Sea (A Stranded Novel) (19 page)

“Emily, I found a sleeping bag! It was in a garbage bag in the garage and look, this is lamp oil. We can use it to help start our campfires, right?”

“Good job
, Lisa! That will definitely help.”

They were in the house for almost an hour and they left with water, a few candy bars and a much better frame of mind. They walked all afternoon through fields and on roads where they could. Emily estimated that they had walked around twenty to twenty five miles that day when they finally stopped. They moved into a wooded area and crossed a stream before finding a cleared area where they set up camp. After two days of walking
, they were all stiff and sore and starving. The stream that they had passed had given Emily an idea so while the water boiled on the small fire David had lit, she used the utility knife he had found at the house and started to cut and strip small green branches. She bent them into shape and used the bark strips to tie it all together. It was almost full dark so she used the flashlight to make her way back to the stream. She scanned the stream until she found a narrow spot and collected rocks. Placing her trap into the water she used the rocks to wedge it in tight and weigh it down. With any luck, they would have a fish for breakfast.

Lisa was fascinated by the trap and asked question after question on how to make one. Emily smiled over at David as she was remembering the summer that they had learned how to make one. Josh had gotten a Dangerous Book for Boys manual for his tenth birthday and had proudly shown off the trap he built from the instructions. Of course, Alex had made it into an adventure. They had all built their own and set off to see who could catch the most fish. Quinn had won and they were completely grossed out when his
grandma had made them all gut and clean the fish before she would cook them for the group. Emily looked at David and they started to laugh. They had the same memory of Josh dumping fish guts down Alex’s back and how she had chased him all around the farm until he begged for mercy.

They shared their story with Mason and Lisa over a split package of hot ramen noodles and beef jerky. Lisa had a sad smile on her face when they finished the story.

“You guys are so lucky. You both have great friends and amazing memories. I wish I did.” she said, looking down.

Emily reached over and grabbed her hand. “You do have great friends and we are making memories together every day.”

Lisa smiled gratefully back. It was full dark and they were all tired from another long physical day but they had learned their lesson from the previous night and tonight there would be a watch posted. Emily was happy to take the first shift because it meant that she would get uninterrupted sleep after she was done. They would have to change the roster every night to make it fair. The sounds of the forest and her friend’s soft breathing kept her company until she woke Mason to take over. As she closed her eyes she pictured Alex smacking Josh across the face with a dead fish in payback so she fell asleep with a smile on her face.

The smell of cooking fish woke Emily and Lisa up that morning. She opened her eyes and looked at David who was tending the pan on the fire. When he saw her looking at him
, he smiled.

“I figured you caught them so I should clean them! You did
good, Em. There were two decent-sized ones in the trap. This is going to be a great day. There are two cups of hot water over there for you girls if you want to wash up. These bad boys will be ready in a few minutes and I made some rice to go with the fish.”

Emily had to smile. It was a much better way to wake up than yesterday. Fish and rice to start the day sounded pretty good. She poured out some warm water on a cloth and scrubbed her face and arms. She and Lisa braided each other’s hair to keep it out of the way and a quick rinse of their toothbrushes had them ready for the day. Even without seasoning
, the fish was amazing and everyone scraped their plates clean. They all pitched in to clean up and used the nearby stream for washing.

Once all the backpacks were on and the bedrolls slung
, they started north once again. They didn’t really know where they were but they had to be close to crossing over the border. It was two hours into their third day of walking when they left a field and climbed onto a paved road. Emily’s leg muscles thanked her for the even surface. Walking through muddy, hilly fields was hard work and climbing over fences was annoying. The road ran east so they walked into the sun. A glint of steel in the distance flashed at them now and again and as they got closer they saw it was an abandoned car. All of the doors were open and there was trash spread out around it. There was nothing they could use so they just leaned against the sun warmed metal and took a break.

Emily handed out some of the candy she had found back in the house they had searched and they all enjoyed the sugar rush. All the teens were feeling the effects of the food rationing. They were burning up a lot of calories walking all day but not replacing them. David was leaned over pulling wires from under the steering wheel and tossing them out onto the road. Once he had a small pile he climbed out and started to sort them by length. He wound them up into a ball and stuffed them into a side pocket of the back pack.

Mason was watching him with a frown. “What are you going to use those for?”

He smiled and looked at Emily. “Well, I can’t let her do all the work feeding us. She’d never let me forget it
,” he said in a teasing way. “When we stop tonight I’ll strip the plastic off the wires and set them up as snares. We should be able to catch a few small animals to stretch our food supply.”

