The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  “Should we check this place out?” Patrick asked.

  “To stay the night?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. The motel that I looked at earlier wasn’t a very nice place anymore,” Mackenzie answered. The vivid memories of the looks of the ladies faces in the lobby of the motel had been floating around her consciousness since she had joined her dad back at the sheriff’s office. Mackenzie thought that their dull open eyes hadn’t been filled with terror, but instead with surprise and wonder.

  “Okay. Why don’t you let me go in and check it out first, and I’ll see what it’s like,” Patrick said.

  “I don’t want to stand around out here by myself,” Mackenzie said.

  “Well just come in with me and stay close,” Patrick said.

  “I really don’t want to Dad,” Mackenzie argued.

  Patrick dropped the duffel bag he was holding, took a step back and put his arm around his daughter. “Listen, I’ve thought this through; and I think that this is the best choice. There probably are bodies in here, but the odds are that we can find a room that isn’t occupied. If we start breaking into houses, there most likely will be bodies in every one of them.”

  “I really don’t want to Dad,” Mackenzie said again this time looking up at him with eyes that conveyed her trepidation.

  Patrick took a deep breath, let it out, and then said “Listen, we need to – “

  Mackenzie cut him off and said “What if we just pitch a tent over in that park?” She pointed across the street to a grassy area that had a small amphitheater, a restroom building, and the like. She was hopeful that he would go for it so they didn’t have to walk past endless dead people again with their eyes staring out in the dark room.

  Patrick thought about it for a few seconds and then said “Alright.” Mackenzie could tell from his tone that he didn’t think that it was the best option, but she was just glad that they didn’t have to go into the hotel. “I’ll go pick out a spot and start dinner while you go back to the store and find a good tent,” Patrick offered.

  “Thanks Dad,” Mackenzie said as she raised up on her tip-toes to give her dad a peck on the cheek. She turned and went back to the sports store as Patrick limped across the street to the park.

  Mackenzie returned to the park with her arms full of more gear while Patrick had the camp stove operational with a large pot of water heating on it. The afternoon was getting late, and the day was beautiful in the park. The sun softly shown with a mid-spring warmth and the slight breeze with the smell of pine filled the air. Patrick was sitting with his legs dangling from the amphitheater’s short stage and staring at the map that he had unfolded. He had taken the splint off from his leg and was unconsciously rubbing his knee when Mackenzie walked up.

  “How’s your knee feel?” Mackenzie asked as she dropped the arms load of loot on the ground when she reached the camp stove.

  “Better I think,” Patrick answered. “Still hurts like a …. bugger though.”

  Mackenzie had selected a large three room tent that she had hauled back to the park and began opening the box. Patrick grabbed the splint from the stage and started putting it on.

  “I got it Dad,” Mackenzie said.

  “You sure?” Patrick asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Mackenzie answered. She’d never setup a tent by herself before and she had never seen one like this, but she thought that she could do it. “So, what are you looking at over there?”

  “This? Oh, I found a map back at the sheriff’s office that I thought might come in handy,” Patrick said.

  “What will we need a map for?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I hope we don’t,” Patrick answered. “I just wanted to see if there were any other towns close by.”

  Mackenzie had taken all the tent pieces out of the box and carrying bag, and she was putting the fiberglass poles together. “How many more days do you think we’ll have to stay here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Patrick said anxiously watching her struggle with the tent. “None, I hope.”

  The next morning after breakfast, both Patrick and Mackenzie were restless. They sat on the edge of the stage of the little amphitheater and let their feet dangle. Mackenzie was used to having a television, cell phone, or other gadget to keep her occupied; and her dad wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

  Patrick suggested that they gather a bunch of wood and other debris, and pile it in the middle of the park so that they could have a signal fire in case they seen an aircraft. Mackenzie made her dad stay on the stage and rest his knee while she assembled all the materials for the signal fire. She went back to the sporting goods store and grabbed fire starters, kerosene, and a camp saw. Then she went around and scavenged all kinds of fuel from a nearby dead elm tree, a blanket from an abandoned nearby car, two wooden chairs from the patio seating at the restaurant across the street, and a few other things. By early afternoon she had made a sizable mass of fuel arranged in a large pyramid in the middle of the park. She stood back and admired her work for some time before joining her dad on the stage again. Patrick was peering at the map again.

  “What do you think Dad?” Mackenzie asked.

  “It’s great Mak,” Patrick said without looking up.

  After a few moments of quiet, Mackenzie asked “Now what should I do?”

  “Ummm…. You could spell out S.O.S in big letters on the ground next to the fire,” Patrick said. “Or go see if you can find something to use as signal mirrors,” he continued to talk without looking up.

  Mackenzie sat with her legs dangling from the stage looking down at her feet. Her dad didn’t sound like either of the things he mentioned were of much importance. “You don’t think that anybody’s coming, do you?” she asked him.

  This time he did look up and meet her gaze. He put an arm on her shoulder and said “I don’t know Darlin’. I just think that we need to be prepared for whatever.”

