Sawyer thought about what Stuart had said for a moment before responding. “See; that’s why I have to get to the Park! I could tell that S.O.B. president was lying through his teeth when he came on the television. The other thing that is totally fishy is how they could figure out what happened and build a special multi-million-dollar bomb to fix it in less than two days. Most of the time, the government can’t even figure out how to blow their own nose in two days.”
“Yeah;” Stuart said as Mackenzie crawled out of her tent still looking like she was half-asleep. “You’re right! How could they have figured out exactly what that mysterious cloud was, where it was coming from, and how to fix it in two days?”
“What are you guys all excited and talking loud about?” Mackenzie asked as she cut half-closed and sleepy eyes to Stuart and shuffled her way to the fire.
Stuart said “We’re just talking about how the government came on the TV and said they needed that special bomb to stop the cloud, but you told us that the cloud was already leaving by the time that bomb was dropped.”
Mackenzie pursed her lips and then nodded her head before pouring herself a cup of coffee and added some water back to the pot.
“I’m going with you!” Stuart blurted out.
“What? What do you mean?” Mackenzie turned and asked Stuart. She turned so quickly that some of the hot coffee sloshed from her cup and onto one of her fingers before hitting the ground. She immediately stuck the hurt finger into her mouth.
“You bet,” Sawyer exclaimed. “That would be awesome!”
“Whaaat arrruuuu thhhtoing?” Mackenzie garbled around the finger in her mouth to Stuart. She was looking up at him with large forlorn eyes that reminded him of those anime comics.
Stuart took a step forward and put a hand on Mackenzie’s shoulder. “Listen Mak,” he started. “I’ve gotta do this. I helped get you guys across South Dakota, and I can help Sawyer get back across it too.”
Mackenzie pulled her finger out of her mouth and looked quickly at the pink flesh on the side of her finger that would blister soon. She then looked up at Stuart with tears in her eyes and said “Don’t go.”
After a brief pause, Stuart said “I have to. I don’t belong back there with everyone else. I’m good at stuff out here. Besides, I think that he’s right. I need to go see what happened at the epicenter too.”
Mackenzie looked up at Stuart for a moment longer, but when the first tears spilt down her cheeks she threw her cup and all its contents on the ground at their feet and stomped off away from camp. When she was just past the tents, she yelled back at Stuart in anger “Does he even know that your gay?”
She didn’t stop and wait for a response, she just kept stomping.
Patrick came out of the tent shirtless and his pants unzipped looking around quickly trying to size up the commotion that had awakened him.
“You’re gay?” Sawyer asked Stuart with his chin pointed down and looking up at him from under his brow.
“What’s wrong with Mackenzie?” Patrick asked forcefully as he was wiggling his shoes on his feet without any socks.
“She’s pitching a fit,” Stuart answered Patrick. Then looking back to Sawyer, Stuart said “Does that change your mind about me going?”
“Which way did she go?” Patrick asked Stuart. Stuart pointed in the direction that Mackenzie had headed without looking away from Sawyer. Patrick took off trotting in the direction that Stuart had pointed.
Sawyer bent down and poured himself another cup of coffee. “Nah. I guess you can still go,” he said. After he stood back up he added “We’re sleeping in different tents from now on though.”
Stuart laughed a little and stuck his open hand out to Sawyer. Sawyer took it and they shook hands.
Stuart and Sawyer talked excitedly more about scaveys, Sawyer’s plan on how to get to Yellowstone Park, Stuart’s Dungeon, and a few other things by the time Patrick had coaxed Mackenzie back into camp. Her eyes and nose were beat red and she sniffled as she stormed past the two boys at the campfire and climbed into her tent.
Patrick went into the tent as well and returned with a shirt that he put on. He also had the road map that he’d gotten from the sheriff office in Buffalo. He motioned for the other two to join him and they made their way over to a large rock some ways off from the fire and the tents. Mackenzie could still probably hear them if she was trying to, but it would be difficult if they kept their voices low.
Patrick opened with “Mackenzie doesn’t want either of you two to go back. We’ve spent every waking second for the last few weeks trying to get out of this place and get back home, so she can’t believe that you guys would rather go through that instead of go back to civilization with us. But I get it. If what you say is true Sawyer, then I would have had a strong pull to join your Truthers as well. With my kids though, I probably would have chickened out; but I would have wanted to. Do you have a route planned to Yellowstone yet?” Patrick unfolded the map and laid it out on the rock in front of them. They each peered over it and pointed as they discussed the best way for them to get to Yellowstone under the circumstances.
They planned and talked the better part of the morning. It was early afternoon when Patrick braved going back into the tent to pack things up and try to smooth Mackenzie over enough to join them again.
“You up?” he asked her as he entered the tent.
Mackenzie was laying in her sleeping bag reading a book. She didn’t look up or even acknowledged that her dad had entered.
“You mad at me?” he asked incredulously.
Patrick kneeled at the foot of his sleeping bag and began to stuff it into its stuff sack. Mackenzie turned the page on her book while Patrick thought about what he could say to her.
“Listen,” Patrick started as he continued to put his bag into its sack. “I know that you don’t want them to go back, but they feel that they have to. It’s like a higher calling, or a duty.”
