by Scott Todd
"He did," she quickly replied. "It's at the bottom of the pile too, along with all the ammo he had. I didn't notice it either, even though we carried the damn thing up the hill four times. We were too caught up in getting away from the water. But I found it last night when looking for the stuff to sow up your arm."
"Good then," I said, and I couldn't stay awake any longer. I nodded off, knowing that my life was in Jan's hands.
Chapter 42: It's Us or Them
I was awoken by a strong shaking of my shoulders, and morning sunlight immediately and rudely interrupted my slumber.
"It's been about six hours, and we have a lot to do," Jan said- standing over me with her rifle from behind the two trees the boat was leaning against. I reluctantly checked my watch. 9:45 am. I noticed she had one hand behind her back, and just as I smelled it, she produced warm liquid gold in a steel cup.
"You're kidding!" I exclaimed. "How did you..."
"Gary did set us up good," she reaffirmed. "Portable small burner stove, and some of those instant fire cans. There's even two whole ten-packs of lighters in there, and about two pounds of coffee.
"Oh God that's good," I said as I savored the coffee. But my arm was killing me as I inspected it gingerly. I loosened the bandage to see for the first time the stitches. They were nice and neat.
"Here's two more," she said, handing me the pills. They were gone with a gulp of coffee.
"Good job you did there on those," I said. "Thanks." I quickly taped the bandage back down.
"We've still got a bunch of stuff up at the cars and at the deck," Jan said. "We better get up there."
"But what about all this?" I asked, pointing to the pile.
"Well, we hauled part of it up here in the boat, so what's stopping us from hauling it all to the parking lot the same way?" she said. "We've got trees pretty much all the way up we can use as pulleys, like we did before."
"Oh nothing. Just ravenous bears and lions," I smirked. But she wasn't amused, and gave me that look.
"Ok ok!" I capitulated. "Sorry... All of it weighs too much, but that's a great idea- we might be able to do it easier in two trips," I suggested.
"Sounds good... We better get moving," she said impatiently.
We packed about half of it, and proceeded to work our way up the hill slowly. We were sure to tie the rope each time- terrified it would slip and go tumbling. That slowed us way down, but we had too much to lose to take any chances. We took turns standing guard, while the other did the hoisting.
At about 11:30 am, we finally reached the parking lot with our first load. We passed the grizzly site of the dead soldiers on the way, now decomposing and stinking badly. I just didn't understand why they were still there, with all the predators around.
We left the boat at the edge of the lot, not wanting to scrape its bottom on the pavement. Checking around, things appeared clear, and we hadn't seen a single bear or lion on the way. So we loaded it all trip by trip into the back of Ben's SUV and shut the door. I thought of moving the SUV, but that would waste critical fuel.
Then just as we were headed back to the boat, we heard sudden snarls and roars up Summit Trail. It sounded like another fight, and I didn't have to think too long what they were probably fighting over- dead, evil, naked meat. I had both Ben's rifle and the military rifle, and I opted for Ben's, knowing Jan still had hers.
We were scared and alert, but this time we were more composed. We were starting to get used to them. I just hoped they would haul off whatever was left- for my story's sakes.
"Maybe we should go up there," Jan said all of a sudden. I just looked at her like she was nuts.
"No way," I retorted. "Let them kill each other. Less danger and more ammo for us." Of course I had other motives for the moment, but that would still not preclude me from hunting them outright in the upcoming days. "We should take advantage of this and go back down the hill for the rest of the new supplies," I said.
But she wasn't swayed so easily. "Shouldn't we take advantage, since we know where they are?" she countered, and pressed me. "I think we ought to go up there and get as many as we can. Less to surprise us tonight."
She had a point, and I had to think fast. "Yeah well by tonight, hopefully we will be sleeping with the windows shut in the Caddy," I said. "Right now we better get the rest of those supplies while we can still see and before the bears get them. We have the rest of our lives to hunt those things down," I concluded.
She looked at me and thought about it. I could see that Jan was going to make her own decisions from that point on, perhaps with my input, and sometimes perhaps not. But that was good, I guessed. We were a team and each person's viewpoint counted. She finally looked up and said "Ok, let's head back down then."
Internally, I was relieved. "I got our six, how about you lead," I said matter-of-factly.
"Fine," she said, and we continued back down the hill with the boat.
By about 2:30 pm we returned with the rest, and again without incident. With everything back at the cars, we finally sat down to discuss what we should do next. And the decision was unanimous: food.
"I wonder if that meat is still good," I said, eying the spot where I remembered burying it next to the cars at the edge of the parking lot. "Cover me please?" I asked. She did.
I went and dug it up, and to my surprise, it still smelled fine. With the other things we had retrieved from the landslide, we had a pretty good meal. I went and reburied it, but knew we might get just one more meal from it.
