The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse

by Franklin Horton

  I still had eight bottles remaining and a few empty bottles that I’d saved for refilling when we found a good water source. I knew Randi had a few more also, and Gary had an unopened 8-pack in addition to what loose bottles he might have accumulated. We could get by on what we had in the bottles today, but may need to start filtering some stream or spring water tomorrow to refill our empties. The Katadyn filter in my pack was more than adequate for keeping us supplied until we got home. It was a veteran of many backcountry trips and had never let me down. Nothing could ruin a backpacking trip faster than spewing from both ends.

  As far as food went, I had not yet tapped into the emergency food that I kept in my Get Home Bag, relying instead on what we’d pilfered from the vending machines. In the bottom of my pack was a Chinese knock-off of the MSR Pocket Rocket that I backpacked with. The knock-off had been less than $10, including shipping from China, and functioned much the same as my MSR stove except it had a piezo ignitor that the MSR didn’t have. I had one unused canister of isobutane gas for the stove. It wouldn’t be enough for the whole trip, it only served as a backup for times when I couldn’t build a fire due to rain or security reasons.

  I was also carrying a one quart pot from an old Coleman backpacking set. I had since replaced it in my primary backpacking gear with a titanium pot that had been a Father’s Day present from my wife and kids. This pot was the right size for boiling water for drinking or cooking. It was also the right size that the can of isobutane stove fuel and the stove itself would fit down inside it and allow me room to get the lid on. That protected the whole setup and kept it together in one place. I had some used Gatorade bottles that held the food rations I kept in the pack for shit-hits-the-fan situations, kind of like the one I found myself in now. One held a two pound bag of white rice, the other a two pound bag of red beans. The bottles were marked in one cup increments to make measuring portions easier.

  There was a large baggie that held a couple of expired Mountain House freeze-dried backpacker meals, two MREs that I’d bought at a gun show, and a mixture of various energy and protein bars, in addition to a few drink mixes that could boost electrolytes, provide carbs, or just help cover the taste of bad water.

  I’d once backpacked a section of the Appalachian Trail around Roan Mountain in Tennessee during a particularly dry summer. Many of the normal watering holes and springs where backpackers traditionally refilled their water had dried up. At one point I’d become thirsty enough to filter water directly from a leaf-filled mud puddle. I knew the Katadyn would filter out anything unhealthy from the water but it did nothing to erase the taste of old leaves. I had since started carrying a few drink mixes for that very reason. Even nasty-tasting water can save your life.

  The stack of candy bars, granola bars, and jerky from the vending machine at the hotel had dwindled. I had divvied up the haul in a tentative fashion soon after the Great Vending Machine Heist, giving Gary some to stash in his pack, and during a rest break yesterday I’d given Randi some to stash in her improvised pack so that she would have access to fuel when she needed it without having to ask for it. You can burn several thousand calories a day hiking trails with a pack and if you don’t constantly refuel you will “bonk” and reach such a deficit state that you crash and can’t continue. We couldn’t risk a bonk.

  I had nine snacks of different types left from the vending machine. Those would be gone today. I figured Randi had fewer, and I wasn’t sure what Gary had. Since no one else was moving yet, I decided to boil up some water and dig into one of the freeze-dried backpacking meals. I needed something besides junk food. After sorting through the stack, I arrived at Spinach Fettuccini for Two. Not usual breakfast fare but my only concern at the point was packing calories into by body for the day’s trek. Carbs would be great. I set up the stove, poured some water in the cooking pot, and balanced it atop the stove. I took another bottle of water and began attempting to rehydrate myself.

  Rather than the soft whisper produced by a gas range, the canister stove sounds like a small jet engine, producing a roar that eventually had Randi and Gary stirring. Murmurs inside Walt and Katie’s tent indicated that were waking up too.

  “Is that garlic I smell?” Randi asked.

  “It is,” I said. “Guess your sense of smell has not been damaged by all that smoking.”

  “What in the hell are you eating for breakfast that has garlic in it?”

  “Spinach fettucine,” I replied. “It’s about done. Want some?”

