by Scott Todd
"You mean some of these?" Jan said, holding up a little booklet of stapled together, homemade pages, and passing it to Ben. Ben's eyes got wider and wider as he leafed through it.
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "Where did you...???"
"It was in her backpack," Jan explained. 'They had obviously done their homework before coming here."
"They sure did!" he exclaimed. "Ohhhhh, I see what they did now... I recognize this... This is an interactive map... And they... They printed each page, with each separate trail lit up and named... Wow. Jackpot!"
"And this one... This one right here... Look!" It shows a trail, Camp Alice Trail, splitting off of... Let me see, ummm... Ahhh yes, Old Mitchell Trail. It leads right down to the camp.
"And Old Mitchell Trail should be... Should be... Right.... Over.... There! Just up the hill," he said. He pointed to the now familiar route up to the deck we had been taking- although granted, our minds at the time weren't intent upon finding damaged trails, covered up by fallen trees and landslides.
"They've got them all marked in here," Ben said, flipping through the pages more. "Every one. Every trail name is in yellow. They must have got this online. They must have been planning a long..."
But he froze, and so did we. A loud snarling and commotion up the hill brought us instant terror. We recognized that sound. The sound from before. The sound of a beast with two inch teeth.
"Oh no, not.... Another one," he said, turning to look at me with eyes as about as wide as they would go.
But before I could even respond, then we heard a loud roar, and then more snarling, and then another roar.
"That sounds like some kind of fight going on," I suggested, trying to sound calm. "No, that doesn't sound good at all. Sounds like another bear and another... Painter."
Jan and Terry bolted into the car. We knew the drill. Jumping into the car with them and locking the doors, Ben and I contemplated the situation for several minutes.
"I'll bet they're up there fighting over the carcasses. Remember? They're both laying up there together in a heap," Ben said, more calmly. Jan and Terry both just stared at him, horrified.
"Yeah, we'd be fools to think there aren't more up here," I speculated. "Chances are the animals around here are all scared out of their minds with all that's happened- the tremors, the water... Everything. Hungry, displaced, fighting over the reduced territory that's left, and driven by desperate, hair-trigger, survival tempers."
"You're right," Ben agreed. "Anything that survived came running up that hill to get away from the water, so now we are in a concentrated, open zoo. And I just remembered... There are also coyotes around here. One desperate and hungry enough could be dangerous."
I pulled out my 38 pistol, deciding to keep the Glock, and eying both Terry and Jan. Sensing what I was doing, Terry promptly said, "I'll take it. I've shot a gun before." I dug out and handed her the extra loose bullets from my pocket.
"Oh really?" Ben remarked. "And where was..."
"Ben..." Terry interrupted with a stern tone. "Don't." The sheer tone of her voice was enough. I could tell he was more startled at her calling him Ben again than he was at learning that she knew how to shoot. This new relationship was going to take some getting used to for him.
"Sorry," he immediately conceded. "Give me some time, please. I'm still getting used to..."
"It's ok... It's ok," Terry replied more softly, losing the attitude. "This is new for me too. We'll work at it, ok?" she said with a light smile, and that totally disarmed him.
But the lighthearted moment didn't last long, as we heard more snarls and growls up on the hill through a cracked car door window. The reality of our dangerous situation put a serious face on everyone again quickly. And as if to accentuate the point, another tremor shook us in our seats.
The fighting noise immediately stopped with the tremor, and all went quiet, except for the breeze which had turned more into a wind- shaking the trees. The car rapidly filled up with the stench of four unclean bodies.
"We still need to go," Ben finally said. "We've got to find water. We have no choice."
"We can't go on a hike with all those demented monsters running around out there!" Jan retorted.
Ben eyed his high powered rifle, stroking it. Looking up, he said "Oh yes, we can." He proceeded to reload it with the three rounds it was missing. Then he pulled out the large hunting knife he had found and handed it to Jan. She took it out of the leather sheath and gawked at it- eying the sharp, menacing, eight inch blade and heavy handle.
"Here, hold it tightly and stab like this if you need to use it to kill something," he said, having her hold the handle in a clenched fist. "And that includes humans," he said with a slight smirk as he looked at me.
"Why you looking at me?" I retorted in objection. Jan was speechless. Looking back down cautiously at the weapon, she put it away in its sheath and hung it from the side of her jeans. "Yeah, Tarzan. You better watch it," she said coyly- looking at me with a daring stare, playing along, despite our desperate situation.
"Oh, ok Jane... I mean Jan," I sarcastically remarked. She gave me one of those looks that's tough to describe, but it conveyed the matter was settled. We quickly realized this was no time to be joking though.
"I was just... Kidding..." Ben smirked, and rolled his eyes a bit. "Ok. So we move slow, carefully, quietly, senses wide open, and in a very tight group," he continued. "I'll take the front, intent on what's ahead... Terry, you behind be, and you always watch UP the hill to whichever side that is. UP the hill to our side, ok?"
