“Everything is better when you have firepower.” He drops the pack into the sand and drops down beside it.
“Ash,” I say, “do you still have your first aid kit?”
“Affirmative.” She pulls off her sodden running pack. “I don’t know how much use everything inside will be.”
“Disinfectant on all the wounds,” I say. Seawater carries a lot of bacteria. We could each use our own personal bottle of disinfectant and a lifetime supply of bandages, but we’ll have to make do with what we have. “If anyone needs stitches, see to it they get them. Susan, I’ll wrap your ankle.” I glance down the beach, at the black sand the Lost Coast is known for. “We move out in thirty minutes.”
“What?” Susan stares at me aghast. “We can’t move out. None of us are in any shape to move.”
“None of us are in any shape to stay here,” I reply. “We have no shelter and little food. We’re wet and cold and we can’t build a fire in this rain. Any one of us could get an infection from our cuts and scrapes. Our best hope at surviving is to get the hell off the Lost Coast.”
“But my ankle—” Susan begins.
I cut her off, knowing how crucial it is to keep everyone in a suck-it-up mindset. “I’ll wrap it. The natural swelling will create a sheath to splint it. It’s possible to run on it.”
“Run?” Susan’s voice is a shriek.
“Mama ran almost a hundred miles on a messed-up ankle,” Reed puts in. “You should have seen her when she arrived in Arcata. Her bad ankle was twice the size of her good one.”
Susan’s face turns incredulous.
Sympathy softens me, but I don’t let it show. “Pain isn’t relevant, Susan. I know you hurt. I know you’ll hurt more in the coming miles. But giving in to pain will get you killed. You can’t stay out here. Your only option is to keep moving.”
A mix of frustration and fear flushes the angles of her face. I remind myself she’s new to the running world. Until a few weeks ago, she didn’t even know what ultrarunning was. I put a gentle hand on her arm.
“Trust me, please. I’ll get you out of here if you let me.”
She nods, lips compressed. I open my pack and pull out a soggy shirt. Using my knife, which miraculously is still attached to my belt, I cut off several strips and set about wrapping Susan’s foot.
Reed and Caleb both receive stitches from Ash. There aren’t enough sterile wipes to go around, so I make sure those with the deepest wounds get them. I also wrap Ash’s ankle with the remains of my shirt, grateful hers doesn’t look as purple and swollen as Susan’s.
During this time, I mentally plot out our next steps. The Lost Coast trail is about fifty miles from north to south. According to Susan, we just exited the southern impassable zone.
Judging on what I know of the route, I estimate we have about thirty miles left to travel. Due to the time of year, we’ll have light for the next two or three hours. I hope everyone packed a headlamp.
From what I recall reading about this next part of the trail, we will have a shit ton of climbing. I need to make sure I pace everyone accordingly. We have to move fast enough to get off the trail by sunset, but not so fast I blow everyone up by mile twelve.
With all of us wet and cold, hypothermia is a real threat. The rain is only a light drizzle, but there’s no telling how long it will last or if it will get worse. At least if we’re moving, we have a chance at keeping our bodies warm.
Once we’re off the trail, we can find a house, a car, or some kind of shelter. We can scavenge food and medical supplies. We can regroup and figure out our next steps.
I check my pack for the small tape recorder Johnny gave me with the alpha command. It’s in a one-gallon Ziploc and appears to be intact. I don’t dare take it out in this rain to check it.
The recorder could possibly be the most valuable thing I have. I wrap it and the Ziploc in a pair of shorts, hoping to give it a little extra protection, then return it to my pack.
“I’m going to distribute the weapons,” Ben says. “That way we don’t risk losing everything in another disaster like we just had.”
Caleb nods in approval as Ash puts the finishing touch on his stitches. Ben distributes the various guns, rifles, explosives, and ammo. The rifles he brought are collapsible. It fits easily in my pack with the tape recorder and water bladder.
Who would have thought I’d ever run down a trail with a rifle in my pack? I wish Frederico were here to see this.
