State of Emergency (Book) (19 page)

            “Bet your mom’s gonna love that,” I mutter, curling up against his chest.

            “Yeah.” He rests his head on top of mine, and we just stay there for a little while, until practically all the wax from my bedside candle is pooling onto its glass plate.

            It’s such a perfect way to end Christmas day. But as I’m laying there in his arms, totally content and love struck, I know deep down that this won’t last. Because sooner or later, I’m going to have to leave all this behind. I’m going to have to hike up to the cabin and find my dad.

            That
was
the whole point of leaving LA, after all.

            Something I’ve learned over the years – and particularly in the last few months – is that it never hurts to be prepared for the worst. Hope for the best, get ready for the crappy. Why not? It saved my life when the EMP hit the world.

            So now I’m wrapped in three layers of clothing plus a heavy wool jacket. My hair is tied up underneath a scarf and wide brimmedhat; my fingers are covered with leather gloves. I’m wearing socks that weigh enough to sink a dead body in a river, so it’s kind of a challenge to take a step because my feet weigh more than I do.

            I’ve got a backpack full of camping gear and first aid stuff. And I’m standing on the edge of the Young’s doorway, tears burning my eyes. Or maybe it’s the cold weather. Whatever. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to do this. But I have to – I
have
to get to the cabin to meet my dad.

 I’m not afraid of the wilderness.  Heck, I’m not even afraid of the dark like I used to be in Los Angeles. Pine trees and random squirrels just aren’t as scary as a guy walking down the street with his pants falling off.

What I’m afraid of – and I mean really terrified of – is not doing the right thing here. I can’t abandon my dad just because it’s comfortable kicking back and roasting weenies at the Young farm. Dad is counting on me, just like I would be counting on him entirely if I had never met Chris or his family.

No, failing my father is somehow more scary than sleeping in the forest during the winter. Although I will freely admit that the thought of facing down a bear does make me want to walk a little faster.

I have to do this alone. Chris is safe, here, with his family. He’s protecting them by being here, just like he protected me when we were escaping Los Angeles. He doesn’t deserve the pain of a long hike on the cusp of winter. No. I’m doing this alone because I care about him. Because I want him to be happy.

I take a final glance at the Young property, a stillness washing over me. It’s peaceful and silent at this early hour. Nobody has even gotten up to feed the chickens, yet. And somewhere in the house or in the barn, Chris is sound asleep, oblivious to the fact that I’m leaving.

A tear slips down my cheek, the first of many that are building up, threatening to spill over onto my face. I’m suddenly afraid.

I kick the ground in frustration. If I cry, I’ll lose my nerve.

I’ll be back,
I remind myself.
I’ll tell dad about the Youngs and we’ll come back here together to help them with the farm. Then we can all be together.

Even as I’m thinking it, I feel selfish. Here I am on a mission to make sure my dad is still alive and all I can focus on is getting back to the Young house – and Chris – again as fast as I can.

I’m a regular Mother Theresa.

“Snap out of it,” I tell myself, swallowing my hesitation. I physically tear my gaze away from the house and squeeze through the bushes, hacking a path back down to the highway.

I’ll be back…I’ll be back…

That’s what I keep repeating. Because the cold air is sharp against my skin, and the road seems a lot bigger than usual. I guess I’m just not used to walking alone. I pick up the pace. When mental reasoning doesn’t calm me down, I like to keep moving.

As I walk, the more distance I put between me and the house makes my anxiety click up a notch. I mean, come on. I’m not a tactical ninja like Chris is. I can’t find food just by looking under a rock. I can’t wrestle wild animals with my bare hands.

I’m just a kid from LA.

Caw!

My head snaps up and I spot a massive crow landing on top of a tree. He makes a few loud noises, hops onto a lower branch, and then swoops down onto the road. “Good to know somebody’s comfortable being out here,” I mutter.

He gives me the eye, which gives me the creeps, because I remember learning in high school that crows have intelligence that’s equivalent to that of a 2 year-old child. Scary.

