by Dennis Elder
“Oh yea, and then there’s the run,” continued Silvia.
Doc didn’t ask any questions for a minute or two. He was too busy breathing hard. Once the road flattened out again, he continued his questions.
“And how far do you run in the Ironman version?” ask Doc.
“Same as you do in a regular Marathon,” said Silvia. “Twenty six miles.”
“And you do this all in one day?” asked Doc.
“Well, you do your best to finish in one day,” emphasized Silvia. “Most finish but many do not. Gets dark and there are cut off times at the end of each leg of the race.”
More time passed as Doc considered Silvia’s instruction on Ironman Triathlons.
“And we’re struggling to make 30 miles in one day?” said Doc to himself.
The troop continued to plod along. On the hills they barely made three miles an hour. Two times they had to get off their bikes and walk them to the tops of the hills. On the level areas they averaged 8 miles an hour and made even better time when they coasted downhill.
They followed the freeway north until it ended in San Dimas. Then they took the 210 east. At noon they got off the freeway at North Citrus and looked for a house where they could eat and rest.
Everybody was pretty tired when they pulled into the first driveway - except maybe Tyrone and Teresa. Susan had put them in the back for two reasons. One: they were definitely the strongest riders. And two: they talked constantly. When everybody else was struggling for air, those two would talk and laugh incessantly at each other’s jokes. It drove most everybody else crazy. Hence, they got moved to the back of the line.
When Mark pulled up, he immediately dictated the terms of their lunch break.
“One-hour total break. Scavenge teams roll out now and report back in 30 minutes.”
That got a few mumbles from the group. Six pre-selected riders made their way back out of the subdivision to scavenge for lunch. Boon gave them the address of the closest market. Boon was always coming up with helpful ideas and plans for the group. The guy was always thinking.
“Let’s get the garage open and the equipment hidden,” added Mark, as he pulled out his small notebook and glanced in it. “Doc and Silvia,” you got body detail.
“Roger that, boss,” said Doc.
“Body detail?” questioned Silvia. “I don’t remember that in the job description.”
Doc smiled, just as Tyrone opened the garage from the inside. He’d already opened a side door to the garage.
“Most every home we stay in will likely have a dead body or three inside it,” replied Doc casually. “Everybody gets a turn taking stinky bodies outside.”
“Sounds fun,” said Silvia.
“Trick is to wrap up the body quick in a sheet or blanket, hold your breath and toss um two doors down as fast as possible.”
“You know I’m learning all kinds of helpful things hanging out with you,” said Silvia.
Doc opened the door from the garage to the home’s kitchen. Silvia noticed the smell immediately.
“Whoa,” said Silvia.
“Remember, hold your breath, follow me and move fast,” said Doc has he took a deep breath and moved quickly into the house. Silvia did the same and the spring-loaded door shut behind them.
Connie reached for the same door to follow, but Susan put a hand on her arm.
“Wouldn’t do that just yet,” said Susan.
“Because?” asked Connie.
“The smell is pretty bad when we first go inside,” continued Susan. “Better to let the body detail open all the windows for a few minutes. Then it won’t be so bad.
Connie nodded her head. Sounded like good advice. The other newbies all heard what Susan said.
Chapter 51: Double A’s
It wasn’t until Mark and his small army had gone about five miles after lunch that he realized their group had traveled all morning without a flat tire.
“How is that possible now, when in the last two hours, we’ve repaired three flats,” Mark thought to himself as he watched Jake and William repair William’s front tire.
The repairs were taking longer than they had a few days earlier. That was because the newbies were learning from the regulars and training time always takes longer.
The rest of the team was positioned like a porcupine, as usual. The scouts were sitting down about 100 yards ahead of the group. Everyone else was on a knee with their guns pointed outward.
There were times when Mark caught the guys getting lazy with guard duty. Since they rarely seemed to see anyone on the freeway they began to chat more than watch. Mark agreed that there seemed to see less and less people around, but that kind of thinking was what got people killed. Get complacent and get killed he would preach. The regulars knew the speech and it didn’t take much to get them refocused. But the newbies resisted Mark’s constant commands. They weren’t used to it. Silvia had to remind them of their commitment from time to time, and Mark appreciated it.
“Keep an eye out, everyone,” said Mark. “It’s everybody’s job to protect the team and each other. Especially those changing tires.”
Frank was kneeling next to Jacob as they watched the team’s back. They’d been paired for the last two days. Frank sensed leadership potential in Jacob. He was a natural.
“How you are doing on the bike?” asked Frank.
“Ok, I guess,” replied Jacob. “Wish I could ride like Tyrone and Teresa.”
“It’s all body types and genes,” said Frank. “I did a lot of special ops with Tyrone and it wasn’t long before he became known as the mule.
