“What?” Mackenzie asked before taking the items.
“Take them,” he said. “Tie the para-cord around your waist like a belt and put the knife on it.”
“What’s the big deal?” Mackenzie asked as she took the stuff from him and did as he asked.
“It’s just good to be prepared,” he said in that authoritative tone again.
He continued going through his pack some more and took the fanny pack out as she fumbled with tying the rope around her waist with the heavy knife hanging from it. He took off his head lamp, put fresh batteries in it, and stowed the used ones back in his pack. He was moving stuff from the fanny pack to his backpack and visa-versa when he saw that Mackenzie wasn’t getting anywhere with the makeshift belt and motioned for her to come over closer to him. She took a few steps forward and made sure that he saw her eyes roll back as she did so.
“Don’t you remember how I taught you to tie a slip knot,” as he had her hold one end of the rope while he made a loop and a knot in the other end.
“Daaad,” Mackenzie said. “I was like seven years old the last time you showed me that.”
“Well, it hasn’t changed since then,” he said as he put the other end through the loop and snugged the rope around her.
“That belt knife is a good one,” he said. “My uncle gave that to me one Christmas when I was about your age, and I’ve taken it on every excursion since then.” It was a nice-looking knife. Nothing fancy, but it looked functional. The blade was about six inches long and it had a black composite handle with a little bit of a finger guard.
When he finished with the rope, he reached up and slung the fanny pack around her waist as well. She stepped back in fear as she realized what he was doing, and he dropped one end of the belt from the fanny pack.
“No!” she said, and she meant it.
“Listen Darlin’,” he started, but she cut him off quickly.
“It took everything I had just to walk back and get your back pack,” she spat out quickly. She could feel the sting of tears coming to her eyes as she continued and felt the pitch of her voice rising higher and higher. “I am not walking back to the car by myself through the forest in the middle of the night after just tripping over a dead guy!”
“Listen…” he started again, but she cut him off just as quick.
Her fingernails were digging into her palms from the fists she was making. She almost screamed at him “No! I’m not walking down that trail by myself!” By now her chest was heaving with sobs again and she lost her nerve to fight. She sunk to her knees and leaned in close to him.
She knew that his strong arms would envelope her and make her feel safe even before they did. He just put his chin on top of her head and said “Shhhhh…” until she caught her breath again. Then he started again “Mak, I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I could think of any other option Darlin’. I know you’re scared, but we can’t leave this guy laying in the trail like this and I’m not up for packing him down the trail.” The more he talked, the more Mackenzie could feel her heart slow and her breathing get more under control. “The car can’t be much more than a mile from here, and you’re bound to run into other hikers or campers before you get that far. All you have to do is explain what happened, and tell them where we’re at.”
She leaned back some and wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hands. They were still flowing somewhat, but they had slowed down a lot. “But what if there is a lunatic or a grizzly bear out there?” she asked.
“I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to worry about whatever got this guy” he said gesturing towards the dead body. “I’ve studied him quite a bit while you were looking for my backpack, and the best that I can guess is that he must have had a heart attack, or stroke, or something. There’s not a single injury on him that I can see.”
Mackenzie tried not to look at the body again, but couldn’t help it as her dad talked about him. She had to catch another quick look at it. He was right. From the flashlight beam, there wasn’t any blood or noticeable cuts or scrapes that she could see. Mackenzie turned her head quickly and closed her eyes tight as her dad’s gaze turned towards his face.
“I threw everything that I could think of that you might need in this fanny pack,” he said. “I did keep out the rest of the Ibuprofen for me, but everything else is in here.” He motioned for Mackenzie to stand up again so she could put the fanny pack on, but she silently shook her head no.
“You’re only going to have the fanny pack on so you can move quickly. Keep the flashlight shining out in front of you a few yards and just make sure that you stay on the trail.” He motioned again for her to stand up again and this time she complied. She could feel her lower lip sticking out in a pouty face as he wiped more tears from her eyes. He slipped the fanny pack back around her waist and was adjusting the tightness as he continued “Like I said, I’m sure that we’re not much more than a mile from the car. If you just keep focused and move on out, you should be down to the car in twenty minutes without a problem.” He gave the fanny pack one last tug then grabbed her hands in his as he looked up at her. “Talk to the first people you find. Tell them that we’re just over a mile up the trail towards Lake Helen and what condition we’re in. Now kneel down here with me.”
She knelt beside him and they both prayed. Patrick said the prayer out loud asking God to look after Mackenzie and a bunch of other stuff while he had his hand on the back of her neck. She thought the words as he said them, but it was kind of empty coming from her heart. She wasn’t quite sure that she totally believed in Him yet. When he finished, Mackenzie leaned forward and kissed his forehead before she stood.
“Just keep focused and keep moving,” he said as she stood looking down the trail. She must have stood without moving for too long because he followed it up by saying “You can do this. Just put one foot in front of the other.”
