Prepper Mountain

by Chris Bostic

“Whoa, I missed a step there,” he said.

  “Now who peed their pants,” I replied with a grin.

  “Good one.” He sloshed his way up onto a flat rock next to me. Rushing water parted around our boots before gathering back into a torrent by the drop off.

  “It’s too dark for this,” I said. The water glittered in the moonlight, but not enough to be sure of depth. It was difficult judging if the ripples looked deep as the stream splashed over boulders.

  Austin pulled off his boots and dumped them out. He surprised me by saying, “Thanks for the save, little bro.”

  “No problem.” I turned back to the others to find they’d almost caught up to us. “Watch out over here. Maybe come this way.”

  “Got it,” Mom said.

  She guided Maddie out onto what looked like a harmless-looking ledge rock, but it turned out to be a different kind of mistake. The flat rocks were extra slippery, especially in shallow water.

  Maddie shrieked. I watched in slow motion as her feet flew out from underneath her. She landed with a splash big enough to obscure her entire body from me. I shook off the paralysis and ran for her.

  I banged my shin into a rock and ignored the pain until later. She was panic splashing, struggling to get back to her feet as the water swirled around her. The river shoved her from behind, which didn’t help getting her upright again. Mom and I each took a hand and finally dragged her up onto her butt out of the river.

  The expression drowned rat came to mind, but I kept that to myself.

  “This is so awesome,” she whimpered.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked. “Cuts or scrapes?”

  “Hundreds.”

  I went through my own accounting, and thought I might be able to rival that number if I included every little scratch on my body from my earlier charge through the bushes.

  “Be serious,” Mom said. She offered a hand to pull her up.

  Maddie moaned and refused the help. “Isn’t it all a little too serious?”

  “You want a good laugh,” Dad said, and no one expected any jokes to come out of that guy. No one understood his financial humor, though he had been loosening up a bit the longer we were on the trip. At least as long as he wasn’t about to snap at someone.

  “The boys are the comedians, Harold.” Mom looked at us. “Say something funny.”

  “Something funny,” Austin deadpanned.

  It was so stupid even Maddie cracked a grin. I groaned and started to walk off down the river.

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll be here all week,” Austin said.

  As far as I was concerned, that joke backfired. The words seeped through me like the cold water through my boots. The idea of a week I could almost handle, though I certainly felt less optimistic without our supplies. Not knowing how long this could go on was a completely different kind of cruelty.

  Thankfully, no one else seemed as affected. They weren’t moving very quickly, though. Perhaps they were just trying to avoid another slipping incident, but I was ready to be away from the river. Maybe it was some kind of sixth sense I didn’t know I had.

  “Let’s go,” I grumbled and stood impatiently on a rock, feeling it lean like a seesaw as I shifted my weight.

  Maddie was stumbling along the side of the creek, her wet clothes clinging to her. The way the temperature dropped, especially in the upper altitudes, I expected her to start shivering. I was feeling a little quivering myself.

  To stay warm, it was best to keep moving. Mom had other ideas.

  “Harold, you want to give your daughter some dry clothes?”

  “Is she gonna go swimming again?” he said, and I had to stifle a chuckle.

  “Dad!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t funny.”

  “Yes, it was,” Austin said, too loudly.

  Mom glared at him before turning back to Dad. “Well?”

  “I’m fine,” Maddie interjected. “I’ll change later.” She sighed and stared at the heavens. “This can’t get any worse.”

  I knew better than to think that. Fortunately, we ended up being close to the fork with the stream running up to the Meigs Mountain Trail. The unfortunate part was the word up.

  We made it the rest of the way down the river without anything eventful plaguing us. But I was tired before we even attempted the climb. We stopped to regroup at the side of the rushing water where the boulders piled up against the forest.

  It was dark, cold, and loud. The raging current of the river was joined by the smacking, rolling sound of water tumbling off the mountain toward it.