Mackenzie turned a page on her book without looking over to her dad. Patrick pulled the drawstring closed around the stuff sack and began picking up the odds and ends from around his side of the tent and put them in the different zippered pockets on his backpack.
“Those two don’t have a mom and brother waiting for them in Columbus. They don’t have that something to look forward to back in civilization,” Patrick said as he continued to stow things in his pack.
“They have us,” Mackenzie finally said as she looked at her dad with a quivering upper lip.
With that, Patrick sat his pack down on the tent floor and sprawled out next to his daughter and her bag. He put one arm around her, and she snuggled her nose down into his shoulder and began to cry some more.
“They do have us. And if it wasn’t for this calling to find out what really happened, I think that would be enough,” Patrick said trying to think of what he could say to comfort her. He couldn’t come up with any gems, so he just continued to tell the truth. “If it wasn’t for you, and James, and Mom; I’m pretty sure that I’d be right alongside of them.”
Mackenzie craned her neck to lift her eyes out from Patrick’s shoulder to look at his expression to see if he was serious. “Yeah,” he said with a slight chuckle as he looked at her.
She rested her face back in his shoulder and asked “Why?”
He thought about how to respond and then said “The truth is a powerful thing.”
Mackenzie pulled herself back, laid on her back and rubbed the tears from her face. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I think that I believe what Sawyer told us about his story. If that’s true, then there are quite a few things that don’t add up. It also doesn’t sound like it’s going to be the same world that we left.”
Mackenzie sniffled, and then pulled herself up on one elbow so that she could get a better look at her dad. “I still don’t get it,” she said.
“Maybe it’s because we are Americans,” Patrick started. “But I think that it’s just because we’re human, and we kn
ow human nature. We naturally suspect people in power have their own interests in mind instead of ours. The way our government is today, they take any chance they can get to grab more power; and martial law is a pretty extreme way to get power.”
“You think that our own government would kill off all of those people to get more power?” Mackenzie asked.
“I hope not,” Patrick answered. “But it wouldn’t surprise me that they would take advantage of a situation to grab more power.”
Mackenzie was quiet and thought about that for a moment, and then asked “I heard Stuart talking this morning about how the bomb was dropped after the cloud started disappearing.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t really add up either,” Patrick said. “I could see if it was supposed to dissipate the cloud faster maybe. I don’t know.”
Patrick sat up and finished putting the things away in his pack as he continued talking, “You see how if you were back home milling around and talking to your friends how you would have those kinds of questions?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mackenzie answered.
“And how you’d be almost compelled to go and find out if you didn’t have me or Mom, or anyone with you,” Patrick finished.
Mackenzie was quiet for a minute, and then said “I still don’t want them to go.”
Patrick leaned over and gave her one last hug and said “I know that you don’t Darlin’. They know it too.”
Patrick grabbed his back pack and opened the tent flaps that served as the door. He called back into her as he was walking out “Get up and around now. We need to break camp and make tracks.”
After putting her things away hastily, Mackenzie emerged from the tent. Stuart and Sawyer were standing next to each other down at the boat. Mackenzie walked down towards them and put an arm around each of them initiating a group hug. Neither of the boys were comfortable with the situation, but they each patted her back with one of their free arms.
“I wish that you guys would come with us,” Mackenzie said to them as she released them and took a step back.
“We are,” Sawyer said and started walking towards Mackenzie’s tent that was only thing remaining in the camp.
“What do you mean?” Mackenzie asked as she turned to follow him.
“We’re going to ride with you until Yankton,” Stuart said. “Sawyer thinks that you guys will run into a bunch of scaveys between here and there, and you’ll need our help.”
“Really?” Mackenzie asked as they reached her tent and started breaking it down. “Isn’t that a long way out of your guy’s way?”
“Yeah,” Sawyer answered. “But Stuart says that he knows where the motorcycle dealer shop is in Yankton, so if we can find some gas we could be back here in a day.”
“Cool,” Mackenzie said. “How long until we get to Yankton?”
Stuart answered as he was putting the tent poles into the bag. “Your dad thinks that we should be able to get there by tomorrow night if we hustle and paddle some.”
“Depending on how many scaveys we run into I’d say,” Sawyer added.
Chapter 21
The boat was cramped with all four of them and their gear in it. Still, they made due as Sawyer and Stuart sat in the middle seat again and did most of the rowing. It seemed to Mackenzie that they were going a lot faster than they had at any other leg of their trip. They all continued to talk throughout the day and share notes about where they came from, the scaveys, and what they thought might have really happened to cause all of this. Mackenzie hadn’t seen Stuart be as open and excited about anything since they had met.
The topography of the river had gradually changed in the last hour or so as the sun began to set. The normally wide river that they had been floating down was becoming choked down, with smaller channels crisscrossing and intersecting one another like a delta. The trees that had lined, and then dotted the river banks, now were sparse or non-existent. The normally slow current of the river was almost gone altogether.
It was almost fully dusk when the boat ran aground. Mackenzie wasn’t expecting the sudden stop and came out of her seat a few inches. She felt herself involuntarily make circles with her hands to keep her balance and not fall forward out of the boat.
