With all that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, Taylor thought it was odd that they had so little to talk about. He couldn’t help but feel that everything he said was forced; that he was creating noise if only to break the silence. And that made him feel self-conscious. He scoffed at the feeling. Let it go, he thought.
For the next thirty miles the highway was remarkably free of obstruction. They encountered two abandoned vehicles, both of which had been courteously parked on the shoulder of the road, almost bumper to bumper.
He caught himself taking abnormal breaths; quick shallow ones that weren’t at all satisfying to his lungs. He noticed he started breathing that way whenever he got to thinking about whatever disease had affected all the people they had encountered. It was mostly due to Tina suggesting that whatever it was might be airborne that brought on the brief fits. He would think about how those same particles could be hovering in the air all around them now, and almost immediately his pattern of breathing would change. As though somehow, if he was careful and didn’t pull air too deep into his lungs, he would be okay.
Carl saw him in the middle of one of his shallow-breathing sessions and said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you can’t catch your breath.” Carl let their speed drop as he watched Taylor with a concerned look.
“Keep going. I’m fine,” Taylor said. “I can breathe fine.”
“That’s not what it looks like. Your asthma?”
“Yeah, but nothing serious. It’ll only last for another minute or two.” He sucked in a long breath to prove it. He lied because it was less humiliating than telling the truth. “See.”
“All right. If you say so. But let me know if you need me to stop. It’s pretty isolated out here. I’m starting to get the feeling that all those things have cleared out. All traveled east on their hippie parade or whatever you want to call it.” What he didn’t say was that he hoped he wouldn’t need to stop. Rabid things or not, Angie was the focus of his mind. The uncertainty was eating him up inside. For some reason his mind had the most difficulty envisioning a scenario in which she was safe and sound, Angie and his mom and his dad all camped out around a fire somewhere in the mountains. Instead, his mind insisted on showing him all the negative possibilities.
Taylor said, “We’re almost there. Only a few more miles. I’m nervous again, you know that? I’m almost starting to think it would be better not to know one way or another.”
“I need to know,” Carl said.
Tina thought about her father and said, “I think it would be better to know. When you know you can deal with it either way. Not knowing, it kind of stays with you and you’re always wondering. I keep thinking of my dad.”
It’s time to tell her, Taylor thought. Maybe not right this second, but as soon as possible. Otherwise that guilt could eat at you forever.
He was determined to tell her. It was a promise to himself. And he would do it…soon. It all had to do with timing.
Tina could already see the forest up ahead. She could also see the huge rock formations and could see why someone might mistake them for mountains. She had a minor fear of heights.
Carl pointed. “That’s what we call the mountains.”
“I think she’s smart enough to figure that out on her own,” Taylor said.
“Right. Well, they aren’t much, but it’s what’s available. A lot of people do their rockclimbing here.”
Carl turned onto the first path available; a narrow dirt road barely wide enough to support two-way traffic. Carl drove slowly because of the road’s state of disrepair. “The roads are shit,” he said. “They have been for as long as we’ve been coming here. Four-wheel drive is practically a necessity.”
“Will we make it in this?” Tina asked.
“Yeah. We can make it. I don’t know if it rained out here last night, the ground looks pretty dry. That’s a good thing. Otherwise we’d probably get stuck. I’ll take it slow and we should be okay.”
Tina took in her surroundings. It would have been a beautiful place had the circumstances been different. Her mind was a full plate, and it was difficult to appreciate the beauty around her. She was too expectant of those rabid things to come running out from the trees.
“Where to start,” Taylor said.
“If Dad brought the boat, the lake is the best place to start.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Carl said, “That’s about two miles in. We can drive most of the way. When we get close it might be easier to walk the rest. Usually the ground gets muddier the closer you get to the lake. Just the way it is, so we don’t want to chance getting bogged down. Search on foot. We can come back for the stuff in the car.”
The dirt road curved to the left. Tina felt like they were making a lazy circle and that they would end up in the same place they had started, but the road eventually curved to the right and then straightened. The trees seemed to be closing in on them.
The giant rocks spiked up all around them. They reached the top of a hill and Carl pulled as far over to the right side of the road as he could without hitting a tree.
“This ends the driving portion of the tour. From this point on, we proceed by foot,” Carl said. He killed the engine and stepped out of the car. The others joined him.
“Do we need to take anything with us?” Tina asked.
“It’s about a mile to the lake. Maybe a little less.” He picked up the shotgun and then walked around to the trunk. He opened one of the packs and placed several bottles of water into it. “Besides the guns, it would probably be good if we each take some water.”
