by Linda Nelson
Max and Rod talked about maybe selling the TV and Stereo. They could get more gas money or better, yet they could buy good stuff like booze and weed and such.
The girls laughed at each other as they tried on the old ladies shirts and pants. Finally, they both found something satisfactory to wear that didn’t make them look like a couple of old ladies.
The style of the man’s clothes was a bit more universal. The old man had decent taste in clothing and shoes with a wide selection of polo shirts and name brand jeans. The jeans fit them kind of loosely, but this was the going style anyway. These they tried on after they left the seashore and were well on their way inland, when they had found a secluded rest area to stop at for a bit while Rod used the bathroom in the camper.
Rod’s next step was to find a place for them to camp for the night. Fortunately the camper came with maps. Carol found these in the glove box and made the mistake of opening the map all the way.
Karla had to laugh at her when she finally gave up on refolding it. That was when she was able to come to the rescue. It was one of the few things that Karla was good at, refolding maps.
Two hours later, Rod drove onto a dirt road and followed it for a good mile. He was satisfied with finding an old cow path jutting off the road. The camper rocked back and forth as it traveled over the path that may have once been a road. It was washed out in some places, and they had to cross a bridge that was in badly need of restoration. He knew by the state of the road that they should be safe from being discovered by any law enforcement.
They chose to camp in the woods instead of a campground after Carol found a section about campgrounds on the back of the map. It listed the costs of each of the places they could stay and decided that they wanted to spend their found money on more important things other than a campground.
Carol was the first one out of the camper. She too was satisfied by the site Rod had picked for them to stay at for the rest of the day, even though it didn’t have any running water or electricity.
As soon as they stopped, Carol took off and walked about the area to see where the stream led. Hopefully it went to some sort of body of water where she possibly could wash off the salt from the ocean.
What she found was woods in every direction and a path that led to a small pond in walking distance.
They could wash up there and maybe swim a bit.
After discovering the pond, Carol went back to the camper and found some soap and towels. She grabbed a towel for herself and one for Karla and beckoned for her to follow.
As always, Karla had a hard time keeping up with Carol. They trudged down a narrow path leading past a marsh.
“Where are we going,” Karla asked.
“To take a bath…”
“Take a bath? Where? Are we going to break into someone’s house next and use there bathroom?”
Carol laughed. She was kind of surprised still by how innocent and naïve Karla was after all this time. “No silly,” she said as the path opened up to a small sandy beach exposing the small pond. She immediately took off her shoes and began to strip naked.
“You’re just going to go in like that?”
Again Karla made Carol laugh. “Come on in – the water is fine.”
Karla looked around her to make sure that there was no one around but them and once she was sure she began to take off her clothes and joined Carol in the water.
After Carol used the bar of soap in her hair she handed it to Karla, “Don’t drop the soap okay; you might not be able to find it again.”
Both girls laughed.
They broke in to a game of splashing at each other bringing laughter from the two of them. Neither girl noticed the creature standing on the beach watching them until it let out a low groan.
Karla looked first to see the black bear scoop up her clothing and give it a toss away from the shore line. It appeared to notice the two of them in the water. When it looked right at her, instead of screaming, Karla reached out and put her hand on Carol’s shoulder and hushed her at the same time.
Carol turned to see what Karla was looking at. The bear began to wade in the water toward where they floated close to shore. The ponds waves lapped at their bare shoulders.
“What are we going to do?” Whispered Karla.
Carol scanned the area and spotted where the path they had followed to the pond passed it where the sloping shoreline rose to meet the path. She pointed to it and began slowly swimming, Karla followed behind her.
By the time they had reached their destination, the bear was walking back toward the shallows but away from the girls. They were now downwind from the animal and apparently it had forgotten all about them.
They were about to climb out of the water by holding onto a fist full of handfuls of branches and rocks to pull themselves out of the water. That was when a snake swam past them in the water. Karla couldn’t help herself. She let out a scream.
Carol turned and clamped her hand over Karla’s mouth while she waited for the water moccasin to swim away.
The bear heard the scream and turned toward their direction and let out a low growl.
Carol released her hand from Karla’s mouth and quickly pulled her naked body out of the water. She held her hand out for Karla to grab a hold of and helped pull her onto the shore.
The bear, still in the water started walking toward where it had heard the sound come from.
Neither girl wanted to wait around to see if the bear was going to come after them. They both decided it was better to be safe than sorry and ran as fast as they could back to their camp.
They were greeted by two wide eyed guys sitting by a camp fire, very much surprised to see two naked girls running toward them.
Carol and Karla ran right past them and into the camper shutting the door behind them. As they replaced their missing clothing, the guys burst inside to see what was going on.
“What happened to your clothes?” Rod asked. He leaned against the cabinets watching Carol slip the shirt over her head. He had a great big grin that was matched by Max’s grin.
