Part 2 – Leave the City Behind

  Sarah and Lisa led the climb through a series of ravines with their corporate Patagonia vests over untucked blouses streaked in dried blood. The trail was a web of densely forested hunting paths and the group stopped frequently to listen - the best intel in a forest. Further behind them, Maria walked with her head down and the mangled metal door handle still in her hand and her go-pack swinging across her back from a single strap over her shoulder. Rob brought up the rear, always checking over his shoulder in case the city behind them had burst the seams.

  Their late morning and early afternoon was filled with silence, each of them lost in their own thought, memories of the horrors of the day screeching across their minds and anxious about and the uncertainty of what was to come.

  At around 1pm, Maria turned around on the trail and looked at Rob, her eyes filled with sadness and staring through him. She stumbled on a root and caught herself on damp pine needles and nearly went down. When she stood up, she came to a stop with her shoulders hunched and staring at the game trail only white-tail deer used.

  The other two were up the climb a bit further, and Rob called out for them to hold up for a minute, and then he fished a granola bar out of his bag. He stepped up to Maria and waited for her to look up.

  “I’ll trade you this granola bar for that mangled door handle you’ve been carrying,” he said.

  She started to cry and scrubbed the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve never killed anybody before,” she begged. The door handle was about three feet long; tubular heavy aluminum buffed to a nice shine – the kind of handle that corporate offices with huge glass doors loved to decorate with.

  “Neither had I,” he said, looking at her.

  She looked at him. “Yeah, but that big group was going to kill us. You had to,” she pleaded.

  “I don’t think those two at the top of the stairwell that saw the end of that door handle were there to talk,” he smiled weakly.

  She covered her face with one hand, peeking at him through her fingers. “It’s not going to be the same after this, is it,” she asked.

  Rob just shook his head slowly. “How about that trade,” he asked.

  She looked at the handle in her hand and she pushed her hand towards him, as if she were getting rid of poison – he handed her the granola bar and then he looked at her. “I’m going to toss this in the woods,” he said.

  She nodded quietly and tore into the granola bar and turned to keep hiking.

  They walked another hour in silence and finally Rob stepped up to Maria. “Did you all know each other before this,” he asked, as they crested a ridge of granite and sunshine.

  Maria turned around while Sarah and Lisa stopped. “No, we didn’t. Not really. Different departments, different buildings,” she said.

  She looked up at the other two. “We were sitting in the back of a van yesterday when a fight broke out with the driver and a group of men,” she started, then shook her head as if she were trying to get water out of her ear.

  “It went from an argument to the group using an axe on the man. Everybody freaked out and the vans emptied and the killing started,” she winced. “We hid under the back seat for hours until sun down. We didn’t really know each other before that,” she said, staring blankly.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Rob and Maria joined the others and Rob divvied up the food in his pack, handing out granola bars and energy bars, and he passed a canteen of water around.

  Sarah pulled out her phone, checked it mechanically. "Still no signal," she muttered.

  Lisa looked over. "You keep checking."

  "Habit," Sarah said. "I used to coordinate travel for…" She stopped. "Doesn't matter now."

  Maria looked up at the other two and then at Rob. "My abuela doesn't have a phone. Just a landline in Cholula." She looked at the mountains. "I don't even know if she's alive."

  No one answered. There was nothing to say.

  The sun was warm for mid-March in the mountains, and after another hour of descending off the ridge line, they finally popped out into a forested parking lot deep inside the national forest. There were no other vehicles around, and as they made their way across the densely forested and empty parking lot, exhaustion pressed down on their shoulders like a heavy weight. Rob’s two loyal German Shepherds, Ranger and Shadow, greeted them with soft barks and wagging tails, grinding their noses into Rob’s leg and sniffing and licking Sarah and Lisa and Maria. Their presence offered an immediate sense of comfort and security.

  The camper truck waited in the trees like something prehistoric. As they walked up, Lisa stopped short.

  “What the hell is that,” she breathed. “It’s the size of a mountain.”

  Rob gave her a quick smile and opened the rear door. The women stepped in and Ranger and Shadow eagerly joined them. Inside the camper truck, Sarah, Lisa, and Maria collapsed onto the cushioned benches lining the walls. They were too tired to even pull off their soiled running shoes.

  Rob set to work. A few minutes later, he popped his head in the door. “Gonna move us further up. Get settled for the nigh. He fired up the truck. The wheels crunched on coarse gravel, then dark grey mountain soil littered with the pine needles from the recent thaw of winter.

  They wound their way along a small creek and eventually ascended a rocky track up to a wide plateau deeper in the mountain range; Rob was trying to put as much wilderness between them and the death of a city behind them. Sarah and Lisa and Maria wrapped themselves in blankets and traded soft sniffles and hitched breath as the truck’s gentle rocking motion lulled them into and out of sleep.

  Rob glanced back at his new companions, but he had no idea what they were going to do. All he had now was determination to find them a safe place to spend the night. He traversed the mountain path and after another thirty minutes, he pulled off the battered dirt road and into a clearing deep in the forest.

  Maria looked out of the back door of the truck as Rob slung his M4 shotgun over his back. “Just going to check the surroundings,” he said.

  The forest was beginning to darken; the long shadows of sunset had passed an hour ago and a mist began to gather at the base of the towering pine trees surrounding them. Rob walked a lazy 500-yard circle around the truck and then he inspected the hard-pack road they’d come in on. The dirt was broken in little mounds from repeated freeze and thaw cycles from the early spring, and the path they’d taken had only one set of tire tracks. Satisfied, he made his way back to the camper truck and started to make dinner; freeze-dried hiking ‘gourmet’ dinners in a bag.

  After a quick meal, the exhausted group settled into the makeshift beds in the back of the camper; they didn’t know one another, but the world they had known could very well be dying. They huddled close, and yet they each tried to carve out their own space. The warmth of shared body heat offered a small respite from the chill night air seeping through the thin camper walls. It was a give-and-take of closeness and isolation, but the awkwardness gave way to sleep very quickly.