“You’re starting to get good at this,” Taylor said. “Acting like a grown-up.”
Carl looked at his brother, smiled, and said, “Shut up.”
Taylor slid the gun into the waistband of his jeans, feeling the cold metal of the Glock resting at the small of his back. He took the Ruger, slinging it over his shoulder, and grabbed one of the backpacks, filling it with water to the point that it was heavy, but still comfortable enough to carry. He handed Tina the other rifle.
“What? That’s all you’re giving me to carry?”
“You’re complaining?”
“If you’re taking it easy on me because I’m a girl then, yeah, I guess I am complaining.”
“Look. It’s not a long walk. Between Carl and me, we’ve got plenty of water for such a short trip. On the other hand, if one of us gets tired, you can carry one of the packs for a while.”
Tina closed the trunk, noticing the smirk on Taylor’s face. “You’re full of shit,” she said.
Taylor turned to Carl. “Why does everybody keep saying that?”
“Because you are.”
“Right. Anyway, if you’re still itching to carry something more, I’ll hand over my pack at the halfway point. Fair enough?”
Taylor stopped and handed her the car keys. “There. You can carry those. What they lack in weight they make up for in importance. That makes it even.”
“You’re a dick,” she said, taking the keys anyway, and following them as they began the walk.
You don’t know the half of it, Taylor thought.
Tina glanced back at the Escort every so often. It looked lonely sitting there along the side of the road; like an abandoned puppy. It was also the first time she could readily admit that it had been a dependable vehicle and served her well over the last three years. While unappealing to the eye, the fact that it had gotten them here was an endearing quality. As they crested a hill she looked back once more before they descended the hill and the Ford vanished out of sight. Instinctively, she thought it would be the last time she would see it. She couldn’t explain why.
They traveled at a diagonal angle from the road. “It’s faster,” Carl said. “The road narrows some more and then curves around in a half-circle. Without it being wet, you can usually make it with four-wheel drive. This is kind of a shortcut because we can cut across instead of following the road all the way around.”
It was a leisurely hike. Almost recreational. At the halfway point, Taylor removed the pack and offered it to her. “This is halfway. You still interested in lugging this thing around?”
Tina, not wanting to contradict herself, took the pack and clumsily shouldered it. Taylor adjusted the straps so that it rested snugly against her back.
“Okay?”
She nodded.
“Good enough.”
“It’s pretty up here,” Tina said.
“Yeah,” Taylor said. “I’m surprised you haven’t been here before.”
“I may have been. I just don’t remember coming here. I think I’m more of a city girl. Is that possible? To be a city girl without ever having really lived in a big city?”
“I guess so. I figured with you studying to be a vet that you would be more a country gal. You know, live on a farm with horses.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not for me. I do like horses, though.”
Carl had been right. The ground became damp, and as they progressed Tina could feel her shoes sinking into the mud. If those things tried coming after us now it would be hard to outrun them, she thought.
They climbed a steep hill. When they reached the top, Tina stopped, awed by the view. Ahead of them, she saw the lake. It wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a thing of startling beauty. The water was dark and still. The land surrounding it was decorated with large moss-covered rocks and trees. It’s beautiful, she thought.
A boat sat in the center of the lake.
Even from this distance, they could tell that it was empty.
“That’s Dad’s boat all right,” Carl said. “But where are they? You don’t leave a boat sitting in the middle of a lake. The only way out would be to swim to shore. You think those things attacked them and they had to swim?”
“No. I don’t think so. Whatever happened, I don’t think they were attacked. At least not while they were in the water. Those things wouldn’t step foot in the water. Right now, I’d say that boat is probably one of the safest places in the world.”
From most of what they had seen, Taylor thought it was sound logic, but he remembered how the rabid things hadn’t seemed to be bothered by the rain. He hadn’t really thought about that, but it occurred to him now, making him a little uneasy.
“Then what?”
Taylor continued forward without saying anything. They were careful coming down the hill. The steepness and muddy terrain made it a precarious descent. When he reached the bottom, Taylor removed the Glock from his waistband with every intention of using it should the need arise.
Taylor guessed it was something like fifty yards from shore to the center of the lake where the boat sat. The boat rocked gently on the water.
“Should we swim for it?”
“Maybe later.”
“What if they left a note for us?” Carl said.
“Let’s have a look around first.”
He followed the edge of the lake. On the opposite side, he found the remains of a campfire; a pile of twigs and broken branches charred into a black pile of ash. Several twigs surrounded the campfire. One end of each of the twigs had been sharpened to a point. He said, “They camped here. They used those twigs to eat. Hot dogs or marshmallows would be my guess.”
