Finding Their Path (Down The Path Book 3)

by Travis Mohrman

  She thought back to a few fairly adventurous evenings in college, and smiled at the memories. It truly had been all those years since she had slept outside the shelter of a proper building. As she propped herself up on her elbows, she remembered why. He back ached and her neck felt like someone had removed one of the vertebrae.

  Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she looked on down the blanket and saw two people missing. Jeep and Marcus had already risen for the day, but Laurel was still fast asleep. Kate knew how hard she must have been pushing herself to formulate this treatment for the virus. She wondered when the last time was that Laurel had actually slept this long. Bender began stirring where he lay nestled against her hip. Even though Kate wanted to lay there for another half hour and listen to the birds sing, she decided it was best to get up and remove Bender so he didn’t start sniffing Laurel’s closed eyes. That dog always seemed perplexed when a person would shut their eyes, as if he thought they just disappeared.

  She gently prodded her long eared friend and received the standard groaning from him. Even when he wanted to get up, he would argue at first. She never understood why. Finally, he crawled out from under the blanket and began leisurely walking out onto the runway before stopping and having a good shake. Kate gently rolled out from underneath the blanket, trying not to disturb the sleeping Laurel. She was in such a deep sleep that she never so much as twitched.

  Once away from the sleeping figure, Kate threw her hands in the air and arched her back to allow for a very long yawn and stretch. The kinks that had formed in her back from sleeping on the hard ground were already feeling better. Bender had disappeared off into the trees, most likely to take care of his morning business and then sniff all the various trails that the rabbits had used for the past decade or so. She was fairly certain that if he could speak, that dog could tell you the location and time frame of recent grasshopper farts.

  As she continued a series of morning stretches, the faint smell of wood smoke and something else found its way to her. She got slightly worried that it was some kind of fire from the bombs, but this smelled like regular wood smoke and she couldn’t see any clouds of billowing smoke indicating a forest fire hanging in the air. Whatever it was from, it was small.

  She followed the scent over toward the river, imagining that this was what life was always like for Bender. Finally, she made her way to the other end of the runway where she saw, in a small depression among the trees and next to the river, the two men furiously twirling sticks. She walked right up to them.

  “So, I guess yesterday really happened then? You know, with you two reverting back to cavemen and all?”

  Jeep quit spinning his stick and thrust his lower jaw out, exposing the row of teeth and started scratching the little bit of hair he had on his head with his knuckles. Kate laughed, but was then slightly disturbed by just how much he resembled a caveman squatting there by the remnants of several tiny, withered fires, smears of soot striping his face.

  “Man, you would have had it if you hadn’t pulled that joke.” Marcus said as he quit spinning and began blowing on the miniscule ember he had created. He softly deposited the ember into a ‘nest’ of dried grass and began blowing on it gently again. Great clouds of white smoked poured out of this bundle as he held it. Suddenly it burst into blames and he dropped it on the ground near the three other now burned out older bundles. “That’s four successful starts to your zero. You’re not going to catch up, man,” he said with disdain. “I think you need to take this seriously.”

  Marcus was by far the best at all the survival skills, and Kate was in awe of him. He had said that it was always a hobby, but before he came to the facility, he never really dug into the nuts and bolts of it all. Now he was fairly confident that he could survive in most places in North America, if he had to. He also always said that he appreciated bucking stereotypes; being the black and gay survival expert made him very proud.

  “Guys, I don’t think we really need to revert back to making fire with sticks. I’m sure we have some matches in our bags.”

  Marcus looked up at her with a very serious expression. “We just need to stay in practice. We don’t want to run out of matches and then have to try to re-learn how make fire.” He shot a glance over to Jeep and said, “Or just learn how to make fire for the first time, as the case may be.”

  “Hey, I’ve made this work before. I’m just a little rusty. Plus, I’ve been awake for less than an hour, so shut up.”

  Kate laughed at the banter between the two friends. Then she felt the knot return to her stomach. “So, we’re all agreeing that yesterday really happened, huh? It wasn’t just some kind of terrible dream?” She glanced back over to where she knew the missile silos had been buried deep inside the stone bluffs and frowned. The smoke from the missiles had long since dissipated and she could not see any evidence of the silos at all, but she knew they were there, and that they were empty.

  The men looked back down at their hands, unsure of what to say. Kate knew it was all real, she knew it had all happened. She was simply trying to avoid admitting it to herself. She also knew, better than the rest of her small group, just how dangerous that type of avoidance was. She was happy that the rest of them seemed to be dealing with everything so well, even better than herself, really.

  Jeep hurriedly changed the subject. “Is Laurel still asleep?”

  Kate was happy to have been pulled out of her own thoughts by the question. “Yeah, I think she’s been running without sleep for a few days at least. Even when I was working in the lab all the time when this all started, she would rarely get more than two to three hours of sleep at time. I didn’t want to wake her.”

  “I was surprised we both woke up just before sunrise too, but once the birds started going crazy I couldn’t lay there anymore. It’s been years since I have gone camping. I forgot what the hard ground does to my back!” Jeep said as he stretched his neck out and arched his back, pushing his belly out.

