The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  They reached a row of elm trees and a mesh fence on the north side of the house, and Sawyer motioned for them to get down. They all readied their rifles and squatted down in the moonlight shadows of the trees and listened. Mackenzie’s thighs started to burn from the squatting position she had taken when Sawyer reached down and grabbed a large clod of dirt from the field and lobbed it over to the side of the house. The clod hit with a large thud and partially broke up when it hit the siding near the second-floor window. They all looked and listened intently for any kind of sound or response, but heard nothing but their own group’s breathing in the quiet new world.

  Sawyer reached down to grab another clod of dirt, but Patrick grabbed his wrist and then shook his head. Patrick handed Sawyer his rifle, and then climbed over the mesh fence to the farmhouse’s yard. He recovered his rifle, then scurried over to the corner of the house near where Sawyer’s clod of dirt had hit the siding. Patrick peered around the corner for a moment, and then quietly dashed to the front porch and tried the front door. It was open, so he turned the handle and entered.

  The others watched and waited for a noise or Patrick for what seemed like too long. Stuart stood up and tried to hand Sawyer his rifle, but Sawyer motioned for him to squat back down. Stuart complied, but from the look on his face he wasn’t happy about it.

  Finally, Patrick emerged from the front door and waved for the others. They each made their way over the fence and joined Patrick in the entry way of the large farm house.

  As they filed in, Patrick reported to Sawyer in a low voice “The house is clear of scaveys. There is one empty bed upstairs, the other bedrooms have some scenes that I’d rather Mackenzie didn’t see.”

  “Any food?” Stuart asked in a low voice as well.

  “I didn’t check very good yet, but the kitchen has been thoroughly tossed,” Patrick answered.

  Sawyer told Stuart “Why don’t you see if you can scrounge up any food and then meet us upstairs. No meat. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Stuart said as he headed off to what looked like it was the kitchen from the entry way.

  “Can you see anything from that bedroom without the bodies?” Sawyer asked Patrick.

  “Not sure. Let’s go look,” Patrick responded.

  The three of them walked single file up the stairs and then turned right down the hallway. It was dark in the hallway and Mackenzie reached out and grabbed a belt loop on the back of her dad’s jeans to help guide her. Sawyer walked a little too fast and bumped into the back of Mackenzie. He kept his hand on the small of her back as they crept down the hall to tell where she was in the darkness. Mackenzie liked the way that his warm firm hand touched her and was glad that it was almost pitch dark in the hallway because she could feel her face blushing.

  The empty bedroom was small, but was on the south-west corner of the house and had two large windows on each exterior wall that let some moonlight in. Patrick went around the bed to the south window, and Sawyer went to the other. They each opened the curtains as wide as they would go and peered out into the darkness.

  “I think that I see a gas station sign,” Patrick said still in a low voice but loud enough that the others could still hear. “And maybe a stop light. Just a little further up the road we were on.”

  Mackenzie joined her dad first and then Sawyer did as well when he couldn’t make anything out from the window he was standing at.

  After looking through it for a minute, Sawyer said to them “We’ll see what Stuart finds down there. If it’s empty, I’ll head into town to see what I can get for groceries.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Patrick said almost immediately. “We have enough food to get us to Yankton.”

  “Yeah, but Stuart and I aren’t going to want to spend time messing around in Yankton while you guys are crossing the Line. It’d be better if we could stock up now on a few things to get us through for a few days.”

  After a brief pause, Patrick argued some more, “At least wait until morning so we can cover you from here if we need to.”

  “Nah,” Sawyer answered shaking his head. “It’d be better to go tonight. The scaveys swarm when they see or hear something, so the darkness would be to our advantage. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

  Mackenzie involuntarily giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Sawyer snapped.

  “Nothing,” Mackenzie answered.

  “Tell me,” Sawyer said again.

  Mackenzie looked into her dad’s eyes and said “It’s just… my dad always told me never to trust a man who says ‘Trust me’.”

  Sawyer turned quickly and stepped back to the other window.

  Patrick gave his daughter a wry smile and then looked back out his own window. “Listen Sawyer,” Patrick started. “I know that it’s fun to play army, but we have to go about this smart.”

  Sawyer turned and faced Patrick. His chest was going up and down and he was clearly upset. “You think that this is playing army?” he said. His voice came out much louder than he had meant it to, and he immediately quieted himself back to a hushed voice before continuing. “Playing army,” he said disgustingly. “If you’d seen some of the stuff that I went through, you wouldn’t call it playing army. Killing the neighbor boy with my bare hands; holding off a swarm of more than fifty by myself in a strip mall; sleeping with one eye open behind a barricaded door while those things paced back and forth outside a bedroom in a townhouse… It’s only been a few weeks, but I feel like I’ve fought a whole war against those things. If you think precautions are playing army, then you know a lot less than what I gave you credit for.”

  “Hey!” Mackenzie said. Her pulse was racing and her blood was warm from this boy practically yelling at her father.

