The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  They also grabbed a few of the rifles that were in the rack behind the glass counter with the pistols. Patrick took a big black machine gun looking rifle that he called an AR, and then he also grabbed a hunting rifle with a large scope on it.

  “That looks heavy,” Mackenzie told him as he searched the shelves in the dim light for the ammunition to go with the hunting rifle.

  “You take this one,” her dad said as he handed her a small .22LR that was mainly chrome with a grey synthetic stock. It had a small scope on it as well.

  Mackenzie hesitated to take it from him. She wasn’t scared of guns at all. Her dad had taken her shooting plenty of times since she was a young girl. She had just never been responsible for a gun all by herself.

  “I don’t think that I need one Dad,” Mackenzie said.

  Patrick pumped the rifle in the air as he continued to hold it out to her. “Just take it. We’ll secure it to your bike and you won’t even know that it’s there. Unless you need it.”

  She reluctantly took the rifle and the ammunition that he found for it. They left another note with their names and addresses on it at the store. They stuck it under the cash register near the front door as they left.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon sun sitting out on the curb in front of the sports store organizing and going through the gear that they had taken. Her dad took some of the rope and zip ties that they had found in the store and lashed rifle scabbards and some of the other gear permanently to their bikes. They planned to just keep the rest of the gear in their backpacks on their backs.

  It was becoming dusk when they took another short ride around the town to try out how well they could pedal and move with the supplies and equipment. They stopped and adjusted things a couple of times, but for the most part everything worked well the first time.

  Patrick stopped at a little gift shop on the main street on their way back to the park. “What are you doing?” Mackenzie asked her dad.

  “Why don’t you go back and get some water boiling. I’ll be right there,” he said as he entered the store.

  Mackenzie felt a little nervous about riding back to the camp by herself. It was only a couple of blocks away down the main street, but it was getting dark. She thought about staying there outside of the gift shop and waiting for her dad to return, but instead she gathered her courage and rode back to the park by herself.

  It took her a few minutes to figure out the camp stove. Her dad rode across the park and joined her just as she was putting the pot of water on the stove. It was almost dark, and she could hardly make out what he was trying to hand her as he walked over to her and sat on the edge of the stage.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s not a cell phone, music player, or anything else that takes batteries; but it’s what I used when I was your age to entertain myself,” her dad said snidely.

  Mackenzie opened the hard-back book and thumbed through the pages. She peered at the cover, but couldn’t make out the title in the fading light. “Very funny. What book is it?” she asked.

  “Huck Finn,” her dad answered. “It’s about a young boy who takes a long journey across the country, and the adventures that he has along the way.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” she said as she checked on the warming water. She seen that he also had a book like object in his hand. Except his looked like it was covered in leather and had a zipper around it. “What did you get?” she asked.

  “Oh. I grabbed a Bible. It thought that we could use a little guidance,” he said.

  The next morning, they both were up just after dawn. They opted for granola bars and trail mix instead of waiting to cook breakfast. They took off down the main street, then down the highway, and then headed towards the interstate.

  Mackenzie was pedaling faster than her dad and consistently stayed in front of him. She liked taking the lead. When they had been backpacking up to the lakes, that was her favorite part. When she was following her dad, she had kept her head down and just trudged along with each step seeming like it was work. But when she had taken the lead, she walked with her head held high and it felt like she was blazing the trail in front of her.

  “You wanna get a good run at this hill,” she turned and called out to her dad as she started up the on ramp. She was still winded and plenty tired as she topped out and merged onto the interstate, but the hill didn’t seem like it was near as steep as it was the day before.

  She circled around after reaching the top and turned and waited for her dad. He was a little more than half way up, and was struggling to reach the top. She could see him wincing whenever he had to pump down hard with his right knee. “You can do it!” she called down to him.

  Patrick kept pedaling and soon reached his daughter at the top of the hill. “Wow,” he said between gasps. “I hope that it’s - - all downhill - - from here,” he made out as he stopped and rubbed his injured knee.