  Marcus laughed at him. “You’re just getting old…and from the looks of it, pregnant.”

  Kate laughed along with them. She didn’t think Jeep was fat, but with his back flexed out like that it did look funny. She was happy they seemed to be in high spirits, and she knew the insults being tossed back and forth came out of a friendship that was years and years in the making.

  Bender came pounding out of the woods with a fairly impressive stick hanging out of his mouth. Kate scratched his head as he trotted up. “I think he wants you to teach him how to make fire, Marcus.”

  “Ha! Even though I’m confident he would get it done faster than Tubs over here,” he said while thumbing in the direction of Jeep, “no way I would teach that little hell-raiser how to start fires. Could you even imagine what he would do?!?”

  The three of them burst out in laughter. The joke wasn’t even that funny, more scary than funny, but they all desperately needed a good laugh. Bender, hearing all the noise from the people, threw his own head back and started baying as loud as he could while he bounced up and down on his hind legs. The sound of the dog’s short and deep howl bounced off the bluff walls and back out again over the river. As Kate was wiping the tears out of the corners of her eyes, she realized that with all the ruckus, Laurel was certainly awake.

  26

  Laurel was sitting up and waiting for them as they came back across the runway. She was pulling all the backpacks out from inside the hallway and removing the pills from the boxes. As Kate approached, she could clearly see that Laurel was putting a vial of pills in each pack, then doing it again and again to make sure each pack had an even number.

  Once they had gotten back to their small camp, Jeep asked, “Why not just put them all in one pack? We don’t plan on separating, do we?” He looked around as if the thought had never occurred to him before, but now that it had, he was fearful.

  While still portioning out the vials of pills, Laurel replied, “No, I certainly think we need to stick together, at least for now. I just don’t wa
nt all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. If we were to lose a pack, or it fell in the water or something, we shouldn’t run the risk of losing all these.”

  Jeep nodded as he moved in to help her. “Is it done making pills, then?”

  “Yes, it probably stopped shortly after we fell asleep. I only found two more boxes when I checked after I woke up.” Laurel paused and looked out over the river. “I think we need to leave as soon as possible. I have left a vial of pills out for everyone. I already took mine for today.”

  Marcus was standing just behind Kate, but stepped in front of her to take the vial from Laurel. “Shouldn’t only the men take them? If it just affects the Y chromosome, we could fix many more people if we only gave them to the men!” Marcus was beaming with pride at having thought of this.

  Laurel shook her head while she continued her work. “No, it has to be given to both genders. The virus gets passed to offspring, remember? If a mother gives birth to a son and only one parent had undergone the gene therapy, that child would become infertile much quicker than if both parents had passed on the resistance.”

  Kate sensed Marcus slightly deflate as his idea was shattered. “It’s was a great idea, though, keep thinking on things like that.” She didn’t know if her ego stroking had much effect, but she was trying to help the group in the only way she knew how.

  Laurel brushed away Jeep’s assistance and then looked up at both the men. “Can you two head back into the supply rooms? Grab everything you think we can carry and more. At the very least, we can leave a pile of things outside here and then cover it with a tarp. I want this to be the last time we go inside that door.”

  Jeep stood up, but then hesitated slightly. “Are you sure it’s safe?” he said with a blush of fear.

  Marcus smacked him on the back and said, “C’mon you big sissy. We’ll do this real quick. It wouldn’t make any sense for the computer to let us out in the first place, only to trap us back in the very next day.” After handing the vial of pills over to Kate, he looked back to Laurel. “We’ll grab enough stuff to start our own damn country.” With that, the door snapped open and the pair walked back inside the hallway and headed for supply room one.

  Kate took the vial of pills and carefully pulled one out. She swallowed it dry and slid the vial into the front pocket of her pants. Left with nothing else to do, she went to help Laurel parse out the pill bottles between the packs, only to find that she was just finishing up. “What do we do now?”

  “Now, we wait for them to come out and then we finish loading up the packs. Then we start heading south.”

  +++

  Jeep and Marcus really had come out with nearly enough supplies to form a small colony, at least. They laid all the provisions out in front of them and quickly chose the things most vital for their immediate survival to put inside the backpacks. Marcus had made sure everyone took a handgun and a rifle, saying that they had no clue what they were walking into, and it was best to be prepared.

  After some adjustments, everyone was ready to begin walking out. Jeep looked back at the pile of everything they couldn’t bring and sighed. He especially wanted to bring all the tracking beacons. They had put one in each backpack, but the rest of the shiny black orbs were in a small sack under the tarp. Kate was worried about them at first, and the AI tracking them, but it was quickly explained that they emitted a signal only. If you tuned to that signal, or were simply monitoring for everything, they would be easily found. Jeep wanted to give the beacons to any groups of survivors they could find. He knew the beacons were fully shielded against the EMP blast and could gather enough sunlight in a day to power themselves for a year.

  “I wish we had a boat. Maybe we could build a raft?” Jeep asked.

  “No, No, No. I read that book. I’m not going down this big muddy river on some raft with you,” Marcus laughed while looking at his friend.

