The Great Wreck (9 page)
Talking
as shallow a breath as I could, I turned the key and heard the engine turn over
once, twice, three times, then catch and roar to live. Yes! I carefully put the
truck in reverse and slowly pressed down on the gas until I began to back away
from the mountain side of the road. The trailer screeched and scrapped along
the asphalt. Once I thought I had enough room, I turned the wheel as far to the
left as I could,
put the truck in drive,
and slowly pulled forward lining the truck up with the right lane of the road.
I felt the truck jerk as it took up the weight of the trailer and the trailer
began to squeal as the metal siding dragged across the asphalt, but still the
trailer slowly slid along behind the truck. I kept up steady pressure on the
gas unit I could see in the rear view that we had enough room to get the Bronco
by.
Thank
you, God, I thought as I turned off the truck’s engine and got out of the cab.
Tony had recovered and jumped in the Bronco driving it around the tail end of
the wreck and stopping next to me. Getting out he looked over the equipment in
the bed of the truck.
“What do
you think? Anything we can use?” I asked.
“The
rifles. We can wrap those in tarps and strap them to the roof. The ammunition,
of course. But the water and food? I don’t think we have enough room in the
back for it. The cabin has a ton of food and water anyways, so let’s just get
the weapons and get out of here.”
“Agreed,”
I said as we wrapped the four rifles up in tarps and tied them to the roof.
Inside I
could hear Dreysi say, “Oh, goody. The men now have their surrogate penises. I
feel so much safer now.”
We finished
tying down the rifles and packing every nook and cranny in the back with all
the ammunition we could carry, then we were on our way again.
The
wreck had one side benefit: we didn’t see any more long lines of cars parked on
the sides of the road and the trailheads from that point on were sparsely
populated with only a few cars each of the parking areas. Apparently most
people saw the wreck and just turned around instead of trying to move the
trailer out of the way.
We made
our way up the winding road and found Forrest Road 453. I slowed down and
pulled onto the dirt road leaving the pavement behind. We were lucky. The road
was in good shape with no washouts. It looked like the county had just repaired
it before…well…things got out of hand. We cruised along the empty road until
finally at around four o’clock, made it to our trailhead. The parking area had
about five cars, a few trucks and a single, lone camper parked in it. We all
climbed out of the Bronco and stretched and spotted a pair of old folks sitting
in front of a double tent in the camping ground right off the trailhead.
“Howdy,
folks!” the old man said puffing contentedly on a pipe.
I went
over to them as the others stretched and walked around the Bronco, “Hi, how you
folks doing?”
“We’re
doing just fine,” the old woman said.
“Everything
OK up here?”
“Yep.
It’s been calm and quiet for the past few weeks. A few folks coming and going
for a while but then things slowed down mightily.”
I
thought I might know the reason why but instead asked, “Any police or military
up here? Rangers maybe?”
“Oh, we
saw a couple of Rangers heading out what, two weeks ago?” the old lady said,
“After that, nothing much. Where you kids going?”
“My
friend has a cabin a few miles up the trail. We’re heading there. You folks
want to come with us?”
“Mighty
kind of you, stranger, but we’re doing just fine right here.”
“Well,
you might want to move your camp back away from the road a bit at least, and if
you folks need any help, you can hike on up to us at any time,” I said and made
my way back the Bronco where, as anticipated, Dreysi was having what my Dad
called a full on, raging horse, shit fit.
“What
the fuck do you mean I have carry all my shit to the cabin? We have to hike
there!? Are you fucking kidding me?!”
“Yes,
Dreysi,” I said thoroughly enjoying her discomfort, “You’re going to have to
pack what you can carry in this,” I said pulling out the pack Nicky had grabbed
when we had left her house, “Fill it up with whatever you think is most
important, and hike about five miles to Tony’s cabin. Or you can stay here with
the old folks. I’m sure they won’t mind,” I said gleefully as I pulled my pack
out and strapped it on. To Tony I said, “We’ll come back tomorrow to grab some
of the supplies. Then maybe a trip a day? Check on the old folks while we’re
here?”
“Sounds
good to me,” he replied, “I just want to get going and get to the cabin.
“I hear
you,” I said grabbing two of the rifles and strapping them to my pack, “You
want these two?” I asked Tony. He nodded and took them handing them to Greer
who strapped them on to his pack.
I walked
back to the old folks and said, “We’ll be coming by once a day or so getting
supplies from our truck. There’s an extra key under the back bumper so if you
need anything, water, canned food, first aid stuff, it’s there for you.”
“That’s
very kind of you but I think we have everything we need,” the old man said.
“Well
just in case,”
I said as a group of
hikers trudged in looking wet, dirty, and completely wore out. The group
consisted of a young man and women in their thirties, a small girl of about
five that the man carried in his arms, and a boy of about ten. They straggled
over to a big Buick Tahoe without even looking at us or the old folks.
“Hey!
You guys OK?” I called out. The man set the girl down, then dropped his pack
and looked at me nervously then at the two rifles I had strapped to my pack,
“Can we help you?”
“We’re
fine,” he said and popped open the back door of the Tahoe and gently set his
little girl in. As he did, I caught a brief glimpse of a bandage on her arm.
Blood had soaked through in a pattern that closely resembled a bite mark. He
closed the door and walked around to the back of the Tahoe and started throwing
the family’s backpacks in.
Behind me I
could hear Dreysi bitching as she took her cloths out of her gigantic suitcase
and stuffed it into the much smaller pack.