“Everyone, pull out any food you have,” I say. “I need to know exactly what we have so I can ration. That includes water.” Neither Ben nor Caleb have water or running packs, which means the rest of us will have to share. I don’t want to risk drinking from streams unless we have no other choice.
Two minutes later, I stare at the pathetic pile of food at my feet. Two cans of black beans. Seven granola bars. A bag of M&Ms. Two sticks of beef jerky. Ten litres of water to share among five people over thirty miles.
This is not good.
“We eat the beans now. Ration the rest for today’s journey. We eat every two hours. Small bites only.”
“How are we supposed to go thirty miles on that?” Susan gestures to the pathetic pile of food.
I share her sentiments, but I don’t let it show. No one can know how worried I really am.
“It will have to be enough,” I tell her. “It’s all we have.”
“We’ve trained for this,” Eric says. “We can do this.”
“You’ve trained for this,” Susan snaps. “I’ve only been running with you guys for seven weeks.”
“Couch potato to ultramarathon,” I reply, trying to make my voice light. “I knew people who specialized in that sort of training.”
“Couch potato training?” Ash asks. “What does that mean?”
“It means they don’t train enough. Sometimes because they’re lazy, but usually because life got in the way.”
“So these couch potatoes still showed up to run on race day?” Reed asks.
I nod. “It wasn’t always pretty, but people can gut out just about anything if they put their mind to it. Besides,” I add to Susan, “you’re in better shape than you give yourself credit for. You and Gary survived for months on the Fairhaven. You can’t tell me ship life was easy.”
Susan weighs my words. “It is hard work,” she says after a moment.
“There you go. Just think of it as cross training for the Lost Coast.”
She closes her eyes, a small smile wrinkling her mouth. “You are the strangest woman I’ve ever met. I can’t believe I actually feel inspired by what you just said. No one cross trains on a charter boat for ultramarathons.”
“They do now.” I refuse to back away from the sliver of optimism I’ve managed to instill in her. “You can start a new fad.”
“Johnny will write about it in his book,” Eric adds. “Couch potato charter woman to ultramarathon runner.” Everyone looks at him. “Yeah, that sounded weird, didn’t it?”
“Um, I think I just found another bear print.” Reed stands in the sand, staring at something directly at his feet.
I head toward him, my heart sinking at the large animal print filling up with rainwater. Leading away from Reed into a narrow canyon is a line of identical tracks. It’s even larger than the last one we saw, these easily five inches across.
“Black bear,” Susan confirms, voice flat. “I forgot to mention no one is allowed to backpack on the Lost Coast without a bear canister for food. Bears can smell food up to two miles away.”
No one speaks. Every single one of us is thinking of the various edible items stashed in our packs. The two granola bars in my pack make me feel like a bear magnet. Zombies, I can handle. Bears? No, thank you.
“We could eat everything now,” Ash ventures.
I hesitate then shake my head. “We’re moving away from the bear tracks.” I hope. “We need to conserve the food. We’ll need a constant source of fuel to keep us going throughout the day.”
We wolf down the two cans of beans, passing them around in pensive silence as the rain patters down on us. I toss the cans to the ground when we finish. It felt weird to toss garbage on the ground at the beginning of the apocalypse. Now, none of us is phased by it.
“Lace up,” I say. “We’ve got an ultramarathon to run.”
56
Pacer
KATE
There’s a time-honored tradition in the ultramarathon world known as pacing. Simply put, pacing is accompanying a racer on part of his or her race. I used to pace Frederico for as far as fifty or sixty miles when he ran hundred milers.
On a granular level, pacing isn’t as simple as just running with another person. It’s studying the route ahead of time and watching for flags so your runner doesn’t get lost. It’s monitoring the food and beverage intake over the long miles to make sure your runner keeps himself fed and hydrated. It’s helping him through rough spots—when he’s bonking, raging, or puking his guts out on the trail. It’s keeping an eye on the clock to make sure your runner doesn’t miss any important cut-offs.