So that’s what she did. First her left, and then her right. Left, then right. Left, and then she had her head down and was moving out. As soon as she was beyond the sight of her dad, she reached her right hand back to the knife sheath and loosened the button clasp that secures the knife in the sheath. Mackenzie didn’t pull the knife out from the sheath, but it somehow gave her a little courage just walking with her hand on its handle.
Mackenzie walked along with the flashlight in her left hand shining straight ahead, and her right hand on the handle of the knife hanging on the makeshift belt. She was so focused on the trail and making it back to the car that she didn’t think that she would have noticed an elephant stampede next to her.
After not too long at all, the ground leveled out more and the trees became less dense. Mackenzie thought that she began to recognize some of the clearings. The creek off to the right of the trail became visible, and she knew that she was getting close to the trailhead. The moon had come out and was helping to light the way somewhat whenever it peaked through the trees. She was tempted to break into an all-out sprint, but settled for stepping it up some to a full jog. The fanny pack was rising and falling somewhat as she moved faster, but she kept her hand on the knife handle to steady the load.
The trail was longer than she thought it was, and she started to feel a little winded. She could tell that she had broken a sweat in the chilly night air because she could feel a bead or two of it running down the middle of her back. Mackenzie was just thinking about slowing down some when she saw the sign for the trailhead up ahead and increased her pace instead. She almost couldn’t believe it. She made it. She did it!
Mackenzie skidded to a stop as she reached the trailhead sign. She bent over with her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and celebrated as she caught her breath for a moment. Mackenzie felt herself having perma-grin and tried to wipe it off her face, but she wasn’t having much success. She could just imagine meeting a forest ranger and telling him about her injured dad with a dead guy on the trail while she was smiling from ear to ear. She thought that they would lock her up for sure befo
re checking out her story.
Mackenzie thought that she would have met someone from the nearby campground by now or at least heard some commotion coming from there, but the forest was as still as it had been all night. She had caught her breath and took off towards the direction of their car. She thought that she could try to call out on her dad’s cell phone or at least honk the horn until someone came to help. The gravel parking lot wasn’t that far from the sign and she felt like sprinting again, but she remembered her dad falling when hurrying back on the same path, so she forced herself to walk cautiously.
Mackenzie reached the gravel parking lot and it looked almost the same as it had when they left it. There appeared to be a few new cars there and a few cars had left since they had started their hike, but the parking lot was still about half full. There weren’t any signs of movement at the parking lot. Regardless of the thought of her dad tripping on the same trail in broad daylight, Mackenzie couldn’t help it when her legs broke into a full run when she saw their SUV there about half way into the lot. She reached the car with a thud as her hands and arms hit the passenger window. She peered into the window and she saw her dad’s cell phone on the center console.
Her heart immediately dropped when she reached out to open the door and found that it was locked. She ran around to the other side before she allowed herself to go into melt down mode and found that it was locked too. Mackenzie ran around the car and tried each handle, while trying the rear latch last. Each of the doors were just as locked as the first.
“No. No. No!” Mackenzie exclaimed as she sat down on the ground and leaned against the rear bumper. She felt tears welling up, but she fought them off because she knew that her dad wouldn’t have sent her down to the car alone without being able to get into the car. She just had to slow down and think of what he had told her. She couldn’t remember anything that he had said about the car, but she remembered that he had said something about putting everything she needed in the fanny pack. She stripped the fanny pack off without standing up and put the flash light in her mouth so she could use both hands to go through the fanny pack. She went through it looking for the keys like a crazy woman. The fanny pack had one big pouch on the back and several small pockets and pouches on each side of it. There were all kinds of stuff in the pack, but she didn’t find any keys.
She felt her eyes watering up, but she fought them back just a little longer because she knew that her dad had to have given her the keys. She went back through the fanny pack slowly and she carefully took everything out of each pocket and then put it back after she didn’t find the keys. By the time she reached the last pocket again, she had no hope left and the tears fell. Then the sobs came in full force. She went through the last pocket again and didn’t find a key.
She pulled her knees up to her shoulders and hung her head between her arms and legs, and cried for several moments. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She beat her fists on the cold hard ground and screamed “HELP!” at the top of her lungs. She stood up frustrated and angry, not sure of what she was going to do. There were several medium sized rocks lining the parking lot that she thought would break one of the windows easily. Mackenzie picked up a decent sized rock about the size of her fist and thought about which window would be the best to break. Before she went any further, the thought of her dad looking down at her with his ever-disappointed expression stopped her in her tracks. The rock fell harmlessly to the ground from her hand.
Mackenzie picked up the fanny pack and headed back to the trailhead sign. The moon was out enough that she didn’t need the flashlight to see at all. She stowed the flash light in the main pocket of the fanny pack and slung the fanny pack back around her waist. Mackenzie thought that she better checkout the campsite and ask someone for help before she broke out a window in her dad’s car, so she took off in that direction at a quick pace.