  Patrick grabbed her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said to her softly. Then to Sawyer he said “You’re probably right son. I haven’t seen or been through what you have. I just want us all to make it through this thing.”

  “Well, then I’m telling ya,” Sawyer answered with some vindication in his tone. “Stuart and I need to get some food so that we’re good past Yankton; and if there isn’t any here then going into this town tonight will be better than going in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Patrick responded. “Let’s wait and see what he finds here first.”

  After only a few minutes, they heard Stuart coming up the stairs. Sawyer went into the hallway and helped guide him into the bedroom.

  “Get anything good?” Mackenzie asked as she sat on the bed.

  “Zilch,” Stuart said as he sat on the opposite side of the bed. “It was pretty gross actually. Everything had been ransacked, but there was also blood, and mud, and hair, and just nasty stuff everywhere.”

  “Were there bodies and stuff?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No. Not that I seen,” Stuart answered. “Just nasty stuff everywhere.”

  “There’s a gas station and some other buildings just up the road there,” Sawyer told Stuart. “I’m going to head up there and see if I can find some food for us.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Stuart said.

  “You sure?” Sawyer asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to just wait around here all night wondering if you found anything,” Stuart said.

  “Alright,” Sawyer said as he turned towards the door. “Let’s go then.”

  “Hey,” Patrick said stopping Sawyer in the doorway. Sawyer turned with his jaw set. “If you get in trouble, fire three quick shots.”

  “Okay,” Sawyer said visibly relieved that he didn’t have to verbally spar again with Patrick.

  “Three quick ones or we’re not coming out of here,” Patrick repeated.

  “Gotcha,” Sawyer said as he turned to leave and waved for Stuart to follow him. “Three quick ones.”

  After they left, Mackenzie walked over to the window to watch them leave and Patrick closed and locked the bedroom door. He knelt at the edge of the bed with his head down and said a silent prayer. Mackenzie watche
d the two boys sneak down the edge of the dirt road together until she could no longer see them.

  Patrick joined her at the window and asked quietly “You still see them?”

  “No. They played leap frog army all the way up the road,” she said coyly.

  Patrick smiled at her, patted her on the shoulder, and then lay down on the bed with his hands behind his neck.

  “Why did you let him go if you didn’t think that it was the best thing?” Mackenzie asked her dad as she continued to peer out the window to try and catch a glimpse of the other two.

  “He was probably right,” Patrick said.

  Mackenzie turned and gave her dad an unbelieving look.

  “What?” Patrick asked.

  “I just don’t think that I’ve ever heard you admit that you’re wrong,” Mackenzie said.

  “Darlin’, I’m wrong a whole lot more than I’d like to admit,” Patrick answered.

  “I know Dad,” Mackenzie said with a chuckle. “You just don’t ever say that you’re wrong.”

  “That’s just the engineer in me,” Patrick chuckled back at her. “I still don’t think that it’s smart to go into that town that we don’t know in the middle of the night when there are clearly scaveys around here, but he has had more experience with them than I have.”

  After a few more minutes of staring out the window, Mackenzie asked “What was the thing back there at the fence?”

  “What do you mean?” Patrick asked her from behind closed eyelids.

  “With the gun. Why did you have me hand my gun across when I was climbing through the fence?”

  “A hunter safety thing,” Patrick said opening his eyes. “Every year it seems like someone gets accidently shot by their son or their buddy when the fence catches the trigger while they’re climbing through. Always hand your gun across when you can.”

  “You’re such an engineer Dad” Mackenzie said as Patrick closed his eyes again.

  After a while, Mackenzie sat down on the corner of the bed so that she could still see half-heartedly out the window. Patrick’s even and deep breathing told her that he was full on into a hearty nap. Her mind turned to her friends and her mother. She was thinking about what it would be like to run and wrap her arms around her mom. The smell of her perfume, the loving and gentle hug, the feel of her mom’s curly hair. Then she heard the first shot and her legs instinctively propelled her up off the bed, and the image of her mother vanished from her thoughts. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins as her dad joined her at the window a split second later.

  “Do you see them?” Patrick asked her quickly.

  “No,” Mackenzie said.

  Patrick reached down and tried to open the window, but it didn’t budge. He found the clasp, opened it, then pushed the window up to the open position. He knelt by the open window and readied his rifle. He swept the scope back and forth looking for any movement.

  After seeing what her dad was doing, Mackenzie knelt next to him and did the same. She couldn’t see hardly anything through the scope on her small rifle and switched quickly between looking through the scope to looking with her naked eye, and back again. She couldn’t make out anything in the darkness.

  After a few seconds, she heard something coming from near the front of the house. She stood up and went to the other window and caught a glimpse of figure running down the road towards the town. She ran back over and knelt at her prior position and found the figure in her scope. She could see that it was a male scavey. He looked like he would have been in his late twenties and was dressed in a dirty white t-shirt and jeans. He was running as fast as he could up the dirt road towards the town. She trained her scope reticles on the back of the scaveys’ neck and flicked her safety off with her index finger.