"I can do that," Terry responded, still half entertained from our little Tarzan and Jane exchange, but she was listening intently. She pointed my 38 out the window with both hands, looking down its sight. She seemed oddly comfortable with it, like she had handled a gun before. I noted she even kept her finger off the trigger.
"That's... Because if we are moving on a hill sideways... The slope will either be on your right or left... And we need to keep that weapon pointed... Up the hill," Ben continued- stuttering, and surprised by Terry's obvious familiarity with a pistol.
"We are more vulnerable from things coming down the hill like a bear than something running up the hill. So Jan, you follow next, always watching DOWN the hill to the other side," he continued. "If we are going directly upwards or forwards on flat ground, then Terry watch right, and Jan watch left, to the sides. And Brian, how about covering our rear. A few steps forward, then turn around and check. Anyone speak softly if you see ANYTHING."
"Ok, I got it," I replied. Jan just nodded reluctantly.
Ben kept on, obviously reliving a more military mindset. "If I raise a closed fist like this, with my arm bent at 90 degrees, that means stop immediately. Terry do the same to signal Jan, who should do the same to signal Ben. So do that for each hand motion I show you. Repeat it for those behind you."
Jan and Terry both practiced the closed fist halt motion a couple times. "Excellent," Ben said.
"Move forward is like this," he said, motioning forward with his arm. "Get down is like this, and that means stop and crouch, keeping your head down."
He continued for several more minutes, showing us other signals for listen, look that way, I see, building, doorway, window, talk, whisper, and more. His military training was rusty, but helpful.
"That should give us the basics, so we can move and communicate without talking," he concluded.
"Well what if I have to go the bathroom?" Jan asked innocently.
Ben just stared at her for a minute. "Well let us know when you find one," he remarked. "But in the meantime, we'll have to use the woods. In that case, you would issue a halt command to Brain, tap Terry on the shoulder, show her the stop command, and then Terry would do the same to me. Once you have all our attention, grab your crotch, and we'll know. We'll wait, and you find the nearest tree. Same goes for any of us. Those waiting keep watch all around us."
"Sounds like we're going into battle," Terry commented dryly.
; "Well we have to make it through the battles without getting killed, if we are really going to win the war of survival," he replied. "And now it's possible we could be facing other humans as well as beasts out here. We don't know that other people would necessarily be friendly. I mean chances are they would, but you just never know. They might spot our weapons, backpacks, and even you women and get ideas. We have to be very careful. And they might be armed. So never assume anything."
"That's horrible," Jan gasped with a sigh.
"But that's our new reality," I interjected. "And Ben's right. We seriously need to be careful and stick together. I mean so far we've been lucky, but you never know who was coming up any of those trails when all this happened. They could also be starving by now, and just as desperate as these animals out here. No telling WHAT they'll do," I pointed out.
Jan and Terry got uneasy. They put their heads down in contemplation.
"Now if we do encounter anyone else at this point, considering it's been days since the disaster," Ben interjected, "Then I think we ought to immediately take cover behind trees if we are in the woods, until we talk it out further. And I'll handle the talking. If it all possible, never let them know you're there. You never give up the advantage of stealthy cover, if you possibly can avoid it," he concluded.
"We could arrive at Camp Alice and find other people there too," I added. "They may not feel like sharing any water they found, or anything, for that matter. We just don't know."
"But I thought we were pushing the reset button on the human race?" Jan questioned softly, in deep contemplation.
Ben, caught off guard, just stood there silently for a minute. "We did push it," he finally offered up. "But only between us four. And as far as we know right now, we ARE the human race."
That whole exchange brought about an eerie silence upon us, as we reflected on what was said. I can't speak for what they were thinking, but in my mind I was wondering if we were taking the right attitude. We had come from a dog-eat-dog world, and many of those attributes were now barking.
But then I thought of poor Randy and Betty, and what their opinion of what was said might be. Would they be so cautious and untrusting?
"Maybe we need to take this one day at a time," Terry finally spoke. "And not worry about it yet. I mean if we don't find some water soon, it's all not going to matter anyway... Cause we're going to die within a week or two."
Before anyone could respond, we caught another whiff of burnt human death from the hill as the wind shifted. Combined with the stench of ourselves in the car, we just had to get out of there no matter how many beasts we had to fight.
"Think we ought to take that rope? That might come in handy," I suggested with a gnarly look of disgust on my face from the foul odors. "Let's go. I'll carry it."
"Good idea," said Ben, opening the car door in a hurry, with nearly the same look on his face. Jan and Terry were just as eager to get out of that car, despite the dangers.
We grabbed our things, entered our formation quickly, and headed in a tight line up the Summit Trail to look for the first trail off to the right- with weapons drawn. We didn't see much of any wildlife, other than some birds. But we knew those beasts were there- somewhere. Ben stopped us, finding the trail entrance.