Mason was grinning in appreciation. “Wow, you really are a
Boy Scout!”

David sent him a scowl. That was something that Mark had said as an insult and David didn’t find it funny. When Mason saw the look
, he quickly backtracked.

“No, no, really, it’s awesome. You and Emily know all this…stuff to get food and water. It’s really great. I just wish I could help too. I’m a total dead weight and I don’t know anything that would help us.” he said, looking down in regret.

David studied him for a minute before nodding. “Well, there are lots of things we could teach you. Don’t feel bad, Mason. Emily and I have lived on farms our whole lives and we spent a lot of time camping and hunting. That wasn’t a part of your upbringing so it’s not your fault. Things are different now so watch and learn how to do these things and you will be just fine.”

Before Mason could reply, Lisa called out. She was standing at the back of the car looking in to the open trunk.

“Hey, guys, come and look at this!” she called out excitedly.

The three of them went to the back of the car and looked into the trunk. There was nothing in it but a spare tire. They looked at a grinning Lisa and shrugged. She laughed in delight.

“Not in the trunk, under it!” And she pointed at the back end of the car.

It took Emily a minute to process what she was seeing but when she got
it, she let out a whoop of joy. On the white rectangular licence plate were the words, Beautiful British Columbia. Somewhere, sometime, they had crossed into Canada. Even though they were still hundreds of miles from home, Emily felt a surge of hope. With a renewed determination, the group turned east and continued on their way.

They had no idea where exactly they were in the province but they were headed in the right direction. After an hour of walking
, they came to some railway tracks that were headed north. The group decided to follow them and it made for easier walking. They followed the tracks through many fields with distant homes visible but kept walking. When they saw that the tracks were headed to a built-up area they left them and turned east. The mountains were in front of them and they got closer with every step.

Emily knew that they would have to hit a main highway to get over them. There was no way they could travel through the mountains unless they followed the highway. Traveling on the main roads meant towns and people. She knew there were a lot of good people in the world but after their previous experiences
, she would rather just avoid everyone. They camped that night in another clearing and dinner was one granola bar and one strip of beef jerky each. David and Mason stripped the plastic from the wires and David showed him how to set them up. They all hoped for something to eat in the morning.

The next morning started off bad and went downhill from there. It had started raining in the night and they were all wet and cold. They had left their camp in the clearing and moved deeper into the woods but the rain came through and they huddled together for warmth. When David had checked his traps he was disappointed to find them empty. So breakfast was some water and the last of the jerky. It was too wet to try and start a fire so they just stayed under their meager shelter and waited for the cold spring rain to pass. Being under trees didn’t keep all the rain off of them but they needed any shelter they could find. After two hours
, the rain became a drizzle and the dark clouds moved further away.

They came out from under the tree they had sheltered under and stretched their cramped muscles. It was time to move on and they could only hope that the sun would come out to dry their drenched clothes. Lisa and Emily headed deeper into the woods to find some privacy to go to the bathroom. They had only gone twenty feet when they stumbled out onto a wide trail. What shocked them the most was the two men who were also on the trail leaning against two
quads. The men were just as surprised to see the girls and their mouths hung open in shock.

Emily eyed them warily and moved closer to Lisa. It didn’t take the men long to overcome their surprise and they both stood and looked the girls up and down with big grins. The first man to speak was big and rough looking. He had dirty greasy hair and a bushy beard.

“Well, looky here, Wayne. We’ve got ourselves some company!” He gave his friend a knowing leer. “I bet we could have some fun with them!”

Wayne was smaller than his friend but looked just as rough and his brown eyes were cold.

“What about the others? Should we take them back to camp?”

“Hell no!
They’re at least ten miles from here. Why would we want to share? They don’t even have to know!”

Lisa clutched Emily’s arm while the two animals talked about them like they weren’t even there. Her face was bone white and her eyes held pure terror. Lisa knew exactly what these men planned to do to them. She took a step back and a whimper escaped her lips when Emily stood stock
-still. The tall man glanced over at Lisa and his face split into an amused grin.

“That’s good
, sweetheart, I like it when they cry.” He took a menacing step towards them and then flew backwards and toppled over his quad.

Emily had no memory of pulling the gun from her pocket but when the shot man’s friend bellowed in rage
, she swung it towards him and pulled the trigger again. The shot caught him in the shoulder and twisted him sideways so he was leaning on his machine. Emily stood frozen watching as he pushed himself up off of it and turned to her with hate-filled eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but before he could she pulled the trigger for the third time and his face disappeared.