Max frowned when Karla pulled her shirt on hiding her shapely figure.
“We took a bath in the pond, and while we were in the water a bear came and threw our clothes in to the woods,” Carol answered.
Max raised an eyebrow. He found this story to be a bit far-fetched for him to believe. What were the chances of the girls running into a bear? Not very high, he thought. It wasn’t like they were that far off the main road.
“A bear – you expect us to believe that you were both chased by a bear?”
“We were,” Karla said defensively to Max. “If you want we will take you back there so you can see for yourself. Just watch out for the water snakes.”
Rod figured he could have fun with this. “So now you’re not only saying you were chased by a bear, but you were also chased by a snake?” He laughed.
“For your information,” Carol began, “We were in the water when the bear just showed up on the beach. We watched it toss our clothes into the woods. Then it came into the water and was either after us or fishing, I don’t know which, but we didn’t want to wait around to find out. So, while it was busy fishing in the water, we snuck out of the pond at the other end. When we began to climb the embankment to the path, a snake swam past Karla in the water. It startled her – she screamed – the bear heard us – and we ran just as you saw us. No clothes, nothing…”
By now Karla was fully dressed. “If you don’t believe us, we’ll show you come on.”
“You aren’t going back there,” Carol asked. “What about the bear?”
“It’s probably long gone by now. If it isn’t we, can feed the guys to it.”
Karla downright hated it when someone didn’t believe a word she said. She challenged both Max and Rod with a glare. They both just smiled in return. That did it for Carol, as well.
Carol grabbed Rod by the hand and dragged him out of the camper. “Come on. Karla’s right, we’ll show yo
u the God damn bear.”
Rod and Max followed the two girls down the path to the pond. The beach held no signs of the bear or their clothes except for the big prints in the sand.
“See, I told you there was a bear here,” Karla said dignified.
Dark clouds began to gather over head with Thunder clouds off in the distance. They would be here in another hour.
Max knew what that could mean being in the south. He had heard many stories about the twisters that frequented the region.
He pointed toward the clouds, “I think we had better get back to the camper. We might have to get out of here quick.”
The four of them left in a hurry forgetting about the bear and the lost clothing.
As soon as they got back to the camper they packed up all the gear that was tossed outside. The storm clouds looked mean, and they didn’t want to hang around.
Rod was high, but he could drive. He had gotten into his stash of Cloud Nine while the girls were off bathing. He felt well enough to drive though. The shadows were not playing tricks with his mind, at least not yet. He was sure he would have no problem driving them out of there if need be. He started up the camper and switched on the radio. It was broadcasting a storm warning for their area for high winds and a tornado warning with violent lightning.
“I saw a bridge back about a mile from here. I think we should try to make it to it and stay there until after the storm,” Max said.
Fifteen minutes passed before they found the bridge. It was an overpass. Rod thought about parking the camper underneath the bridge, but the camper was too long and there was already another car parked underneath it, leaving no room for them to park. There was only one thing left to do. Get out and hide on foot underneath the bridge.
Rod went about the camper gathering up a few belongings before he would leave the rig behind. Carol kept yelling at him to hurry. She already could see the twister coming toward them. The wind had picked up.
Karla found something to hang onto under the bridge. Max did the same. Carol and Rod didn’t join them at first, and they both began to worry if the two of them were going to make it, yelling at them to hurry.
The twister barreled down on them and then split into two. It didn’t take much for it to suck the camper up into the air and carry it off. Gone was all their food, anything of value for hawking, and clothing. Once again they had nothing. Not even a place to sleep.
The four teens held on for dear life while the winds threatened to suck them out from underneath the bridge.
All Karla could do was pray. She prayed for the twister to go away. She prayed she could hold on until it passed. And she prayed that it didn’t suck Max or her friends up and take them away from her.
As it passed overhead, Karla prayed one last time. She prayed that she never saw a twister ever again.
It seemed like an eternity passed before it was safe for them to come out from underneath the bridge. The sky cleared up, but the grounds showed a trail of destruction for miles. They had been lucky.
Karla was tired, and her arms hurt from having to hold on for dear life. Carol felt drained too.
Rod wasn’t happy about the loss of their wheels. It meant that they were going to have to walk, which he had no plans of doing. Not when there was a car underneath the bridge with them, and a man and woman got out of it.
“Are you kids all right?” The man asked.
He didn’t notice Rod moving around behind him. Carol saw him though, and she didn’t like what he appeared about to do.
Rod grabbed the woman from behind with one arm and held a knife to her throat with the other.
“Give us all your money and the keys to your car,” he demanded.
The man turned to see Rod holding a knife to his wife’s throat. He knew he had no choice and tossed his wallet and keys on the ground in front of Carol’s feet.
Rod in turn, released the woman and shoved her toward her husband.
Carol couldn’t believe he was doing this.