"This looks like it," he whispered. Looking down the trail a bit, the first part looked covered with fallen trees here and there, but passable. We couldn't see much beyond that. The observation deck was now up on the hill to our left.
He took about five paces forward slowly, stepped on a twig- which cracked- and all of sudden we heard something move in the woods down off to the right, like it was startled by the noise. We froze.
And then we saw it- another black bear, some fifty yards away, plenty big enough to make a man out of your fortitude. I don't know if it saw or smelled us. I reasoned that since the wind had shifted, we were down wind from it. I saw Jan's hand clench the knife tighter, and Terry was in a firing stance, frozen. But then the bear slowly wandered away back into the wilderness.
Ben made the forward motion to continue, so we did. I kept seeing Ben look up into the trees, as well as ahead. And then I remembered why- tree climbing mountain lions. "Good thinking Ben," I thought to myself. I could tell Jan and Terry noticed Ben looking up too, and it wasn't long before we were all doing the same thing, checking the trees as we went.
The going was slow, and we had to avoid or step over a lot of fallen trees, but we made steady progress. We started seeing some smaller animals, and a bizarre flying squirrel that was half flying and half leaping from tree to tree. I felt like I was in another world. It seemed like permanent Christmas with all those Frasier-fir trees everywhere- a sight you cannot see in the wild below about 5,400 feet elevation, since they only grow above that.
And to make matters worse, many of them had been impacted by the flying fire rocks, so there were burned holes of varying sizes in their trunks. Some trees had been entirely topped by them, and we could still smell the smoldering and see occasional smoke from the apocalyptic onslaught. The rain had been effective at knocking down the smell, but not entirely. And we could still detect the subdued smell of sulfur in the air as well.
As we cautiously continued, my mind drifted with bizarre thoughts that this is what it must have been like in the south pacific 75 thousand years ago, near the violent eruption of the Toba caldera: A catastrophic super eruption that wreaked near total devastation and plunged the planet into an ice age. I further wondered if the same would happen now with all that debris and sulfur in the air, and how long it would take before the sky turned completely dark, blocking out the sun. Ben had to be wondering too.
But fear had no intentions of leaving us from its clutches, and no sooner than we had made it some quarter mile through the devastated trail, we heard the same snarling and roaring we had heard before, but this time more behind us and in the distance. We all stopped and froze, and Jan quickly grabbed my hand, squeezing it in sheer terror.
"They're probably fighting over those carcasses again," Ben whispered to the group. We all nodded, and noted the urgent need to get as far away from the scene as possible. And quickly. "Make sure you keep an eye on our six," he said quietly to me, and with a faster pace, he immediately continued down the trail.
Gripping the Glock tighter, I tried to keep up while constantly turning around to make sure nothing was coming up behind us. Jan seemed torn between trying to keep up with them, and not leaving me totally behind. Startled by the commotion, several deer darted out from the trees and took off down the hill, into a clearing that exposed the park entrance road down to our right. And then we reached a spot where trail branched off in several directions, and we were faced with a dilemma of which way to go.
"I think it's this way," Jan said, pointing to the left. Eying the maps again, Ben agreed, and asked to look at my newfound compass watch. After a minute of contemplation, he took off in that direction, only to be confronted again with another fork in the trail soon thereafter. This time he took the right fork, and then took a more obscure trail headed off the main trail. But he was sure he was headed towards Camp Alice after looking at the compass again.
The smell of ocean was again on the breeze, albeit faintly at first, but as we made our way down through the woods it seemed to get stronger. We kept seeing more and more deer, and I for one was surely glad to see them, knowing they would provide food at least for a while.
The going got tougher, as we seemed to be less on a trail, and more just descending through the woods. But Ben kept checking the compass and his maps, and was sure we were headed in the right direction. I finally just handed him the compass watch, and let him navigate us the rest of the way.
Then we began hearing the sound of ocean waves faintly as we descended. "We've got to be close," Ben remarked as the group stopped for a minute to take a drink.
"Yeah well at least we're away from those beasts," Jan said- somewhat relieved- and looking back up through the woods.
A fe
w hundred yards further, and Terry gasped. "Look! I see it! Down there through the trees! Buildings!"
Sure enough, several buildings became visible quickly as we descended, and Ben checked his maps and the compass again. "Yup, I think that's it- Camp Alice!" he concluded. "Or what's left of it. But before we get any closer, we need to be quiet and check around for any signs of humans. Let's all wait right down there for a bit, and sit tight and observe."
So finding a suitable spot above the camp and behind some trees, we all sat there in hiding- observing and waiting. A bigger building in the camp had suffered badly during the quakes, and was nearly destroyed. But there appeared to be a couple more smaller ones that looked still somewhat intact. Although we could hear the ocean more plainly, we still couldn't see it through the trees. But it clearly wasn't too far beyond the camp, just down the slope.