  “It’s quite a racket,” Mom said, raising her voice.

  “Yeah, it is,” I said, but no one seemed to hear me.

  “No point standing around, is there?” Dad asked.

  “Just trying to catch our breath, Harold.”

  Before anyone could reply, a yellow light brighter than a spotlight poked into the tops of the trees across the road from us. It slowly spun our direction, growing brighter. The beams, now two, flattened out to eye level.

  “Hide!” Mom shouted.

  CHAPTER 24

  “Get in the woods!” Dad shouted, but we didn’t need the command. I stomped through the shallows to dive behind the nearest thick tree. I wedged my back tight against the trunk and watched as the woods brightened.

  The sound of tires droning on the asphalt grew exponentially louder along with my heart beats.

  “Don’t see us,” I repeated over and over through clenched teeth, and kept my head buried in my lap to keep from having my eyeballs cast some weird telltale reflection like a deer along the side of the road.

  There was no sign of the vehicle slowing. It hummed by, and I chanced a look once I was sure it was clear.

  Brake lights popped on. I froze, cursing my stupid impatience.

  Fortunately, the truck kept going. It had just been slowing for the narrow bridge. I heard the throaty rumble of the pick-up truck as the driver mashed the gas pedal again. In seconds, the taillights blinked out of view over a hump in the road.

  “Everybody alright?” Mom called from the dark.

  I blinked, no longer able to see in the woods until my eyes readjusted to the starlight.

  “Over here,” I said, and Austin muttered something from next to me.

  Dad walked back out into the stream. “Where’s Maddie?”

  “With me,” Mom replied. “I’ve got her.”

  “The big baby,” Austin mumbled. He hurried past me like he was trying to beat me back to the creek. I wasn’t in that big of a hurry, purposefully slowing to amble my way out to the others.

  “We won’t have to worry about trucks for a while,” Dad said. He pointed up the streambed away from the road. “We’re taking the stairs.”

  “An elevator would be nicer,” Mom said, obviously joking.

  “Or the escalator, like the mall.” Maddie added softly.

  “Of course you’d say that,” Austin said, which was a cheap shot considering that none of us had been to the mall in ages. The closest one to us had closed the year before, and I doubted any of the others were open either. It had been Joe or someone else at school who had said they’d turned one into a homeless shelter. From what I’d heard about the state of the country, that didn’t sound big enough. Then again, I couldn’t help but wonder if the prisons were equally as overcrowded, or worse.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re not going very far.” Mom took Maddie by the wrist and helped her climb over a fallen log blocking our path.

  “We get far enough away from this road,” Dad said, “and I’m perfectly happy finding a spot to stay the night.”

  “Anywhere in particular?” Mom said, though she’d be the better one to make that determination.

  “Not really, unless you know of a king-sized bed.”

  Though I didn’t find it particularly funny, Mom laughed. “Oh, Harold, if there was one out here, the mice would make it their home.”

  If she was making fun of his
lack of outdoor skills, he didn’t notice. Without a doubt, the guy was great with a map. He could read them upside down—and apparently in the dark. But whenever Mom had talked about book smarts versus street smarts, it was obvious which one had been blessed with which skill.

  “You know, that’s one thing about this park…there’s very little trash out here. They’ve kept it clean.” Dad stopped to look around, but there was nothing that looked any different than anywhere else. He probably just needed a break. We all did.

  “I’d say that’s about the only good thing they’ve done,” Mom replied softly.

  “Well, that’s the hallmark of a classic dictatorship,” he scoffed. “Everything so nice and neatly ordered.”

  That statement confused me to the point that I had to ask, “What about all the trash around home? You know, the crap streets and full garbage cans? The bad tasting water.”

  “Ah, good observation,” Dad said. “There’s a reason why it’s clean out here, but failing back there.”

  “Not many people?” Austin suggested. “There’s no one out here to mess it up?”