  “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly.

  “You’d prefer more candy bars?”

  “Fettucine it is,” she replied, sitting up and throwing back her blanket.

  Gary got up and raided his own pack for an MRE, although I offered him a third portion of the pasta. Fortunately, I had two plastic sporks in my pack so Randi and I didn’t have to share a utensil. The meals were cooked by pouring boiling water into the bag that the meal comes in, then closing the bag up while the meal rehydrates and cooks. When the correct amount of time has passed, you simply stir the meal and eat it from the bag. Since I didn’t have any plates in my pack and didn’t want to dirty up the pot, Randi and I passed the bag back and forth alternately until we decimated our spinach fettuccini breakfast.

  “Best breakfast pasta I’ve ever had,” Randi said, digging immediately for a cigarette.

  “I think I’d agree,” I said. “What did you end up with, Gary?”

  “Huevos rancheros,” he replied. “Real breakfast food.”

  “I’m eating with him tomorrow,” Randi said, winking at me.

  Walt and Katie had been packing up their gear while we ate. When they finished they joined us, each of them nibbling on a Clif bar.

  “How are you guys set for food?” I asked.

  “Getting low,” Walt said. “We’d just come through a five day section with no resupply, which is a long stretch for us. We usually don’t carry more than three days’ food. We were planning to resupply today before we changed plans.”

  “How many meals do you have?”

  Walt looked at Katie. She held up a lone finger.

  “Lunch,” she replied.

  I wasn’t to the point of singing kumbaya with these folks yet and telling them that what was mine was theirs. I had a lot of reservations about sharing supplies with everyone I met, potentially depleting them. As her co-workers, Gary and I had already assumed responsibility for helping Randi get home, which would put a dent in our supplies. We had accepted that, though. If we assumed responsibility for everyone we met along the way, we may eventually run out of resources and fail in our mission of getting our own selves home to our families.

  Feeling a need to address this now that it was hanging out there, I thought of the plan I’d been turning over in my head during our walk yesterday.

  “I don’t have a lot,” I said. “I can get you through dinner tonight. We are also facing a resupply issue, though. We don’t have enough to get us home.”

  “Getting on this trail is the first time I’ve felt safe since leaving Richmond,” Randi said. “Don’t tell me we’re going to have to get off it and go back into the world again? Where all the crazy people are?”

  “Yes, we are,” I said. “There’s no alternative. You can’t travel fast and live off the land. If you are going to travel fast, you need to carry your food with you.”

  “Are we still shooting for Crawfish?” Gary asked.

  “Crawfish?” Katie asked. “Your plan is to eat crawfish?”

  “No,” I said. “Crawfish is a town. My best friend from high school, Lloyd, runs a barbershop in a town on the outskirts of Buena Vista. He’s also the mayor. I think he can help us if we can get to his place.”

  “How far is that?” Katie asked.

  “Maybe thirty-five miles,” I responded. “If we can make good time, we could be there tomorrow night.”

  “You think he’d take us in?” Gary asked. “All of us?”

  “I think he will,” I said
. “There’s probably a party at his place right now. He’s an old time musician and he kind of lives in the past. I doubt any of this has fazed him at all.”

  *

  The day’s walk began fairly well considering the circumstances. I had always found long walks to be meditative and it was easy to lose track of time plodding along a mountain trail. I was a little sore that morning, which was a combination of age and pushing it yesterday. Though I was in fairly good shape and did a variety of exercises and activities, hiking is more extreme than people think. My shoulders were sore from the weight of the pack pulling on them; my knees were a sore from stabilizing the combined weight of my body and my pack on uneven and hilly terrain; my calves were sore from climbing, as were my quads; my back was stiff from everything combined. The bottom of my forefoot was also hot from a day’s walking. I had taped it with duct tape this morning and hoped that it would wear better today. I knew that if I was experiencing all this, the rest had to be in as much pain or worse.

  I had tried to text my family again and found my iPhone dead. I pulled it from my shirt pocket and checked it again, hoping it had miraculously charged in my sleep but it had not. While I was staring at it, Gary pulled his from his pocket and checked it also.

