“That’s what you said a little while ago. I don’t know if it will.”
“Hey, do you hear that?” I asked her suddenly.
The noise sounded like a motor. The noise rose in volume and then fell away. Then it happened again.
“We’re not that far now,” Tina said shooting me a smile.
I looked around and then looked back at the green belt we’d come out of. It was a ways back. I knew this entire time we’d not been any more than a mile or two from a road or a river, but without a compass during our get-away in the dark, we could have been going in circles. Now with the compass busted, I was using the sun to give me an idea and I sort of felt like we were heading south now.
“I can’t wait to get off this slope,” I said, looking at the reddish hued rock we’d been walking along.
“You’re lucky you’ve been doing more cardio with Opus and me during the last year,” Tina said, only slightly less out of breath than I was.
With the water in sight, we hadn’t bothered rationing it, mostly just concentrating on getting out. I heard a horn, then the murmur of voices. I looked ahead and saw that the rocky slope we’d been following was turning a corner and there was a shelf we could walk on near the water, built up out of the sediment. I couldn’t see anybody, but I knew we were close, right after this corner.
“So, what are you going to say to my dad exactly?” Tina randomly asked.
“I uh… Well, I was going to ask him if I could marry you?” I asked her stupidly.
“No, I mean, how are you going to say it?” She asked, and paused to look back at me.
I stammered a second, realizing there had been a fatal flaw in my plan. “So, tell me about your parents,” I said, after a long hesitation.
“Well, you’ve talked to my mom on the phone. She’s pretty old-fashioned, but she always was proud that the mini-storage was her idea.”
“It was?” I asked.
Tina nodded. “Even though she worships the ground my dad walks on, she has an independent streak a mile wide—”
“I wondered where you got that from,” I interrupted, and Opus chuffed, which I took as a chuckle.
“Well, when Daddy went off to war—”
“Wait, your dad is a… was a…?”
“Yeah. The first Gulf War was his last two deployments. He was a career soldier, but mom and I didn’t always move around with him. I guess we did when I was first born, but I don’t remember it. We came back to Michigan before I could remember too, so you know, it’s all I’ve known. But once he retired, they both worked the mini-storage.”
“And when they retired, you took over.”
“Well, I grew up working there, and they’d invested well, and Daddy has his pension. So, when I got the business from them, it was kind of all I knew. That, and all the games of paintball and laser tag with the guys growing up.”
“I bet your father approved of all the war games,” I said with a grin.
She turned around to see if I was teasing her or not, but I wasn’t, I was being sincere. To me, it made sense a little bit. She was a very feminine lady, but she had a tomboy streak. She didn’t always play it up around me, but at times it shone through. Like her knowledge of firearms, and how she’d comfortably unboxed and cleaned up the new bug-out bag gun I’d picked up. It also made sense when she had a psycho ex who’d made her feel helpless for the first time ever, leading up to her getting Opus.
“He actually thought I should have had my hair braided, wearing dresses all the time. No idea how he and my mom got along,” she said, and then snickered.
They were two peas in a pod, that’s what she meant. Old school. From a different era, like Old Sarge & Annette.
“How old are they?”
“I was their miracle baby, so they were a little older than most of my friend’s parents. They aren’t Sarge’s age, but probably within ten to fifteen years.”
“Oh, ok. Anything I should know? Likes, dislikes… should I—”
“Just be yourself. I think you’ll be fine, but if Daddy gets out his guns and starts cleaning them…”
“He wouldn’t,” I said, shocked.
Opus barked.
For a second, I thought he was excited, agreeing with Tina that if her dad was cleaning guns, I should probably run, but he barked again, and I saw him wagging his tail.
“Hey there!” a voice called over to us.
Oh crap. I had been caught flat-footed, but Tina was waving back enthusiastically, and Opus’s tail was wagging so hard he was almost falling over from excitement. I hurried ahead and caught up with them. The wash we’d been following had curved to the right into what could only be described as a mocha latte frothing, as two bodies of water converged. We’d done it, we’d found the Colorado River and a man was waving and smiling as we approached.
