The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  “Why’s that?” she asked after a few seconds.

  Patrick began to scoot along his butt backwards to lean up against a large rock that was next to the trail. Makenzie sat and watched as she waited for an answer. After he reached the rock, Patrick began to tell her what he knew. “Not too long after you left, the Ibuprofen really started to kick in and I was able to scoot around on the ground enough to find stuff to make this splintcrutch thing.” Patrick looked down at his injured leg and grabbed the limb for emphasis that he had tied to it with the cut jeans and an extra heavy shirt from his pack. “It’s really pretty cool,” he said talking a little too fast because he was so proud of his idea. “I used a shirt and the jeans to pad it against my leg so it wouldn’t rub, and made it a couple of inches longer than my leg when it’s tied on so I put all my weight on it instead of my knee.”

  “You’re such an engineer Dad,” Makenzie said with a partial smile.

  He went back to telling her the more important stuff, so his tempo slowed accordingly. “While I was looking for a branch to use, I found another dead man just off the trail from where you had fallen on the first one. He was only about fifteen feet away. He was off of the trail, but I don’t know how we didn’t see him before.” Patrick unconsciously stopped talking while he was contemplating the scene and how they possibly could have missed the other body when Makenzie was there.

  “Daa-aad,” Makenzie said prompting him to continue.

  “Sorry. Well, after I found the other guy; I knew something was seriously wrong, so I made this splint and got down here as fast as I could because I wasn’t sure what was going on. I went down to the camp first because that was where I thought you would be, and it was…” Patrick trailed off not knowing how to describe it to her. “There must have been two dozen or more people down there that looked like they just keeled over doing whatever they were doing at the time.” He stopped again as he remembered the disturbing scene, especially the young boy with his fishing pole.

  “Dad!” she said again more impatient this time.

  This time he didn’t apologize, but just continued. “I called out for you time and time again, but I couldn’t find you so I headed back and was going to go down to look for you at the car when I heard you scream in the bathroom.”

  They just sat where they were at without saying anything for several moments. Patrick thought that they were both contemplating the circumstances and glad to be back together. “Was it the cloud Dad?” Makenzie asked finally.

  “I guess so,” he responded. He didn’t know any other way to explain it, even though the cloud wasn’t much more of an explanation. They sat for a few more seconds in silence before he interrupted it by saying “Let’s get to the car and get back to the lodge by the highway. We can tell them what has been going on up here.”

  “Can’t we just call the police?” Makenzie asked.

  “There’s no cell service or land lines up here on the mountain. You have to get almost back to that Town of Buffalo before you can get any signal on a cell phone,” he told her.

  Patrick started to get up and struggled due to his injured leg being splinted straight. Makenzie saw her dad struggling and helped him right himself. She asked her dad sheepishly as she let go of his armpit and elbow “Ummm Dad…. Can we do something before we head down to the car?”

  “What’s that?” he asked wondering what she could possibly want to do up here before heading back to the car.

  “Can you see if there are any bodies in the Men’s restroom? I kind of need to clean myself up a little bit,” she continued sheepishly.

  After Makenzie finished in the restroom they hiked down to the car. Makenzie went on and on about how she couldn’t believe that her dad left the keys in the bumper right next to where she had been sitting and going through the fanny pack. She said she knew that the keys were there somewhere, but she couldn’t find them.

  Makenzie grabbed the keys from Patrick and used them to hurriedly open the door and check for reception on his cell phone to no avail. She was bummed and exhausted, and only half-heartedly helped him try to get in behind the wheel. It took at least five minutes of trying to figure out how to sit down in the car with his injured right knee before he thought that he was going to vomit again from the overwhelming pain. When Patrick was sure that it just wasn’t going to work out, he reluctantly asked Makenzie if she felt comfortable driving the several miles on the dirt road down to the lodge by the highway. She of course said that she would do it, and helped him get into the passenger seat instead which was much easier.

  Mackenzie didn’t look exhausted anymore as she got into the driver’s seat and began to adjust the seat and mirrors. Even though she had almost two years to go before she would get her driver’s license, Patrick had taken her out for driving lessons several times on old gravel roads out in the boondocks and down by the canal. She usually did well when she kept herself focused, but he didn’t think that she had ever drove in the dark, let alone in the mountains.

  She backed out of the parking space okay. As she was looking forward to driving out of the parking lot she had a small smile on her lips even after everything that they had went through. The dirt road back to the lodge was maintained, but it had enough traffic on it in the summer months to make drivers wish that they could blade it just one more time every year. The road was plenty wide, but there were quite a few places where it was wash boarded out so you needed to pay attention to what you were doing. Patrick instructed Makenzie to put the SUV in second gear and just take it slow and easy.

  He held his cell phone in his hand and stared at the service bars for most of the trip just in the off chance that somehow a cell signal bounced up to a single spot on the road. The No Service sign at the top of the phone never changed though.