  Mackenzie did do what her dad had suggested. It took her most of the afternoon, but she had found a large full length mirror in the clothes section of the sports store that she had dragged back to the park, and she used all kinds of scavenged materials to spell out S.O.S. in letters big enough to take up the whole block that the park occupied.

  They had dinner and then both went to sleep at dark, mainly out of boredom. Mackenzie laid awake in her sleeping bag for hours, unable to keep her eyes closed. “Dad?” she finally asked hours after they had gone to bed.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “You still awake?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” he said.

  “I miss Mom,” she said.

  “Yeah. I do too,” he answered. “I’m sure she’s missing us too.”

  After a long pause, Mackenzie said “Dad?”

  “What Mak?” he replied.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Are we going to stay here?” she clarified.

  “I don’t know. What do you think we should do?” he asked.

  After another long pause, Mackenzie answered “I want to go home.”

  The next day, they both were up with the sun and had an early breakfast from the freeze-dried camping food. The swelling on Patrick’s knee had went down considerably and he was trying to walk around the camp gingerly without the splint.

  “I was thinking…” Patrick said as they sat in their familiar places on the edge of the stage.

  “What’s that Dad?” Mackenzie asked. She knew since she was a little girl that whenever her dad started a conversation like that, that something difficult was going to come out next.

  “I had seen some mountain bikes in that sports store the other day. Remember the ones hanging in the back by the baseball bats?” Patrick coaxed her.

  “Kind of,” Makenzie answered. One of the store workers had been back in that area and she had avoided going back there. She even tried to avoid looking ba
ck there while her dad walked around in there because she had caught a glimpse of the large man in the forest green vest earlier. He was balding, had a bushy unkempt goatee, and a substantive belly that rested on the floor. The thing that had really bothered her though in the dark back of the store was the way that his mouth was wide open. His cheek and temple were laying on the old hardwood floor, but his mouth was agape with his large tongue and old yellow teeth making the focal point of his face. She had only glimpsed the sight, but had seen enough that she knew that she didn’t want to see anymore.

  “Well, what if we go grab a couple of them and go explore more of the town. We can make sure that there isn’t anyone else in the same predicament as we are; and we can see what we can see,” Patrick said with almost a little excitement at the sound of the idea.

  “Sure,” Mackenzie said. Then she added “Do you mind getting the bikes though Dad?”

  “Yeah; I suppose I can. Why’s that?” he asked.

  “I just don’t want to go that far back in the store,” she answered.

  The two of them walked back down to the sports store and Patrick selected a mountain bike for each of them and wheeled them up to the front of the store. They hopped on the bikes and road them in circles in the main street in front of the store while they made slight adjustments to the seat height, pedals, and a few other things. They didn’t waste much time though, and they were off exploring the town.

  They pedaled up and down the main street, up the highway towards the sheriff office and then back down the highway towards the interstate ramp. They saw no signs of life or movement wherever they road. There were cars and bodies scattered throughout the streets and the town, just as if they had no notice and dropped where they had been standing when the cloud swept down from the mountain.

  The two stopped at a convenience store on the outskirts of town for a short break. Patrick went in and got two warm sodas and two bags of chips. He came back out to sit on the curb with his daughter.

  “Thanks,” Mackenzie said as he handed her the pop and chips he had selected for her. She was staring up at the large hill that the on ramp to the interstate went up. “How would we go back Dad? If we had to.”

  Patrick took a deep breath, let it out, and swallowed the mouthful of chips before answering. “There are other ways to go, maybe even shorter ones. But I think that getting back on the interstate and using it for the most part would be the best. If anyone is looking for survivors, that would be the place to start looking.”

  Mackenzie washed some chips down with a large drink of the warm soda. “How long do you think that it would take us to ride these bikes back home?”

  Patrick laughed a little as he said “All the way home? I hope that we wouldn’t have to go that far. I think that we could make it to the next big town in a couple of days.”

  “If we did have to ride all the way back though, how long would it take us?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Mmmmm…” Patrick sounded as he put another handful of chips into his mouth and he squinted his eyes. Mackenzie used to imagine that there was a big machine or computer inside her dad’s head that was turning gears, bouncing up and down, and blowing steam whenever he would get that look on his face. When she was little she used to tell him that was his thinking face. “Depending on how long and hard we rode, I bet that we could make it all the way back in a couple of weeks.”

  Mackenzie finished her pop and sat the rest of the bag of chips down on the curb. “Let’s do it then,” she said.

  “You sure Darlin’?” Patrick said.

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie replied as she stood up.

  “Riding for a couple of days straight is going to make the backpacking trip seem like a day at the park,” Patrick told her.

  “I miss mom,” Mackenzie said with determination in her voice.

  “And maybe even your little brother too,” Patrick said as he finished his soda, collected all the trash, and struggled to stand up with his knee clearly bothering him.

