by L. L. Akers
She had thought about killing those men. She realized that somewhere deep inside of her, she was capable of it, too. For a moment, she wasn’t looking at the biker in the woods. She was looking at a man from her past. A man who’d nearly forced her to take her own life. He was a monster, just like the bikers. Did killing a monster make her a monster, too?
She hoped she’d never find out.
They stopped to lean against a tree to rest. Mei stared worriedly behind them.
Gabby breathed silently, although it was an effort, and her lungs were seriously getting pissed from the abuse. She didn’t want Mei to know just how worn out—and scared—she really was. Sweat dripped off her nose, hitting the dry leaves with an exaggerated plop. There were no other sounds, other than the distant tree frogs and cicadas. She listened harder. A breeze rustled up some leaves, but when it quieted, she heard nothing again.
The near silence was deafening.
She waved a hand at Mei and they slowly trudged forward another fifty feet.
Finally, through the trees she, she saw daylight and a glimpse of the highway covered in cars that had given up their fight and now lay haphazardly parked in two sleeping lines. There wasn’t a person to be seen.
Until there was.
Larry’s car came into sight, barreling down a clear gap and then swerving to zoom down the shoulder of the highway. He slid to a stop beside the two rows of gridlocked stalled cars, throwing up loose asphalt.
Gabby’s heart leapt. They’d found them!
But how? Can they see us? Through the trees?
She watched him jump out of the car and stomp to the other side.
What is he doing?
“Hey! We’re here!” she screamed, pushing the brush and branches out of her way, trying to break free of the forest to step out onto the road.
She heard Olivia and Emma yelling, but couldn’t make out their words.
Why is no one looking at me and Mei? Maybe they haven’t seen us?
Starting to panic, she hurried, walking faster and trying to break into a run. Maybe they were out of gas, too? Maybe the bikers were coming? Had they found a way to fix their tires? Were they right behind them?
Gabby looked to the left but could only see more stranded cars and now, a small group of people were walking a few miles back, no bigger than toy soldiers from this distance.
A stitch in her side struck her suddenly and she bent over in pain. “Run, Mei! Catch them!”
She stared through the trees as Mei pushed harder, opening a bigger space through the limbs and leaves. Now Gabby could see Larry. H was in a rage, throwing their make-shift T-shirt bags out of his car.
He was dumping them.
Asshole!
All other thoughts flew from her mind as the belief planted itself firmly that they’d be stranded, hours and hours away from home, on foot. The bikers would find them soon. They’d be taken to some Sons of Anarchy-type clubhouse and forced to be Old Ladies.
She may never see Jake again.
Or worse.
She stood stooped over, with one hand clutching her side, paralyzed with fear. It all caught up with her. She was tired of being the one always in charge. Tired of Olivia being so flaky and undependable. Tired of Emma being so invisibly quiet except when she was being the peacemaker. She couldn’t handle the pressure. All she wanted was to get herself and her sisters home safely. But she’d screwed up everything so far.
She leaned farther over, grabbing her knees. She couldn’t breathe.
Her bag slid up and hit her in the back of the head. The sweat that soaked her clothes turned into a prickly bath of ice water. She turned her head up just in time to see Larry get back in the car, and leave Olivia and Emma standing still on the side of the road, shoulders slumped, their bags at their feet.
Probably waiting on Gabby—or someone—to tell them what to do next.
To hell with it.
She was done.
They were on their own. She couldn’t be the boss anymore. She sucked at it and had only got her sisters into a bigger mess than they were in at the beach resort. Olivia should be stepping up; it was her husband after all that was the prepper. With their elderly father now living out of town with his fiancé, Grayson was sort of the new family patriarch. Didn’t that make Olivia the matriarch? Surely, she learned something from Grayson.
She swallowed past a lump in her throat and stood up straight. Mei had stopped, waiting as though in limbo between Gabby and her sisters out on the road. Gabby was ready to explode.