  “You gonna make it?” Mackenzie asked her dad.

  “I’m tougher than – tougher than you think,” Patrick said as he continued to rub his knee.

  Once they both caught their breath, they were off. Mackenzie took the lead again and set the pace of the biking marathon. The terrain was rolling hills separated by long runs of straight flat interstate. For the most part, it was slightly downhill from where they had started. While it was exercise and Mackenzie could tell that her thighs were going to be sore tomorrow, none of it was as difficult as that first onramp hill.

  There were only a few sparse cars on either side of the divided interstate. Most of them looked like they had just come to an easy stop in the median or ditches along the asphalt roadway, but there were a few doozies that they came across. One small pickup had gone across both lanes and was on its top pointed in the wrong direction in the wrong lane. A Buick sedan had gone over a guard rail on a bridge and landed on its nose on the railroad beneath it, still teetering on its front grill. At first, Mackenzie would peer into the windows as she road by or would even sometimes slow and stop at a car that looked like it was just parked there in the middle of the interstate. After only a few times though, she forced herself to keep pedaling by and tried not to look in at all. The scenes inside the cars were never anything that she cared to see again.

  While she didn’t know any of them, the people in the vehicles looked just like people that she had seen all her life. One teenage boy that had been driving an older two-door Civic with one prime red quarter panel looked very like one of her best friends back in Nebraska. Although this boy had the same dull look in his eyes that those women did back at the motel, and he had dried blood in a trail down his forehead.

  A pudgy lady wearing a grey hoodie looked like she was just sleeping behind the wheel while her van was parked with the front half teetering over a guard rail to a small creek below. Mackenzie could make out two car seats in the middle row of seats and looked away before she saw anything that would have really upset her.

  A little before noon, Mackenzie pulled over in a parking area on the top of a large bluff. She took her backpack off and started rummaging through it looking for another granola bar as her dad pulled up behind her.

  “How’s the knee holding up?” she asked him.

  “I think that it’s fine,” he said slightly winded. “It hurts a little, but I think that the biking might be good for it. Hey – why don’t we stop and make something with a little more sustenance? We need to make sure that we keep our energy up if we’re going to ride like this all day.”

  They did take a long break and cooked up freeze dried beef stroganoff. They chatted a little about how the ride was and what they liked about their bikes, but mostly they just ate and read quietly in the books that they had got the day before. After lunch, they stowed everything and hopped back on their bikes.

  By early afternoon they were both exhausted. Patrick caught up to his daughter as they neared the Powder River and told her to exit. They took the exit near the river and went down to a smal
l public rest stop. Mackenzie wanted to get back on the road, but Patrick talked her into staying there for the night to rest up and let his knee heal more. They pitched their tent near the river, rested, and read their books until dark.

  The next morning, they were up and back on the interstate just after first light. Mackenzie had a drive to cover as many miles as they could, and she pushed her body beyond anything that she normally would have attempted before going on the backpacking trip with her dad. She stopped and rested a few times throughout the day, but Mackenzie set a sustained quick pace. By late afternoon they were reaching the outskirts of a larger town called. They were both excited about making it there and about the possibility of finding other survivors. As they came off the interstate and coasted into town though, their hope was almost immediately dashed.

  The scene in that town was grislier than it had been back in Buffalo. There were many more cars and people strewn about in the streets and around the town. They rode their bikes around the town, called out to anyone who was listening, and looked around for things that might help them on their travels. They weren’t successful in any of their endeavors. Patrick spent considerable time in a car dealership downtown that had lots of used vehicles in its lot. He had grabbed a handful of keys and gave another handful to Mackenzie to try. They each tried six or seven different vehicles, but gave up after finding that nothing electric or electronic even tried to function.

  After exploring the town, they decided to camp outside again instead of breaking into a building. They found a huge park with a lake on the east side of town that they decided would work as well as anywhere. They sat up camp again and read more of their books until dark. Neither of them had much to say and Mackenzie felt like they were never going to get back home.