  “Dead,” he muttered.

  “Mine, too,” I said.

  He stuck his back in his pocket. “Even unreliable communication was better than nothing.”

  “Let’s take a short break,” I announced to the group.

  Everyone gladly stopped and dropped their loads for a moment. Usually on backpacking trips, people string out a little based on their individual pace and then they catch up at with each other at the rest breaks. It’s no big deal for people to be thirty minutes apart when the path is clearly delineated and there are no hazards or navigational challenges. Due to the unusual circumstances of this particular disaster, and the way strangers were not always behaving nicely under the present conditions, I had warned people this morning that I felt it was best to stay within sight of each other as much as possible. I had also told them that if they were pulling off trail to take a bathroom break they needed to let someone know so we didn’t leave them behind. Everyone agreed with the plan. I didn’t necessarily consider myself the leader of this bunch but there were things that needed to be discussed. If no one else brought them up, I would.

  I dug in my pack and removed a padded nylon case about the size of a hardcover book, around an inch thick. I unfolded the case to the solar cells lining the inside. It was an Anker portable solar charger with a USB port that could charge a phone or tablet. I carried a spare iPhone cable inside the case and plugged it into my phone and then into the charger. Using two carabiners, I hung the charger from the back of my pack so that my phone would charge as I walked. The charger worked best in direct sunlight, but a day of walking should leave it usable by the time we stopped for the day, as long as I could get signal.

  “That’s a trick,” Gary said. “I’ve been wanting one of those.”

  “Start backpacking,” I said. “It gives you the excuse to buy a lot of prepper gadgets. My wife would have rolled her eyes at me purchasing this for ‘the apocalypse’ but she was fine with me buying it so I could call her and tell her how much I love her from the trail.”

  “I might enjoy backpacking under different circumstances,” he said.

  “Not this girl,” Randi said from where she rested against a tree. “I think this will be my one and only backpacking trip. Hell, once I’m home, I may never leave town again.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” I remarked.

  After another candy bar, we hit the trail again. I stared at the empty wrapper before I stuffed it into my pocket, recalling a day when I had looked at a Snickers bar as a treat. I expected it would be a long time before I ever craved another one. I really wanted a club sandwich.

  We stopped for an early lunch at the empty Blackwood shelter, another of the sparse overnight huts scattered along the trail. Every shelter had a trail register where hikers could sign in with their trail name and indicate they’d been here and even include a short message if they wanted. There were no entries dated for the previous night. Perhaps word was reaching the trail that things had gone to shit and people were peeling off to try to get home. Come to think of it, we hadn’t passed any hikers all day, and that was unusual on the AT. This time of year, it was practically a freeway for the great unwashed and overburdened.

  Walt and Katie finished the last of their food, sharing sandwiches of tortillas, sliced cheese, and summer sausage. Gary, Randi, and I had jerky, peanuts, and – you guessed it – candy bars. We’d come thirteen miles already but everyone was feeling well. Over the past day, we’d reacted promptly to any hot spots in our shoes, putting duct tape over any areas of our feet that rubbed to prevent blisters. If anyone was suffering, they were hiding it well. I’m a pure Mountain Masochist – I love to suffer with a pack on. If it hadn’t been for the worry about my family, I’d have actually been enjoying this.

  Thinking about them prompted me to dig out my phone and check it. It had about 20% charge. This was not surprising since I’d only had it on charge about two hours and we were in and out of wooded cover all morning. I appreciated that the device worked at all.I had not received any texts since last checking it, but I composed one and sent it to my family, updating them on the turn of events. It balked when I sent it, the progress bar refusing to move all the way across, indicating a successfully sent message. I would leave the phone on, and on the charger, hoping that it may continue to try to send if we found a pocket of signal along the way.

  I noticed that Gary had field-stripped his Glock and was wiping sweat from the components with a bandana. I wasn’t as Glock-obsessed as Gary was but you had to admire the ease with which you could tear the damn things apart for cleaning.

  “I will be adding a gun cleaning kit to this pack when I get home,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about the effects of daily carry in these conditions.”

