The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  The inside of the store was even worse than it appeared from looking through the broken window. There was cereal or something like it over the entire floor, glass and broken items were littered everywhere, and only a few of the wider aisles were clear enough to easily walk down. The light from upper windows on the two sides facing the streets let ample light in, that allowed Mackenzie to see almost everywhere in the store. Besides the massive mess throughout the store, it looked like a hundred other corner drug stores in small towns that Mackenzie had been in or seen on television.

  “I’ll see if I can find some ibuprofen and antibiotics somewhere. You load up with food,” Patrick whispered to her. She nodded her understanding and started to go down the aisle along the outside wall. “Oh!” Patrick said in a loud whisper and turned back towards her. “Look for anything that you think I could burn in the camp stove. I need some coffee.” He gave her a slight grin before turning and heading towards the back corner of the store. He had to duck and hunch over to get below the tilted stand of shelves that bordered the aisle he was stepping into.

  Mackenzie made her way along the outside wall of the store trying to see where they kept the food. The aisle was mainly makeup, fingernail polish, and other girly stuff that she was sure that she wasn’t going to need anytime soon. Instead of following the outside wall all the way to the back of the store, she turned down a middle walk-way and slowly walked along the end caps peering down the aisles looking for anything that resembled food. The aisles were mostly like long caves with the shelving units tipped over and balancing like a row of half-sprung dominoes.

  One end cap that she came to had large bags of chips on it, which looked promising. She just ducked into the aislecave when she heard her dad yell out for her, “MAK!”

  She could tell by the sound of his voice that it was something serious. She bent over and mostly ran down the aisle that she had started down towards the back of the store where her dad’s voice had come from. As she rounded the corner at the end, she seen her dad behind the pharmacy counter with his AR up and ready. They locked eyes for a split second before he fired off three quick shots down an aisle that Mackenzie couldn’t see down.

  The gunshots were deafening in the small store and it took a second for Mackenzie to realize that her dad was yelling for her to join him behind the counter. She hadn’t ever seen that kind of fear in her dad’s eyes before, so she dropped her empty backpack and sprinted for the open door thirty feet away that led to the pharmacy room where her dad was standing behind the service counter.

  Halfway to the open door she passed an end cap full of toothbrushes on it just as her dad fired two more quick shots that exploded packages of toothbrushes all around her. Without slowing, she turned her head to look at what he had shot at so close to her, and she saw one of the creatures that somehow looked like the one she had encountered at the farm. This one had been a teenage girl, probably just a little older than Mackenzie. One of the shots Patrick had fired at her struck the creature just below the left eye socket, and she was collapsing as Mackenzie ran by. If she wouldn’t have had the hole in her cheek, she could have lunged and reached Mackenzie for sure.

  Mackenzie reached the doorway as her dad ripped off three more shots down the same aisle that he had fired the first time. She tried to close the door behind her, but she realized that the doorjamb had been broken and it wasn’t going to close easily. Instead, she readied her rifle and took position next to her dad standing behind the counter. She could see a couple of bodies lying in the shadows down the aisle that her dad had taken to get back to the pharmacy. Even though she had just sprinted across the store, she felt herself holding her breath again and made herself exhale.

  “Is that all of them?” Mackenzie asked. She didn’t realize that she was that shaken until she heard the quiver in her own voice.

  Patrick reached over with one arm, pulled her head towards him, and kissed her on top of the head. “Somehow I don’t think that it is Darlin,” he said before readying his rifle again.

  Patrick suddenly swung the rifle over to the left and shot twice at a creature who had come out of the same food aisle that Mackenzie had ran down. This one was a young man with a beard and a duck brown work jacket on. The first shell hit him in the upper shoulder and knocked him backwards down the aisle so that only his work boots and the bottom of his dirty jeans were visible where he now lay on the drug store’s floor. When Patrick had swung the rifle around, he had accidently struck Mackenzie with the stock rather hard.

  “Here,” he said repositioning himself on the other side of Mackenzie and closer to the open door. “You concentrate on getting anything that comes down that first aisle,” he said as he lifted his elbow up and gestured down the only aisle that you could clearly see down all the way. “I’ll try to get any others,” he finished stoically.

  Mackenzie stared down the aisle, looking for any movement. The two of them stood almost back-to-back now as they waited for any more creatures. She could feel her heart beating in her throat again. She saw the rifle sights begin to sway back and forth as she started shaking.

  Patrick fired a shot, and the surprise made Mackenzie jump and she accidently jerked the trigger and fired her rifle as well.

  “Did you get it?” Patrick yelled over to her without looking.

  “I didn’t mean to shoot,” she yelled back. That quiver was still in her voice.

  Patrick shot again; and then again. “Do you have this?” Patrick yelled to her.

  Mackenzie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you have this?” Patrick yelled again with more emphasis.