I walk past him (or her, whatever), feeling a little more relaxed once the first thirty minutes pass. This isn’t so bad. There’s nobody around. There’s nothing going on except some birds flying over my head. If this is all it’s going to take to get up to the cabin, it’ll be like a walk in the park.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

I look over my left shoulder, a habit I picked up when Chris and I were trekking down the empty interstate out of Los Angeles like a couple of Amazonian explorers. My chest squeezes because there’s nothing beside me but air.

I’ll be back
, I say for the fiftieth time.
He’ll understand.

After a couple of hours, the sun has risen over the trees. The higher I get, the thicker the forest becomes, and as soon as I pass the snowline, everything starts smelling like wet dirt and sugar pine sap. Even though it’s obvious that there are no cars on the highway, I keep to the side of the road, ready to duck and roll into the pine needles if an Omega truck comes along.

At the four-hour mark, I stop and rest against a log that’s fallen over the road. I’m guessing that nobody’s going to bother to clear it, since it’s not exactly like our taxpayer dollars are being used for useful things anymore. I’ve brought some of Mrs. Young’s food with me, like dried jerky and crackers. I’ve also got a few small canteens of water. I eat a small meal, pack it back up, and set off again.

It’s kind of boring walking through the woods without anybody to talk to, so I play games with myself to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, you can’t really play ‘I Spy With My Little Eye’ by yourself, and “Find That License Plate,” is kind of a no-go since nobody’s driving anymore.

Mid-afternoon hits, and my feet are killing me. I’m well into the so-called “mountains,” now, and I feel comfortable enough with the darker environment to take a breather out in the open. I lay down for about an hour, hydrate, and move on. When nighttime hits, I’m too chicken to navigate in the dark. I don’t want to end up walking off a cliff.

I make camp in a big grove of fern at the base of a tree. I lay awake for a couple of hours, aware of every sound. Being in the middle of the woods is like sitting in a room that’s so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face, only it’s extremely cold, the ground is hard, and you could be eaten by a wild animal at any moment.

Chris would love to laugh at me now.

I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to think about him. If I do, I’ll just turn back. So I force myself to relax. After a while I doze off. I sleep until sunrise, waking up to find everything covered with a thin sheet of frost. I sit up, trying to get my fingers warm by playing an imaginary piano.

I eat a quick meal of dried meat and crackers (yum), and get moving. I try to stay out of the foliage as much as possible, knowing that animals are at their most active stage during the early hours of morning. Of course, I always assumed that most creatures went into hibernation during the winter, but why risk walking into a snoozing bear if I don’t have to?

 Another reason I miss Chris. He makes a great decoy.

At around ten o’clock, I arrive at the entrance to Sequoia National Park. The road widens into five lanes, all separated with yellow lines. There are two streamlined check-in stations in the middle of the road, marked with the National Forestry insignia. But that’s not what draws my attention: on the right-hand side of the road, there is a Redwood tree as big as a building. The trunk is bigger than ten SUVs, towering above the highway with gigantic branches.

It’s stunning.

I smile beside myself, remembering driving through here with my dad last year on summer vacation. We would always come to the cabin and hang out for a week or two, but everything was different, then. Obviously. There were cars and people everywhere at the entrance to the park. It was exciting.

Now it’s lonely. And it makes me think. Maybe the forest, the trees, everything out here, is happy that there aren’t any cars plowing through the roads, spitting out diesel fumes. I mean, without people around, there won’t be any idiots to leave empty beer bottles behind at campgrounds or throw their dirty napkins out the window for some poor squirrel to ingest.

I sigh. I guess if there’s a bright side to this situation, this would be it.

About an hour later, I pause at the corner of curve number five thousand, sniffing the air. I smell…smoke. It’s a light, woodsy scent that reminds me of burning pine needles. I tighten my hands around the straps of my backpack, nervous. Where’s there’s smoke, there’s usually people. Fire doesn’t just happen by itself unless some lightening and a tall tree is involved.