“The mule?” asked Jacob.
“You know, like he could carry twice as much weight as the next guy and it didn’t seem to bother him any,” said Frank.
Frank took a long drink out of his water bottle and pushed his sunglasses up on his nose.
“We were in country in August and the temperature was like 115 degrees,” began Frank. “We’d hiked in 35 miles to our target and on our way back to camp our radioman rolled his ankle bad and couldn’t walk. Tyrone picked the guy up like he weighed nothing and walked him back all the way over his shoulder.”
“Why didn’t you guys just call in a helicopter or something?” asked Jacob.
“There are times when that’s possible,” responded Frank. “But we were walking out through a steep waddie.”
“What’s a waddie,” said Jacob.
“It’s like a ravine with a dry riverbed in the bottom,” replied Frank. “You couldn’t get a helicopter in there. We had to walk it out.”
“And let me guess,” said Jacob. “And Tyrone was talking most of the way back like it was nothing.”
“Exactly,” said Frank. “See, after a while we began to think Tyrone didn’t have real parents, but that he was built out of automobile parts.
Jake smiled when he heard Frank telling the “Tyrone didn’t have real parents’ story.” He was close enough to hear Sam and Jacob.
“We also wondered if Tyrone was part of some crazy Army experiment gone horribly wrong,” added Jake with the same smile. “At night we would plug him into a power source to recharge his batteries.
“Double As, as I recall,” said Frank.
Tyrone was picking up the conversation now.
“Double As!” rejected Tyrone. “Those batteries are for kids’ toys. “I run on 250 lithium nine volt batteries encased in a titanium box where my stomach should be. That’s why I don’t eat much.”
Most of the regulars laughed. It was an old story line. But the men knew it and it brought comfort when there was stress.
Jake and William finished patching William’s tire and were packing the repair gear back into William’s trailer. Everybody sensed they were about to move again, and everyone began to stir.
Junior was close to Mark.
“You thinking about trying for the Cajon summit today?” asked Junior.
“I don’t think we could make it before dark,” replied Mark. Boon sa
y’s it pretty steep in places. Probably have to walk the bikes toward the end.”
“How far you want to go?” said Junior.
“We’ll go until the we come to the steeper grade. Then we’ll look for a place,” responded Mark.
Everyone one was up and ready. Mark lifted his radio to his mouth.
“Let’s fire it up,” said Mark.
One hundred yards ahead Randy and Caroline popped up and Randy pulled the radio close to his mouth.
“Roger that,” replied Randy.
The team of twenty began pedaling again, heading east on the 210 freeway toward the Cajon pass, entryway to the high California desert.
Chapter 52: Beef Medallions
Kevin and Marylin started riding by 10:30 in the morning. They’d found two ten-speed bikes in one of the homes close to the town convenience store. They were both Schwinn Varsity models and seemed pretty old. Kevin found an old tube repair kit on the garage’s dusty shelf as well as a pump that looked even older than the bikes. But the pump seemed to work and after the tires were full, they started west on the 1-15 freeway, this time pedaling instead of walking. Kevin strapped the pump to his overloaded backpack.
There were a lot of accidents and glass on I-15 between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The Gamma Ray Burst hit on Friday night and the section of road pointing toward Vegas was choked with late night drivers heading out for a quick weekend of gambling. Even though they were traveling in the southbound lane, there was still glass everywhere. It took Marylin and Kevin all day to make 19 miles. After a few flats they learned to walk through the glass while carrying their bikes on their shoulders. This was particularly hard because they were already carrying heavy packs.
Just as the sun went down they pulled their bikes off the shoulder and into the sand. They spotted a large culvert that ran under a freeway bridge and climbed into it.
They spent 15 minutes clearing out the rocks and brush from inside the bottom of the culvert, trying to make the sandy bottom as level as possible.
“Hey honey, what’s for dinner?” asked Kevin with a smile.
Marylin was carrying all the energy bars.
“Well let me see,” replied Marylin, as she reached into the bag.
“For the main course we’ll be eating beef medallions in wine sauce with red potatoes and asparagus,” said Marylin, as she reverently handed Kevin an energy bar. “And for desert,” she continued, as she handed a second bar to Kevin. “We’ll be having Chocolate Death Fudge Cake with cinnamon frosting.”
“Ah,” replied Kevin with relish. “My favorite.”
The small couple sat close together with their backs up against the round corrugated culvert wall. They’d piled extra clothing underneath them for insulation and spread the single sleeping bag over them both like a blanket.
“Good enough,” said Mark.
“Good enough,” replied Marylin as positively as possible.
The light was fading fast and they could barely see anything inside the culvert.