Carol was all for stealing from parked cars or shoplifting in stores, but threatening to take a person’s life for their money, that wasn’t what she was into. Now wasn’t the time to argue with Rod though. He was the one with the knife, and Carol was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to muscle it away from him anyway.
The whole trip had been fun up until now. Wasn’t it Thanksgiving? She should have been home having turkey with her dad, maybe her mum too. The bitch who had taken her stuff. Once she remembered that…she remembered why she was on this road trip in the first place.
Rod made the man and woman walk down the highway in the opposite direction to the way the teens would be traveling, they willingly obliged even though he didn’t have a gun pointed at them. He didn’t realize he was sending them right into town. In a matter of hours, the authorities would know about them and in which direction they were traveling in.
Chapter 14 – Surviving the Party
Rod drove a half an hour down the highway before he pulled off at the next junction. He quickly turned the car around as soon as he saw the four police cruisers parked on the side of the road. He was sure they were waiting for him.
“Can’t go here, Police,” he said as he turned the vehicle around after seeing the road block ahead.
Karla hung on tight to Max in the back seat of the car as she was off balance from the sudden turn. The car tires squealed and screeched while the car spun around.
Carol looked out her window back up the street from where they had come from. There wasn’t a single police cruiser in sight. “What the hell are you talking about? There aren’t any cruisers back there.”
Rod looked in his rear view mirror. He could see the cruisers. In fact, they had all turned around and they were now following him onto the highway with their lights flashing.
“Man, slow down, you’re gonna get us all killed,” yelled Max from the backseat.
“Damn it Rod! Now we are going the wrong way on the wrong side of the highway. What are you trying to do – Kill us?” Carol screamed.
Rod looked once again in his rearview mirror. There were no longer any cars following him as far as he could tell. Maybe he had lost them, he couldn’t be sure.
Carol started smacking him on the arm. “Get on the right side of the road, you friggin idiot!”
He had been dodging cars one right after the other since he had spun the car around at the last exit. On top of that, he was traveling close to a hundred miles an hour.
Karla was almost on the floor out of fear of seeing car after car heading right for them.
With a quick turn of the steering wheel, Rod drove the car over the median and set them in the right traffic direction. But he still hadn’t slowed the car down. The gas gauge was quickly falling. Soon they would be back in the county they had just fled from with a car that had an empty gas tank.
Exit signs for the next town appeared overhead.
Carol quickly pointed them out. “Pull off here. I got to pee.” She was still furious from his drive down the wrong side of the highway. She couldn’t understand what was going on with him. She just knew that he was acting crazy, too crazy for her liking.
Rod pulled off at the exit. He slowed the car down right before he entered the winding turn.
A black bird came out of nowhere and smacked into the center of the windshield.
Karla jumped. She thought they had hit another car.
Max leaned forward in the seat to see if he could see where it went. “Did you see that, man?” He gripped onto the back of the front seat.
“You hit a friggin bird,” Carol shouted at Rod.
“I know, I saw it too,” he yelled back at her. “What do you want me to do about it? Go back and give it CPR? It’s probably dead.”
Carol crossed her arms. She didn’t know what was up with Rod, but she was sure she didn’t like it. The guy just kept flipping out. First there were the bugs and then the so called road block. What was going to be next – aliens from another w
orld?
The exit led them into a small town. Its main street had a dinner that was closed, and a gas station. That too was closed.
Carol was still pissed. “They’re all closed. Now what,”
Rod looked at Carol. He had never seen anyone turn into a bitch in the flash of an eye. He could only wonder what her problem was.
“Just pull down the next street and pull over someplace where no one can see. I really got to pee,” Carol snapped.
Rod hated it when someone spoke to him this way. “All right Bitch, I’m pulling over.”
Carol glared at him. As soon as the car stopped she flung open the car door and beat feet into the sparse woods on the side of the road. She couldn’t put enough distance between her and the car. All she wanted to do at that moment was scream. No one, not even Gerry, had ever managed to scare her like that with their driving.
“Carol?” Karla called after her.
Karla followed after her friend but was soon far behind her. She stopped in her tracks fearing she was about to become lost. The rumble of thunder sounded off in the distance.
“Damn it, Carol, where are you?” Karla called out again.
Carol heard Karla calling her name. She didn’t answer right away. She really needed some space.
In her pocket, she felt a left over joint. At least she had that, it wasn’t much, but at least it was something.
Five minutes later she jumped out of the brush behind Karla who was fretting herself about being lost in the woods. Carol scared the crap out of her causing her to let out a small scream.
Karla hated when someone did that to her.
“Carol what the hell? You just scared the crap out of me.”
“I know… it was so funny,” a giddy Carol replied. “Okay, I’m done going the bathroom. Do you need to go?”
“No…”
“All right then let’s go.”
Carol led the way back to the road. It was a good thing too. Karla’s sense of direction was way off.