“Whooa,” Patrick said loudly. “What the heck was that?”
Sawyer extended his oar out the side of the boat and slapped the water. “Feels like we’ve hit a sand bar,” he said. He dug around in his pack that was stuffed under the bench he was sitting on and brought out a small flashlight. Mackenzie was so used to not having artificial light for the last few weeks, she was amazed when it came on when Sawyer clicked the button on the end of it.
Sawyer pointed the flashlight over the side and peered into the murky water. “Yeah,” he said. “We bottomed out on something sandy.” Sawyer handed the flashlight to Mackenzie, flipped the oar around so that he was holding the wrong end, and submerged the handle in the water. He gave several big pushes with the oar and they were floating once again.
“How well can you see the bottom up there with that thing?” Patrick asked Mackenzie.
Mackenzie got on her knees and peered over the front of the boat with the flashlight pointed down into the water. “Ummm, a little bit I guess,” she answered.
“I guess we’re going to have to try and find a place to camp for the night,” Patrick said. Looking around at the banks and not seeing what he wanted he said “Let’s see if we can make it a little further first though. Mak, you keep a look out for sand or rocks and yell out if you see anything.”
“All right,” Mackenzie answered as she tried to settle in and get more comfortable leaning over the edge of the boat.
They paddled slowly that way for another hour or so until it was fully dark. The moon was a little more than half-full, so there was some ambient light, but not enough to navigate the larger channel with. They made their way to the south side of the main river and Patrick directed them to dock at a concrete boat ramp when it came into view.
Mackenzie’s back was aching and it screamed at her as she climbed out of the boat after they had gently beached it in the mud next to the boat ramp. They all were stiff and stretched some as they got out of the boat and pulled it further up the bank.
Sawyer took the flashlight from Mackenzie and snapped it off in a hurry.
“Hey,” Mackenzie said. “What’s that about?”
“Sorry,” Sawyer answered. “It will attract scaveys.”
“We haven’t seen any on this side of the river,” Mackenzie said.
“Yeah, but I bet there’s a town nearby with this boat ramp here,” Sawyer said. “If there’s a town, there’s bound to be scaveys.”
“Should we pitch the tents over there?” Patrick asked the group as he pointed over to a picnic bench and fire ring on the other side of the boat ramp. They could just make it out in the moon light.
“I don’t think that we should stay in tents tonight,” Sawyer said.
“What do you mean?” Patrick asked.
“If there is a town close by, we’d be overrun in minutes in tents down here,” Sawyer replied.
“So, what do you think that we should do?” Patrick asked.
“Let’s scout it out a little bit. If there’s a farm house or some place to hole up for the night, we’d be better off,” Sawyer suggested.
Patrick didn’t say anything, he just stood there and pondered Sawyer’s suggestion.
“You asked if we’d come along and help you get past the scaveys,” Sawyer started. “I’m telling you, you don’t want to be down here in tents if they start to swarm us. Let’s grab our rifles and scout out the area a little.”
“Alright,” Patrick said. “Grab your rifle Mak.”
They spread out side by side and walked up the boat ramp. When they crested the small hill from the river, the boat ramp and empty parking area turned into a well-maintained dirt road that had a road sign that said “4th Street”. The ground was flat, and the road went straight south as far as they cou
ld see with barren fields on either side of it.
“Not really a sprawling metropolis,” Patrick whispered.
Sawyer gave him a sideways glance and started walking down the dirt road. Patrick shrugged as he looked at the other two, then started after Sawyer. Mackenzie was glad to be out of that boat and able to get a little exercise. She normally wasn’t one for exercise, but it felt good to be out walking instead of bent over the bow of the boat searching for the bottom with the flashlight.
The small group walked in silence along the road. The air wasn’t cold, but much cooler than it had been throughout the day and it felt refreshing. The smell of the river was giving way to the smell of earth as they walked further away from the boat. Sawyer suddenly came to a halt and held his right hand up in a fist like some of the platoon commanders do in the war movies. The whole group recognized what he meant and stopped immediately. Mackenzie peered into the darkness lit only by the moon and stars, but didn’t see anything except for the same extending road up ahead. Sawyer motioned with his right hand for them to walk along the edge of the road, so they all joined in single-file as he began to move again.
After they had walked for several more minutes, Mackenzie recognized the dark shape of a building or house up ahead on the left. Just when she was going to whisper to Sawyer if that is what he had seen, Sawyer walked to the barb wire fence on the left-hand side of the road. He stepped on the bottom wire and pulled up the other strands so the others could pass through. Mackenzie was first and dipped down to go under, but her dad put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“Huh-uh,” he whispered as she turned around to see what his concern was. He motioned for her rifle that she had slung across her back. She looked at him quizzically, and he motioned again to it. She took the rifle off her back and handed it to her dad. He then motioned for her to crawl through and handed it back to her once she was across. He then handed her his rifle and then climbed through himself. They helped the other two across, and then they made their way across the field at a diagonal line towards the farm house. When they were a few hundred feet from the house, Sawyer started walking hunched over and low to the ground, so the others followed suit.
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 26