by Jack Hunt
“Sam, let’s go.”
I looked towards the truck as bullets riddled it. I couldn’t wait any longer, as there were already two men on horses racing up to where we had ducked into the forest. Billy and I sprinted into the darkness. It was so thick in parts that our faces were cut by the gnarled branches. If they were following us we didn’t know, as we didn’t look back.
When we had put some distance between them and us, we stopped running so we could catch our breath. The forest was almost silent except for the sound of small critters and a stream in the distance. I let out deep lungful of air and tried desperately to catch my breath. My side was hurting. I hadn’t even stopped to think if a bullet had hit me. My arm was still in pain from the graze I got back at camp.
“What an idiot,” Billy repeated while pacing back and forth and looking in the direction that we had just come. “He’s as stubborn as a mule.”
“I just hope he made it. Come on, we need to keep moving.”
There was no way to know if they would follow us but my gut instinct told me they wouldn’t waste their time. They were there for the truck, nothing else. It was hard to tell where we were. Dan had taught us to use the sun for direction. My best guess was that we were traveling south. The camp was north.
“We’re going to have to turn back around but further downstream.”
“Maybe we should stay here for the night,” Billy said. “They could be searching the forest north of the highway. If we stay south, chances are they won’t be there in the early hours of the morning. We can head back then.”
We threaded our way around the tall green pines until we made it to the stream. Both of us fell to our knees and sank our heads under the cold water. I couldn’t get enough of it in my mouth. I was gasping. We didn’t stop to think about fallout. Six months and this far north, Dan had said that we would be fine. Besides, we had nothing to filter it. Thirst had taken over.
As I looked up I saw a rabbit staring. It moved a few feet then looked back before disappearing down a hole.
Once we had taken a moment we followed the river downstream for another half hour, focusing on the setting sun between the trees. It would be dark soon. If we didn’t find a way out, we would be stuck out here with whatever animals prowled the forest.
“Dude, I can’t go another inch, my legs are killing me.”
Billy slumped down beside a tree trunk and checked the magazine he had.
“Didn’t you grab another gun?”
“Are you kidding?”
I shook my head. There was no point getting into it with him. He would just argue until the cows came home. I began looking for branches and anything we could use to build a makeshift tent.
“We camping?”
“We are going to hunker down for now but only for a couple of hours. Once early morning is here we are heading north across that highway.”
“And if they are still there?”
“They won’t be.” I said it, but truthfully, I couldn’t know for sure.
Every sound in the forest made me nervous. If these men were trained soldiers, they would have learned how to move undetected, or at least approach us and stop within a range where they could take a shot.
The rumble of thunder in the distance and dark clouds hovering in the sky didn’t help.
“We are going to get soaked. You want to give me a hand?”
Billy hauled himself up and together we gathered as many large and smaller branches as we could find to build us a cover in a thick part of the forest. The goal was to nestle ourselves in an area where there was a lot of brush in the hope that we wouldn’t be detected. All I wanted was to keep the rain off our heads for a short while. What a futile goal that was. Within five minutes the rain poured down and we were soaked.
Underneath our small wooden A-frame covered in tree debris, we shivered and hugged our knees trying to stay warm.
“This reminds me of this one time my old man took me camping,” Billy said without even looking at me. “He had this big thing planned where we would head up into Flathead National Forest. It was meant to be like three nights. We lasted one.” He laughed. “The heavens opened up and turned the earth into water. You should have seen the look on his face. It was priceless.”
“You stayed there?”
“Hell no. We barely managed to get the truck out. Our tent got washed away. We were covered in mud. When we reached home my mother just laughed. My father didn’t find it funny.” Billy scoffed. “You know how long I tried to get him to take me camping?”
I shrugged.
“Four years. All the time it was the same. Too busy working. But he wasn’t too busy to drink, was he?” He shook his head and tossed a stick out into the rain.
Rain was quickly turning the ground into a small stream. The banks were high but with the amount of downpour, I had visions of it overflowing in the night and being swept away.
“What about you?”
“Not much to say really. Before Brett and Jodi, my previous father’s idea of camping was having me lug his shit around and bring him beers while his kids went off and did all the things I should have been doing.”
“That’s rough.”
“That’s mild,” I replied.
There was a pause as if Billy was contemplating what to say next. “What were you hoping for?”
I turned to him. “Not much.” I snorted. “My whole life has felt like a prison sentence. I used to ask some of the other kids in foster care what they wanted if they could start again. Most wished they were born into a wealthy family, so they didn’t want for anything. Not me. I just wanted a family that treated me like a son, not a slave.”
Billy nodded. We heard a branch snap and both of us reached for our guns. We listened intently waiting for more movement but it never occurred. We notched it up to animals or a fallen tree limb.
“Where are we going after this?”
“Head north back to the camp.”
