Pushing On

12

The four of them had walked for days. They’d taken the back trails. Derek and Sara hadn’t been lying about their experiences as hikers. They’d hiked these trails before, and knew them well.

They also knew how to improvise with shelters. They knew how to start fires, and they even knew how to accurately identify edible mushrooms without a guidebook.

John and Cynthia had been too scared to try eating mushrooms on their way to the farmhouse. John had enough sense to know that the death cap mushroom was common in Pennsylvania, and often masqueraded as an edible mushroom.

Before the EMP, there might have been a dozen cases of wild mushroom poisoning a year in the US. John was sure that after the EMP, with people desperate for food, there’d be even more. Only this time, there’d be no emergency rooms to go to. There would be no antidotes to take. People would writhe in agony until they died, with their loved ones watching them anxiously, hoping against hope that they’d get better, but knowing that they never would.

John wouldn’t have had any idea where they were if Derek and Sara hadn’t been able to show him on the map.

They weren’t yet at the Pennsylvania border, but they were very slowly making their way west, on the trails that wound through the thick forest.

The weather was getting that fall bite to it. It wasn’t yet cold during the days, but at night, it would have been cold without a fire.

They’d decided early on to take the risk of having a campfire. Maybe it wasn’t a rational decision. John didn’t know. They’d all rationalized it, saying that the chance of getting spotted was worth having the warmth. Not to mention warding off animals, and cooking food.

But in reality, what the fire mainly provided was a psychological advantage. There was something comforting and fortifying about looking into those glowing embers, those flickering flames, in the middle of a cold dark night in the woods, with no one around for miles. Hopefully.

Derek and Sara’s enthusiasm for having firearms had soon died down. They kept them in their packs and hardly ever took them out. They’d probably been the sorts of people who’d been opposed to firearms before the EMP. And while they recognized their importance and usefulness now, they still carried with them enough of their old attitude to make them hesitant to really begin to understand and use their guns.

John and Cynthia, on the other hand, spent long hours around the campfire examining their guns. They learned how to disassemble them, how to load them, how to check the chamber to see if there was a live round. Not to mention target practice. There was plenty of that, and gradually they were getting better. Significantly better. Not to mention more tolerant of the defending assault on their eardrums each time they squeezed the trigger.

Both John and Cynthia tried to work up Derek and Sara’s enthusiasm for guns. But there wasn’t any getting around the fact that they simply wouldn’t do it.

And as they progressed along their journey heading west, John grew more and more concerned. Not just about the whole gun reluctance thing, but about Derek and Sara’s overall attitude. That a lot of people were good and all that. He told them stories about his journey out of downtown Philadelphia, about the horrors he’d experienced, about the viciousness of once common people, but it didn’t do any good.

Part of the problem was that Derek and Sara felt at home on the trail. Sure, they were well aware that the EMP had happened, and that the world had changed, possibly forever. But their vacations, before the EMP, had always involved backwoods hiking. So to them, psychologically, they were basically just on vacation. They’d always enjoyed being away from civilization. And now they were. They enjoyed sitting around the campfire, telling jokes, while John remained vigilant, his eyes always darting around, checking for shadows, listening for strangers approaching.

Early in their journey, they’d abandoned the idea of hiking by night and resting by day. It had simply been too challenging, once the flashlights’ batteries had run out. And they’d run out surprisingly quickly.

When the clouds were thick in the night sky, there was hardly any light at all. Certainly not enough to walk by, even with darkness adjusted eyes.

John didn’t know what was going on, but he’d noticed that his own night vision was getting worse. Not that the others could see well either. But when they could see a little at night, he could see nothing at all. Just a curtain of blackness and nothing else. Maybe it was a vitamin deficiency, or maybe his eyes were just going bad. He didn’t know, and it wasn’t like he could hop on over to his general practitioner for a checkup.

They were hiking along a trail that was wide enough to walk two abreast. Derek and Sara led the way, chatting as if they were on their honeymoon hike again.

John and Cynthia walked about twenty feet back.

“We’ve got to do something,” whispered John. “They’re not listening to anything we say. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we come across danger.”

“But what can we do?” said Cynthia.

“Maybe we should break off and let them go their own way.”

“They’re better off with us, though.”

“This isn’t a charity. We’ve got to get something out of this deal. It’s not our job to protect them. Plus, they’re just as much of a danger to us as they are to themselves.”

“You really think it’s that bad?”

“Yeah. It’s definitely that bad.”

“Well, we can’t leave them anyway. They’re the ones who know where to go.”

“Right.”

John knew she was right.

The only option John could think of was to figure out the path on their own. One way to go about that was to be open with Derek and Sara and simply explain things to them. That might not go over so well. But John didn’t want to have to be sneaky about it.

“Doing OK back there?” called Derek, turning over his shoulder.