  She opened her eyes and yelled “Yes!” back to him just as she saw a young woman-creature on her hands and feet down the aisle that she was supposed to be watching. The creature-thing seemed to be smelling the leg of one of the bodies that her dad had shot earlier. The woman-creature moved in fast jerky type movements.

  Mackenzie trained the sights on the thing’s face and held it there for a moment while she tried to steel her nerves enough to squeeze the trigger. The creature suddenly locked eyes with her and Mackenzie recognized that same blank stare that she had seen from the creature at the farm. She squeezed the trigger without any more hesitation, and the small bullet hit its mark. The woman-creature thing cried out with a shriek and spun around to the ground. The small caliber bullet must not have been enough to finish off the creature, as it shrieked and crawled on its belly around the corner out of view.

  Patrick fired two more quick bursts and then asked “You still okay?”

  “Yeah; I got it,” Mackenzie said with more confidence than she had had before.

  They both stood there at the ready with their eyes locked in the area away from each other waiting to acquire their next target. The woman-creature was still making noises from somewhere near the front of the store that made it clear she was in pain.

  “That noise will probably really bring them in,” Patrick said as he debated leaving the pharmacy area and Mackenzie to go finish it off.

  Mackenzie then heard a sound that she hadn’t heard for weeks. She thought that she must be hallucinating. It was very faint, but it was becoming more and more distinctive. When Patrick didn’t respond to the sound, she asked him “Do you here that?”

  “That creature howling?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “That motorcycle.”

  Patrick glanced over his shoulder to see if his daughter was okay or if she was going crazy with all the macabre stuff happening. She didn’t look back to him, but instead kept her eyes trained down the aisle. Then he heard it too.

  He turned his attention back towards the other aisles and strained his ears to hear the noise over the wailing of the creature at the front of the store. It did sound like a motorcycle, although it was some ways off and was hard to tell exactly what it was. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.

  A creature stepped out of the aisle where the work boots were sticking out. Patrick swung his rifle around and
fired, but his shot was way off and struck the old man-thing in the leg near the kneecap. The creature spun and fell to the floor. Patrick fired one more shot at the base of skull of the creature as it laid on its side grabbing its knee. That round found its mark and it immediately created a gory mess all over the floor in front of the creature as it made impact.

  Then they heard gunshots coming from outside as the motorcycle was wound tight and sounded like it was right outside. The shots were from a larger caliber semi-automatic rifle or pistol because they were being fired in quick succession.

  There was a stampede of creatures. Two came running around the end-caps towards the pharmacy door, and Patrick shot multiple times and dropped them to the floor. Their momentum carried them partway across the floor. Two more came around the corner. And then another. Patrick began pulling the trigger as fast as he could.

  Three turned the corner into the aisle that Mackenzie was watching. Two teenage boy creatures, and a hulking bald man-creature that ran with a limp. Mackenzie aimed at the fastest boy in front. She shot twice at his head, which caused him to fall on his face. She then turned the rifle to the second boy and began shooting. She had several rounds into him before he finally spun around and collapsed to the floor.

  Patrick’s rifle continued to fire almost non-stop, and the shots coming from just outside the store were almost continuous as well. The large bald man continued to trudge down the aisle towards the pharmacy and made it about half way by the time the second boy had succumbed to Mackenzie’s small caliber rifle shells. The man was garbed in an oily dark blue set of coveralls that had a name badge stitched high on the chest. He had a bad limp with his right leg that required him to almost drag it along behind him as he walked. Mackenzie aimed for the man’s large bald head and squeezed off a shot. The bullet hit the upper left cheek of man-creature that immediately caused a trail of blood to flow down its face. Other than causing a small hesitation, the man-creature continued his walk towards the pharmacy undeterred.

  Mackenzie held the rifle sights as steady as she could, and trained them on the large man’s left eye. She remembered all those things her dad used to say when he took her out to the shooting range: ‘Aim small, miss small’; ‘Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it’; ‘Concentrate on your breathing’. She let her breath out, and slowly squeezed the trigger as the large creature had gotten close enough to read that his name badge had “George” embroidered in red cursive on it. But instead of the normal report or the rifle, it just clicked.

  “Oh no,” Mackenzie said softly, but it couldn’t be heard by anyone but herself over the noise of the other shots being fired and the ringing of her ears. She pulled the slide back on the rifle to see if it had jammed, and she realized that it was out of shells.

  She looked up to see George about seven feet away from her limping towards her with those empty eyes staring directly into her. She thought that she saw a small smile at the corner of George’s mouth just as blood and gore exploded out of the side of the large creature’s head and he crumpled with a thud to the floor at the base of the counter. Mackenzie felt bits of bone, blood spatter, and other mess contact the side of her face in a warm painful ooze.

  As Mackenzie involuntarily leaned over behind the counter to vomit, she saw a figure of a man holding a pistol half way down the aisle. That figure must have been the one that finished off George.

  “Hey!” the figure in the aisle called out as Mackenzie continued to vomit and wipe at the muck and gore on her face and hair. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Patrick swung the gun around and trained it on the new comer at the sound of his voice.