“No, I mean after… if we get Murphy and Shaw out. There’s no bunker left.”
“Maybe we’ll return to Mount Pleasant. It’s still there. Or, we join with the others. They seem like good people.”
He nodded and dug a piece of stick deep into the soft soil.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that we pass people every day on the street and most of the time, we don’t even look them in the eye. But then something like this happens and people can’t help look you in the eye?”
“Fear, I guess. People don’t trust each other.”
I slipped out into the rain to do one last check before we tried to get some shut-eye. It was dark now and other than a few small shards of light that came from the crescent moon, we were cloaked in darkness.
CHAPTER 23
Waking up the next day, I was greeted by the sound of Billy taking a piss up a tree. While the shelter had kept the water off us, it had been cold and now my bones ached. I eased out and cocked my head from side to side to work out the tension. It was like being back at Camp Zero. At least there we had the tarps to keep the cold from entering our body.
The night before we had piled sticks together to keep off the ground which had been turned into a shallow stream. With the break of dawn, it was no longer raining and the sun was already filtering in through the trees. Billy glanced over his shoulder.
“I thought you were going to sleep all morning.”
He zipped up and turned back around. “Here,” Billy tossed me a half-eaten granola bar he had in his pocket.
“Is this even edible?”
“I only opened it last night.”
“You never told me you had food.”
He went a slight shade of red. “I was hungry. I thought you would want some so I didn’t tell you. After I ate half I felt guilty so I kept the rest for you. I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.”
I bit into it immediately.
With no matches, no flint, and no way to start a fire because all the wood around us was soaking wet, we head
ed out. It didn’t take long before we returned to the highway. There was a dead horse on the side of the road, no truck or men, but a whole lot of shattered glass and ammo shells.
“Either Corey made it or they killed him and took the truck.”
Cautiously we walked up the embankment and back onto the road. I looked around for tire marks. Anything to indicate that he might have slipped off the road into the ditch but there were none.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to make it back to camp?”
“At least two hours by foot.”
Billy’s stomach grumbled. “I’m starving.”
“Try not to think about it. We have a lot of miles to cover.”
“What about seeing if we can shoot a rabbit or—”
“We can’t risk it. We don’t know if they are camping around here.”
The last thing we needed was to draw attention to ourselves.
“Do you remember what Dan said about which plants could be eaten?”
I scoffed. “No. I can barely remember any of it except some of the basics.”
Dan had taken us through what kind of things we could eat if we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. He had mentioned certain types of plants but I couldn’t remember which ones or even what they looked like. They were all the same to me. But the insects, those I remembered. He said ants, crickets, wasps, grasshoppers and beetles were all good sources of protein. Grasshoppers had 20g and crickets 100g of protein, plus iron and zinc.
“Hunt around for an ant nest.”
“Screw that.”
I laughed. Billy had been completely against eating ants while the rest of us had tried them. He said he would rather starve than have something crawling around inside his mouth.
We pressed on until we reached the turnoff for Old Wake Road. It wasn’t exactly a road as it was an off-the-path muddy trail that hunters had used in the past to get into the middle of Kootenai National Forest. We stayed close to the trail but kept inside the tree line so we wouldn’t be out in the open. We must have been walking for over an hour. As we came over a rise in the road, we saw a truck in the distance.
“You think that’s…”
“I dunno.”
We were crouched down and looking through the trees for any movement. Had they managed to stop the truck? Was Corey’s body inside?
“Cover me, I’m going over and taking a look.”
Billy grabbed my arm. “And if it’s a trap?”
“Then get ready to run.”
I pulled away and moved quietly through the brush until I was level with the vehicle. I glanced to my left and right one last time before I stepped out and approached carefully. I noticed that the back tires were flat, and the metal sides were riddled with bullet holes. The first thing I checked was the cab. It was empty. The door on the passenger side was wide open. I hopped in and checked for signs of blood. There was none. I glanced in the back and noticed only a few supplies. That wasn’t a good sign. There was no way that one person could have lugged all that out of there. I figured it had to have been the same guys from the night before. Perhaps Corey had driven the truck as far as he could go before the tires went flat. He would have had to abandon the vehicle. I just wanted to shout his name but as they might have still been within earshot.
I double-timed it back over to Billy who looked anxious.
“Nothing.”
“Where the hell is he?”
“They took some of the weapons.”
We were deep in the forest but not so far from camp that Corey wouldn’t have been able to get back. Billy rose from the ditch and went over to take a look.
“Any blood on the seat?”
“None.”
“So he’s still alive.”
“Let’s hope so.”