  Patrick had taken another batch of Ibuprofen before they had driven off, but it hadn’t kicked in by the time they left on the drive. Every bump and wash board that Makenzie hit jolted his knee. She must have heard or felt him wince with the pain because she would say “Oooooh. Sorry,” whenever she would hit a big one. Besides those interruptions, the drive reminded Patrick of the times that he had taken Makenzie out on the gravel back roads around their town for her driving lessons. The road had quite a few gentle sweeping curves, and in most spots the trees were thick enough that you couldn’t see anything from the road so he cautioned Makenzie to watch closely for deer and elk although they didn’t see any.

  “Look!” Makenzie yelled as she was pointing straight ahead through the windshield. Patrick had been staring down at his phone and hadn’t immediately seen the pair of headlights that she was pointing at. They were a few hundred yards ahead of them. She looked over to her dad and was literally beaming with a smile and slightly bouncing up in down in her seat.

  Patrick didn’t have the heart to tell her that something didn’t quite look right about the headlights from what he could see. He couldn’t initially put his finger on it, but as they got closer he could tell that the angle that they were pointed was wrong somehow. Mackenzie was driving slow and cautious, but it took a while to approach the oncoming vehicle and Patrick also realized that it wasn’t moving toward them. As they got closer and closer Patrick could see that Makenzie coming to the same realizations as the smile slowly left her face the closer they came to the vehicle. As they neared it, you could make out that the vehicle was a seventy something tan Ford Bronco with a red stripe down the side of it. It had gone off of the road and struck a small tree.

  Patrick had Makenzie drive up close next to it and roll down her window. The vehicle was still running, but there wasn’t anyone around that they could see. The Bronco had some oversize tires and a small lift kit on it, so it set quite a bit higher than the SUV Patrick and Mackenzie were in. The windows were rolled up on the Bronco, but Patrick yelled across Makenzie anyways “Anybody in there… Anybody need any help?”

  The sound of the older V8 engine purred, but otherwise there wasn’t any other response. “We sho
uld check it out and shut the engine off,” Makenzie said looking at her dad.

  Patrick let her statement hang in the air for probably just a little too long before he responded. “You’re probably right Darlin’. But I think that whoever was driving up the mountain in this vehicle probably met their demise the same way all those others did back at that campground. I also don’t think that the vehicle will start a fire or anything by the looks of it, so it will probably just die when it runs out of gas. Either way, my knee is too bunged up to get out and back in this car right now. So if you want to get out, check it out, and shut their engine off I’m good with it. But I’ll be watching you from right here.”

  She looked at Patrick for several seconds in almost pure bewilderment. He wasn’t sure if her wonderment was from him not doing what seemed like the right thing to do, or if it was because he suggested that she do it by herself instead. Makenzie looked straight ahead for several seconds and then she put the transmission in park and left her door open when she got out. Patrick saw her peek her eyes over the edge of the Bronco door to look into the window. Whatever sight was in there; it must have not been a good one. Mackenzie jumped up and down while spinning in a circle with her eyes closed, a grimace on her face, and her fists pumping up and down. When she turned back to the Bronco, she leaned out with one arm trying to keep as much distance between her and the Bronco as possible, and opened the driver’s side door. She then reached in and tried to turn the vehicle off in one quick motion, but she ended up pulling her hand back out of the vehicle like she had been bit by a snake. Patrick had a hard time keeping from chuckling as Makenzie jumped up and down while spinning around again. After she completed another circle, she reached in again but was able to shut the engine off this time. She immediately withdrew her hand from the cab of the Bronco. Almost as quickly, she closed the Bronco’s door. She slid into the SUV and closed her door.

  “Pretty rough?” Patrick asked.

  “Mmmm-Hmmm,” she said as she put the car back in second gear and started back down the road.

  “Wanna’ talk about it?” Patrick inquired.

  She just shook her head no and didn’t say anything. He decided not to press it right now and went back to watching the road and his cell phone’s signal bars.

  It took another uneventful twenty minutes to reach the lodge. Patrick wasn’t surprised that there were no lights on or activity at the lodge when they pulled into the parking lot as his cell phone said it was a little after 2:30 in the morning. All the same, he had a bad feeling about what they would find.

  Makenzie pulled the car up in front of hitching posts in front of the main lodge and shut the ignition off. The lodge wasn’t much of a lodge, but more of a large cabin. The other buildings that were arranged in the shape of a large letter ‘U’ were mainly just single level motel rooms that were probably built in the 1950’s or 1960’s like rudimentary motor lodges.

  Makenzie leaned way back in her seat and looked over at her dad with a fretful look on her face. He saw that she was worried that he would make her go into the lodge while he waited in the car as she had done with the Bronco. “I’ll go in and check this out while you hang out in the car,” Patrick told her and he could see the worry leave her face almost immediately. “Would you help me out of the car and with putting that splint back on though?”

  It took a few minutes to get out of the car and put the splint back on even with Mackenzie’s assistance. It struck Patrick how quiet the evening was. The quietness added to the ominous feeling that he had about not finding a happy ending inside the lodge. The Ibuprofen must have been kicking in quite a bit because his knee was feeling considerably better, although he couldn’t put any weight on it. Patrick told Makenzie to stay in the car and lock the doors while he went inside and checked things out.