He was a little older than us, wearing khaki shorts, a lightweight white plain T-shirt, and some water shoes.
“Hi!” I said, stepping forward in front of Tina and Opus.
He looked at me, his smile wide as I closed the distance. I could hear Tina engaging the safety as I passed them, and realized I might have been caught unawares, but she hadn’t.
“Y’all out doing a spot of hunting?” the man asked.
“We’ve gotten ourselves in a bit of a jam and don’t have our cell phones,” I called back.
“Don’t tell him we’re being hunted by a killer,” Tina said coming up fast behind me, her words coming out in a hiss. “He might not want to help.”
“Well, come on over, I’ve got mine in the canoe!”
I looked to my side and saw Tina and Opus had been matching my pace and were right on my heels. It took everything I had not to run toward the man, closing the distance and putting an end to the crazy day we’d had. We were so close now, shouting wasn’t needed, and Opus let out a happy bark. I understood his excitement too, it was all I could do not to wiggle as I moved.
“Thank you,” Tina said, beating me to the man, and shaking his hand, giving him her 10,000-watt smile.
“We were out doing some plinking and got turned around a bit. We’ve been out here since this morning.”
“Where did y’all come from?” he asked.
“We were at the Arches,” I told him, stopping beside Opus who was still showing his enthusiasm with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and wagging his tail.
“That’s a good bit of a hike. Four or five miles I think. Come on back this way, I tied my canoe off. You need a ride back to your spot?”
“Actually, if we could borrow your phone.”
“For sure! I’ve been up north here for a couple weeks now. Pulled my RV with my wife Greta and we’ve been seeing the sights, and I’ve been doing a little bit of fishing. You two on vacation, too?”
“Sort of a pre-honeymoon,” I told him.
“Pre-honeymoon?” he said, his eyebrows raised, and then when he got it, an embarrassed grin broke out.
“I’m Tina, that’s my fiancé, Rick, and this guy here is Opus. Opus, say hi!”
Opus barked once, excitedly and the man put his hand in front of him without hesitation. Opus sniffed his hand and then jumped on his hind legs and put his paws on the man’s chest and licked his face.
“I’m… Ouaaaffff,” he stammered, as Opus got him.
Opus got down and chuffed.
“I’m Clive,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth to wipe away the dog slime.
“Thank you, Clive,” I said simply.
Tina unloaded the rifle, removing the magazine, then racking the slide, catching the shell and putting it in the magazine before breaking it down and taking off her pack.
“Where’s the road?” she asked.
“Across the river,” Clive said with a grin.
Clive had stopped his fishing for a bathroom break, and that was how he’d ended up on this side of the river. The campground was more of a wide spot where people pulled off and parked, but there was a place
a little further south of that where a real campground was with full hookups.
As we walked down the river bank, we saw people floating down the river on tubes, some laughing, some splashing, and some holding cans that looked suspiciously like Budweiser.
My mouth watered at the thought.
“There she is,” Clive said, as a green fiberglass canoe came into view behind a small bush where he’d tied it off with a length of nylon rope.
Other than a bucket of water in the middle with two fish in it, the canoe was empty except for a set of paddles and two life jackets. Clive got in and walked to the back of the canoe slowly. When he got in the back, he dug under his seat and slid out a tackle box that he promptly opened. He dug around and pulled out a Ziploc bag and walked back toward us, opening it as he went.
“Damn,” he muttered. “It got too hot and shut down, or the battery is dead.” He held it up, showing me a black screen.
“Oh, that’s—”
“I can plug it in, or we can use my wife’s if you guys want to take a trip across the river. It’s slow this time of year.”
“We’d love a ride. Can your canoe hold all of us?” I ask, knowing my pack was starting to feel like it was full of rocks and lead weights.