  “They do get nasty,” I said.

  I was gathering my trash to burn in the shelter’s fire ring when I saw Walt and Katie staring at Gary. Or more specifically, staring at Gary’s Glock.

  Walt noticed that I was watching him and raised his eyes to meet mine. “We’re not big fans of guns,” he said. “Guns kill people.”

  I shrugged. “When treated with respect, a gun can be very useful. It’s just a tool, and in this case it’s an important survival tool. Our guns have saved our lives several times over the past few days.”

  “You have one, too?” Katie asked, concern in her eyes and her voice.

  “I do. And when I hiked the southwest Virginia section of the AT – the same section you two were just hiking – I carried a gun then, too.”

  “They make me uncomfortable,” Walt said.

  A switch inside me flipped and cold aggression took hold of me. “Would someone raping your girlfriend make you uncomfortable?”

  Both Walt and Katie recoiled. They hadn’t seen this side of me, the unemotional, coldly practical side. The side I’d inherited from my grandfather. This time, however, rather than trying to soften my words and deescalate the situation, Gary followed my lead.

  “You guys haven’t seen what it’s like out there,” Gary said. “It’s like Lord of the Flies or some kind of depressing futuristic movie. Bad people are figuring out that the cops are all occupied with bigger emergencies and they’re doing whatever they want. They’re robbing and murdering and raping. We’ve seen a lot of violence in the last two days. Several times, our guns have been all that stood between us and violence.”

  “You seem like normal people,” Katie said. “I’ll try not to judge you.”

  She appeared to be sincere in what she said, but I didn’t know her well enough to give a damn if she judged me or not. As much as I wanted Walt and Katie to get home, I wasn’t taking on new pains-in-the-asses. I decided I needed to make that clear.

  “We’re glad to help you as
long as helping you does not stand in the way of our objective,” I said. “Which is us three getting home to our families. The minute I feel like you’re judging me for doing what I feel I need to do to protect the interests of our group, we’ll have to part ways. This is not a democracy. You are welcome to travel with us as long as our interests coincide. When they don’t, we part ways with no hard feelings. Is that clear?”

  Walt and Katie exchanged glances, then met my eyes and nodded.

  “I’m sorry if I pissed you off,” Katie said, tears in her eyes.

  “You didn’t piss me off. I am just a very determined, very blunt man who misses his family.”

  “The bluntest,” Randi agreed. “No sugar coating with this guy. He doesn’t mind peeing in your cornflakes.”

  “Definitely not,” Gary chimed in.

  He reinserted the mag in his Glock, racked the slide to chamber a round, and placed the weapon on his pack beside him.

  I stood and picked up my pack. “As long as we’ve cleared up who America’s biggest asshole is, let’s get this show on the road. We’re burning daylight.”

  As I shouldered my pack and began buckling the straps, I heard the sound of an engine. I froze and listened. Randi started to say something, but I waved her silent, cupping my ear. In a moment it was clear, something motorized was coming up the trail.

  Gary removed his Glock from the top of his pack and placed it beneath his thighs, within easy reach.

  “It’s a four-wheeler,” Randi said quietly.

  A green Suzuki ATV came pounding through the brush, overhanging the narrow trail by a foot on each side and leaving a wake of crumpled foliage behind it. It looked incredibly strange and out of perspective. This National Scenic Trail was off-limits to motorized vehicles and the last thing I expected was one to come crashing out of the woods. It was just another indication of how quickly the world was changing in the wake of disaster.

  There were two riders. In the front was a scrawny man/boy somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five wearing a wife-beater, jeans, a gold chain, and hunting boots. He had a faint mustache and a dark mullet. Behind him was a harder looking man of indeterminate age who bulged with muscles and wore a sleeveless camouflage t-shirt, with full sleeves of homemade tattoos. They could be the remnant of jail or merely of a misspent youth. I guessed jail. He had the look of a man who had done hard time. Both carried weapons. The boy in front had a single-shot shotgun hanging over his shoulder from a homemade rope sling. The one in back balanced a lever-action carbine across his lap.