  “Yes and no,” Dad replied. “I’d postulate that the government does that on purpose, so they can step in and magically fix all our problems. They create the mess, then clamp down on the law and order angle to clean up something that never needed to happen in the first place.”

  I’d never thought of it that way. The whole concept sickened me, and I stated as much.

  “That’s how the propaganda machine works…and how they grab more power. Anyway…” Dad looked to Mom for confirmation before saying, “We should get going.”

  “Just a little farther,” she encouraged, and took Maddie by the wrist.

  We made it another hundred yards off the road before muttered curses started to join with the heavy breathing. It wasn’t the most rigorous trail I’d climbed by far, but even a walk around the block back home would’ve been strenuous by that point.

  “We can stop, Harold,” Mom said, though she didn’t sound nearly as breathless as the rest of us.

  Even Austin was laboring, though I supposed all the time on the couch working out his fingers on video games wasn’t the type of exercise the President’s Council on Fitness was all about. I’d found it humorous how getting up and moving around was supposed to be a cure for all the nation’s troubles. Rather than get my mind off problems, all I’d learned on a walk around the neighborhood was more and more houses were being foreclosed on, and the sidewalks were so cracked it’d been a hazard.

  Despite all that, I would have given anything to walk home with Katelyn one more time.

  As we settled into a quiet spot in the woods to rest for the night, my thoughts turned to her. I imagined horsing around with her in a creek like the one babbling next to me. Maybe splashing her with the icy water to hear her shriek.

  We would climb on a log, slowly putting one foot in front of the other. I’d be tempted to bounce the log just to scare her a little, but would think better of it. Instead, we’d hold hands and sit suspended over a creek watching the water tumble downhill toward the road. It would be so peaceful. Romantic, too. I might even work up the urge to make a move, and finally get that kiss that I’d craved on her couch only a short day before.

  In my mind, I drew out the whole scenario. Sitting on the log out over the rolling water, I’d tuck a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. She’d smile demurely, rounding out her perfect cheekbones. With my heart pounding so loud she could hear it, I’d lean in. I’d trace her jawline with my hand, and our lips would finally meet.

  And then she’d fall off the log.

  I shot upright, panicked. Thankfully, I didn’t shout her name or the rest of my family really would’ve thought I’d lost my mind.

  It was still dark. So dark. The water gurgled next to us, and I tried to use that to calm myself back down, but all I could see was waterfalls. Not the kind of waterfalls to play in and enjoy the spray. The one that became Niagara Falls, and we were headed over the top in a barrel. A barrel filled with MREs for padding.

  “Stop it,” I whispered to myself. “We’ll get out of this…somehow. It’s gonna work out. It has to.”

  I couldn’t live out there, not endlessly. Besides what was bordering on obsession with Katelyn, I had Joe and a few other friends, things to do, a whole life back in the city. We might have been twenty or thirty miles from home, but it was a world of difference. A world I wasn’t ready for, no matter how much I remained in denial about the state of our country—or rather police state.

  I looked over at the others. The dark lump that was Mom was stretched out under a pine tree. Dad was close by. I could hear more than see him. Like the last residents of this forest a century ago, he was sawing logs. Nearly as loudly too.

  Maddie was close to Mom, opposite Dad. As I sat and watched, she stirred in her sleep and moaned. Then a heavy sigh. She couldn’t have sounded less comfortable. Before too many visions of my baby sister whimpering for Momma or Dada came to mind, I turned to find Austin. It was easier said than done.

  Eventually, I gave up. Austin would be close by, but leave it to him to be off on his own somewhere. Not surprising. And I really didn’t mind.

  I got far less sleep than necessary. As the night dragged on, I must’ve woken every hour to a strange sound, or sometimes nothing at all. It was always that way when I camped. Sleep was an impossibility for me on the first night; the next I was too exhausted for anything to wake me. Not that I was really camping as much as hiding in the woods.