  “Whooa,” her dad whispered. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Why? I got him,” Mackenzie said.

  “If you shoot they’ll know we’re here,” Patrick said. “I don’t think one more of those things is going to make a bit of difference to whatever they’ve gotten themselves into.”

  Mackenzie took a deep breath and put the safety back on. She continued to watch the scavey run for a few more seconds until he was totally out of view in the darkness.

  “I hope that you weren’t wrong twice tonight,” Mackenzie said.

  They both knelt at the window and sat on the corner of the bed quietly for several more hours waiting for something else to happen. The first signs of light began to show as a deep red glow came from the east. As the light grew in intensity, the more they could make out of the small town several blocks away. The gas station sign and the stop light silhouettes became more distinct. Then they could begin to make out the shapes of a couple of houses and a few buildings around the street corner that was in their view. Then they could start to make out the colors of the buildings and the few cars that were parked along the road and streets.

  “Where do you think that the shot came from last night?” Patrick asked Mackenzie as he stared through his scope trying to make out more details as the sun rose in the sky.

  “I don’t know; I was – “ she stopped abruptly as another gun shot rang out.

  This time with the window open, they both were sure that it was considerably West from where they could see. It must have been further along the main street past the stop light that they could just make out.

  Then another report, but the last one sounded different. It was from the same general area as the first, but it sounded like it was from a different gun.

  “That’s his pistol I think,” Patrick said blankly as he was still trying to see anything out of his scope. “Open that other window and man that post,” Patrick told his daughter. She wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but she scrambled over to the other window and struggled to open it. After fighting with it for a few moments she finally got it to open and readied her rifle. She couldn’t see as much down the street from that vantage point, but she could see the driveway to the front of the house and the empty fields to the trees that must have hidden the rest of the town from her view.

  They heard two more quick reports from the gun that Patrick thought was Sawyer’s pistol. They were from the same general area, but they sounded like they were getting closer.

  “I think that they’re headed back this way,” Patrick shouted over to Mackenzie. Then he added “Make sure that you know what you’re shooting at before you pull the trigger. Aim small, miss small.”

  One more shot from a different gun was heard. This time it was definitively much closer than before. It seemed like they were making their way down the main street back towards the street light and gas station.

  “Was that three shots?” Mackenzie asked her dad. “Should we go get them?”

  “No,” Patrick answered. “I told him three quick shots or we were staying put.”

  Two more shots from the pistol. It sounded like they should be able to see them any minute.

  Out of the corner of Mackenzie’s eye, she saw a Scavey running down the road toward the town in almost the same path that the last one had taken. This one was much larger though. He looked like he had been in his fifties and was considerably overweight with a balding head. He loped more than he was running, but he was still making good time up the road.

  Mackenzie flipped the safety off from her rifle and drew a bead on the neck of the loping scavey. She could see through her scope that one of the shoulder straps from his overalls was unattached and flapped against his back with each of his loping step. Mackenzie thought to herself Aim small, miss small. She let out her breath and slowly squeezed the trigger as she kept her target in sight.

  The little rifle was loud in the small bedroom. So much so that she involuntarily closed her eyes and didn’t see the impact of her shot. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the large man lying in the street face down and motionless with one hand clasping the back of his neck.

  “Here they come!” her dad yelled across the room. She craned her neck to peer down the s
treet and saw Stuart and Sawyer sprinting down the dirt road towards them. Stuart was in the lead, and Sawyer was running with his pistol pointed behind him. “Watch the front door!” her dad yelled again.

  Mackenzie turned her attention to the front door and the driveway in front of the house looking for any movement. She felt her arms starting to shake, so she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As she was letting the air from her lungs, her dad fired and operated the bolt on his rifle to load another round. She looked down the street and saw a scavey explode backwards off its feet just as it turned the corner chasing after the two boys.

  Suddenly both boys stopped in the middle of the road about half-way to the house. Stuart dropped to his knees and aimed his gun down the road in the direction towards the river and passed the house. Sawyer turned and aimed his pistol behind them watching the corner that they had just came around. Stuart shot once, then twice. Mackenzie swung around to the other side of the window to try and see what Stuart was shooting at. She heard him fire again, and again, and again. The elm trees that they had come through blocked her view, and she couldn’t see what Stuart was shooting at.

  Her dad fired again and the sound made her flinch. When she opened her eyes, she saw a woman scavey running down the driveway towards the front door of the house. She brought her rifle up quickly and fired a shot just as the long hair of the woman vanished from her field of view, and she heard the screen door slam on the front door.

  “I missed one Dad!” Mackenzie screamed. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry!”

  “Did it make it inside?” Patrick yelled back over to her without looking up from his rifle.

  “Yeah,” she screamed again. “I’m sorry!”

  Patrick took the revolver from his belt and slid it across the floor to his daughter. “Cover the bedroom door with this,” he said.