Someone was screaming. Emily hadn’t moved and she stared straight ahead where the ugly man’s face had been. She was unaware of the rain and tears mixing and flowing down her face. She didn’t hear David and Mason’s frantic yells for them or feel the ache in her hand that continued to clutch the cold
, heavy gun. It was only when David tried to take it from her that she finally came back into herself. She yanked her hand and the gun away from him and clutched it to her chest. The scream that came out of her made the others freeze and stare at her in horror. It contained all the fear, rage and hopelessness of a broken soul. She fell to her knees and rocked back and forth on the muddy trail.

“Why, why, why?” she wailed in a pitiful voice.

David looked down at the girl he loved and his heart broke. All he wanted was to gather her up in his arms and hold her and keep her safe but he was afraid to touch her. He looked around at the others and saw Lisa staring blankly at the ground. Both of the girls were in shock and he didn’t know what to do. Mason was checking the men’s bodies so David went to help him. They were both dead and he had to force the vomit back down when he saw the one man’s face. He helped Mason pull the bodies off the trail and into the woods. Both of the men were wearing camouflage rain slickers so their bodies weren’t visible after the boys threw some branches on top of them. It was grisly work but he knew that Emily wouldn’t have shot them if they were good people. He didn’t know what had happened on the trail but when they heard the gun going off in the direction the girls had gone, he tore through the trees with no thought but getting to Emily.

When the two boys made it back to the trail, Lisa had Emily up and was holding her tight. The gun was gone. David didn’t know who had it but he was relieved that it was no longer clutched in her hand. David stepped towards them but Mason stopped him with a shake of his head. So they checked over the two machines and the supplies strapped onto the back of them. There was food and water but not a lot. Both had an extra fuel can strapped down but what they didn’t find was any guns. David was sure that the men would have rifles or shot guns but other than a sharp hunting knife
, there were no other weapons.

Lisa’s urgent voice had them both spinning around. “We have to get out of here, out of the woods! They said there are others in a camp. We need to get away from here in case they show up!”

Mason and David looked at each other in concern and they both tried to start the quads. When they started up right away they shut them off and Mason helped Lisa get Emily on one. David made a mad dash back to where they had left their things when they had bolted to find the girls. It didn’t take long to gather the backpacks and get back to the trail. Mason helped strap them down and when he went to get on the quad that Emily was sitting on, David grabbed his arm.

“No, she’s riding with me
,” he said with fierceness.

Mason looked at him in confusion until understanding dawned. He slowly nodded his head.

“Okay, man. Take care of her.”

David nodded curtly and climbed on in front of Emily. He reached back and pulled her arms around him so she wouldn’t fall off. When he felt her hand grip his waist, he closed his eyes for a minute. He almost lost her. All this time he had been sitting back and waiting for her to figure it out and
he almost lost her. No more. He wasn’t waiting any more. He loved her and he was going to make sure that she knew it.

They started the machines up and drove down the trail. When they came to an opening in the forest they could see a road in the distance so they left the trail and headed for it. David and Mason had decided to travel the roads from now on. They would make much better time and distance and they would need to be close to abandoned cars to siphon gas along the way. Once they were on the road
, they increased their speed and made twenty miles in the first hour. It was right about then that Emily started to sob into his back and he knew she was coming out of her shock. The only thing he could do was briefly squeeze her hand and keep going.

They eventually connected with a bigger road and turned north onto it. There were more and more cars and trucks abandoned on the road but nothing they couldn’t get around. To David, it felt like they were flying after walking for three days.

After two and a half hours and seventy miles, they stopped to refill the gas tanks from the spare cans. At the next group of abandoned cars, they stopped again and they took turns siphoning gas into the cans. They didn’t want to take a chance and lose the precious vehicles. By the time the sun was going down behind them, they had gone a huge distance and they started to look for somewhere they could stop for the night. It was almost dark when they came to an old gas station that had been abandoned even before the lights went out. After carefully checking that no one was around, they forced the garage door open, and pushed the quads through.

It was dirty and dusty but it was dry and out of the wind. Emily hadn’t spoken all day but she was more alert and followed Lisa into the small bathroom where they changed into the dry clothes from their packs. When the girls came out Emily looked much better and she had some color in her face. She gave David a small smile as she passed him and settled down on to the floor. Lisa took one of the few dry blankets and wrapped it around her before hanging the wet ones to dry. As the boys changed into dryer clothing, she started to go through the men’s supplies.