On top of that, a pacer has to monitor his own food and drink intake. You can’t pace a person if you’re laid out on the side of the trail.
As I usher my group down the beach, I realize this will be the toughest pacing job of my life. Not only do we have to contend with Mother Nature and all she throws at us, I have myself and six people to monitor. We’re starting out wet, cold, and injured with limited resources.
There are no aid stations waiting for us at regular intervals. There is no option to drop from the run if things get hard. There are no gear bags waiting for us with dry clothes and clean socks.
As we jog down the beach, black pebbles slowing our journey, I fall into step beside Susan. Her jaw is set. I have no doubt she’s in pain from her rolled ankle, but it’s good to see her sucking it up. She’ll need that grit to make it out of here.
“Have you hiked the Lost Coast before?” It would be helpful to have someone with knowledge of the trails.
She shakes her head, panting as she jogs. “Hike, no. Gary and I boated down here plenty of times for the fishing. I grew up with stories of the Lost Coast.” Her brow wrinkles. “Mostly of people getting washed away by the tide, or just lost. Or having a close encounter with a bear.”
Well, there goes that idea. Susan knows about as much as I do about the Lost Coast, which is just enough to leave me terrified.
I pull ahead, leading the pack down the black beach. Reed brings up the rear. My sweeper. Every race has sweepers, people who bring up the back of the pack to make sure no one gets left behind.
We enter a stretch of beach that is true sand, the fine grains glistening black beneath my running shoes. I shift a little closer to the water where the surface is firmer for running. The cliffs to our left are tall, tan, and vertical.
“Black Sands Beach,” Susan calls.
“No shit,” Ben grumbles.
“I mean, that’s the name of this beach,” Susan says. “The end of the beach marks the midway point of the Lost Coast Trail.”
“How much farther after that?” Eric asks.
“About twenty-five miles.” I let that sink in. No one says anything.
The rain continues to peter down. Even though I’m running, I’m cold. The wind from the coast, combined with the rain and clothes already soaking wet, are a bad combination. A glance down my line of runners shows me everyone in the same condition.
I mentally run through the list of hypothermia symptoms. Shivering. Slurred speech. Shallow breathing. Slow pulse. Clumsiness. Confusion. Drowsiness. And worst of all, unconsciousness.
These are very real dangers.
I grit my teeth. I’m getting everyone out of here if it kills me. I’ve survived zombies. I’ve survived loss. I’ve survived way too much other shit to lose to the trail.
After running a little over an hour down the sand, I spot the end of Black Sands Beach. A pale line of dirt zigzags its way up the cliff. From that point on, the trail follows the contours of the land as it meanders down the coast. Which means no more risky run-ins with the tide. It also means the end of the beach running, thank god. I’m ready for good old-fashioned dirt beneath my feet.
“This way,” I call, gesturing to the trail.
As I jog toward it, I feel something stir in my chest. I haven’t had a real trail run since the start of the apocalypse. My feet move faster of their own accord, carrying me toward what feels like an old friend.
There have been so many times in my life when I turned to the trail for comfort. Having that cut out of my every day existence hasn’t been easy. Ben understands that. It’s the reason he covered my room with pictures of nature on my birthday.
I glance in his direction. He looks back at me, nodding in understanding. Somehow, he knows what this means to me. It’s baffling how well he understands me.
I climb a short way onto the trailhead and pause, waiting for the others to catch up. Fennel and thistles line both sides of the hard-packed dirt. Farther ahead are gnarled cypress trees, bowed sideways from the constant battering of the elements. I inhale, pulling a lost world into my lungs.
“If we weren’t all at risk of dying, I’d say the world has just delivered a gift to you.” Ben is the first to reach me. The two of us are momentarily shielded from sight by the tall shrubs growing along the trail.
“It suits you out here.” His voice is gruff as always, but his eyes are soft as he takes me in, framed by the trailhead. “It’s like seeing you in your natural habitat.”
