The Hike
The Hike
Survivors
A novel by
QUENTIN ROGERS
The Hike - Survivors Copyright © 2017 by Quentin Rogers
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact; www.thehikenovel.com
Book and Cover design by Quentin Rogers
ISBN: 978-0-692-84527-1
First paperback edition March 2017
This book is dedicated to my children:
Mariah - Fourteen years old
Kaylee - Eleven years old
Coltin - Seven years old
Several strong women in my life (grandmother, mother, and wife) saved it; and Jesus gave me hope. I pray that you show others the hope and love that has been bestowed upon you. Dream big.
Preface
CRASH! A dinner plate exploded against the dining room wall. It left a large dent in the drywall and paint where it had impacted, and small fragments of the porcelain flew in all directions across the room.
Mackenzie’s dad had raised his elbow and slightly ducked in an evasive maneuver when the plate had whizzed by his head from over the bar in the kitchen. He now lowered his elbow and stood up straight as his bewilderment at what happened turned to anger.
“What are you doing?” Mackenzie’s dad half-yelled across the room to her mom.
“You’re not doing this Patrick!” Mackenzie’s mom yelled back at him. Her normally well-kept sandy-blonde hair was frazzled and wavy around her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were locked in focus on her husband. From Mackenzie’s vantage point sitting at the kitchen table, she couldn’t see her mom’s hands from behind the countertop, but she was sure that her hands were balled up in fists from the way that her arms were straightened.
“You’re not taking her on that stupid trip!” her mom screamed this time and spittle flew from the corners of her mouth. Mackenzie had only seen her mother upset like this once or twice before and she wasn’t sure how to react to it. Her little brother James sat in his high chair next to Mackenzie and from the expression on his face she could tell that he hadn’t ever seen his mom in that state of anger. Although James normally was Mackenzie’s nemesis, the look on his face touched her teenage compassion somehow and she reached out and put her hand on his wrists to give him some comfort in the moment.
“Listen Mary,” Mackenzie’s dad started to say, but then raised his elbow to his face and slightly ducked again as another dinner plate sailed through the air at him. This time the aim was better and he had to fully duck to avoid being struck by the plate as it crashed against the wall like the other had.
This time though Mackenzie’s little brother James began to wail immediately after the plate had struck the wall and left another similar size dent in the dry wall.
“Mary!” Patrick said forcefully. “Now that’s enough!”
Mackenzie seen blood begin to trickle down the neck of her little brother and she exclaimed his name as she jumped to her feet to get a better look at where the blood was coming from. At her reaction, Patrick turned his attention to James as well and began lifting his son’s short hair in patches to try and determine what the source of the blood was. Mackenzie seen something flash in the hair as her dad was moving James’ hair around and reached in and grabbed a small piece of porcelain that had lodged into the boy’s hairline just above the back of his neck. He shrieked and continued to sob as Mackenzie extracted the fragment and held it up in front of her nose looking at it.
Her dad grabbed the small piece from Mackenzie’s fingers and held it up to Mary with a righteous look on his face. He didn’t have to say the words for Mary to get the point that he couldn’t believe that she had done that to their son. Before he could say anything, she was across the room and in between Patrick and James inspecting his wound for herself. After Mary quickly surmised that there wasn’t any real damage or issue, she began unlocking the tray from the high chair to get James out of it.
“Mary…” Patrick started.
The first syllable no longer left his mouth when Mary dropped the high chair tray turned around and screamed “Just LEAVE!”
Patrick’s eyes widened and he stood motionless for a moment.
Mary took a breath, closed her eyes and then opened them. “Patrick,” she said with a reserved calm in her voice. “Just leave,” she repeated.
Patrick stood for a moment longer, looked to Mackenzie as if he was sizing up her well-being; then he turned and left. Mackenzie seen him start down the stairs and then heard the front door slam behind him. Mary had finished unstrapping James from his seat and began carrying the still sobbing boy towards the hallway bathroom.
“Mom,” Mackenzie called out from her place still in the dining room.
“Not now Mackenzie,” her mom said back to her somewhat calmly but not looking back as she continued down the hall.
Mackenzie made her a plate of spaghetti from what was on the dinner table being careful to ensure there were no pieces of broken plate in her food. She grabbed her iPod from the counter and took the plate of food with her down the hall to her bedroom. She could feel the adrenaline begin to subside and she began to physically shake.
She sat the plate of food down on the end table next to her bed and collapsed onto her comforter. Mackenzie felt the wave of emotions spill over her and she began to cry herself. She didn’t want to go on the trip with her dad. She couldn’t understand why he was risking whatever at his work that her mom was worried about, or why he would make her mom so angry over something that Mackenzie didn’t even want to do with him. Her dad was mad because he repeatedly chose work over her, and now he wanted her to do things with him that Mackenzie despises. It just wasn’t fair.