Furiously looking around, she stalked over to an abandoned bike dumped in the ditch. She got on the bike and turned it the opposite way, calling out behind her, “Go. Walk with them. I’m going on my own from here.”
21
The Ladies
Gabby ranted and raved, throwing her fist into the air and then giving Larry a double one-finger salute to his rear-view mirror. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her sisters—and she’d left her bag. She’d meant to. They’d need it worse than her. But she wasn’t so angry she didn’t realize she needed it too.
She’d only ridden a minute up the road before turning around and pedaling back as fast as she could to try to catch Larry. But he was too far ahead.
He’d driven slowly away, leaving them stranded, answering her one-fingered salute with an obnoxious honk of his horn. She hoped the bikers found him.
“Piece of shit!” she screamed, straddling the bike.
She jumped off of it and let it fall to the ground and whipped around to her sisters. “Why’d he dump us?” she yelled.
Olivia backed away from her.
“Calm down, Gabby. It’s not her fault,” Emma answered. “He’s a coward. When we told him about that gang, he said he didn’t want to be caught with us.”
Olivia held up her arm. “But look, I still have my Rolex. We can find someone else to trade with. Although I’d really like to keep it…”
Gabby rolled her eyes and clenched her jaw and turned, stomping back through the ditch to the tree-line where she’d dropped her bug-out bag. Mei stood beside the bag, silent and wary, staring at Gabby with guilt pinching her eyes.
“It’s not your fault,” Gabby muttered. “Come on.”
Olivia tried to pick up the bike, dropping it on the first try. “Let’s take this. We can take turns riding it,” she said.
Gabby kept walking. “Fuck that bike.”
She snatched her bag up with a heavy hand and trudged back to the road, stepping out in front of her sisters and leading the way.
Again.
Flip. Flop. Flap.
Flip. Flop. Flap.
The slapping of Olivia’s flip-flops was driving everyone insane, on top of the waves of heat rolling up off the asphalt, giving more weight to the feeling of being in hell. To her credit, Olivia had run like the wind earlier in them, but now they were nearly destroyed, the rubber almost completely melted on the soles. Gabby watched as Olivia exhaustedly measured each step while looking down and gripping the stubborn piece between her toes that barely held the shoes together. Her toes were bunched up, crooked and strained, and when she raised her feet, there was a gaping hole in the bottom of each shoe, clearly showing the dirt on Olivia’s feet.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
“Stop, Olivia,” Gabby said, feeling guilty that in her rage she’d stupidly made Olivia leave the bike. She could have ridden it to save her feet some grief.
Olivia didn’t argue. She stepped off the road to the ditch and heavily sat down, stripping off her shoes and rubbing her feet.
Gabby dug through her bug-out bag. “There’s got to be something in here to fix them.”
She found a pencil, wrapped in layers of silver duct tape. “Aha!” Silently, she thanked her husband for listening to Grayson and packing her a bug-out bag. She’d meant to do it herself, but never got around to it. Jake had done well. Quickly she focused on the flip-flops before thoughts of Jake crippled her.
She wound the duct tape around Olivia’s shoes multiple times, covering the holes and giving her more padding to replace what had melted or been worn away. She handed them back to Olivia, not even earning a thank you.
She sighed.
After an hour of arguing, her sisters—and Mei—had lost the fight, and they were sulking. They wanted to step off the interstate, and cut through the country, hoping to get away from the energy-depleting heat and into some shade, and shave time off their long walk home.
But someone had dropped the map.
Gabby cringed again. She’d let Olivia believe it was her, having left it in the car when they’d first arrived at the rest area. But actually, Gabby had picked up the map and the picture of her and Olivia standing in front of Jake’s truck and had put them in her back pocket before their snafu in the woods with the bikers.
Gabby had left the bike. And Gabby had lost the map. And the picture. Three screw-ups. Maybe more… And without the map, she couldn’t be sure they’d find their way home if they left the interstate.
