The Hike (Book 1): Survivors

by Quentin Rogers

  When he could break his trance from the scene, he walked and hopped the couple of hundred yards to the crest of the ridge where he could see to the east. The scene to the east was burned into his brain from when he had looked out from that same spot when he was a kid. On a clear day, he remembered that you could see almost forever from that ridge. You could easily make out the Town of Buffalo at the foot of the mountains, see the buttes that were south of the town of Gillette sixty miles away, and if you squinted you could even make out “Butt-Hill Mountain” near the Wyoming border. But what he saw this time was totally different. For as far as he could make out, it was nothing but the yellow-orange fog that was just as thick as it was to the south-west. It felt to Patrick as if he was staring out onto a yellow-orange ocean of evil from their secluded island. Patrick stood there mesmerized for a long time and was not sure how long he had been there when Makenzie approached. The sun was a little further across the sky, but it seemed like it was still early afternoon.

  “You scared me,” she said. “I couldn’t find you anywhere,” she continued with no emotion in her tone. She was just as mesmerized as her dad was at the lack of the landscape below and the rolling cloud.

  After a few moments, she said more than asked “It’s not a forest fire, is it?”

  “Nope,” he said without any emotion.

  She nudged his shoulder and handed him a granola bar as she opened one as well. They both ate the bars and stared off in a trance at the cloud.

  Patrick wasn’t sure how long it had been when Makenzie yelled “Dad! Come look.” He still had the granola wrapper in his hand, but the sun had moved almost all the way across the sky and was sitting just over the western horizon. He turned and saw that Makenzie was back at the wreckage and was looking in the direction of the sun.

  “Dad,” she called again and he began to briskly walk over to her. As he approached her, he could see what she was excited about. The cloud looked like it was partially dissipating to the west. At least it might be. He couldn’t concentrate on what she was looking at totally until he reached where she was standing because he kept having to look down to watch his footing along the boulders. But it looked like the cloud wasn’t as dense on the western horizon as it was in front of them.

  “I think that it’s breaking up,” she said with a little bit of excitement in her voice as he reached her. She had gotten the small pair of binoculars that had been in the fanny pack and was looking in the direction of the setting sun. She pulled them back and offered the binoculars to Patrick.

  He took the binoculars from her and pointed them in the same general direction that she had been looking. Patrick had to adjust the focus on them to try and make out what she was looking at, but it did seem that the cloud wasn’t as dense on the Western horizon and that it was beginning to become thinner. It was hard to tell, but he didn’t think that the cloud reached up as high on the ridge as it had when had looked at it earlier today. “It’s hard to tell Darlin’, but I think you’re right,” he told her as he continued to look through the binoculars at the cloud.

  They both sat down and leaned their backs up against the wreckage of the bomber as they handed the binoculars back and forth and watched the edge of the cloud until the sun touched the far horizon. That eerie deep orange color filled the sky as the sun shone through the mustard colored cloud.

  “What are we going to do Dad?” Makenzie asked.

  Patrick had spent all day staring at the cloud and surveying the surroundings, so you would have thought that he had rolled all the possibilities around in his head and came up with the most prudent solution for their predicament. But he hadn’t. He didn’t even know if he had a single coherent thought from the time that he had crawled out of the bomber wreckage that morning.

  “I’m not exactly sure Mak,” he told her directly. “We’ll take shelter here tonight and hope that the cloud dissipates overnight.”

  “Why don’t we head back down tonight Dad?” she asked with some excitement in her voice. “If we make it down to Lake Florence tonight, we could head back first thing in the morning if the cloud’s gone.”

  “Nah,” he told her after little contemplation. “I don’t think that the head lamp batteries will make it another night, and I think that we both could use some more rest before hiking out of here.”

  He could tell that she didn’t like his plan from the way that she looked down between her bent legs, but she didn’t argue the point at all. Instead she rifled through the fanny pack after a few moments and pulled out the last granola bar and unwrapped it. She tore it in half and handed one-half to her dad.

  “You go ahead,” Patrick said nodding to the half that she offered him.

  “No Dad. We both need to keep our strength up,” she said and kept the portion of the granola bar extended out him. Patrick somewhat reluctantly took it while she ate the other half.

  Unlike the previous night, Patrick wasn’t able to sleep. They had both turned in at the same time after dark, trying to share a portion of the shiny emergency blanket. However, his mind was fully engaged and racing now about their predicament and the nature of the cloud. When he realized that it was fruitless to lay in the make shift shelter any longer, he left Makenzie lay and he paced in the darkness outside the bomber wreckage that was dimly lit by the stars and a sliver of a moon.

  Patrick had purposely left his cell phone in the vehicle when they had left for the trailhead because he didn’t want any distractions from their bonding experience. There wasn’t cell coverage on the mountain anyways. He now wished that he had brought it though just to occupy his time by watching the service bar while he wandered around the top of the mountain. He also didn’t wear a watch anymore, so he could have pulled the phone out every few minutes to check the time to see how long they had until sunrise. As it was, he didn’t have anything to draw his focus and attention away from the cloud and what their next steps should be.

