After probably twenty minutes on the road, Patrick turned on the radio to see if they could catch some broadcast that could tell them whether anyone knew about what had happened up there on the mountain. All they heard was static, so he methodically began to tune to each different frequency that the digital tuner in car’s radio would allow. Suddenly, a large white Suburban without any lights on appeared in the middle of the lane as they were going around a sharp left corner.
“Look out!” Patrick yelled to Makenzie, but it was too late.
Makenzie hit the brakes hard and turned the wheel to the left quickly, but they still hit the driver’s side rear quarter panel of the Suburban with the passenger side of their bumper. Luckily, they were probably only going ten or fifteen miles per hour when they impacted, but it still stunned them both. There looked to be quite a bit of damage to the vehicle as the fiberglass part of the front quarter panel of their car came up at least a foot above the hood from what Patrick could see from inside the vehicle.
“You okay?” Patrick asked Makenzie who seemed to have been frozen behind the wheel. Neither of the air bags went off, but both of their seat belts locked. “Mak! You okay?” he asked again.
Chapter 8
‘Oh-no! Oh-no! Oh-no!’ was all Mackenzie could think after slamming into the back of that big SUV. She knew that her dad was going to f-l-i-p out.
“Mak! You okay,” he asked.
It took her a second for Mackenzie to get a status check from her body, but she felt fine except where the seat belt had locked and cut into her shoulder and chest. “Yeah. I think so,” she finally muttered.
Mackenzie looked over to her dad and he was putting his head lamp on and trying to take his seat belt off. He snapped his headlamp on and shown it on her for several seconds. Then he opened his door and tried to get out. Mackenzie knew that she should go help him out and get his crutch thingy situated, but she couldn’t peel her fingers from the steering wheel. She felt her foot slip off the brake and the car moved a couple of inches.
Patrick was leaning up against the car trying to attach his crutch before it moved. He immediately leaned in the door and yelled “What are you doing? Put the car in park!”
That started the water works. Mackenzie willed her fingers from the steering wheel and reached up to the steering column to put the transmission in park. Her tears were streaming down her face by the time her dad started walking around the other car. Mackenzie couldn’t really make out what he was doing, but he walked around the passenger side of the other car and was looking in the windows for several minutes. He then limped back over to their car and looked at the damage that the wreck had done to the front end. After a few moments, he reached down and began tugging on a piece of the car’s body that was loose and bent up at a weird angle up by the passenger side tire. It took him several tugs to finally pull the large piece of the body from the car. Mackenzie’s tears continued to stream and she unconsciously wiped them from her face with the back of her hand. When he had the piece free, he turned and threw it over on the shoulder of the road and hobbled back towards the passenger seat.
“They didn’t make it,” he said as he tried to settle into the car with his injured leg.
He saw his daughter’s face and snapped his head lamp off. “You sure you are okay?” he asked again.
“Yeah,” Mackenzie muttered again. “I’m sorry Dad,” she said and then the sobbing started.
He leaned over and snuggled her face into his armpit. “It’s OK Darlin’,” he said as he held her. “These circumstances are a little different than how I expected to teach you how to drive.”
After a few minutes, he relaxed his grip on her and she pulled back. “Okay, let’s get off this mountain,” he said.
Mackenzie chuckled a little from relief, wiped the streams of tears from her face, and put the SUV in reverse. She hated backing up. She never could see good enough and everything always seemed backwards. She did okay though, and then they started back down the mountain. They saw several other cars that were stopped in the middle of the road or had went off and hit the guardrails in the next couple of miles, but Mackenzie was going slow enough to steer around those. Since they hadn’t seen any other survivors, they decided to not stop and see if anyone needed help, but instead get down to Buffalo to make sure someone knew what had happened up on the mountain.
After a while Patrick started tuning on the radio again and was getting nothing but static. He switched from looking at the signal bars on his cell phone, to looking at the road, to changing the dial on the radio trying to find some station that would tell them what was going on. Mackenzie wanted to ask him to turn the radio volume down more because the constant noise of static was annoying when she was trying to pay attention to driving, but she decided not to say anything.
Suddenly, there was what sounded like a sonic boom outside of the car and almost immediately the whole car shook. The lights went out on the car simultaneously and it became hard to steer. Mackenzie hit the brakes as hard as she could and turned the wheel to the left, but she had to go from memory because she couldn’t see anything. Patrick reached out with his left hand and grabbed the steering wheel trying to turn the wheel even further to the left. They were going very slow to begin with, but it felt like it took forever to stop. Mackenzie’s seat belt locked again and rubbed her already sore shoulder and chest.
“What did you do?” Patrick almost yelled.
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything,” she shot back somewhat unsure of herself. “That big boom happened and then the car shut off.”
“Set the emergency brake and pop the hood,” he said and then started getting out of the car in a huff. He wasn’t very successful as he still had to mess around with his knee and lean up against the car to tie his crutch back on.