“Do you think we’ll ever find a safe place?” asked Marylin.
Kevin didn’t reply right away. He was thinking about the old woman, Olivia.
“I think we will,” said Kevin, nearly whispering.
They were quite for a while again.
“Maybe we’ll have a better luck toward Los Angeles,” suggested Marylin.
“Maybe,” replied Kevin. “But there are probably nasty people in Los Angeles too. I don’t think Las Vegas has a corner on the bad guy market.”
The air was so quiet. Nothing stirred.
“Where are we going to go?” asked Marylin with a tear in her eye.
“I don’t know. Someplace where we can protect ourselves as least,” said Kevin. “All I know for sure is we stay away from Las Vegas.”
“Amen to that,” added Marylin, as she pulled the sleeping bag up tight against her chin to keep out the cold.
Marylin lay next to Kevin with her head on his shoulder. Neither of them would sleep for a few hours. They were too keyed up. When they finally did doze off, Marylin’s dreams were filled with the sound of breaking branches and images of Olivia lying dead in her hallway with her eyes wide open.
Chapter 53: Warm Beer
Ralphy and Squeaky had made good time on their Wal-Mart bikes. But it was nearly dark by the time they pulled into Nipton. They’d covered the same distance in half the time their prey had taken the day before. They spied the convenience store and headed there, looking for water. They’d finished all their water by 1 pm and were very thirsty. After they realized there wasn’t any bottled water left in the store, they decided to drink a few beers.
It was pretty obvious that someone had been there before them and had already taken away most of the edible food.
“Warm beer,” said Ralphy in disgust.
“Better than nothin,” offered Squeaky, as he guzzled his open can.
Warm beer was hard to swallow. Felt like the bubbles were twice as strong. Came crawling out your nose and ears.
Ralphy looked around the store as the sunlight was fading.
“I wonder if our lady friend was here before us?” said Ralphy.
“Probably,” said Squeaky between gulps. Squeaky was on his fifth beer. These boys could polish off a case of beer without even trying.
“My bet is our little miss sunshine and her boyfriend was here yesterday and took everything they could carry,” said Ralphy.
“Makes um sound a little desperate,” said Squeaky with a smile on his face.
“They’ll be desperate enough when we catch up with um,” finished Ralphy.
That re-planted the thought Squeaky had been dreaming of most of the day.
“And we still get first crack at the woman,” said Squeaky.
“You’ll get your turn after me,” said Ralphy.
Squeaky didn’t say a thing. But he was giddy with anticipation and thought of nothing else as the early evening ticked away, until he passed out while drinking his thirteenth beer.
Chapter 54: He stays where he lies
Mark’s team of twenty kept up a good pace after lunch. They turned North on I-15 about 30 minutes earlier. It felt good to finally get on the road that would take them all the way to Utah. As anticipated, the grade was getting steeper. They were beginning the long and steep climb up the Cajon pass. Mark’s strategy was to go as far as he could today and then ascend the steepest part of the pass tomorrow after a good night’s rest.
Suddenly the radio cracked and interrupted Mark’s stream of thought.
“We’ve got a little problem up here,” said Frank. “You better come up quick.”
Mark looked forward as he rode a little faster and saw what looked like a man and a woman off to the side of the freeway with Frank and Jacob standing away from their bikes with guns drawn.
It took Mark and the rest of the group about 30 more seconds to pull up even with Frank and Jacob. There was a heated conversation going on and it grew louder the closer the group got to Frank and Jacob. Frank had his handgun pointed at the man with his finger on the trigger.
The man was about 50 years old. He wore a backpack and an old Angles baseball cap. He hadn’t shaved in few days. In one hand he held a long leather dog leash. The leash was attached to a dog collar that was round a young woman’s neck. She was maybe 30, dark blonde hair and wore a pair of jeans and a thin jacket. It looked like she hadn’t bathed in days. Her head was down but her eyes were wide with fear.
“She’s mine, dam it!” barked the old guy, as he violently jerked the leash and the head of the woman.
In the other guy’s hand was a trigger switch. His hand was on the red plunger. He held it out toward the group like a weapon.
“She’s mine and nobody’s taking her from me,” repeated the man. “Bought and paid for proper.”
Mark got off his own bike and slowly approached the man. He got a closer look at the woman as he came around toward her front. Mark raised his hands into the air to make s
ure the man knew he wasn’t going to harm him. Then Mark noticed that around her neck were a couple of wires attached to some gray plastic explosives. Not a lot, but more than enough to kill her. There was a small blinking light attached to the wire and explosive and the wire ran back down the dog leash to the red trigger switch in the man’s hand. Mark had seen similar devices on suicide bombers in Afghanistan.
“Mr.” began Mark. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt here.”