  “We don’t have time for this,” the man said. He then turned and ran back down the aisle towards the front of the store.

  Patrick grabbed his backpack and Mackenzie by the arm. He half-pulled Mackenzie out of the doorway to the pharmacy and down one of the aisles as she was still vomiting and wiping the mess from her face. Another shot was fired from right outside of the front door to the drug store.

  There were creature bodies everywhere that they had to step over and around just to get down the cave-aisles. As Patrick and Mackenzie reached the broken window and burst through the store’s door, they saw the young man that had just saved them climbing onto a four-wheel ATV just outside the door. The ATV was camouflage painted and had four large red jerry cans strapped to the rear cargo rack.

  The man turned to the father and daughter as they ran from the store. He looked like a strapping young ranch kid to Patrick. He had short buzz-cut hair, and built like he probably played linebacker for the senior-high football team. He had an AR slung diagonally across his back, and was starting the ATV as the two reached him.

  Patrick took Mackenzie’s forearm and guided her onto the back of the ATV while he yelled at the kid, “Take this road straight down to the river. We have a boat and someone else there waiting for us.”

  “Dad,” Mackenzie said worriedly when she realized that he was leaving her in the care of this stranger.

  The boy didn’t hesitate, and wound the engine up on the ATV and headed off down the road in the direction of the river. Mackenzie couldn’t help but wrap her arms around him, otherwise she would have lost her balance and fell off the back of the vehicle. She felt the boy’s muscles tighten and flex as he navigated the ATV around the stranded vehicles and over the terrain. She was dazed. She didn’t want to leave her dad alone, but he evidently had planned it.

  Mackenzie wasn’t sure how fast they were going, but it felt like they were flying. The ATV’s engine was whining and its two riders were leaning forward into the wind staring down the paved road that was streaming beneath their feet. It was only after a few minutes when the slope of the ground changed from being mostly flat to going slightly downhill towards the river.

  When they reached a hill that Mackenzie recognized was just before the river, she yelled to stop in the man’s ear; but he didn’t seem to hear or respond. As they crested over the top of the hill and they could see the river a few hundred yards away, she yelled again and hit his shoulder hard twice with her closed fist.

  The man grabbed both breaks hard and sent the ATV into a sideways skid. Mackenzie found herself gritting her teeth and gripping his torso tightly so she didn’t spill off the side of the four-wheeler. They came to an abrupt halt several feet from where the man had first applied the brakes.

  “What’s the matter?” he partially yelled to her.

  “Stuart,” she said flatly peering to locate him down by his tent. She then saw the glint from his rifle laying on the other side of the beach from where his tent was, with him behind it prone on the ground. She pointed to where Stuart was laying, and then waved her arms back and forth over her head.

  The man couldn’t tell what she was pointing at until Stuart stood up and began waving the hand without the rifle in it over his head as well.

  “Hop off,” the man said.

  It took Mackenzie a moment to understand what the man said, and then another to decide if that was the best thing to do.

  “Hop off,” he said again, but this time more impatiently.

  Mackenzie quickly slung her leg around the seat and slid off the seat. The man gunned the engine and took off back the same way that they had just came without so much as looking back. She could hear the whine of the engine as it sped away and she stood there wondering what happened and where he was going.

  She trotted down the hill towards Stuart. When Stuart realized that Mackenzie was okay and now by herself, he left the rifle and sat backwards on a picnic table bench with his blanket wrapped around him again. When she was several yards off, Stuart seen the blood and other gore plastered to the side of Mackenzie’s face and hair. He jumped up from the bench throwing his blanket off, and ran the rest of the way to meet her.

  “Are you okay? What happened? Did that quad guy do that to you?” Stuart fired off several questions while inspecting her head and looking through her hair trying to find the injury.r />
  “No. None of that,” Mackenzie said perturbed and slapped Stuart’s hands away from her head. “I’m fine. That’s not my blood, it is creature blood.”

  Stuart paused and took a step back as he only imagined what Mackenzie must have been through to get that kind of mess on her. Mackenzie continued to walk down the slight slope to the boat dock and ramp area.

  “What about Patrick?” Stuart asked.

  “He’s okay,” Mackenzie responded as she continued to walk. “I think he is anyways,” she said unsure of herself. “Quad-boy snatched me up and ran me back here to the river while my dad was hoofing it back with the bikes.”

  “What happened, and who is that quad-boy guy?” Stuart asked.

  “I’ll tell you all about it, but you’d better break down your tent and get your stuff put away first. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be high-tailing it out of here soon,” Mackenzie said as she reached the edge of the water. She got on all fours and submerged her head in the water and began to rub at the mess on her face and in her hair.

  Stuart did as he was told and had his tent broke down and most things in the boat when he heard the four-wheeler again. Mackenzie was still on her hands and knees at the edge of the river trying to get the last of the blood from the strands of hair at the edge of her scalp.