Mackenzie did as he told her and then got out to help him with his crutch. He tried to turn his headlamp on to let him see to tie his crutch on, but it wouldn’t come on.
“Grab that LED flash light I gave you from the fanny pack would you?” he asked as he continued to tie the branch to his leg.
She turned to go to the rear of the car to get the fanny pack and half-way in her turn she remembered that she must have left the fanny pack in the women’s restroom at the campsite. Her heart fell when she reached down to her belt loops and realized that her dad’s belt knife from his childhood was also laying on the floor of that bathroom with the bodies of that lady and girl. She just stood in that position for a second deciding on how and what to tell her dad about what she had done.
Before she could decide what to do, Patrick reached the front of the car, opened the hood, and said sternly “Mak! What are you doing? I need that flashlight!”
Mackenzie slowly walked back towards the front of the car empty handed, knowing that she was going to have to tell him what happened. Although she tried, she couldn’t raise her eyes up from her shoes. Patrick was leaning over the radiator and tugging on some wires that connected to the engine when she mumbled “I don’t have it.”
She still couldn’t bring her eyes up to look at his face, but she could tell that he still had his head under the hood. He held one of his hands out towards her with an open palm and said “I need the light.”
Mackenzie didn’t respond right away. She mustered up the courage to mumble “I don’t have it” again, but this time a little bit louder than before.
He quit tugging on the wires, came out from under the hood, and stood looking at his daughter. Mackenzie could feel his disgusted stare on the top of her head for a second before he spoke. “I told you three times to go get the flash light from the fanny pack. What is your problem?”
All she could utter is “I don’t have it.”
“What do you mean that you don’t have it,” he almost yelled this time. Mackenzie still couldn’t look up at his face, but she knew that his cheeks would be red and his brow would have that crease in it just above his nose.
She mustered her remaining courage and s
aid “I forgot your fanny pack back at the bathroom with the dead bodies!”
It took a second for that to set in with him and she braced herself for the explosion that was about to come. Instead of exploding, he leaned up against the grill of the car almost defeated. He didn’t say a word.
Mackenzie was trembling, but after several moments she forced herself to raise her eyes and see what he was doing. He was hanging his head staring at the ground with his shoulders slumped. Just standing there. After a few moments, he turned and leaned back underneath the hood and began tugging on different wires again on the engine. Mackenzie could tell that he was super disappointed in her.
“Grab my cell phone off the console. I can use the light from it,” he muttered without looking at his daughter.
Mackenzie slunk back to the driver’s side door to get his phone. She searched all around on the console, but couldn’t find the phone in the darkness. The phone must have flown someplace when they stopped the car suddenly. She felt her heart start to pound because she knew that her dad would flip out even more if she couldn’t find his phone. She ran around to the passenger side and began searching everywhere. She couldn’t see very well in the darkness inside the car, so she just frantically moved her hands around on the dash and floor trying more to feel for the phone than look for it.
“What are you doing Mak?” Patrick asked from under the hood. Mackenzie could feel his disappointment turning to anger and frustration again, and she made her hands move even faster.
Finally, her pinky touched something cool and smooth on the floor that she knew was his phone. It was down at the base of the console where it meets the floorboard. She reached down and grabbed the object that had that cool feel from the gorilla glass on the front. She hopped out of the car, ran around to the front of the vehicle, and held the phone out to him.
“Here it is,” she said. He leaned out from under the hood and took the phone from her. “It was down on the floorboard and I couldn’t find it.”
He pushed the button on the front and nothing happened. He pushed the power button on the top and nothing happened. He shook it a few times and said angrily “What did you do to it?”
“I didn’t do anything to it,” Mackenzie said.
After pushing the buttons and shaking it a few more times, he suddenly stopped in mid shake. The crease went away on his forehead and his expression changed to look like her dog Piggy does when she yells at him. Their boxer tilts his head ever so slightly and looks at her with his big eyes wondering what she is trying to convey to him. Patrick turned and leaned against the front bumper staring at his phone without saying a word.
“I didn’t mean to do anything to it,” Mackenzie said.
He drew back and threw his phone. Mackenzie felt her jaw drop in disbelief as her dad’s high-priced cell phone sailed over the road and out of sight into the trees. The thud that it made somewhere in the forest sounded like it surely broke when it hit a tree or log.
Patrick didn’t say anything, he just leaned against the bumper with his head hung down. Mackenzie didn’t move either; she just stood and stared at him.
After a few minutes, he muttered the letters “E-M-P.”
“What?” Mackenzie asked sheepishly.
“E-M-P,” he repeated. He waited a second and then explained. “EMP stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse. Did you hear that big boom right before the car died?”
“Yeah,” she said again sheepishly and leaned on the front bumper next to him.
“EMP is like an invisible wave that can fry electronics and electrical systems. I think that big boom we heard was a bomb or something that let off a huge EMP event,” he spoke with a defeated tone to his voice that resonated with Mackenzie and hurt her heart.
“What’s going on Dad?” Mackenzie asked as she realized just how bad her whole world was spinning out of control.
