The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse (18 page)

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.

When they came with fifteen feet of us, they killed their engine.  In the silence of the woods, the only sound was the pinging and ticking of their cooling engine.  When they stopped in front of me, my eyes were immediately drawn to the front and rear cargo racks of the ATV.  Strapped to the racks with bungee cords were two bulging backpacks. 

We stared at each other, and I broke the ice, nodding at the two.  “How’s it going?” I asked, hoping to set a friendly tone.

The driver nodded back, spat, and met my eye.  “Alright, I reckon,” he said.  “You folks camping?”

“Nah,” I said.  “Not hardly.  Just trying to get home.  What are ya’ll up to?”

The two men were no longer meeting my eye, nor were they simply ogling the women as I might have expected.  Their eyes moved over us, seeing what we carried, how many packs we had, if we had weapons visible – which we did not.  Yet.  They were assessing us, both as foes and for the potential value of what we might be carrying.

“We’re doing some hunting,” the rider in the back said.  “Ya’ll seen any deer?”  His speech was slow, heavily accented, and he wore an inappropriate smile.  It was the expression of someone impaired by drugs or suffering a mental disability, or perhaps even that of a sociopath.  I noticed a scar under his eye and several missing teeth.

I shook my head.  “No, haven’t seen any deer.”

“Got a smoke?” he asked.  “We’re out.”

I looked around to confirm that Randi wasn’t smoking, then replied.  “No,” I said.  “No smokers here.”

He nodded at me, not saying anything.  He continued to look at me, smiling that odd smile, sizing me up.  I could feel tension rising.  The driver of the ATV wrung his hands on the handlebars, not sure where this was going, not sure if he should stay or drive off.  It showed me that the dangerous man, the decision-maker, was the one in back.  If this turned violent, my first shot would be aimed at him.

It was at this point that the offended liberals in our newly-formed group could not contain themselves. 

“You shouldn’t have that four-wheeler on this trail,” Walt spat.  Apparently the idea of people hunting on and defacing the trail was too much for him.  “Look at what you’re doing to the trail.  It will take years for that damage to repair itself.”

The two riders glanced at each other and grinned, each revealing teeth coated in flecks of smokeless tobacco.  They were truly amused by the comment.

“What you gonna do?” the rider in back asked.  “Tell on us?  Who the fuck you gonna tell, college boy?”

“I w-will if I have t-to,” Walt stammered.  “When I get out of here.”  Walt raised his cell phone, snapping a quick picture of the men on the ATV, making a big show of collecting evidence.

I intervened then, waving an arm toward Walt to hush him up.

“He ain’t telling on nobody,” I said.  “You all know as well as we do that there isn’t anyone right now who gives a shit if you all hunt up here or not.  No one even cares if you ride on the trail now.  None of that matters.”

“Damn straight,” said the man driving the ATV.  “Nobody can’t do shit about it.  You thinking you can do something about it, college boy?”

It was about this point that Walt realized he’d stuck his foot in it and he started to backpedal.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t mean it.’

I rolled my eyes.  First Walt had provoked them and then he revealed his weakness by folding like a wet noodle.  This wasn’t going to end well.  “Forget him,” I said, gesturing at Walt.  “He’s all talk.  We’re out of here.  Good luck hunting.”

“Where ya’ll headed?” the passenger asked, his attempt at friendliness chilling my blood.  He was definitely a killer.

“West,” I said. 

The driver gave us all another once over, then started his engine.  He thumbed the throttle and accelerated away, his passenger giving us a parting nod and a non-committal grin that could have meant just about anything.

“We haven’t seen the last of those two,” I said to no one in particular as the sound of their engine faded down the trail.

“What do you mean by that?” Walt asked.

I looked at him and shook my head.  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.  “You’ve stirred the hornet’s nest.”

*

With our group experiencing a division from the tension of our earlier discussion about firearms, we cliqued up for the afternoon’s hiking.  Walt and Katie hiked together, while my group stayed to themselves.  We made good time, chugging away like machines and cresting a peak 4,000 plus foot peak known as The Priest.  By early evening, we gradually lost elevation and were within an hour’s walk of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  My plan was to overnight here, a good distance from the road, where we would hopefully be safer.  Tomorrow, we would head for the Blue Ridge Parkway and follow it until we came to another road that would descend even further.  If all went well, by nightfall we would be at my friend Lloyd’s place.

We had yo-yoed with Walt and Katie all afternoon, taking turns between our group leading and them taking the lead.  I was in the lead when I reached the point where my GPS told me I was as close to the Blue Ridge Parkway as I wanted to get.  I didn’t know for sure that the road was being utilized by travelers, but my gut told me to avoid people when possible.  Tonight it was possible to avoid them.  Tomorrow it might not be.

“Before you set up your gear, I have a plan,” I told the group when we had all made it to the clearing.  “I don’t think we should set up right here beside the trail.”

They stared at me blankly. 

“We need to pitch camp here at this clearing, but I think we need to sleep a little further back in the concealment of the woods,” I continued.  “My gut tells me we might have company tonight.”

“Those men?” Katie asked.  “Aren’t you being a little paranoid?”

I shook my head.  “No, I’m not.  Gary, did you notice the firearms?”

Gary’s face was slick with sweat and he appeared exhausted.  “Single shot shotgun,” he stated.  “Looked like a 12 gauge Harrington & Richardson or something similar.  The lever gun was probably a Rossi .30.30.  I know it wasn’t a Winchester because I’m familiar with those.”

“Are those expensive guns?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head.  “The shotgun is probably something you could pick up for under a hundred bucks.  The Rossi is a little more but still on the low-end of the price scale.”

“Do you think those guys were locals or backpackers?” I asked Walt.

“Locals would be my guess,” he said.  “They probably just wandered up here from their parents’ homes to look for game like they said.”

“Did you see their packs?”

“I saw they had packs,” he replied.  “Didn’t see what brand.”

“Gregory Baltoros,” I said.  “You ever price one?”

“We did,” Katie said with surprise.  “They were close to $350 each.”

“What about the sleeping pads tied to those packs?  Did you get a look at them?”

No one said anything.

“I did,” I said, answering my own question.  “They were Thermarest Neoair.  One on each pack.  Anyone ever price one of those?”