  “Better luck tomorrow,” I muttered, and considered getting up to look around. But there was nowhere to go, and I couldn’t risk getting separated. I could’ve walked farther up the stream, but it was pointless only to come back and do it all over again in the morning. If I had ventured anywhere else, I probably would’ve gotten hopelessly lost in the forest. So I laid my head down on an arm and prayed for sleep to last.

  I finally dozed off somewhere around daybreak. When my eyes reopened, the woods were shadowy gray. It would still be a while before the sun was high enough to cast shadows—or bake us. Nevertheless, it was still warm for early morning.

  My eyes felt crusted over, much like my mood. Scrubbing at them failed to remove the junk in the corners. So I ended up pulling on my wet boots and walked to the creek to splash my face. I stooped over at the side of the stream and searched out the clearest looking pool. Cupping my hands, I buried my face in the cold water and recoiled with a sharp intake of air. That woke me up. Like swimming in October, it was almost too refreshing.

  I stumbled away from the creek, happy to have my eyes cleared—until I caught sight of a black shadow moving toward me.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Bear,” I said weakly at first.

  It was not a young one. The heavy black mass moved through the trees on all fours, looking as big as a Volkswagen Beetle. I held my ground, knowing it was better to stand than run.

  I found my voice. “Mom! Dad!”

  Still no reply.

  The black bear looked up and locked eyes with me. It was on the opposite side of the stream, but quickly closing the distance. Bear attacks weren’t something I usually worried about since the animals were somewhat domesticated in the park. But knowing the rest of my family was sleeping, there was unpredictability. Sudden movements or panic could encourage the beast to attack.

  “Mom!” I yelled even louder. The bear stopped again to stare at me.

  “Yeah, hon?” she replied. A disheveled head of hair appeared above the bushes lining the creek.

  “Bear.” I continued the staring contest. “A big one.”

  She disappeared below the brush. “Harold, wake up.”

  He mumbled something while I watched the bear pad its way on all fours to the edge of the creek. My feet told me to run, but my mind kept a tighter grip over my nerves. I’d never been afraid of bears, but hadn’t been quite this close before. I’d seen several along the roads of the park, even gotten out
of the Jeep to get within twenty yards. But they were usually young and less imposing.

  Muscles rippled through its shiny black coat. The bear pulled at some sort of vegetation along the stream bank with giant claws and shoved its toothy maw into the dirt.

  I stood still and debated whether I should be waving my hands and making more noise to try to frighten it away. Instead, I was fascinated watching the claws work over the vegetation, raking through the brush with ease.

  It straightened up suddenly as Mom and Dad appeared off to my right.

  “Easy big fella,” I said to our visitor, and kept talking in low tones the way I would talk to a growling dog. Tempted as I was, I wasn’t about to pet it.

  Dad gasped when the bear moved toward me, but I didn’t back away. My parents added their voices to mine, slowing its progress. The bear got so close I could nearly feel its breath on me. A gust from its nose would’ve blown me over. I swear I felt the fur brush against my pants as it abruptly turned.

  I cringed at the sound of Austin’s voice. “Whoa, cool!”

  He popped up from somewhere out of the woods behind me, and stomped through the brush toward me. The bear watched him closely; his big body shuddering with every one of Austin’s pounding footsteps.

  Abruptly, the bear turned and bounded several yards downstream. I couldn’t blame it for running from my brother. I’d been tempted to do that many times too.

  We stood as a family, minus one, and watched as the creature finally stopped along the side of the creek below to drink before sauntering off toward the road.

  Maddie raised her head. “Whatcha doing over there?”

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Things could’ve gotten wilder than her morning bedhead if she’d woken up when the bear was staring me down.

  “Nothing, sweetie,” Mom said. She walked from the creek over to our meager supplies and laid out granola packets, dehydrated fruit and the water jug. “Let’s eat up.”

  “You guys are gonna need your strength,” Dad said at first; then he must’ve thought better of it. “It won’t be too tough of a walk today, but you know…”