  Kate thought the raft was a pretty good idea, and was about to say so. As she went to speak, she felt a small tremor ripple beneath her feet. She immediately thought of the missile launches and looked to the hidden silos. She realized that she wasn’t alone as the rest of the small group all had their eyes intently focused on that line of bluffs.

  Jeep finally spoke up. “No, that rumbling grew much louder and faster.” Then, the slight trembling in the earth stopped altogether. “That almost felt like…” Jeep dropped his pack and quickly jogged down the runway a short ways, looking towards the river. “It is! Two of the jon boats just popped up. Screw the raft!”

  Jeep came trotting back with a big grin on his face. “We don’t have to walk after all.”

  Marcus looked at him warily. “Yeah, but can we trust those boats?”

  “Man, I have maintained those boats for years. They have no connection to the AI at all. I can guarantee they run great, plus, they run on hydrogen harvested out of the river itself. We can’t run out of gas. Well, we could run out if you tried to drive it on dry land or something…don’t do that.” Jeep smiled as Marcus flipped him off.

  The rest of the group, Kate included, was pretty leery about the proposition, but she trusted Jeep when it came to all things mechanical. “Now we can carry all the stuff we were going to leave behind!” she said with enthusiasm.

  Jeep and Marcus were already hauling things down the runway to load the boats up.

  27

  It hadn’t taken them long to get everything loaded into the small crafts. Then Jeep spent an hour teaching Kate and Marcus how to drive the boats. Laurel had grown up around boats in northern Illinois and turned out to be an old pro at handling one. They would start off with Jeep and Laurel piloting each craft, but it was important that all members of the group knew how to drive the boats in case of emergency.

  The boat lessons also served to allow Bender to become acclimated to the motion of the boat. At first, he seemed very scared of the way the floor beneath him rocked and swayed. In the first five minutes drool was flowing out of his mouth like a tap had been turned on. Everyone was certain that the pooch was going to vomit from motion sickness. Thankfully, he was able to keep everything down. After the hour practice session, and much reassurance from Kate, he had grown comfortable and taken up a spot right at the bow of the boat. He seemed to do much better when he could see exactly where they were going. Either that or he liked the way the breeze made his long ears flap back and forth.

  Finally, the lessons had ended and they were ready to shove off. They hadn’t given much thought to where they were going, other than they need to get away from the facility as soon as possible. They had talked about it several times. Jeep wanted to meet up with some extended family he had in southern Missouri that he hoped were still okay. Laurel hoped to find her family in the old train yard outside of Gary, Indiana, The bombs that had been detonated in Chicago hadn’t done any visual damage to the areas outside of the city. Fallout was a concern, but it should blow out well north of Gary.

  Jeep had spent a great deal of time trying to convince her that Gary, Indiana was probably fine. The bombs that destroyed Chicago were low yield, and the winds blowing over the lake would have pushed any radioactive fallout well north of Gary. Laurel’s hopes had been raised, but she still seemed very worried, and rightfully so.

  They had found a route that would take them to her family’s train yard using only rivers, and avoiding the now ruined city of Chicago. Laurel was aware that biomedical labs existed all around the suburbs and sprawl of the massive city. The virologist knew that she still had work to do in order to make her gene therapy more successful. They also all agreed that the greatest number of people they would find would be just outside the largest population centers. People would be aware of the dangers of radiation, and hopefully would stay out of the ruined cities, but the group doubted they would travel too far from them.

  Jeep had a plan to eventually head down to southern Missouri and meet back up with his family. Everyone knew that Laurel’s work on the gene therapy was much more important than visiting fam
ily. They were survivors who knew how to live off the land and he wasn’t very worried about them anyway. Marcus and Kate weren’t sure what they were going to do, but the group knew they wanted to stay together. Marcus’s family was all on the east coast, right around D.C. He knew that they were almost certainly killed in the explosions that rocked that whole region. Kate’s family was all in the Phoenix area, and she hadn’t seen them in years anyway. She didn’t have much interest in risking anything getting back there. The unspoken fact was that Phoenix was almost certainly hit with a very large warhead, since its population was so dense.

  With their plans all laid out, they were ready to head out. They were only a little tearful when they finally pushed away from the shore in the twin pair of hydrogen powered jon boats. They had discussed their supplies what seemed like hundreds of times, and everyone was as confident as they were going to get. They were leaving their isolated bubble of rural Montana, and heading out into what was likely to be a wasteland.

  Just before boarding the boats, the four of them made a pact to never talk about the facility with others, no matter what. Their only job was to spread the pills around to everyone they met; they didn’t need people to know that the pills were made by the same machine that essentially caused the global apocalypse. They needed people to embrace the gene therapy, not be fearful of it.

  In an effort to streamline the distribution of the pills, Laurel had hatched another plan. It wasn’t that she thought people were stupid; she simply knew that in these times they would be overly suspicious. Saying that the little pills were for some virus that might have given you a fever for a day might raise red flags, and no one wanted to try to explain exactly what a DNA virus could do. They had decided to tell people that the treatment was to protect them from any radiation that would inevitably still be present.