His words create a warming sensation in my body. Regret flickers through me. I wish I’d ignored what he said to me the night we kissed.
“Kate?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for what I said. That night of your birthday, I mean.” The words rush out of him. “On the roof. I shouldn’t have said what I said. What I wanted to say that night was that I’d been wanting to kiss you for months.”
I stare at him, tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. Of all the times to pick for an apology, Ben would decide to do it when we’re sopping wet and stranded on one of the most dangerous trails of Northern California, our only privacy a tall scrub brush.
Ben hunches his shoulders, like he’s trying to disappear into his own body. “Words aren’t my thing, Kate. I’m sorry. Really sorry. I just want you to know that. You know. In case we die out here. I want you to know.”
He looks so contrite and miserable. I find myself releasing the mortification I’ve been dragging around like dirty socks for weeks, letting myself bask in the knowledge that he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him.
But I can’t help but compare Ben to Kyle. The comparison is a chain around my neck as real as the one Rosario once put there. Ben could not be any more different from the man I was married to for almost twenty years. The fact that we’re attracted to each other doesn’t change the fact that we might not be compatible in the long run.
“Thanks for telling me the truth. It means a lot,” I say instead.
“Can I—can I try again?” he asks.
I stop breathing. I can’t look away. There is nothing that I want more than to kiss this man. It makes no sense, but there it is.
It occurs to me that I might be in love with Ben.
Anxiety mounts within me, a rising tide that scrambles my brain. Kyle’s easy smile flashes before me. Easygoing Kyle with his kind smile.
Ben doesn’t even know how to smile.
“I—I don’t think that’s a good idea.” My whisper is husky. I force myself to step back. “This thing between us, whatever it is, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
He draws in an uneven breath, breaking eye contact. I’m both disappointed and relieved when he doesn’t make any argument.
“Creekside is a small community,” I continue, trying to rationalize everything in my own mind. “It’s tightknit. If we end up not liking each other as much as we think we do, it could disrupt e
verything. I ... I need your friendship, Ben. I don’t want to risk losing that by doing something stupid.”
“Okay.” It’s his turn to take a step back.
Something inside me crumples. I consider the wisdom of throwing my arms around his neck when a shout goes up.
“Mama Bear! Wait up!”
Our moment evaporates—as does our privacy—as Caleb hikes up onto the trail, the others following behind him.
I’m thankful for the distraction. Ben turns aside as though studying the plants growing along the path.
“This is the end of the beach trail,” I tell the group. “From here on out, we won’t have any sand or riptides to deal with.”
“Gracias a Dios,” Ash mutters.
“This is a true trail run,” I continue. “There are some climbs ahead of us. We’ll walk the up hills and try to run everything else. We’ll pass through a few primitive campsites only accessible by foot. It’s isolated out here, but there’s always a risk of running into zombies in the campgrounds. We need to proceed cautiously.”
“Don’t forget the bears,” Eric says. “That was one big ass track back there on the beach.”
“Bears.” I nod. “There are bears and rattlesnakes.”
Caleb taps his gun. “I can take care of any rattlesnakes.”
Ben snorts. “You ever try to kill a snake with a gun? You have to be one hell of a shot.”
“If we see a rattlesnake,” I say, “give it wide berth. It’s more afraid of us than we are of it. Besides, there’s little chance of running into rattlesnakes out here today. It’s too cold. Just don’t be stupid if we do happen to run into one. What we are likely to run into is poison oak. I know we’re all limited on clothing right now, but if anyone has long sleeves or long pants, now is the time to put them on. Make sure you know where your headlamps are. Oh, and be on the lookout for ticks.”
“Ticks?” Ash looks horrified. “Ticks, as in the little fuckers that carry Lyme Disease?”
Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bite of a tick. Initial symptoms are flu-like, but if untreated with antibiotics, a person can have lasting inflammation and neurological conditions.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 88