The distant roar of the water was noticeably less at the parking lot.
"The trees are probably shielding a lot of that water noise," I said. "It still might be receding further. Also, at some point we really need to see what's happened down at Camp Alice. I sure as hell hope that spring is still there, and I want to see how far that water came up on the south side."
"Yeah but we'd have to go right through lion territory," she countered.
"True," I replied. "Well maybe we'll combine a hunting trip with an exploratory trip. But I guess we'd better wait a day or two. If it's like at all before, the salt water probably infected the spring, and it's going to take a while for it to replenish clean from the ground anyway. No use going if we can't get some..."
But a startled look in her eyes stopped me cold. She raised a trembling hand and pointed up the hill. A lone lion was meandering down the hill, and she immediately raised her rifle.
"No wait," I said. "I've been thinking. When we kill one, I want it to be in front of some others, so they see the danger we bring, and hopefully that will cause them to stay away."
"I don't care WHAT you think," she retorted, rather coldly. "That thing comes much closer and I am taking it out." She rolled down the window, sat down on the sill, and took aim over the top of the car roof at it. But it stopped dead in its tracks near the bottom of Summit Trail, and just paced back and forth, without entering the parking lot.
"It's just a bit too far for me to shoot it with this," Jan said. "But not too far for Ben's rifle. Want to hand it to me please?"
"Ahh, that rifle probably kicks too much for you... I don't think..." I began to say.
She quickly came back inside the car with a determined, unyielding and irritated look in her eyes. "Either shoot the damn thing or here... I'll do it," she demanded- and grabbed it out of my hands. Ten seconds later, I heard a loud shot ring out, but what I saw kind of amused me.
The high powered rifle kicked her so hard it literally dragged her out the window backwards, and she ended up on her ass outside the car on the pavement. It was all I could do to contain the laugh, cause I knew I'd be in deep trouble. Her pair of demon eyes were looking at me through the window seconds later, reminiscent of our initial trip up there when I had to kidnap her. GOD she was pissed.
"I missed it and it ran off," she huffed. "Thanks a lot."
"I tried to warn..." I started to say.
"Just shut up," she barked. "Thanks to you, that's one more that can kill us in
a surprise attack." She climbed back in the car, and didn't say a word to me for an hour, staring blankly out her window. And I wasn't about to speak either. I figured I just better shut it and let her calm down. I had a way that I thought would work, but she wanted to do it her way. We didn't agree to disagree, we just disagreed period.
By then the sun started setting, and it was about 5:30 pm. We saw no other animals. I wondered if I should attempt a radio call, thinking that maybe the elevation would add to the range. The water roar had all but vanished by then, and I had to strain to hear it at all.
As usual, she seemed to read my mind. "So you going to call them?" she asked rather emotionlessly, and still stared out her window.
"I don't know," I replied. "I was thinking about it, but since we can still make out that roar, even as low as it is, I can only assume that it's still receding. And that means they may still be in a fight for their very lives. I really don't want to distract them. That could prove fatal in their situation. I think we ought to wait more... At least until the roar disappears completely. And even then we still ought to wait another day or two beyond that, just to be sure. By then it will probably be safe to try... But I seriously doubt we'll get them. We never did talk about what to do if we got out of radio range. There was just no time," I concluded.
She finally turned and looked at me, and her eyes were watering up. Then she quickly looked away again without saying a word.
"Hey, that's just my opinion," I said kind of sympathetically. "What do you think?"
"Well you've obviously thought about it, and so I am just going to have to trust you on that. I will agree to wait as long as you want," she replied, but she was kind of removed- obviously thinking about other things. What, I did not know.
I put a hand on her shoulder. "Thanks," I said. "I am really just trying to put myself in their shoes. We've got to be really careful with trying to call them too soon."
"Yeah... I get it," she said coldly, and turned to look at me. There was obviously something really bothering her.
"Tomorrow I'm getting my period," she suddenly said. "I always know. The cramps have started. Sorry I'm being so bitchy."
I finally understood, and her statement was a bit of a relief in way, considering all that had happened. But I still felt sorry for her. That was one inequity I never fully understood in us humans, but I damn sure understood to stay out of their way and just try and be as helpful as I could.
"Can I... Umm...Get you anything?" I offered.
"Yeah, two of those pills might help, although that morphine sure is tempting," she retorted. "But don't worry... I know better than to waste that." She mustered a faint smile, and put her hand on mine. Then she pulled out the strong pills, and I went and dug around in the trunk until I found some bottled water.
"Thanks," she said, and sunk into the seat after taking them with a gulp. "Hurry up twenty minutes," she said with a sigh. I just stroked her hair lightly, as she looked again out her window at the final vestiges of sunset for the day.