Her iPod dinged from under the blankets that she knew meant was a text message. Mackenzie dug around under the blankets until she found it and stared at it through the tears in her eyes. It was a message from her dad:
Anger burned in her and she felt her stomach clench. She thought about not responding to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to be that way.
Mackenzie felt her anger subside a little and her stomach relaxed some. She knew that her dad loved her. But she still wasn’t going on that stupid trip with him.
Part 1 – The Hike
Chapter 1
Everyone has certain triggers that makes their heart melt just a little. Not a major melt like the smell of a newborn baby or a young puppy licking your face does; but a melt just the same. Patrick Kincaid’s does that when he sees the sign that they put next to the interstate and highways for the state of Wyoming that has the bucking bronc on it with the mountains in the background. Patrick had been born, raised, and had since lived in Nebraska his whole life, but somehow that sign always stirred something within him. He knew that it was kind of sappy and he wasn’t exactly sure why it had that kind of effect on him, but it always seemed to bring back memories of happy times and the thoughts of restful days.
“Mackenzie…” Patrick said as he adjusted the volume on the radio dial down some as he could just make out the sign in the distance. A quick glance to the passenger seat showed that she still had her ear buds in and was staring out the passenger window trying to will herself somewhere far away from her da
d and this car. “Mak…” he said a little louder along with a nudge from his forearm.
The only reaction he got from her was a half-hearted “Yeah” as she pulled one bud from her left ear by yanking on the wire.
“You know when I was a kid that sign used to say ‘Welcome to Wonderful Wyoming’ instead of ‘Forever West’” he told her with a little reverence inflected in his voice.
“That’s awesome” she disinterestedly stated in a monotone that only teenagers seem to pull off as she put the misplaced ear bud back in her ear.
So much for telling her about the memories he had of that sign. He was going to tell her about how his mother always used to say “pick your feet up” as they passed by that imaginary line so that they didn’t drag dirt from one state into the next. Or the one when his dad and Patrick did a twelve-hour road trip to a family reunion with the radio blaring, and his dad singing along with the radio to an oldies station. That was quite a story if you knew Patrick’s dad and how singing along to anything really wasn’t in his personality.
Patrick thought about nudging her again and making her listen to his reminiscing of his road trip memories of when he was a kid, but looking down at her disinterested face with that ever-present hate in her eyes he decided to keep his memories to his self for a while. He turned the radio dial back up to a volume that helped to pass the time.
The miles went by and the radio droned on with popular country music that Patrick had no interest in. His mind turned to projects at work; where his marriage went wrong; how it was ridiculous to think that a backpacking trip with his daughter would repair their relationship; and many other dismal train of thoughts that seemed to fill his thinking time of late. All the while the rolling plains of Wyoming rolled by outside the windows, and Mackenzie sat in the passenger seat with that infernal iPod plugged into her ears.
Patrick loved his wife with something deep in his soul. He also knew that Mary loved him. But the last couple of years had been rough. Patrick was sure that it was mostly due to their differences in parenting. Patrick believed that strong boundaries with consequences were essential to raising kids. Mary’s beliefs weren’t too far from his, but she felt that it was okay for Mackenzie to run around with the dark brooding friends that she has and spend all of her free time staring at the small screen on her iPod. Mackenzie was a good girl with a caring heart, but she could recognize the growing rift in the differences of their parenting styles; and she had been driving a wedge between them every chance she got to earn more freedom that every teenager desires.
“Hey Dad, is that Butt Mountain?” Mackenzie asked an hour or so after they had passed the Wyoming sign. She had to speak a little louder than normal to be heard over the radio. She again had pulled the one ear bud from her ear and was looking out the windshield to a large hill on the horizon on the south side of the interstate that rose abruptly out of the nearby plains. This time though she was sitting forward with only a partially disinterested furrow on her brow.
It took Patrick a minute to register what she was talking about, but then it came back to him. When she was young, probably around eight years old; they had taken a camping trip to the mountains above Sheridan, Wyoming. For whatever reason at the time, she had decided to call the large hill “Butt Mountain”. Her little cousin that went with them was only five or six years old at the time and he thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Patrick couldn’t recall where the reference came from or how many laughs she had gotten out of that single name, but it went on for miles. After a while he had playfully told her that wasn’t the correct name for it and that she should quit saying crude things in front of her little cousin. All the while her mother and dad were snickering in the front seat. That kept the game going on for even more miles while that infectious laughter from her and her nephew made the time fly by.
As Patrick remembered the reference, he couldn’t help the grin that tugged at the corner of his mouth. He reached to turn the radio down so that they wouldn’t have to strain to talk over Rush Limbaugh’s opening monologue, but stopped short when he glanced over to see that the ear bud was firmly fixed back in her ear and the glazed over stare of discontent was back on her face. With that one look, Patrick’s grin was gone.