Mackenzie put the brakes on and skidded to a halt as she passed a small brick building along the trail when she realized that it was a restroom. It had a men’s entrance on one side and a woman’s on the other. She stood on the path for several seconds just past the building and debated the morality of having to go to the bathroom instead of sending help to her dad lying on the trail next to the dead guy. She hadn’t gone number two since they had been in the mountains, and the longer she stood staring at the building thinking about what to do, the more her body was making the decision for her. It wasn’t long before she thought that she wasn’t going to make it into the building before messing herself.
She slung open the door and was pleasantly surprised that the stench wasn’t nearly as bad as she had expected. It smelled like an outhouse in the middle of the mountains, but the smell wasn’t overwhelming. There weren’t any stalls in the small room, just one toilet in the opposite corner and a piece of stainless steel acting as a mirror on the far wall. There wasn’t any electricity in the building, but small glass blocks near the top of each outside wall let in enough moon light that you could still see good enough to do your business. Mackenzie latched the door with the hasp and hurried over to the toilet, undoing the fanny pack along the way. She began trying to untie the knot that her dad had tied in the makeshift rope belt that held the belt knife. Mackenzie began to think that she was going to mess her pants before she got the knot undone and began to involuntarily hop up and down in place, which made it harder to untie the knot. She began yanking at the rope fiercely, but it wouldn’t budge. Just as she was committed to go ahead and mess herself, she had an idea. She took the knife from the sheath and cut the rope around her waist right at the knot in one quick movement. She immediately dropped her pants and panties, and then plopped down on the oversized and cold toilet seat.
Just as her bowels released themselves in one big movement, her jaw dropped to her chest and utter fear gripped her again. She was unable to move as her eyes burned the image in her brain of the dead woman and teenage girl crumpled on the floor in the opposite corner. The moonlight shown in just enough at an angle to see the upper body of the woman and the head of girl. She couldn’t move or even really think. She sat there for what seemed like forever while her bowels continued to empty and stared at the moonlit scene. The woman had long curly hair and was dressed as if she had been camping for a few days. Mackenzie couldn’t make out any major features of the younger girl, other than she had short hair and appeared to be around Mackenzie’s age.
Mackenzie’s fear stricken trance broke when a drop of liquid from the cesspool below the toilet splashed up on her bare butt and startled her out of the moment. She immediately and involuntarily screamed, jumped up, and tried to run to the door. Her pants were still down around her knees and she almost tripped before she reached the door, but caught herself instead. Mackenzie heard herself scream again, but this time if felt as if it was someone else making the noise. She was pulling her pants up with one hand and trying to work the hasp with the other to open the door. She heard herself let out a full other scream before her fumbling fingers finally opened the bathroom door and she fell forward out of the door. She pulled her pants all the way up with one last tug and bolted around the side of the building with all the speed that she had.
Just as she turned the corner, a large man was standing there in the middle of the path and he wrapped his arms around her in a tackling move as Mackenzie plunged into him. They both tumbled to the asphalt trail with Mackenzie screaming at the top of her lungs and his vise like grip holding her close to his body.
Chapter 7
Patrick heard himself groan as he hit the asphalt square on his back. They slid a couple of inches on the asphalt for good measure and he felt his lower back get road rash where his shirt slid up. Makenzie was still screaming, fighting, and flailing well after they hit the ground.
“Whooooaa!” he told her once he caught his breath. He was sure that she recognized his voice, but she didn’t let up. He held her as tight as he could as she had one arm loose and was flailing it and her legs for all she was worth trying to escap
e.
“Mak, Mak, it’s me!” he said. It took several seconds for her to slow down, and as she did she turned in his arms to snuggle and began to sob.
They lay that way for several moments as she sobbed and cried. It was extremely uncomfortable and cold laying on the asphalt in the position that they were in, but Patrick tried to block it out and just give her a while to collect herself. When he realized that she was going to have a hard time stopping by herself, he told her “Shhhh.” He gave her one big last hug, and began to sit up.
As they separated some, she sat up as well and slugged her dad hard in the shoulder. “You scared me to death,” she said between sobs and after sniffling.
“Sorry Darlin’,” Patrick said.
“There’s a dead woman and girl in the bathroom!” she blurted out.
“You okay?” he asked unfazed by her statement.
“Yeah, I think so,” she replied somewhat uncertain. “Did you hear what I said?” she asked with concern.
“Yeah,” he said. Patrick wasn’t sure how to tell her what he knew, so he decided to just come out and say it. “There are quite a few people dead up here.”
“What do you mean?” she asked bewildered.
“I take it you didn’t make it down to the campground?” he asked.
“No, I went down to the car. But I couldn’t get in because you didn’t give me the keys,” she hit him on top of both shoulders with her fists and started to cry a little again.
It took Patrick a second to understand what she was talking about, but then he hung his head when he realized that he hadn’t told her the keys were in the bumper. “Sorry Darlin’. I had put the keys in the bumper when we left so that if something happened to me, you could still get into the car,” he told her without looking up. “I was going to tell you at the time, but you had those dang ear buds stuck in your head. I was going to tell you later and I guess that I forgot with my knee hurt and everything. I’m glad that it worked out like that anyways.”
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 7