I checked around, getting a bit more nervous about prowling predators. But there was nothing. The coast appeared clear. My arm was hurting again, and I reached for the pills. Taking two, I put them back on the dash. But when I tried to retract my hand, her hand all of a sudden snatched mine. She put it on her breast and rubbed it a little bit, making me feel her hardening nipple through her shirt.
"I don't just get bitchy..." she said with a determined look in her eyes. "How about closing that window," she told me, and rolled up the crack in hers. She unbuttoned her shirt, and I felt a stir as I sat fixated on her bare breasts and hard nipples.
But there... There was a slight problem. And it had to do with a certain dead piece of naked, evil meat. I had not had any chance to bathe since- and I couldn't risk Jan finding out. Oh damn... What to do.
"Ok, but first I need to find a tree or something," I said. "I kinda gotta go. Keep an eye out for me, will you?" I grabbed the bottled water, and headed straight ahead for the nearest tree across the parking lot that would be wide enough for me to... Secretly clean up behind it. I took a sip casually on the way, and turned back to look as I went. Jan was sitting on the window sill again keeping watch- but this time she had HER rifle. She wanted no more part of that high powered Ben- cannon. I quickly turned back around and kept going before she could see my chuckle.
Mission completed quickly, I headed back to the car. And oh boy, was I in for it. I really hate to use the term "bitch in heat," but...
It may be extremely difficult to understand how anyone in our situation could even THINK about sex, much less have it. But we had been reduced by the deadly circumstances to mere opportunistic animals. Animals without much of a conscience. Animals with no more pressure from an unrealistic, vanished civilization.
Sex with Jan had already, in that short a time- with all that had happened - become something much more. It was a brewing love, affection and fatal attraction that we were feeling- all bonded together by continually surviving extremely deadly situations. It also kept us human, and helped provide some kind of normalcy to the otherwise totally abnormal.
We seemed to be experiencing what would normally take long years in mere days. Forced bonding and forced trust through extreme circumstance. Time was being compressed with each passing moment, and we both knew that it was running out. So with another opportunity for sex, and not much else to do, we took it. We climbed into the long, comfortable back Caddy seat and milked it for all it was worth.
Chapter 43: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 44: The Chronicle Notes
By the time we finished it was nearing sunset, and again we wondered if we would make it another night. But then our thoughts quickly turned back to the others and the sub, and again we discussed the pros and cons of trying to contact them sooner rather than later. Again my plan to wait seemed more prudent, so again we settled on waiting another day at least before trying. We couldn't let our need to know usurp their rights for their best fighting chance to survive.
Where we were having real trouble though, was trying to decide whether to leave one of the radios on in case they tried to contact us. She wanted to, arguing that the need to get any communication from them outweighed the need to conserve the battery. She reasoned that the battery would be of little use anyway if they had not survived, but I knew better. Any energy was of great value, and further, that radio could end up saving our lives later if a search party came within range.
It was a tough call, but I finally agreed to leave it on for brief periods after attempting the calls the next day. We were so far away from them that even if they were still alive and calling for help, there was nothing we could do.
Totally exhausted from the hard hauling work, and finally- the sex- Jan grabbed a blanket and asked for the back seat alone so she could get some sleep. I was tired too, but still too pensive about the whole situation to want to sleep yet. I had briefly opened a car door to ease the transition back to the front seat, and the light came on. That's when I saw the thick notebook binder, complete with a pencil and pen in the binder wires, laying on the floorboard. I grabbed it before heading to the front seat to let Jan sleep, curious to see what was written in it.
There was still enough sunlight left to read the first and only page- a short grocery store list Sandra had made of the things, it appeared, she would get for their final, fateful trip up here. The rest was blank.
With nothing else to do other than think, the thought occurred to me that maybe I should write all this down, while I could still recall it all vividly.
And so I began these notes, on the fifth day of the catastrophe. It is in simple outline form first, and I hope to expand them as time goes on into a more readable format with much more detail. IF time goes on, and only if I get more time to write them.
But right now, the situation is looking pretty bleak. I don't have much hope for the others, seeing as they were swept away in the rushing current. I can only hope th
at they made it into a more protected area behind the southwest side of the mountain, and managed somehow to ride the receding water all the way down.
After thinking about it more though, there could still be a fighting chance for them. It might be possible that the receding water stopped all of a sudden when it reached the lower level of the mountain range, and could no longer overflow its banks. It could be that entire new huge lakes were left between the mountains, plenty deep enough to contain the sub. It also occurs to me that I have not seen what happened yet over on the southwestern side since the water began rapidly receding and they left in the sub. I have only seen the north side.
We must get there and take a look. Besides, we need to return to Camp Alice anyway for more water soon. The southwestern side would probably be the best place to attempt radio contact anyway, since that would offer the most unobstructed path to them.