  “What if we’re it Dad?” Mackenzie asked her dad. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes as she reclined in the grass on a hillside next to the lake with her Adventures of Huckleberry Finn book opened on her chest.

  “What do you mean Darlin’?” her dad asked without looking up. He had his nose in his book and she could tell that he was intrigued by something because he had his finger on a passage while he was reading another one.

  “What if we’re the only two that lived?” she asked. She could feel her upper lip quiver as she imagined her friends, her mom, and even her little brother as the cloud rolled through their home town. She thought about what each of them could have been doing at the time.

  “We’re not,” her dad said without question.

  “How do you know?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I’ve read the back of this book,” he said holding his bible up. “I know how the whole story ends. And this isn’t it.”

  Chapter 11

  The edge of Stuart’s boot grazed the forehead of Mrs. Wendall’s temple as he walked by, and her head rocked back and forth lifelessly as if she were shaking her head no. Stuart glanced down at her sunken eyes and gaping mouth as he turned the corner of aisle nine heading to the canned goods on aisle ten. As he navigated the cart past her large calves and white flats laying lifeless on the tan tiled floor he told her “I’ll stop and pick some Crest up for you on the way by Mrs. Wendall. Your breath is getting bad enough to make my eyes water.” He made a mental note to drag her body out of the way the next time he came to the store before he got a cart so that he would quit running into it in the dimly lit section of the super center.

  Even though it was mid-morning with the sun shining brightly outside, it was quite dark inside the big box store once you got away from the front doors which contained the only windows in the large building. Stuart had been down this aisle several times recently and knew almost exactly how far down he needed to go to reach what he wanted. He was looking for the beef ravioli cans with the easy open lids. He got to about where he thought they should be and took his zippo lighter out of his pocket. He flicked it a couple of times to light it and then held it down to the third row to illuminate the cans enough to make out their contents as he slowly walked down the aisle. The last supply run he made he had grabbed several cans of spaghetti without the easy opener by mistake and it had taken over an hour for him to figure out how to open the can without a can opener.

  He finally reached what he was looking for and stooped to grab the remaining fourteen cans of ravioli off the shelf. The cans made rather loud thuds in the stillness of the store as Stuart haphazardly tossed them into the cart and they connected with the six packs of pop and the cart’s wire frame. He missed the cart with one of the cans, and it rolled to the opposite side of the aisle where it was even darker. Stuart had to fish his lighter back out of his pocket to find where that last can had rolled off to. While looking for the can, he absentmindedly began whistling the first several notes of Patience by Guns n’ Roses. He wasn’t a big G’nR fan, but that song had been playing relentlessly in his head since he had been stuck in the darkness.

  Once the last easy open can was in the cart, Stuart closed the lid of the lighter but didn’t stow it away in his pocket yet. The only other thing that he needed on this supply run was near the back of the store where there was absolutely no light.

  In the last couple of weeks Stuart had accepted that no one was coming to save him; and with that, no one cared if he took things that he needed. Or took things that he just merely wanted. As a result, he had been around this and plenty other stores in the last couple of weeks raiding whatever suited his fancy. Since he had already looted as much as could, today’s trip to the store was simply a supply run. He was out of food, pop, and ammo.

  As he continued to slowly push the cart back towards the sporting goods section of the store, Stuart continued to slowly and absently whistle the tune that he had started. As he was walking past one end cap, something caught his eye in the dim lighting and he stopped. “Alright!” he squawked as he realized that the end cap was full of Doritos bags. He grabbed a few of the bags and threw them in the cart, then opened one and began to munch on the chips as he continued back towards sporting goods. Stuart had thought that he had cleaned out all the Doritos when he took the last bag from the chip aisle a week ago, and he was utterly thrilled to find a few more bags were left.

  With his mouth half full of chips, he wasn’t able to whistle the tune anymore so he began to softly hum and sing some of the lines from the same song as he continued slowly pushing the cart.