Taylor picked up one of the twigs and examined it. Carl stood behind him and said, “Abandoned? Why would Dad leave the boat in the middle of the lake?”
“They might have decided to find higher ground. Maybe the boat drifted out there on its own.”
“But it’s right by the lake. What better place could there be?”
“The van isn’t here. That’s a good sign. Wherever they went, they took the van with them.”
“Or if they were attacked, the van could have been stolen.”
“I can’t see any of those things being able to drive.”
“No,” Tina said, “but I don’t think he was talking about the rabid things. There are people that turned bad because of this disease or whatever it is going around, but there are also people that are just bad in general. People that don’t have an excuse to be…they just are.”
“Dad could have tied the boat off to one of those trees. You know how it is around here. It can get windy as hell. Maybe the knot was loose to begin with. So the boat gets loose and eventually drifts to the center of the lake. Nothing mysterious about that.
“The other thing is that we know dad packed most of his guns.” He looked down at the ground surrounding the abandoned campfire. “I’m no expert, but I don’t see any signs of a struggle. There are footprints around the fire where they would have sat. There are more that go that way, which is probably where he parked the van. Some faint ones that travel in that direction. To me it looks like they lead up to one of those trees over there. That’s where he could have tied the boat off.”
“I don’t see any rope,” Carl said.
“That doesn’t mean anything. So the knot came undone from the tree. The rope went with the boat.”
Carl wanted to say that something about his brother’s theory didn’t gel, but it wasn’t that as much as simple pessimism. The reality of the situation was that it was hard to believe that such a simple explanation existed. His mind insisted that it must be something far worse.
“I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about what I’m saying. We know Dad brought guns with him. So he had one for sure. Chances are, he gave one to Mom and probably Angie, too. Mom at least knows how to use a rifle. You think somebody attacked them and wouldn’t leave a trace that anything happened?”
“Someone could have surprised them. Snuck up on them.”
Taylor trudged through the mud and climbed a small hill. He sat down on a boulder that was partially buried in the ground and stared in the direction of the lake.
Carl said, “I pissed him off.”
“Should I go talk to him?”
“No. Let him chill for a minute. You can’t talk to him when he’s like that. It’s a funny thing. Growing up, he never took to any of the same things that my dad and I were interested in. Dad would take him hunting, but Taylor didn’t have any interest in it. Didn’t like hurting animals. I’m the one that grew up tagging along with Dad everywhere he went. I’ve got the same hobbies. Taylor’s kind of the black sheep. A real loner. It’s almost like he’s adopted. I mean, he’s not. I’m just sayin’. I don’t think my dad could ever relate to him. But personality wise, it’s a whole different ballgame. If you compared personalities, my dad’s and brother’s would be almost identical. They’re both stubborn as hell. Same sense of humor. And it’s like he’s just starting to realize that. I think it’s hard for him.” Carl paused for a moment. “I hope Angie’s all right.”
“I keep thinking about my dad,” Tina said. A tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t think he made it, Carl. I think he’s dead.”
“Doesn’t do you any good thinking like that.”
“But that’s reality. He’s probably dead Should I kid myself and go on pretending he might be out there somewhere?”
“How do you know you’re kidding yourself? You hope that he is still alive. You keep that belief alive until you have proof that the truth is something different. I couldn’t just give up like that.”
“Or you could be setting yourself up for heartache.”
“There’s heartache either way. That’s the shitty thing about not knowing.”
“Maybe we should just drop it. Talking about it just makes me upset.”
“You started it.”
“Yes. And I reserve the right to end it. I’d just rather not talk about it anymore.”
Carl thought about adding something else but stopped himself. It looked like the slightest nudge might push her over the edge. Beautiful or not, he had no intention of dealing with a hysterical woman. Maybe throwing a big fit was exactly what she needed, but this didn’t seem like the time or the place to deal with something like that.
Carl sat down next to his brother. “If your plan is to just sit here and stare at that boat the rest of the day then it’s not a very good one. No offense.”
“I’m trying to figure it out,” Taylor said. “I don’t think they were attacked. The signs aren’t there. The footprints in the mud aren’t erratic. No blood. I checked over there at the top of the hill. I found tire tracks. Probably from the van. Obviously, I never stopped to see what his tire patterns looked like, but they’re too big to be from a car.”
“Okay. So maybe you’re right. They weren’t attacked. Then what’s eating at you?”
Taylor pointed in the direction of the boat. “That. It’s the one thing that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Like you said, Dad didn’t tie it off well enough. Thing floated out to the middle of the lake.”