“I don’t know kid. But I think we’re walking from here,” he said as he put his arm around her and squeezed her against him.
Part 2 – The Trek
Chapter 9
Patrick realized that exhaustion will make you do things that otherwise wouldn’t seem reasonable. After their vehicle died, the father and daughter started walking down the highway back toward the Town of Buffalo. After only a few hundred yards from their useless vehicle, they saw that there was a small residence on a private driveway just off the highway. Mackenzie was adamant that breaking into the house was wrong and that she didn’t want to be a part of it. She wanted to continue walking until they found someone. Patrick reasoned with her that these were extraordinary circumstances and that most people would be grateful to help someone out in their predicament, but she wasn’t convinced.
After and during the discussion, they walked to the house and found it locked up tight. The house was built with logs and may have been called a cabin by its owner, but it was considerably larger than the Kincaid three-bedroom home in Nebraska. And built twice as stout. Patrick knocked on the door and called out multiple times, but there was no answer. Patrick ended up breaking a side door’s window pane out with a nearby rock to gain entry. He left Makenzie outside while he went in and made sure that it was safe and there were no bodies. Patrick thought that the house appeared to be a weekend or summer home as it didn’t seem to have that lived-in clutter or feel to it. The electricity wasn’t on, so Patrick had to feel around in the dark to figure out where he was going but he didn’t find any bodies. There was a large great room, bathroom, kitchen, and dining area downstairs, and four bedrooms upstairs. By the time that Patrick had hobbled back downstairs, Makenzie had become impatient with him and had already entered the house. She was looking through the cupboards in the kitchen.
“There are some guest bedrooms upstairs,” Patrick said as he reached the bottom step.
She took a pop-tart from a box she found and walked by her dad up the stairs without saying a word. Patrick could tell that she was not happy with him, but he decided to let it go until they both could get some rest. He took another pop-tart out of the box that she had left on the counter and limped around the lower floor. There was no land-line phone that he could see, and with the electricity out he couldn’t try the television that was in the great room. Patrick decided to sit down on the large sofa and eat a pop tart himself before finding a bed upstairs. After a few moments, exhaustion took over and he fell asleep before opening the foil bag of the pop-tart.
Patrick awoke to the sun shining in his eyes. There were huge windows all along the eastern and southern walls of the great room that allowed the mid-morning sunlight to fill the room. He was amazed at the beauty of the rustic decorum, and the layout of how the windows caught the light in the great room. The overall craftsmanship of whoever had built the illustrious cabin was inspiring. Patrick was an amateur wood worker and liked to build things in his shop back in Nebraska, but he was quite sure that his skills would never rise to the level of whoever constructed the cabin.
A quick inspection of his knee found that it was stiff, swollen, and painful. He had fallen asleep so quickly the night before that he hadn’t taken his splint off, which probably made the swelling worse. He undid the splint now and took several deep breaths as he allowed his leg to bend and his knee to flex. Patrick wasn’t sure how he was going to get off the mountain without a vehicle.
Patrick sat on the couch and tried to fathom all that they had been through in the last few days, but it was overwhelming. He ate the pop-tart that was lying next to him on the couch as if he were ravenous. Mackenzie came down the stairs as he was finishing up, and he hoped that he hadn’t been making odd noises while eating it.
“Grab the box of those things would you?” Patrick called out to her.
Mackenzie still half-sleeping walked over to the counter, grabbed the box of pop-tarts, and shuffled over to the couch. She handed him the box as she plopped down on the sofa next to Patrick that shook his leg violently. Patrick let out an involuntary grunt, and dropped the box as he instinctively grab
bed his knee.
“Oh – Sorry, Sorry, Sorry,” Mackenzie said as she reached down to grab the box.
“You got to be careful Mak,” Patrick said through gritted teeth as he carefully leaned back on the couch again. He took the box back from her and tore into a package.
They sat there in silence for a while as Patrick scarfed pop-tart after pop-tart. Mackenzie leaned back on the sofa as well, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the warm morning sunlight in the room.
“It’s real isn’t it?” Mackenzie said without opening her eyes.
Patrick stopped eating long enough to swallow and respond. “I guess that it is. When I woke up down here, I thought for a moment that it had all been some kind of dream and that we were staying at some resort.”
Patrick peered into the pop-tart box and realized that he had eaten all but the last one. He took it out and offered it to Mackenzie. “No thanks,” she said. “I’m really not hungry.”
“Eat it anyways please. We may have a long walk ahead of us, and you’re going to need some energy,” Patrick said even though his stomach was telling him to scarf that one as well. The only food that he’d had in the last couple of days ended up on the ground next to the dead man on the trail after he had hurt his knee.
“Mom’s okay, ain’t she?” Mackenzie asked her dad as she stared down at the pop-tart.
“I’m sure she is Darlin’,” Patrick told her with confidence. “I’m sure she’s heard about what happened up here on the mountain and is worried sick about us both.”
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 9