  He hadn’t seen or heard another soul, a critter, or even an insect for weeks; but the dark part of the store was still unsettling in its stillness. The last time he went back this way was to get a bicycle. The stench had been so bad from the remaining bodies and the dairy products that went bad in the non-functioning coolers that he had to change his route to walk in a looping arc around that corner of the store. This time, the stench was still there but had dissipated enough to be bearable, and he walked directly back to where they kept the rifles and ammunition.

  Stuart continued to absently sing as he lit his lighter and walked around to the front of the cart to pull it instead of push it in the darkness. After a few steps of pulling the cart, it stopped abruptly and almost caused Stuart to lose his balance. He almost fell, but righted himself instead. Using his lighter, he peered down to the floor at the cart’s wheels and found what the problem was. A teenage girl’s rotting arm was laying in the middle of the aisle and had become lodged between the wheel and bottom of the cart. Stuart had seen enough bodies by now that he was more perturbed about his supply run taking longer than he had thought rather than thinking about the tragedy that had befallen the girl.

  He could dislodge the corpse’s arm easily by stepping on the forearm and pushing the cart backwards. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the young girls face and recognized her immediately. Her eyes were slightly sunken in their sockets, her already dark hair was matted with dried blood, and her skull resembled a bruised apple near what had been the impact point of her head and the tile floor. Regardless of her looks, Stuart knew immediately that it was Mary Castlebrock and he fe
lt his spirits lift slightly as he thought about the terror that must have consumed the last few moments of her life. After the years of menacing teasing, unscrupulous comments and actions, and her involvement with his being locked in that unending darkness; he couldn’t help but feel some relief that she had been included in the death that had swallowed his town. He wouldn’t ever have to see that twinkle in her eye or hear that one-word ooze from Mary’s lips again. That word that made him cringe deep down in his soul.

  With the Doritos find and now this, this supply run was turning out to be one of the better days Stuart had experienced in the last few weeks. Once Mary’s arm was dislodged, he was on his way again. He crooned with his best Axel Rose impression that even he would have admitted wasn’t that great. He continued back to sporting goods pulling the cart, but this time he stooped a little closer to the floor with his lighter out to make sure that he didn’t run into any other road blocks.

  With his supplies loaded up in his overflowing back pack and other bags slung over the handle bars of the red and black dirt bike, he was slowly pedaling and enjoying the sun and breeze of the late afternoon sky. While working to get up the last large hill on route back to the Dungeon, Stuart became slightly out of breath and paused in awkward moments as he continued to sing about patience in a soft voice that only he could hear.

  Stuart had been on this route enough in the last few weeks that he went into auto-pilot mode while his mind began thinking about Mary’s face again. This time though, her sunken eyes weren’t just staring up at him from the cold tile from the department store’s floor. The slight smirk that had been at the corners of his mouth since he’d recognized her face in the glow from his lighter faded from his lips. This time those same sunken eyes were staring at him from his memory of the last time he had seen her alive. He remembered how he was down on all fours with one hand holding his abdomen to try and comfort the pain from Brock Donovan’s one-two combination to his midsection. Brock and Keith slinked out the partially open door to the Dungeon while Mary stood in the doorway. She was partially illuminated by the moonlight and glared down at him with pure loathing. Only this time, the evil spewing from that hatred stare was through the sunken and half-rotted eyes of the Mary that he had seen laying on the tile floor of the department store twenty minutes ago. While her face was rotted and distorted in this memory now, her voice was just as sharp and cutting as she said “Why don’t you stay in here and think about that for a while,” as she paused for effect before the word “faggot” darted out of her mouth as a closing condemnation. Mary slipped out of view into the moonlight with wisps of her long stringy black hair following her as she suddenly turned. The open side of the heavy double door swung closed. Then the hard click and bang of the crowbar being jammed through the door handles in the replay of Stuart’s memory jogged him back to reality in the nick of time before he missed his turn at the top of the hill. He stopped pedaling and put both his feet down astride the bike to rest a little from the climb, but mostly to recover from the memory.