“I know I said it, but I don’t really believe it. Dad would have tied it down right.”
“What if he had Mom do it? Or Angie even? I’m not sure Angie could have tied a sturdy knot to save her life.”
“Dad would have wanted to do it himself. And even if he did have one of them do it, he definitely would have checked their work. You know that.”
“If Dad didn’t mess up, and they weren’t attacked, then what other explanation is there?”
“That’s why it doesn’t make any sense.” Taylor reached over, picked up a stick, and used it to doodle in the mud. “I don’t see one.”
Carl stood up. He stripped off his shirt, his pants, and finally his shoes and socks.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m swimming out to the boat.” His bare feet sank into the mud. It was an odd sensation. “Maybe there’s a note or a clue or something.”
“Are you kidding? It’s cold enough without being soaking wet to boot.”
“It’ll be fine. Only take a couple of minutes.”
“Water’s probably freezing.”
“Then I’ll swim fast. Get my blood pumping.”
“I’m telling you, you’ll freeze.”
“You can hold me.” Carl smiled at him.
“That’s not happening.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.” Carl, wearing only his boxer briefs, charged towards the water and plunged in. He disappeared under the surface briefly and then poked up ten yards farther out, rubbing water from his eyes and shouting. “Damn! It’s fucking cold!”
“No shit!” Taylor said.
Tina walked to the edge of the lake. “What is he doing?”
“He thinks he’ll find a clue on the boat.”
“Does he want to get hypothermia?”
“That’s what I said. I don’t think he cares. It’s how stupid people act in a survival situation. Start taking needless risks.” Taylor watched as his brother swam out to the boat. Carl had passed the halfway point. He was beginning to wish he had been the one to take that swim. Whatever Tina thought about his brother’s mental state, he could see by the look on her face that she had a sense of admiration for what he was doing.
“Maybe he’ll find something,” she said.
“We can only hope.”
“You think he’ll make it?”
“Oh, I know he’ll make it. He’s an excellent swimmer.”
Carl tired near the end. When Carl reached the boat, his arms were like flubber. Out of practice, he thought. It was a struggle to lift himself up into the boat.
Now that he was no longer submerged in water, the cold air froze his skin. He shivered. His fingers felt stiff and clumsy when he tried to move them.
A cooler sat in the center of the boat. He opened it. It was filled with bottles of water that had been packed in a bed of ice.
It’s been sitting here long enough for the ice to melt completely.
The only other object in the boat was a walkie-talkie. He picked it up and switched it on. A red LED at the top next to the volume knob let him know that it still had power.
Moving to the back of the boat, he tried to get the motor started. It started the same way many lawnmowers started. There was a handle attached to a long retractable cord. He yanked on the cord. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. On the third try, he heaved on it and the motor coughed briefly before dying.
“Come on, baby. You know you want to start.” He used both hands, drew the cord back rapidly, and the motor grumbled to life. “Thank you, God!”
He drove the boat back to shore. When he was several feet from land, he grabbed the small anchor that lay atop a coil of rope on the floor of the boat. He motioned for the others to stand clear and tossed the anchor onto the land. He jumped out of the boat and said, “I guess we can rule out the idea that Dad tied the boat off. That’s the only rope on the boat and it’s attached to the anchor.”
Carl was shivering. Tina had gathered up his clothes from the ground. She handed them to him. “You better put these back on before you freeze to death.”
Taylor said, “What did you find?”
“Wait a sec.” He finished dressing (his socks were a considerable hassle to get on due to his feet being wet) and climbed back into the boat. He returned with the walkie-talkie. “Better than a note.”
Taylor examined the walkie-talkie. “It still has power,” he said, pointing to the LED. He turned the volume knob as high as it would go. He pressed the button on the side of the walkie-talkie and spoke into it. He felt self-conscious, like a child playing with a toy. “Hello? Can anybody hear me? Hello? Hello? Dad, can you hear me?”
Silence.
“Why would they leave one and take the other?” Tina asked. “Do you think they forgot?”
“Assuming they have the other,” Taylor said. “They may have lost that one, too. Could be at the bottom of the lake for all we know.” He spoke into the walkie-talkie again.
“Maybe they’re out of range,” Carl said.
“It’s a possibility. These aren’t the cheapest ones I’ve seen, but they’re not great. I think the range is something like three to five miles. And five miles is probably stretching it. I don’t know how much area this place covers for sure. If they’re still here and theirs is working, then they should hear us.”
“You think they might have left?”