We continued on down the trail until we saw the first of three hunting cabins. They were mainly little shacks in the middle of nowhere. Simple one-bedroom, run-down huts that were used by campers on weekends. We might have passed them by if Billy hadn’t seen one of the soldiers lying dead in the dirt driveway. Flies buzzed around him and he was beginning to smell. Billy flashed me a glance but didn’t say anything. I signaled for him to go into the trees on one side of the path while I took the other. We moved in unison up to the shack all the while staying quiet and out of view. Further up the trail there was another dead soldier. I couldn’t see from where I was where the bullet had struck, only that he was motionless. It had to have been Corey. I figured that they must have blown the tires on the truck and he’d managed to make it so far down the trail before it gave out on him. The soldiers could have caught up which meant he would have sought cover in one of the cabins.
I so badly wanted to call out his name but there was no telling if the others were nearby. I assumed they weren’t because if the truck was partially empty they must have hauled away what they could on horseback but not before attacking Corey.
Ahead of us was a small shack. The porch looked as though it had seen better days. There were holes in the roof and no windows. All that covered them were wooden shutters. We continued moving around the sides. I spotted another dead soldier at the back of the cabin. His face was half blown off. The dead soldiers’ guns were still beside them, which made me believe that the others fled.
Billy signaled for me to move in. Slowly we approached the sealed cabin. I stepped out of the brush and cast a glance sideways checking for movement. Nothing. I kept my finger close to the trigger, my breathing quickened, as I got close.
“Corey,” Billy said.
Oh my god, I couldn’t believe he had just shouted his name. I motioned for him to shut the hell up but he just waved me off. While Billy stepped up onto the porch I scanned the tree line preparing for the worst. All over the cabin were bullet holes.
It was silent except for the sound of the forest. Nature going about its business oblivious to the human horror around it. I was surprised to see that the bodies were still intact, I would have thought animals would have descended on them and eaten away the soft tissue, which made me wonder if this had all taken place in the early hours of the morning.
Satisfied that no one else was around, I joined Billy on the porch.
“Corey. You in there?”
I approached the door and gave it a push with the butt of my gun before stepping off to the side. I had seen too many movies of people getting blasted through doors. The door creaked open. Inside it was dark. Whoever had been there was gone. There was no movement. Inside it was very basic, a room that would have been used as a bedroom, and a living and kitchen area.
Billy gestured to a patch of blood in the corner of the room. It was a corner that Corey might have sat in, as it would have given him eyes on both the front and back door.
“He’s been hit.”
I went over to the window and cracked open the shutters to let more light in. That’s when we saw the trail of blood from the front door to the corner and then out the back. Neither one of us ran to see where it led, we followed the trail slowly keeping a good eye on the trees around us.
“Corey!” Billy shouted.
I backhanded Billy. “Would you shut the fuck up? You want to alert them to our presence?”
“They are long gone.”
Small droplets of blood could be seen on fallen leaves, twigs and the dirt. The trail led us towards the stream in the distance. We could hear the water rushing. Every now and again I would look back to the cabin just to check that no one was following us. Billy went ahead while I kept my eyes on the forest. As we came over a mound of dirt that led down a steep embankment, Billy was the first one to see him.
“Sam.”
I rushed from a few feet away while Billy slid down the incline to where Corey was lying. He was half in the water and half out. Billy checked his pulse.
“He’s still alive. But barely.”
His skin had become pale. He’d lost a lot of blood. Billy dragged him out of the water and Corey mumbled something.
> “Hey you pudgy bastard, don’t you die on me.”
Billy tore his shirt open to expose the wound, washed it with handfuls of stream water and then ripped off a portion of his own shirt and used it as a bandage. He left it slightly open to allow for drainage. In the wilderness Dan had told us many stories from battle. One of which was when he had been stabbed and had to survive a day before getting treatment. He went on about how you could treat open wounds using maggot therapy, which meant leaving the wound exposed for a day to flies and then checking for maggots every day, and cleaning them off the wound once they had removed all the dead tissue. It was kind of sick. Billy acted as if he had heard every single word. “We don’t want it to get infected.”
We were at least twenty, maybe thirty minutes from camp and that was just a rough estimate; it could have been longer. Both of us hauled him up and that’s when we got a better look at the wound. He had been shot in the side of his lower back. Billy took one of his arms over his shoulder, I grabbed the other and we began hauling ass back through the forest.
CHAPTER 24 - MURPHY
After being captured by the Commander’s men, Shaw and I had been thrown inside a makeshift pen that had been erected in one of the parks of Hayden. According to the guard I had chatted to, the main jailhouse was already full of local folk unwilling to relinquish their weapons.
Over the past twenty-four hours I had been through every escape scenario in my mind. I had thought of attacking one of the guards as they brought in food, or overpowering one when they took us out to perform some of the menial tasks they didn’t want their soldiers doing, like digging the ditch and erecting the fence that was slowly being built around the town. I had seen the trucks enter and supplies taken out of the back. They were gathering all manner of things, food, clothes and metal, to create a fascist town governed by the Commander’s rules. The fence wasn’t being built to protect them, but to imprison them.