I walk just off the road, putting a few feet between me and the open space of the highway. As I get farther, the smell becomes stronger.

And then I hear laughter.

Every muscle in my body freezes. Why? A) If there are people here, there’s a good chance that they’re not friendly because B) they’re probably Omega soldierslooking for somebody to bully.

I drop to my stomach, crawling forward on my hands and knees through the brush. The laughter gets louder, and there’s definitely a girl’s voice mixed in with it. I get a nose full of bear clover as I keep my body perfectly still, glued to the scene in front of me.

Across the road, just past a big clump of fern, is a little campfire. Tendrils of smoke rise up and drift towards me. Three people are gathered around it: a girl with a blonde ponytail, and two guys, one with dark hair and the other that looks like he could be the girl’s sister.

They don’t look like Omega hacks to me. Friend or foe?

I rest my chin in my hands, thinking back to the abandoned baby carrier on the side of the road when Chris and I first escaped LA.

There are a lot of crazies in the world
, I think.
I’d better play it safe.

But I’m afraid that if I move backwards, they’ll see me. It’s probably a miracle that they didn’t hear my footsteps on the pavement. So I just stay there, trying to think of a way to get around these people without being seen and without getting lost.

What would Chris do? He’d avoid them altogether.

One of the boys at the campfire, the one with the blonde hair, stands up and stretches. He says something to his friends and disappears into the bushes. I assume he’s going to collect firewood.

Seriously
? What now?

I slowly lift myself up enough to wiggle backwards, trying to make the least amount of noise as possible. I’ll just go back the way I came and make a wide detour past their campfire, hope we don’t run into each other again, and be on my merry way.

Problem solved.

As I retreat, the soft voices of the strangers fade. My heartbeat slows. If I can’t hear them, they probably can’t hear me. I sit up with my legs tucked under me. Crisis averted.

“Gotcha!”
            A strangled scream dies in my throat as somebody grabs the collar of my coat and yanks me upright. I see a flash of blonde hair and green eyes, and for a split second I think it’s Chris. Relief floods through me, but it doesn’t last, as usual. It’s not Chris. It’s the blonde boy from the campfire.

He’s got a boyish face – maybe fifteen years old – but he’s almost three times as big as me. “I got her!” he yells across the road. His voice is
way
too loud. Is he stupid? “She was
spying
on us.”
            He’s got one hand on around my neck, and the other is literally wound around the belt of my pants. I’m facing away from him, so I can’t turn around and claw his eyes out with my fingers.

“Let go!” I say, choking. “For crying out loud!”
            “What do you want?”

The blonde walks towards me, trailed by the kid with dark hair. They’re all high school age, no older then the guy currently using me as a stress ball. “Um…choking…can’t…talk,” I sputter, feeling my cheeks turn red.

“Drop her,” Blondie says.

The guy I affectionately dub “Choker,” in my head lets go. I stagger forward, gasping for air. “Geez. Thanks a lot,” I spit, hoping my windpipe is still intact. “Are you insane?”

The dark haired one looks down at me.

“Why were you watching us?”

“Why were you watching
me
?”

“I asked first.”

“Your buddy almost choked me to death.” I shoot Choker a glare. “Thanks, pal.”

The three exchange puzzled glances. Maybe they were expecting me to pick them off one by one with a sniper rifle while I hid in the bear clover. A side effect of watching too many teen television shows.

“Come on. Back to the fire,” Blondie commands, her arms crossed. “Bring her.”

Choker and the dark haired one each take an arm, hauling me across the road. It occurs to me that I should just try to make a run for it, but hey. Maybe they’ve got some food or coffee they’re just dying to share with me.

“Sit.”

Blondie plops down on a log, her legs crossed. The boys stay on each side of me, and then Choker leans behind Blondie’s log and grabs a hunting rifle. He keeps it trained at my head, with his finger
on
the trigger.

I suddenly feel very uncool about all this.

“What’s up with you guys?” I snap. “I’m just hiking, that’s all.”