  “Maybe a little,” Mackenzie said smiling. “But don’t tell him I said that.”

  Her dad reached out and messed her hair.

  “Let’s go. How far do you think that we can make it tonight?” Mackenzie asked.

  “We can’t go today Darlin’,” Patrick said.

  “Why?” Mackenzie said. She felt her breathing speed up somewhat and anxiety filled her chest. “I don’t want to stay here again tonight. Let’s get going so we can get back home!”

  “Whoaa, Whoaa,” Patrick said trying to calm her. “We probably only have a few hours of light left. We need to go back to that sports store and stock up on backpacks, tents, jackets, food – all kinds of stuff. We’re going to be camping in the middle of nowhere in between towns. We’ll get stocked up on things today, and if nobody comes and rescues us tonight, we’ll head out early in the morning.”

  “Why can’t we just get ready now and leave today?” Mackenzie asked still not wanting to accept another night of just sitting there.

  “It will take all of the daylight that we have left to get ready,” Patrick said. Mackenzie could hear that patronizing tone start to enter his voice that grated so badly on her nerves. “And it would be good to stay by your signal fire one more night just in case someone is looking for us.”

  Realizing that she wasn’t going to get her way, she asked “Can we at least ride up to the on ramp there to check it out?”

  “You can Mak,” her dad said. “I’m going to save my knee for tomorrow.”

  Mackenzie didn’t waste any more time. She hopped on her bike and pedaled out onto the highway. She was kind of upset at her dad and his logic, and pumping the pedals somehow made her feel a little better. The ramp was further away than what she had thought it was, and she was starting to become winded when she turned her bike up the beginning of the ramp. The on ramp was a long and steep incline that rose nearly a hundred feet from the level of the highway below to the flat divided highway above. Mackenzie began to shift gears on her bike as the pedaling became harder and harder with the incline. Each time she shifted it became easier to pedal, but required that she move the pedals even faster.

  By the time she was three-quarters of the way to the top, her lungs were burning and she only had one more gear left to go. She told herself that she had to make it. If she wanted to see her mom and little brother again, she had to make it. She was breathing so hard now that she thought that she might pass out. She had to make it.

  She began to crest the hill of the onramp and she shifted down a gear. Her lungs were still burning as felt her chest stretching with each gasp. A little further and she shifted down again. The incline was getting less and less. She shifted down again. I did it! she thought. I really did it!

  Mackenzie shifted down two more gears and slowed her pedaling as she topped out on the hill and merged onto the interstate. Her triumph was quickly overcome as she looked out at the expansive country and the interstate that faded into the rolling hills in front of her. The endless length of it made her realize why her dad had tried to temper her enthusiasm.

  Mackenzie gradually slowed her speed until she stopped and straddled her bike. She stood that way looking east and longing for the rest of her family. The scenery was beautiful, but terrifying as well as she realized how far away she was from home. She stood there for several moments. After she caught her breath and the burning in her thighs faded, she saw basketball sized black masses on the interstate that stretched across both lanes. It looked as if someone with a huge black marker had marked a diagonal line that was as wide as a house across both lanes of the interstate and into the fields on both sides. Mackenzie got back on her bike and pedaled further down the interstate warily as her mind tried to make out and reason what was causing the wide black line.

  It wasn’t until she was almost up to the edge of the dark line, that must have been at least forty feet wide, that she realized that the line was made up of the corpses of geese. The large birds must have been flying in a tigh
t pattern when the cloud came through, and they fell where they were. Their bodies dotted the ground so tightly, that their lumpy masses made what had appeared to her earlier as a large black line. Mackenzie stood there straddling her bike at the edge of the line of geese for several minutes. Even though she had finally recognized what was causing the black line across the roads, she had difficulty accepting what it was that she was seeing. She eventually got back on her bike, and turned it back around to ride down the same hill that she had just struggled to come up.

  She zoomed down the hill of the on ramp. In a matter of seconds, she was nearing the bottom of the hill that took her at least fifteen minutes to pedal up. The wind was blowing in her face and she felt the adrenaline begin to pump through her veins. As she neared the bottom of the hill, she was going faster than what she felt comfortable with and began to apply the brakes on the handlebars. She slowed somewhat, but she misjudged how fast she was going and began to panic. She pressed harder on the brakes and bike slowed more, but she was still going too fast.

  As she reached the bottom of the on ramp and tried to turn onto the highway, she was squeezing both brakes as hard as they would go. Her back tire began to skid as she leaned into the turn. Just as the back tire was skidding out from underneath her, she put her left leg down on the ground in a last-ditch effort to not take a tumble. She hopped three times on her foot trying to not lose her balance, and then finally stood stationary on the one leg. I just did that too! she thought.

  The two did stop at the sports store on the way back and looted even more gear. They each got a backpack, more clothes, a jacket, camping gear, freeze dried food, and anything else they could think of that they might need. Her dad kept telling her “That looks heavy” and “You sure that you need that?” whenever she picked up something that looked cool.