  A few hours before dawn, the stiff breeze that had been nearly constant since they reached the top of the ridge turned into a stiff wind. The pacing that had been keeping him warm in the breeze now wasn’t enough in the stronger wind, and he hunkered down on the east side of the wreckage to escape it. Even though the whistling of the wind through the wreckage was loud in the otherwise perfect stillness, Makenzie seemed to sleep through it.

  After a while, Patrick’s nose caught the hint of an odd smell that he couldn’t place. It was an odd odor had been carried along in the wind. Most flatlanders would think that you would smell pine and other woodland earthy smells while on the mountain, but Patrick was always amazed that above timberline there is a distinct lack of smells in the air. So the new distinct odor caught Patrick’s attention rather quickly. While his senses couldn’t place the odor, he could tell that it was out of place. It reminded him of a burnt-sweet smell. It was almost like that of sugar when it first begins to burn on a crème brulee or when his wife tried to make caramel for caramel apples for the first time and cooked the sugar too long. Almost like that, but not quite. The smell stayed in the air for a while, but it left almost as quickly as it had arrived, being replaced by the absence of smells in the clean crisp high mountain air.

  Even though the wind was just as strong as it had been and the temperature hadn’t increased at all, Patrick made his way back around to the west side of the wreckage at the signs of first light. The cold couldn’t keep him from looking to see if the cloud had broken up anymore or if what they had thought they had seen last night had just been wishful thinking.

  Makenzie stirred and then joined him outside as the first signs of light increased from the eastern horizon. They still couldn’t make out any details of their surroundings when she exited the wreckage while rubbing her upper arms and making small bouncing movements to stay warm.

  “Sleep okay?” he asked her.

  She looked up at him with sleep still in her eyes and an almost painful look on her face and said “Not really.”

  They both waited in si
lence while staring to the west for the sun to rise enough to illuminate the landscape to see if the cloud had receded or not. It only took a few moments, but it seemed like hours. Patrick slowly paced around in a small circle and Makenzie bounced up and down while they waited. Neither of them took our eyes from the ridgeline to the west where they thought they had seen the cloud receding the night before.

  The light came up gradually with the sun, and both Patrick’s eyes and brain strained to make out what they were seeing. Makenzie’s younger eyes must have been considerably better than her dad’s because she was sure of herself when she exclaimed with jubilee “It’s gone! It’s totally gone!” Her slight bouncing to stay warm turned into jumping up and down for joy. She quickly turned and wrapped her arms around his chest, but her legs continued to jump.

  Patrick slowly broke her grasp and removed her arms from around him so that he could concentrate on what he was seeing. His eyes were still trying to bring into focus the far ridge and find the cloud. As the light increased, it was evident that the cloud had receded much lower on the far ridgeline than it had been last evening. Looking down the valley towards the south, it looked like it had receded almost to Lake Helen. Even down there, it had dissipated in thickness and became much less opaque. It now looked more like a haze or smoke instead of a dense cloud. Patrick picked up the binoculars and looked down the valley at Lake Helen and the remains of the cloud. Through the binoculars he could see that the stiff wind that they had been experiencing on the ridge was down at the lower elevations too, and that the wind was carrying off the remains of the cloud.

  “It’s not gone, but it sure is leaving,” he told Makenzie with relief, but not with near as much exuberance as she was exhibiting.

  They collected their things, took one last look at the bomber wreckage, and began their trek down the ridge towards Florence Lake. Patrick wasn’t sure why, but his knee bothered him a whole lot more coming down the ridge than it had going up. He had to stop several times to rest and pick different routes to reduce the amount of times that he had to bend his knee just to keep the pain in check. He could tell that Makenzie wasn’t happy with the delays from the way that she would shift her weight back and forth and furrow her brow when she stopped and waited on him. Because of the delays, it was close to midday by the time they reached Florence Lake and the plaque from where they had started. They both sat and rested for several minutes without speaking to each other. Once rested, they gathered the fishing poles up that they had left near the plaque.

  “Do you think the fish we caught are still good?” Makenzie asked.

  “Oh yeah, I would think so. The temperature has been cool and I bet that lake water isn’t too far from freezing,” Patrick responded as his empty stomach growled when he started thinking about the fresh trout. He grabbed the stringers of fish and they both hiked up the hill to the sitting rock along the trail.

  Makenzie didn’t slow when she reached the top of the hill and the sitting rock, but Patrick grabbed her elbow gently and told her to wait a minute. He dug the binoculars out of the fanny pack and scanned the valley below looking for remnants of the yellow cloud. He couldn’t see any clue that the cloud was still there no matter where he looked.

  Patrick offered the binoculars to Mackenzie to look through as well, but she huffed and said “Let’s just go Dad,” as she started off on the trail back to their campsite where the tent was setup. Patrick didn’t respond, but just fell in along the trail behind her. His knee continued to bother him even walking down the trail that was considerably less steep than the Bomber Mountain ridge that they had just descended. This time though, Makenzie didn’t slow or stop to wait for him. She just continued at a quick pace along the trail such that she was out of sight by the end of the hike and had made it back to camp several minutes before Patrick arrived.

