Chapter 39
Moving into the living room of the farm house, Natalie had all of the canines come out one at a time. After seeing what the black blood most likely did to the previous owner of this house, she wanted to make sure none of her pack were suffering due to this. Starting with the coyotes so that they could quickly get back to sleep, she gave each of them full physicals. The coyotes snouts were all that seemed outside of perfect physical health, and those had already closed and were already fading behind fresh, new skin. Going through each of the pups, Rogue and Spirit were the only ones without a clean bill of health, but their lesions from the disease they had already shrunk immensely and now they were but nubs. Both the fast healing shown that she had seen so far and the lack of any extraneous issues caused Natalie to feel better about the whole situation. Did it only affect the bodies of those who passed? She remembered some getting sprayed onto her in and around Waterton, but there was nothing that she could tell was wrong with how her body felt and moved.
Going through the adult wolves, the first to be checked was Bryden. He was the only one to have fresh wounds to be covered in the black ilk. Taking a look at the swatches of missing fur, she found nothing discoloured or out of place. Looking up, Nat jumped back a little bit, as Emily was right in her face with worry plastered all over hers. After a quick reassurance that everything with him was fine, Nat worked her way through all of them, checking to see if anything was wrong as well as looking for a general state of being. Making sure they had enough exercise, that they had balanced diets and enough to eat. The veterinarian soul inside of her did not rest until she made sure that all of the canines that were with her were in as good of a state of health that they could be. Finally, she finished the checks with Kali.
Starting at her muzzle, Nat worked her way down, checking every part of Kali as she had done for the rest of the pack. Eventually she came across the bandaged and splinted paw. Taking all of the wrappings off, she was stunned at what she saw. This was an injury that had happened almost six days prior, yet the level of healing that was showcased looked as if it had been left to rest and heal without any issues for almost a month. At this point, Kali could walk around without splints and have minimal to no pain. She just could not put that much stress on it in case it aggravates the wound. Upon hearing all of this, Kali got up and walked around the living room, enjoying the feeling of walking without pain once more. She was extremely cautious of the paw to start, but slowly she started to get into a rhythm as she prodded her current limits. Satisfied at how far her foot allowed her to now go, she went exploring through the house with her pups and Maia as Natalie got a fresh notebook and finished recording how everyone's physical went. She gave each wolf two pages each, so that anything new they found would hopefully have plenty of space to be added. The bonus with writing in the notebook is that the Soulscape counted it as a new and different item, even compared to her questions about the apocalypse notebook that now had zombie questions added.
Content that all of the canines were fine despite all of them being exposed to and ingesting the ilk, she quickly recorded that currently no living beings showed signs of illness despite exposure. She also recorded her brief encounter with the herd of cows, as well as a few of her ideas. While it could have just been happen stance, she wanted to make sure just in case something similar happened in the future. Putting both of the notebooks away, she headed deeper into the house after the group escorting the recovering mother. As she found them in what looked like a storage room, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the wolves bringing items into her Soulscape. As they did, Kali walked up with them but did not immediately enter. Held in her mouth was a compound bow. Maia followed up behind her with a quiver full of arrows.
Collecting the bow from Kali, Nat gave it a quick once over. It was in pretty decent shape, save the thin layer of dust that was covering it. Clearly the previous owner did not use it that much. Checking the draw weight, it was sitting at a solid fifty five pounds. Giving it a test pull, it took a little effort to draw the bow, but not too much. Easing it back so as to not dry fire, she passed the bow back to Kali to store while checking out the arrows that Maia had. Pulling one out of the quiver, she found that most likely these arrows had almost never been used. They were a broadhead tipped arrow with standard fletching, with no signs of wear on either. The shafts were straight and true and the tips sharp. Perfect for hunting deer with, and probably most other prey that was native to the area. Carefully returning the arrow to the quiver, she passed it back to Maia so it could be stored alongside the bow.
Slowly the group went through everything, making sure that anything that could be of use was duplicated. While they knew the previous owner had passed, it felt wrong not to leave things as they were. Everything that they grabbed was duplicated and left back in place where they had found it. Moving out from the house, Nat took a few minutes to get the quiver set up on her hip, before heading back over to the road with the compound bow in hand. Confirming that all other members of the back were with her, they headed eastward once more with Bryden leading the way. They moved fast and low, now with the sun slowly falling in the sky behind them giving them urgency to get to a good area to rest before it set behind the mountains.
Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu, Lachlan, Coen, Adam, John, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 25 patrons, which I will then open up an official discord for everyone to come and discuss the story in and hang out!