Kyle put it into first gear, released the clutch, and eased the truck around. He drove it back to the road and around the hill. The road that split around the grassy hill took them directly back to their campsite. When they saw Richard, they slowed down to observe his reaction. Richard was by the fire, splitting some small logs. When he saw the truck he stood, stared, and probably thought that he was imagining things. They could tell by Richard’s body language that he could not see who was driving the truck, most likely from the glare of the setting sun on the windshield. Kyle sped up and honked the horn wildly. Richard stepped farther away from the road and held the little axe tightly in his hand. Kyle drove off the road and went directly toward the campfire, leaving a cloud of gravel dust behind him. Richard’s eyes got wide and he was looking all around for his two companions. Kyle spun the wheel, slammed on the brakes, and rolled the window down, revealing himself. Richard’s expression went from fear to disbelief when he saw that Kyle was the driver of the truck.
“Hey, we got you a present,” yelled Kyle, out of the driver’s window.
“A truck?” asked Richard.
“Nope, that’s for me. This is for you.” Kyle held the pistol out the window with his index finger and thumb on the handle. It dangled between his fingers with the barrel pointing toward the ground.
Richard eagerly accepted the pistol and walked away, admiring his gift. Kyle parked the truck and offered Robert the keys, but Robert shook his head and sat down beside the campfire to rest. He was hungry and all he wanted to do was eat something and go to sleep, but his hunger drove him to obsessively inspect the food supplies again. The amount of food was getting dangerously low. He knew that all the rowing they had to do on the lake was burning calories. Consequently, they needed a lot more food. What they had been able to scavenge was inadequate.
Robert ate his share of the remaining food, and promptly dozed off. The nightmares came back, as expected.
Chapter Eleven
At daybreak, Kyle pulled his trotlines in from the lake. The fillets of fish smelled delicious as they roasted over the campfire.
Kyle leaned against the truck and spoke to the others. “We’ve been burning a lot of calories rowing on the lake. According to the map, it’s over one hundred miles long. That’s a lot of energy to get to the end. We should put our gear in the bed of this truck and get the hell out of here. Let’s take the truck as far as that gravel road will take us along the shoreline.” He slapped the truck. “This baby is going to save us a lot of time and don’t forget, we better make a good effort to get more food. We’re real low. I don’t want to touch the MREs unless it’s an emergency.”
The men wasted little time loading the truck. They sat in the cab shoulder to shoulder and took off down the road. It was a fantastic feeling to go faster than the river’s current. The dam was several days of backbreaking effort away by raft, but now, with a truck, they planned to make it in less than a day.
Richard sat in the middle, his thigh leaning against the stick shift, and dozed off as Kyle drove down the bumpy road. Robert looked out the passenger window and watched the shoreline whip by, and the birds circling in the air above the water as he quietly daydreamed of a better time in his life, a time when a trip to a lake would have meant fishing and camping for fun, not survival.
Kyle was the first to notice the people ahead of them, sitting on the side of the road. He immediately applied the brakes, jerking Richard forward and waking him up.
“What happened?” asked Richard, still groggy from sleep.
Kyle had a tight grip on the steering wheel and extended a finger to point at the group of people in the distance. Richard and Robert saw what Kyle was pointing at. They strained their eyes and noticed that the members of the group all appeared to be wearing the same type of clothes, maybe uniforms. When the group ahead noticed the truck, they stood up, and then began to jump up and down. They waved their arms frantically, like castaways on a deserted island, finally seeing a passing ship and desperately trying to get its attention. They were Boy Scouts. Kyle leaned forward again, straining his eyes toward the distant pack, and all the men remained alert for danger.
The tallest of the scouts got to the truck first, and pleaded for help. His shirt had a patch with the name Ryan embroidered on it.
“We need help! Can you help us?” Ryan begged breathlessly.
Robert got out of the truck. “Calm down. We all need help. What do you need from us?”
“We’re starving, all of us are starving, and two of us are really sick. They can’t walk anymore. We need food and help getting back to town.”
“What happened?”
“We went away for a camping trip, but didn’t bring a lot of food with us,” said Ryan, lethargically. “It was supposed to be just a week in the wilderness. Our vehicles went dead, so we’re stuck out here. We hiked to the road to get a ride, but no one has showed up except the three of you. Our troop leader left days ago to get help. He told us to stay at our campsite, but he never came back.”
“Let’s stop here, and get them some food and water,” said Robert to his companions.
Ryan pointed to the two boys lying on the ground. “They’re really sick and too weak to eat. We need to get them to a hospital.”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward Robert for a decision. He covered his face with his calloused and dirty hands, subdued a scream of frustration, and moved his hands back through his now longer hair, then rubbed his beard. He shut his eyes tightly as he tried to think of a solution, or more likely, a compromise. Getting involved was not part of his plan. He knew that avoiding people was their safest option. Nevertheless, when he saw those young boys in trouble and desperate for help, his isolationist resolve quickly vanished.
“That does it. Let’s get our gear out of the truck,” Robert said, as he started to remove his pack from the bed of the truck. “We all won’t fit, so it’s back to the rafts for us, except you, Richard.”
“Me?”
“You get those two kids to the dam and find help. Get them into the town and wait for us there. It might be a couple of days. I don’t think you’ll mind not rowing for a couple of days.” Robert then turned toward the boys who were still standing. “Let’s get you something to eat, and then you go to work.”
Robert pointed toward an inlet that was surrounded with trees. “Take your gear over there. We’ll set up camp. Some of you pick cattails from the shoreline. I made a couple of bows and some arrows. Some of you need to hunt for any kind of game animal; we’ll cook it all up later. While you’re out there, look for nut trees. Get as many nuts as you can. Ryan, can you shoot a bow?”
“Yes, I have my archery badge. I can do it.”
Robert pointed to the bows and river-cane arrows on the rafts. “The arrows are blunt tipped. Look for frogs, rabbits, and squirrels. Just the small stuff. It’ll only stun them, so be quick to grab what you shoot.”
Richard drove away with the two sick scouts, leaving the others to set up camp by a row of trees near the inlet. Six scouts remained with Robert and Kyle.
Ryan told the two men that they had walked here from north of the road. The area they walked through was full of large game. He pointed to Robert’s rifle and said, “With that rifle you could bring down something big, like a deer or elk. We saw plenty on the way over here.”
Robert looked at Kyle and smiled. “Let’s go for a walk in the morning.”
Kyle gave Robert’s rifle a pat and eagerly agreed to the plan.
At sunrise, the smell of cooking fish woke up all the hungry campers. Kyle had been the first up and brought the fish back to camp. He reset the fishing lines because they were going to be there until they could build up the food supply. Breakfast was fish, more cattails, and the remainder of the nuts found the previous evening. When everyone was done, Robert shared his plan for the day.