He knew that she didn’t want to come along on this trip. She would have rather hung out with the delinquents that she calls friends, or even just sat in her room with her electronics for the weekend in that make believe social media world. If he would have given her a choice, she probably would have said that she would rather “kiss a creeper’s foot” instead of spending three days in the mountains with her dad. Whatever that meant. Although he knew that she didn’t want to be here, Patrick knew that she needed it. He needed it. He didn’t really think that one backpacking trip would take her out of that teenager know-it-all attitude, but he had to at least try to break through that hardened heart somehow and show her what life and love truly was. If he could get that special five minutes of openness while secluded with her in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains to impart a kernel of wisdom and love in her heart, he thought that it could infect her life. As a father, he had to hope and try to create that one special moment. And then try to recognize and take advantage of it when it happened.
His wife Mary had other opinions about the trip. She thought that it would further stress their father daughter relationship while Mary stayed back at the ranch with their three-year-old boy, Piggy the dog, and a forty-hour a week job of her own at the newspaper. Patrick spent plenty of good-will capital with his boss as well. They had several deadlines coming due next week, and Patrick was the only engineer that knew enough about the projects to get them done. Patrick was confident that he could complete the work on time, but his boss wasn’t as trusting. He didn’t care for Patrick taking a four-day weekend to traipse across the country for personal time with such large deadlines looming. But Patrick felt that this trip was needed. That the trip was worth the cross looks and discouragement from his wife and boss, if it worked. And it had to work.
A couple of hours more on the road and they exited the interstate to a little town called Buffalo. Makenzie had long since drifted off in a late afternoon nap and didn’t wake as they pulled off the interstate and into the sleepy little town as the sun began to set. The Big Horn Mountains (part of the Rockies) enveloped the horizon and caused Patrick to pause in awe after turning the ignition off in front of the motel that he had previously booked. He almost couldn’t wait to get up there and briefly thought about skipping the motel to drive up to a campground instead. Patrick had been on this hike a couple of times as a kid, and the memories of the beauty and comradery were ingrained in him. The trail went high up to the top of the mountain range where it zig-zagged around a dozen small glacial lakes. The rugged beauty and solemnness of the trail was something that had impacted him deeply as a kid, and he held out hope that it would do the same for his daughter.
Instead of waking Makenzie up before going into the motel to check in, he let her rest in the car with her head up against the passenger window. The air still had a definite chill to it in mid-June, and whatever cobwebs and doldrums had been affecting his brain after ten hours on the road were long gone by the time he got back to the car. Patrick had stiffly slid back behind the wheel and was planning on asking his daughter what she wanted to do for dinner when he realized that she was gone.
First fear and then anger rose to Patrick’s chest and shoulders as he looked quickly around the parking lot to see where she might have gone. Mackenzie was always doing something like this to infuriate him. She never seemed to have respect for others now that she was a full-fledged teenager. He left the car parked under the overhang in front of the motel and walked towards the gas station that was immediately adjacent to the motel’ s parking lot. He thought that was the most likely place that she would have wandered off to.
Halfway across the gas station’s parking lot, he saw her standing in line at the checkout counter inside the station. The
fear that had gripped him quickly subsided, but it was immediately replaced by more anger.
He continued to walk towards the gas station’s entrance, and met her at the door as she was exiting. “Hey Dad,” she said smugly as she walked past him.
“What the --heck are you doing!” Patrick half yelled at her as they marched back across the parking lot to their vehicle.
“Getting a coffee,” she said lifting her cup with a gesture so that he could see it.
Patrick was beginning to see red, and knew that whatever he said next wouldn’t be good for either of them. But he couldn’t help himself. “You don’t just wander off by yourself in a strange town to go get coffee! And coffee? Since when did you start drinking coffee?” He continued to half yell at her until they reached the car.
“Geez Dad! I just went to get a coffee while you were checking in,” Mackenzie partly yelled and otherwise screeched back to her dad as she opened the door and got back into the passenger seat.
Patrick didn’t allow himself to open the door right away as he saw through the side window that she had put the ear buds back into her ears. Instead, he spun around and muttered several things through clinched teeth that he wasn’t even sure what they meant. He took two deep breaths, then opened the door and got back behind the wheel.
Patrick turned to his daughter, pulled the wire to the closest ear bud and pointed his finger at the startled Mackenzie. “Listen here,” he started. “I know that you think that you’re fully grown up and you can do whatever you want, but I don’t care if you’re an eighty-year-old grandma; you’re not allowed to wander off by yourself without telling me where you’re going.”
Mackenzie didn’t respond. She knew that she should have said something, but she was old enough to go across the street to get a coffee no matter what he said.
“Do you got me?” Patrick asked.
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 1