  When he reached the tent, Makenzie had the camp stove setup and was rifling through Patrick’s backpack looking for cooking supplies. She had already dawned her jacket and changed clothes, and Patrick began to do the same. He had expected there to be a residue or soot covering the tent and everything from the cloud when it left, but there wasn’t anything that could be seen or felt.

  By the time that the two cleaned, cooked, and ate the fish with some oatmeal it was late in the afternoon. They both were ravished and had made short work of the trout. Neither of them spoke during the meal preparation or consumption of it, and Patrick could feel Makenzie building that wall of anger back up between them. When the meal was finished and they were cleaning up, she began to pack her sleeping bag and other belongings up.

  “It’s going to be hard to make it back to the trailhead before dark,” Patrick commented to her.

  She immediately snapped her head around, cut her eyes to him, and responded sharply “I knew it. I knew you were dragging just to keep me up here one more night.”

  “That’s not it at all,” he said defensively. “I want to get back just as much as you, but my knee is killing me.”

  Makenzie continued to pack her belongings while her dad cleaned up the stove and stowed it. After a few minutes, he told her “Why don’t you go over to the camp across the lake and see if those folks know what that cloud or fog was from? I’ll stay here and break camp so that we’re ready to head down when you get back.”

  He could see the tension ease somewhat in her as she realized that he was willing to at least break camp. She started off around the lake to the other camp and then came back immediately. She then grabbed the water bottles and purifier before heading off again along the trail to the other campsite where they had seen when they first arrived at Misty Moon.

  She wasn’t gone very long at all and Patrick had just finished breaking the tent down when she returned. Makenzie handed him a filled water bottle that he placed in his pack and asked what the other hikers knew about the cloud.

  “Nobody was there,” she said.

  “Huh. Maybe they saw the cloud coming in and broke camp before it rolled in,” he said half wondering.

  “No,” she said. “The camp was still up with their bags and packs all around. Just nobody was there.”

  Makenzie helped her dad with stuffing and stowing the tent and they both went through and looked over their packs one last time. Patrick transferred a few of the things over to Makenzie’s backpack from his to make the weight being carried a little fairer. He had Makenzie get her flash light and raingear out and put them in side pockets where she could get to them in a hurry if they were needed. There was still plenty of light in the sky, but it was late afternoon and they didn’t have much time before the sun would set. Patrick rubbed his sore knee again quickly before they hoisted their packs and quickly adjusted them for the hike back down to the trailhead.

  “Now I know that you want to get back down to the vehicle as fast as possible and get off this mountain, but let’s make sure that we do it safe. I would hate to spend another night up here nursing one of us with a broken ankle, because we were trying to move faster than we should,” Patrick instructed. Makenzie turned to start the hike and after a couple of steps he added “Oh. And don’t put that iPod back in your ears so we can communicate if we need to.” Makenzie didn’t say anything in response or even look back, but Patrick was sure she rolled her eyes at his last request.

  Makenzie was in the lead, and just as her dad had worried she set a very fast pace. They weren’t quite jogging down the trail, but almost. Much of the trail wasn’t extremely steep, but it was downhill. Patrick’s knee was still functioning okay after it limbered up some, but it let him know that it didn’t like going downhill every step by sending dull pain messages.

  Patrick wasn’t sure how fast they were going, but he guessed that they were going down the trail three or four times faster than what it had taken them to hike up it the few days before. At the speed they were going, they might make it back to the trailhead just after dusk if one of them didn’t twist an ankle and his knee decided to hold together.

  When they
reached Lake Helen, Makenzie stopped for the first time at a rock near where they had camped the first night. Patrick joined her by leaning up against the rock, rubbing his sore knee, and looked out across the lake trying to take a mental picture of scene.

  “You know,” Makenzie began while she stared out across the lake as well. “I don’t remember seeing any of those rock chuck thingies on the way down.”

  After thinking about it for a little while Patrick told her that he didn’t remember seeing any either. Neither of them offered any guesses of why that might be, but instead they each took a long pull from their water bottles and headed back down the trail.

  The further they travelled, the more his knee was bothering him and the harder it became to keep up with Makenzie. By the time dusk fell, Makenzie was a couple of hundred yards in front of her dad clipping along at the same pace that they had started at. They had walked far enough that they were back down below timberline, and Patrick could only catch glimpses of her brightly colored light blue jacket through the trees occasionally. Now that they had entered the trees, the dusk was turning to early darkness and Patrick was debating whether to dig his flash light out of a side pocket on his back pack when he heard Makenzie scream.

  Chapter 5

  It doesn’t take long for new parents to recognize the different whines, cries, and coos that their new born baby makes. Patrick’s wife Mary could even usually tell if her children’s diapers were wet or more soiled just by the pitch of their voice when they would cry. The same type of recognition is still there even when they get older. Patrick knew before Makenzie’s scream was half-way over that she just wasn’t startled, she wasn’t excited about something, and she wasn’t playing around. Something was wrong.