  Patrick hobbled up the front steps using the contraption on his knee, and then along a skinny boardwalk that ran along the front of the lodge towards the front door. There was an eve over the boardwalk and a few wood carved patio chairs were positioned on either side of the front door. It looked like it would be an inviting place to sit on a warm summer day. That night the chairs just took up too much space along the board walk for a man with a crutch tied to the side of his leg and it took much longer for him to navigate around the obstacles than he would have liked. When he reached the front door, he cupped his hands around his face and peered through the upper half of the door that contained a large pane of glass into the main lodge itself. He could see one large room with a welcome desk on one end, with a large table and chairs on the other side. The décor looked like low end hand carved furniture with several cool photographs and paintings from the surrounding area hanging on the walls. Although he could see most of the lodge from the window, he didn’t see any movement or sign of life.

  After turning to check on Makenzie who was still sitting in the car, Patrick opened the main door to the lodge and said in a loud voice “Hello… Anyone around?” His own voice kind of startled him for how loud it sounded in the quietness. He stood at the threshold with the door propped open for a few seconds and then called out again. There was no response so he put his headlamp on, turned it on, and limped into the lodge. The large cabin was made up of the one room with the welcome desk and table, but there was a wall towards the back of the cabin with two closed doors on it. Patrick approached the door that was closest to the welcome desk and called out again before reaching for the handle. There was no answer so he opened the door and found that it was a small office with a desk on one side of the room and a couch along the opposite wall. He was just turning to go open the other door in the lodge when the light of his headlamp illuminated a dirty white tennis shoe towards the end of the desk that looked odd. He decided to check it out and limped in and around the door frame in the dark with his splinted leg. As he got closer to the shoe, he could begin to see over the top of the desk to the body that was laying on the floor that the shoe belonged to. It was a younger man, probably in his early twenties. He had a short scruffy beard and was dressed in a black concert t-shirt and jeans. This body was different than the others that he had seen because his head lay in a considerable amount of blood that appeared to have come from somewhere near his temple area. Although he hadn’t noticed it when Patrick first came in the room, the smell of death was beginning to settle in his nostrils and he was immediately wanting to get out of there. Patrick forced himself to stay for a few seconds to look around the office for a telephone or anything else that they could possibly use, but he didn’t find anything.

  Patrick limped back out to the main room in the lodge and over behind the welcome desk. There were three keys hung on the wall behind the desk that were obviously room keys. He picked number 24 and headed back out to the car.

  Makenzie bailed out of the car and ran over to Patrick as he came out the front door and along the boardwalk again. “So…?” she asked with hope in her eyes as she put her head under his arm pit and helped him down to the car.

  Patrick dangled the key that he had picked up in front of her by the plastic green fob that had the room number on it and said “Only a dead guy in there, but I did get us a room.”

  Makenzie evidently didn’t think that joke was very funny. They both rested on the SUV’s front bumper and stared at the lodge building for several moments. Makenzie broke the silence by saying “I’m not staying here.”

  “What to do you mean?” Patrick asked half perturbed at her defiant attitude.

  “I’m not staying here,” she said again matter-of-factly.

  “Listen,” Patrick started in a defensive and somewhat condescending tone. “We’ve been up for almost two days without any rest, hiked up to the top of the Big Horns and back with a tore up knee, and have been through an emotional roller coaster with more dead people than I’ve seen my whole life. We need to get some rest.”

  “I’m not staying here,” she repeated.

  “Darlin’, I don’t think that I could get in and drive down the moun
tain tonight even if I wanted to with my knee the way it is,” he said trying to reason with her.

  “I can drive,” she said matter-of-factly without looking up.

  “Driving down a gravel road to the lodge is one thing. Driving down the mountain on the main highway in the middle of the night is something totally different,” Patrick said just imagining what her mother would say if she found out that he let Makenzie drive down the mountain.

  “I’m not staying here tonight,” Makenzie said again with just as much certainty as she had a few moments before.

  Father and daughter both continued to lean on the front bumper while they thought about the situation and what they should do. Patrick ended up rationalizing allowing Makenzie to drive down the mountain because he knew that he couldn’t get in the driver’s side of the car, and it probably was safer to get out of there in case that cloud or whatever caused all the death came back.

  “Okay,” Patrick finally said and Makenzie immediately looked up at him. “We’ll try to make it down to Buffalo. But there are a few rules,” he said resurrecting his father knows best tone of voice. “You will drive down the mountain, but you won’t take it out of second gear. And we will pull over and snooze at the first sign that either one of us is too tired to go on.”

  “Deal,” Makenzie said with a half-smile on her face and stuck her hand out for him to shake.

  “Deal,” Patrick repeated and shook her hand.

  They got back in the car and started down the mountain. Patrick gave Makenzie a lot of instruction, but she seemed to be taking it in instead of getting mad or frustrated. He taught her about not riding her brakes and allowing the car to downshift instead; about slowing down for corners before you get to them; how to watch for animals alongside the road, and all sorts of other things. With her keeping the vehicle in second gear, they didn’t really get over thirty miles per hour which made the drive take forever, but Patrick felt somewhat safe with her skills at that speed. Although it was three in the morning on the mountain, they didn’t see another vehicle coming or going.