“Oh sure, I take this fella out duck, and we pack four of us guys in it, and my buddy, Janesh, is a big ‘un. Easily tops out pert’ near four hundred or so.”
“That’s fantastic, we’d love your help,” Tina said.
He grinned back at her and then remembered I was still there. Opus barked happily, reminding all of us he wasn’t the third wheel, and to prove it, he walked back up to Clive and licked his hand and then sat on his haunches and whined expectantly. Clive scratched his head and turned and headed away from us.
“We’re so almost out of here,” Tina said, shouldering her pack.
“I know, I can’t wait to call the authorities and then get this over with. Get the van, spend the next week or so not running through the desert…”
“Meeting my father,” Tina said, bumping me with her hip.
“On second thought, running through the desert wasn’t all that bad,” I admitted.
Opus sneezed, and that made me bust up.
“Are you sure we aren’t overloaded?” Tina asked, as Opus stood between us. Our packs were on the floor at our feet.
“Maybe a little bit. If the river was a bit faster and we were trying to go straight across we might have some issues, but trust me, we’re fine. You all right paddling there, Rick?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Tina, no worries, you could fit another guy in here as long as the current didn’t have white caps. Plus, we’re heading downstream. Right, Clive?”
“You got it. I should have you to a phone in about twenty, twenty-five minutes or so. Then you can call whoever you need to.”
“Probably the sheriff,” Tina mumbled, though she wasn’t very quiet.
“You two in some kind of trouble…or hurt?” Clive asked. “Shoot, I didn’t even think to ask when you popped out of that incline all sweaty and happy-like.”
“Well, we had some car issues, and somebody was shooting near us,” I said going for a watered-down version of the truth. “It surprised us, and we got turned around a bit. Once we saw that small stream, we figured we’d follow it, and it’d eventually take us out to the Colorado where we could find help.”
“Oh, phew. I was worried for a moment, though I might be giving an ax murderer a lift.”
“I’m not an ax murderer,” I said with a chuckle.
“Wasn’t meaning you,” Clive shot back.
A surprised look covered Tina’s face, and her mouth dropped into an O-shape while she fought back saying something extra snarky. Instead, she reached into the water and smacked it, sending a splash back at Clive.
I snickered, and Opus let out an excited bark as Clive laughed, wiping water off his face. Tina turned around to see how bad she got him at the same moment he slapped the water with his paddle. Both of us got drenched.
“Maybe we are a little full,” Clive said, and Opus barked again before sitting down, his whole hind end shaking as his tail wagged.
The ride took a little longer than expected, but the splash fight only lasted a couple moments, the men with the paddles winning of course. Not only did we manage not to go all tippy canoe, the cool water hitting us kept us cool as a light breeze began to blow. It also worked as a tension breaker, and my muscles were sore from the hiking, but I realized a lot of that had been the fact I’d been fleeing with my loved ones from somebody lobbing lead at us from a long ways away.
“Here we are,” Clive said, right before the front of the canoe pushed up onto a mixture of rock and sand that formed the bank at the other end.
“Got it,” I told him, jumping out and gently pulling the canoe up a little further, making Tina look at me with wide eyes.
“He isn’t going to tip you,” Clive chuckled, and Opus barked.
I waited and helped everyone out, with Clive coming last. Opus got close and leaped, but as soon as Clive got off, he walked over to him and leaned his head against the man’s side.
Clive grinned and gave him a firm pat.
“Give me a hand pulling it up more?” he asked.
“Sure,” I told him, and we did, the rocks making scraping noises as the aluminum came out of the river.
“That’s good enough.” He reached in and grabbed Tina’s pack.
I got mine and strapped it on. This nightmare was over. We could call the authorities, get the van, hopefully, avoid any more problems and…
“I’m glad we changed out of our sleeping clothes,” Tina said with a smirk.
“Me too,” I told her, though my pistol was visible with the shorts and shirt I was wearing.
