into him.

This was worse. He'd eaten the day before--ham and eggs and toast, with the trucker who'd given him a ride, smiling benevolently at him as he beckoned the waitress over to refill their coffee cups.

And he lost every bite and swallow an hour later, throwing up on the side of the road, while the dust from the truck's wheels scoured his eyes as it drove away. He was glad of it, too; he'd thrown up more than the food. The rank, bitter taste of the trucker's come had lingered in his mouth even after he puked, though that might have been his mind playing tricks on him. The woods had called to him then, safe and tempting because they were familiar. He marked the way the sun was headed to find north and left the highway behind him.

These weren't the woods he knew, though--small, contained, bordered by farms where a knock on the door would bring a woman, smiling tiredly, to muss his hair (they all did that since his mom died) and hand him a chewy, raisin-studded cookie and some cool, fresh milk. No, these woods were vast, limitless, and empty. They were trees and earth and a soft, sighing wind that made branches creak oddly and the summer leaves whisper. He found himself staring out across a valley of nothing but more trees, higher up than he'd realized, with the sun unhelpfully directly overhead, and he came close to crying.

Too old to cry, though. Shit, only babies did that, and he wasn't a baby. Babies didn't get pushed to their knees, their mouths split open and filled with--He turned his head and spat, his belly restless again. God, had that man ever even heard of soap and water?

He walked until it got dark, slept huddled in his thin jacket close to a small stream the summer heat had shrunk to a trickle, and now it was morning again, and he was walking because it was better than lying down to die.