He had a big smile on his face, like he was just out for another jaunt in the country with his lovely wife.

John flashed him a smile and gave him a thumbs up.

As Derek turned around, John’s smile fell off his face immediately. He fell deep in thought, ruminating on the possibilities.

It was only about ten minutes later when they came across him. He was the first person they’d seen so far in their trip.

He was outfitted like a hiker, wearing a big backpack. He was wearing those zip-away pants, and a thin button-down sports shirt. He even had one of those adventuring hats.

He didn’t seem to have any weapons on him, except for a fixed blade in a leather sheath on his belt. It looked like a custom, but John wasn’t sure.

Derek and Sara waved the guy down, and stood there chatting happily with him while John and Cynthia hid in the background.

“You think he’s a danger?” said Cynthia, in a low voice. “He looks harmless enough.”

“We can’t be too careful.”

“He looks fine.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. He could be anyone. He could be capable of doing anything.”

“What if he’s thinking the same thing about us?”

“I hope he is. It’ll make him more hesitant to try something.”

From John’s perspective, the scene was simply too weird. The three others were chatting like they’d just met at the summit of a particularly difficult climb. They weren’t acting like the world had fallen apart.

“Hey there,” said John, finally walking up and introducing himself.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Drew.”

“We were just talking about how Drew should join us,” piped up Sara. “He’s an experienced hiker. We thought it’d be good to have another member of the party.”

Drew nodded enthusiastically.

“And he knows a shortcut,” said Derek. “Up ahead, he says there’s a way to shave off a few miles.”

“Close to five,” said Drew, flashing a grin.

“I don’t know,” said John. “Can I talk to you for a second, Derek?”

“Uh, sure.”

John took Derek off to the side, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Drew.

“Look,” said John. “We’ve got to be careful. We don’t know who this guy is.”

“Come on, John. Enough of this paranoid crap. Just because the EMP happened, it doesn’t mean everyone’s turned into some evil enemy. I know you’ve been through a lot, but you’ve got to lighten up and recognize when people are willing to help you.”

“I don’t like him,” said John.

“Well, Sara and I do. I’m not going to fall into your way of looking at things. You’re too pessimistic.”

John had things he could have said, but he didn’t say anything except, “Maybe Cynthia and I should head off on our own.”

Derek nodded stiffly. “If that’s the way you want to do it. If you’re that paranoid.”

“Look,” said John. “I’m sorry it’s ending this way. But it’s your choice, how careful you want to be. And it’s our choice, too.”

Derek nodded. He didn’t say anything, but he had that look to his face, like he was getting angry. Very angry.

“We’ve helped you out,” said John. “With the guns, with gear. You could help us out by giving us the maps you have. The trail maps.”

“No way.”

“You already know the trails. You don’t need the maps, but we do.”

“That’s the breaks.”

The tension was thick between them. John could feel it.

“We’ve helped you out.”

“Not really.”

John knew that wasn’t true.

He saw Derek’s hand forming into a fist. Derek was bigger than he was, and taller, and he wasn’t as worn out as John was. Derek and Sara had essentially had a leisurely walk since leaving the suburbs, and they were in shape and used to hiking. John, on the other hand, had to fight for his survival almost every inch of the way. He was tired and he knew it.

John had to make a decision. Leave, without the maps. That was one option. Take the maps—by force. That was another. It involved his gun. And he didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t going to hurt Derek. Or Sara. They may have made him angry, and they may have been stupidly naïve, but they weren’t bad people.

The other option was to keep going with them, keep an eye on this new guy Drew, and try to come up with a plan soon in order to break away from the group with Cynthia.

“What’s going on, guys?” said Cynthia, coming up to them.

“Nothing,” said John.

“You guys coming then?” said Derek, looking at John expectantly.

John nodded. “Yeah, let’s go. I hope this shortcut is good.”

“Oh, it is,” said the new guy Drew, flashing his annoyingly wide smile at them all.

The five of them started off again.

Once again, John and Cynthia hung back, away from the others.

“This is crazy,” whispered Cynthia. “Don’t you think so? This guy could be anyone. He could have stolen all that hiking stuff.”

“I know. But we’re just going to follow them long enough to figure out a plan. Figure out a way to keep going on our own. If that means stealing the maps, then that’s what it’s going to be.”

“Seriously? You don’t seem like that kind of person.”

“Maybe you don’t know me that well. I’m not above stealing. He won’t give us the maps, or even tell us where to go. Derek wants us along for the added insurance. He knows we can shoot, and he can’t. He doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty.”

They walked for another half hour, taking the new guy’s shortcut, which was a thin trail, barely maintained. It was overgrown enough that John had to keep pushing branches aside. As he walked, his hand stayed close to his gun in its holster at his side. He wasn’t going to be caught by surprise. He kept alert, his eyes constantly scanning.