That hadn’t bothered Clive, and as he made a motion for us to follow him, I saw his shirt in the back move and saw the outline of his own pistol. Everybody in Utah, it seemed, was ready for something. Well, unfortunately, that also meant whomever had tried to kill us.
We followed him up the bank. Motorhomes, some as old as War Wagon, were lined up side by side with their canopies open, and on the other side was an assortment of cars and trucks, probably tubers and hikers. He kept a running dialog going with Tina, but I was watching.
Across the highway, the roadway went from flat to a side of a mountain. The red hues in the rock were broken up by veins of some other, sometimes the green of shrubbery. I’d seen snow-capped mountains further north, but this… I realized I was a big dummy. The Colorado River ran through the Grand Canyon. In Arizona. This wasn’t in Arizona, but we weren’t that far sidetracked, and once we got things sorted out, we’d be heading to Arizona to meet the parents.
“Let me head in and see if Greta is decent first,” Clive said stopping in front of a newer motorhome, its fiberglass shining.
“Ok, thank you,” Tina said, as he walked up behind him. “Or you could just let us borrow her phone and not bother her,” she muttered.
The gravel crunched, and a blue Astro van pulled up in front of us, and the driver tapped on the horn.
“Who’s that?” Tina asked.
“Hell if I know,” I muttered and saw a hand beckon to us.
We both walked up, and Opus made a whining sound, but I wasn’t sure if he was complaining we weren’t waiting on Clive to come right back out. The passenger side window opened, and I walked over to see what they wanted. I put my hands on the frame and leaned down to see who it was and ask what they want.
I was met with the bore of a large shotgun.
“Get in,” Craig said in a snarl that was so quiet it barely left the van, though Tina immediately stiffened by the feel of it when she saw the shotgun.
“Craig?” I said in shock. “What are you doing, buddy?”
“You get in. Tina, put Opus in the back, then load up the packs. If the old man comes out, get rid of him, or your fiancé is going to be the first one to die.”
“Craig?” I
said again, unable to believe my eyes and ears.
He clicked off the safety.
I believed it now. “Getting in,” I said, opening the side door.
“Leave your pack on the ground,” he said, moving from the driver's seat and stepping over the center console.
For a second, I thought he was putting the stubby shotgun right up my guts when he did that, but I saw it was because he was moving. I dropped my pack and wondered if he could shoot through the body of the van.
Could I get away?
If he was the long distance shooter… he had to be. Why was he doing this?
“Don’t hurt him,” Tina said, her voice shaking.
Opus growled. At first, it was the nervous growl we’d all heard before, but within moments it was angry and threatening.
“Opus, come,” Tina said, and the volume of the growl increased.
“Close the door and roll up the window, Rick,” he told me, and I did, slamming it.
“Clive, a friend, found us,” Tina yelled from the back of the van.
I turned to see she’d dragged my pack, and an unhappy Opus, to the back of the van and was walking near the back door.
“Take your pistol out slowly and hand it back between the gap in the seats and the side door. If you turn around during this, I’ll end you right here, then hunt down your lovely wife-to-be.”
His words chilled me.
Where was the guy who’d been joking and hanging out with us a couple of days ago? I reached over slowly, not wanting to die, and handed my gun back between the tight gap. I realized suddenly why he’d had me do it that way. By making me get in the passenger seat, he was limiting my mobility, and handing the gun backward in the gap like that, there was no way to point and aim. The Beretta was roughly snatched out of my hand as Tina opened the back door.
“He’s gone,” Tina said softly.
I could see the door from the mirror, but I couldn’t see her.
“Good,” Craig told her. “Load Opus in that cage, pile the backpacks on, and then get in the driver's side.”
“Or you’re going to kill us right here, right now?” I asked, unable to stop the sarcasm to run out of my mouth.
“Yes,” he said and nodded his head with aloof confidence.
Opus Odyssey_A Survival and Preparedness Story Page 16