Taylor scanned the area around him solemnly. He didn’t answer. The truth was he didn’t have an answer.
“Taylor? You listening to me? I asked if you think they left or not.”
What would Dad do? He wouldn’t come here and just leave. He wouldn’t leave his boat in the middle of a lake, either. Not on purpose. So where the hell are they?
Taylor made another half-hearted effort to reach them on the walkie-talkie. “Hello? Are you guys out there? Anybody?”
Nothing happened. Taylor was about to turn the walkie-talkie off when static issued from it. The three of them huddled together.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah. Static.”
“There it is again.”
Tina said, “Is that somebody talking? I can’t tell.”
“Hello? Is somebody there?”
Another short burst of static. Taylor thought he heard someone’s voice buried underneath the static.
“If you can hear me, you’re coming through really garbled.”
There was silence for a full minute. Taylor was ready to write the sound off as a figment of his imagination when the walkie-talkie squawked and a distinctly female voice came through.
You’re not imagining that, Taylor thought.
“Hello? Taylor? Is that you?”
“It’s Angie!” Carl said. “I can tell the sound of her voice.” He snatched the walkie-talkie from Taylor’s hand and spoke into it. “Angie, baby, it’s me, Carl. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Carl? I’m so scared.”
“I know, baby. I know. I’m here now. Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. Lots of trees. Those things...”
Tina said, “There are trees all over the place. How are we going to find her based on that?”
“Baby, are you okay?”
Another burst of static. Angie’s voice was garbled when it came over the walkie-talkie. “Things.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand it.”
“Ask her where Mom and Dad are?”
“Angie, honey, are my Mom and Dad with you?”
“No…sep…ar…ated. Those…things…”
“She’s breaking up bad.”
“Angie?”
Carl kept trying, but hisses of static were the only response.
“Dammit, we lost her,” Taylor said.
“Fuck! We’ve gotta find her. She’s out there. Alive. We have to get to her.”
“I know. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. We need to think this through for a minute.”
“That’s your answer to everything! We don’t have time to think!”
“You hear yourself? That’s a pretty fucking stupid thing to say. Don’t have time to think? Jesus Christ.”
“What if we all split up? Go in different directions? One of us would be bound to find her?”
“We’re not doing anything like that. We’re sticking together. Splitting up is a very bad idea.”
“She’s out there, bro. By herself.”
“I know. She was pretty broken up over the walkie-talkie. That means there was something interfering with the transmission or she’s almost out of range. Or both. Let’s think about this logically. Going south is out of the question. That’s the way we came in. We’d hit the highway before the walkie was out of range. That narrows it down a little.”
“Why don’t we just follow the tire tracks?” Tina said.
Taylor glanced at Carl and shrugged, both of them a tad embarrassed for having overlooked something so obvious.
“Stands as good a chance as any.”
Carl was still shivering badly. His lips were a dark purple.
“We’ll follow the tire tracks,” Taylor said. “For as long as it seems like the right thing to do. But do we go back for the car first?”
“That’ll waste too much time.”
Taylor handed Tina his rifle. “Take this. You two start following the tracks. I’ll go back for the car.”
Tina looked at him incredulously and said, “You were the one who just got done saying that splitting up was a bad idea.”
“I know what I said, but I don’t see any other way. All of our supplies are in the car. The farther we get from it, the slimmer the chance we’ll get back to it. I’ll run back. I can do it in ten minutes. I’ll catch up with the two of you.”
“I thought the whole reason we went on foot was because we couldn’t get here in the car.”
“Well, as far as I knew we couldn’t. I was aware that a trail started up again to the north of the lake, but I didn’t know of any way to get to the lake other than on foot.”
“I think it’s connected somewhere to the west,” Carl said.
“I always thought that was a dead end.”
“They might have opened it up. How long has it been since we’ve been up here? Years? We need to get started. Get the car. Find your way back here. I’m going to find Angie.”
Taylor couldn’t argue with his brother’s determination. “You okay to keep carrying that pack? It’ll just slow me down if I take it.”
“I’ll be all right,” Tina said. She handed him the car keys. “You’ll need these.”
“Good thing you remembered. Stay on the path. Or at least within shouting distance of it. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can. Be careful.”
He watched as Carl started down the path, following the tire tracks as they curved with the road until it straightened and led north. Tina followed him. She looked back once at him and smiled nervously. He waved at her and she waved back. His mind hadn’t changed from earlier: splitting up was a terrible idea. He could think of dozens of movies that illustrated that point. As he turned and started to sprint in the direction they had left the Escort, all he could do was hope that the outcome would be different in real life.