But the girls had another point, too. If and when the bikers fixed their tires, they could be right behind them. They’d hedged their bets, planning to run and hide if they heard motorcycles, and so far, they hadn’t. But their luck had to run out sometime. They would be harder to find if they took a shortcut and got off of the highway. But, they were all directionally-challenged and relied far too much on the modern conveniences of google maps and GPS’s. She didn’t trust them to find their own way home without that map, which had their route highlighted all the way to the homestead.
She watched as they shared a last bottle of water, passing it around between the three of them. Finally, Mei handed it to her.
Gabby shook her head.
Penance for her unspoken crimes.
Let them have it.
“Okay, I give. Let’s get off the road.”
As night began to fall around them, their hearts fell with it. At this point, after hours of walking, they had no idea how close or far from home they were. They’d lost sight of the interstate long ago and only hoped they were still walking the right direction.
Mei was in the front now, where they could prod her along and keep an eye on her. Although they didn’t know exactly how old she was, Gabby felt sure she was very young. Mei should be stronger than all of them, not weaker. She had been through a lot, but in the past few hours she had really slowed down, and even more worrying, she was convinced they didn’t want her there, and didn’t want her to come home with them. Repeatedly, she’d offered to just go it alone and head a different direction.
At this point, Gabby could admit to herself, she didn’t want her there. She had a feeling Mei had some very serious issues. But Mei had said she had no one and nowhere else to go, so Gabby kept her mouth shut when Olivia and Emma stepped in to reassure her she was wanted.
Mei stopped walking and cocked her head, and rubbed her red, itchy eyes for the thousandth time. Gabby hoped she wasn’t going to dig through that purse again. She’d stopped and dug through the small bag a dozen times already, never finding what she was looking for.
“Look,” Mei yelled excitedly. “A creek!”
Gabby raised an eyebrow. She was hesitant to believe Mei. Twice now Mei had seen something that wasn’t there. She’d freaked out over sticks on the trail, screaming and jumping around like a lunatic, thinking they were snakes, startling all of them.
They weren’t.
But this time, it was real. Gabby could hear the sound of water bubbling. Finding a burst of energy, the girls ran forward. They all jumped in to the ankle-deep water of the narrow creek, splashing it onto their faces and each other.
“Can we drink it?” Olivia asked.
They’d been without water for hours.
They all looked at Gabby. If someone was going to be a party pooper, it’d be her.
“Let’s filter it first,” Gabby suggested. “I don’t think anyone wants to be shitting like a goose while squatting on the ground.”
Olivia scrunched her nose up at her sister’s bad language. As Gabby’s patience wore thin, her mouth always got nasty, and her own filter soon would be totally gone. She’d always been that way, and Olivia had always chided her for it.
Gabby dug through her backpack and pulled out a sandwich baggie that held a Sawyer Mini filter kit. She unrolled the bladder and blew into it and held it down in the stream until it filled up. She screwed the filter onto the bladder, and handed it to Olivia first; she seemed to need water the worst.
Olivia held it in her hand and then looked at Gabby. “Do I drink the whole thing?”
“No. Take what you need right now and pass it around.”
Olivia scrunched up her nose. “So we’re all going to be drinking after each other?”
Gabby sighed. “Yeah, Olivia. Because you left the other bags at home, this is the only filter we have. That’s on you. Gotta share now.”
Indignantly, she drank long and deep and then tried to pass it to Gabby. She waved it on to Emma and Mei first. After the first bag was gone, Gabby filled it up again. They split two energy bars, surprised to still find they had some, and then emptied the bladder, drinking as much as they could hold. Three more times they filled it up and drank until they squeezed out the last drop, and finally the last bag was filtered into the empty water bottle for later.