“Are you
heading back down the mountain?” I asked not getting any closer to the
obviously frightened family.
“Yes,”
he said as he finished putting their packs in. He then opened the other door
and motioned for his son to get in, then closed it when his boy had buckled up.
“You
might want to reconsider,” I said.
The man
stopped and looked at me, “Why’s that?”
“Grants
is gone,” I stated simple, “We got out of there just as everything fell apart.”
The man
looked at his wife, then at his two children, “What do you mean ‘fell apart?’”
“The
military was pulling out and the whole town was chaos. People trying to get
out, smashing into everything. The whole town looked like it was on fire. You
might want to consider staying.”
“We’re
not staying,” he said as his wife got in the giant SUV, then stuck her head out
the window to look watch her husband and me, “My little girl is sick. Some
fucking weirdo bit her a few days ago and we have to get her to a hospital.”
Bit her?
Oh, fuck, I thought.
“Is she
infected?” He didn’t even ask me what I meant. He knew she was. I watched as
his wife drew in a sharp breath and roll up her window. The man looked at me
for a moment, then walked towards the driver’s side of his vehicle.
“Hey!” I
yelled after him, “The man? What happened to him?”
The man
stopped with one foot in the SUV and looked at me, “I killed him. I clubbed his
fucking head in,” and got inside and slammed the door shut.
As he
drove by me, I asked him one last question, “Were there others? Hey, were there
others? Other infected out there?”
He
stopped next to me and rolled down his black tinted window, “I didn’t see any.
Just him. I wouldn’t count on him being the only one though,” he said, rolled
up his window, and rolled out onto the road.
“Casey,
we’re ready!” Nicky called out behind me. I turned away from the road and
towards the trail. I locked up the Bronco, hitched up my pack, and headed into
the forest following after Nicky and Tony with Greer and Dreysi bringing up the
rear.
For the
first quarter mile, Dreysi bitched and gripped about anything and everything:
her boots were too tight, her pack was too heavy, she was thirsty, she was
tired but after we hit the first mile marker, she wore down and we hiked along
in silence. The woods were quiet and felt empty of anyone but us. We moved
along the neatly kept trail moving through the closely packed pine trees until
we came to a branch in the trial. There someone had put up a
sign that said Garrard Cabin, Three miles.
Underneath it an arrow pointed to the right. Below that was another sign that
said Old Man Johnston’s Cabin, Six miles and pointed up to the left. I was glad
we were getting close.
We
pushed on taking more and more frequent breaks as the trial became stepper.
About a mile from Tony’s cabin we broke out from the trees and the trail
brought us out the edge of Water Canyon. We stopped for another break at an
overlook. I could see the canyons stretch for miles all the way into the
foothills and plains to the southeast. It felt like we were a million miles
from nowhere without a soul other than ourselves nearby. For the first time
since I locked up the tramway, I felt safe.
“What do
you think Tony? Another mile or two?”
“Two,
tops,” he said picking up his pack, “We should be there in an hour or so.
“That’s good.
We’re going to lose the light soon,” I said. With the peak of the mountain to
our west, the sun had already dipped behind it putting the trail deep in the
shadows of the trees. We all picked up our packs and got back to it.
It took
us a little over two hours to finish our day long trek from Albuquerque but we
knew we had made it when the path widened up to a large dirt road and we came
up on a seven foot high, chain-link fence topped with barbwire with a heavy
metal gate set in concrete barring our way.
“Was
your uncle preparing for a dear invasion?” Greer asked as Tony pulled a key out
of his pocket and unlocked the stout, metal gate.
“Nah, he
just had a thing about marking his territory,” Tony replied, “He also wanted to
make it as difficult as possible for someone to break into his cabin. Not many
people would come up this far to steal something, but after a few break ins, he
wanted to ensure anyone trying to get to this cabin would lose a lot of skin
and blood while doing it. He’d tell me that after he put the fence in with some
other security measures, he never had another break-in.”
“Other
security measures?” Nicky asked, “There aren’t landmines or anything we need to
worry about, is there?”
“Just
stay on the marked path and you’ll be fine,” Tony said with a laugh. Nicky
looked at me and I silently shook my head indicating to her that there were, in
fact, no landmines to worry about.
We hiked
the last few hundred yards feeling our spirits lift with the thought of a hot
shower and a bed safely tucked away from the madness playing out far below us.
We trudged down the road until we came to the cabin itself where we all stopped
to take in the huge home, “That,”
I
said, “Is some cabin.”
I had
seen it a few times before but it never failed to impress me. The “cabin” was a
two story, four thousand square foot monstrosity that Tony’s uncle had paid a
fortune to have built and then another fortune to have power and water routed
all the way from Grants to the south. It also had a small solar farm built over
the same road he had had cut for the construction crews that could run the
major appliances if we lost power, a diesel generator for short power outages,
a garage with two ATVs equipped with trailers, and somewhere near the peak of
Mount Taylor, a satellite dish that ran cable to all the super-rich folks who
owned cabins in this pristine wilderness area.
The
bottom floor acted as a basement and had only a few narrow, thick, horizontal
widows to let some of the natural light in while keeping anyone who was brave
enough to make it over the barbwire fence from getting into the ground floor.
The front door was a monstrous piece of metal that had another metal gate
covering it so no one could pick the locks or tear it off its hinges. I didn’t
think anyone was getting in through the ground floor.