Twice, while they were eating, drinking, and resting, Emma had tried to bring up their father. Neither Olivia nor Gabby wanted to discuss their dad. Getting home seemed such a challenge already, and he was another two hours away from Grayson and Olivia’s homestead, now living in Anderson, South Carolina, where he’d moved with his fiancé. They were getting on in years and there was no way they’d attempt to make it to the homestead; that they knew, so eventually if the power didn’t come back on, they’d have to make a plan to go get them.
But for now, one problem at a time.
The women got very quiet.
Gabby couldn’t think past seeing her husband, Jake. He’d not been himself lately and she wondered if he was suffering from some sort of depression. He wouldn’t talk about it with her. She hoped he’d gone to Grayson’s as soon as the grid went down so at least he wouldn’t be alone.
Olivia was worried beyond belief about her husband, Grayson, and her stepdaughter, Graysie—not to mention her dog, Ozzie. Graysie was away at college an hour from home. Surely, she left before the gas was gone and the roads were gridlocked, but what if she didn’t?
And Emma didn’t dare mention her son Rickey, or her own husband, Dusty. She couldn’t even whisper their names for fear of breaking down. With Dusty’s job, he could be in more danger than all of them, and Rickey could be right in the middle of it with him.
Mei wasn’t interested in talking either. She went from sitting to standing to pacing in equal measure, driving them all insane with her inability to sit still for a moment.
Gabby packed everything away and stood up. “Let’s go.”
They’d lost a lot of time sitting next to the creek, but left with a little more oomph and one refilled water bottle. Now they were in near pitch darkness struggling through a stand of thick forest in single file. Finally, they found a small trail but had no idea how far it went. They could be in here all night.
Gabby ran straight into a branch and leapt back just before it gouged her eye out. “I think we need to turn around,” she said.
“No way. We’ve been in here almost an hour now. I’m not going all that way back,” Olivia answered. Olivia thought they were close to home. She was wrong…Gabby just knew it. It didn’t feel like home yet. Or anywhere near it.
She gave in. “Okay, but I’ve got to pee. You all go on without me, I’ll catch up in a minute.”
“You sure?” Olivia asked. “Aren’t you scared?”
Gabby shook her head, although not sure if Olivia could see her. “I’ve got the gun, remember? I’ll only be a minute. Just keep walking.” She was afraid if they stopped and sat
down, they wouldn’t get back up.
The moon chose that moment to shine through the clouds and trees, throwing a patch of light onto the trail as Olivia, Emma and Mei slowly walked on.
Gabby stumbled around trying to find the perfect tree to squat in front of; a big one to lean against if she lost her balance, with a small one to hang onto next to it, hopefully with a patch of higher ground that would drain the pee away from her shoes; not on them.
Finally, she dropped her pack, removed the gun from the back of her pants, and hunkered down. As she emptied her bladder she wondered what kind of trail this was… a deer trail? A 4-wheeler trail?
It didn’t take her long to find out.
In a moment, a baby pig ran across the trail, and then turned and zigzagged back the way it’d come, nearly running right over Gabby’s feet.
Gabby gasped and froze, waiting to see if it came back. Her first thought was the bikers had found them, but this pig wasn’t wearing a skirt, and it wasn’t white. It was spotted gray and black.
It was a wild piglet.
And where there was a baby, there’d be a mama close.
She jerked her pants up in a hurry so she could warn her sisters.
Too late.
A piercing scream cut through Gabby’s heart and the woods came alive with the sound of running, squealing and snorting.
Gabby cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed, “Climb a tree!”
There was no way anyone could outrun a wild hog in the dark woods.
Her heart pounded as she gripped the pistol with one hand and blocked the branches from her face with the other. She flew down the trail guided by the tiniest bit of moonlight, feeling her skin being slapped and ripped with a torrent of limbs.
It’s going to kill them. It probably has tusks. I should have stayed with them. I’m the one with the gun… She could just see her sisters smeared with blood, laying in dripping heaps while wild animals gnawed at them. Her life would never be the same. Losing her twin sister would be like losing a limb. Losing both her sisters would be worse than death.