Mei stopped walking and cocked her head, and rubbed her red, itchy eyes for the thousandth time. Gabby hoped she wasn’t going to dig through that purse again. She’d stopped and dug through the small bag a dozen times already, never finding what she was looking for.
“Look,” Mei yelled excitedly. “A creek!”
Gabby raised an eyebrow. She was hesitant to believe Mei. Twice now Mei had seen something that wasn’t there. She’d freaked out over sticks on the trail, screaming and jumping around like a lunatic, thinking they were snakes, startling all of them.
They weren’t.
But this time, it was real. Gabby could hear the sound of water bubbling. Finding a burst of energy, the girls ran forward. They all jumped in to the ankle-deep water of the narrow creek, splashing it onto their faces and each other.
“Can we drink it?” Olivia asked.
They’d been without water for hours.
They all looked at Gabby. If someone was going to be a party pooper, it’d be her.
“Let’s filter it first,” Gabby suggested. “I don’t think anyone wants to be shitting like a goose while squatting on the ground.”
Olivia scrunched her nose up at her sister’s bad language. As Gabby’s patience wore thin, her mouth always got nasty, and her own filter soon would be totally gone. She’d always been that way, and Olivia had always chided her for it.
Gabby dug through her backpack and pulled out a sandwich baggie that held a Sawyer Mini filter kit. She unrolled the bladder and blew into it and held it down in the stream until it filled up. She screwed the filter onto the bladder, and handed it to Olivia first; she seemed to need water the worst.
Olivia held it in her hand and then looked at Gabby. “Do I drink the whole thing?”
“No. Take what you need right now and pass it around.”
Olivia scrunched up her nose. “So we’re all going to be drinking after each other?”
Gabby sighed. “Yeah, Olivia. Because you left the other bags at home, this is the only filter we have. That’s on you. Gotta share now.”
Indignantly, she drank long and deep and then tried to pass it to Gabby. She waved it on to Emma and Mei first. After the first bag was gone, Gabby filled it up again. They split two energy bars, surprised to still find they had some, and then emptied the bladder, drinking as much as they could hold. Three more times they filled it up and drank until they squeezed out the last drop, and finally the last bag was filtered into the empty water bottle for later.
Twice, while they were eating, drinking, and resting, Emma had tried to bring up their father. Neither Olivia nor Gabby wanted to discuss their dad. Getting home seemed such a challenge already, and he was another two hours away from Grayson and Olivia’s homestead, now living in Anderson, South Carolina, where he’d moved with his fiancé. They were getting on in years and there was no way they’d attempt to make it to the homestead; that they knew, so eventually if the power didn’t come back on, they’d have to make a plan to go get them.
But for now, one problem at a time.
The women got very quiet.
Gabby couldn’t think past seeing her husband, Jake. He’d not been himself lately and she wondered if he was suffering from some sort of depression. He wouldn’t talk about it with her. She hoped he’d gone to Grayson’s as soon as the grid went down so at least he wouldn’t be alone.
Olivia was worried beyond belief about her husband, Grayson, and her stepdaughter, Graysie—not to mention her dog, Ozzie. Graysie was away at college an hour from home. Surely, she left before the gas was gone and the roads were gridlocked, but what if she didn’t?
And Emma didn’t dare mention her son Rickey, or her own husband, Dusty. She couldn’t even whisper their names for fear of breaking down. With Dusty’s job, he could be in more danger than all of them, and Rickey could be right in the middle of it with him.
Mei wasn’t interested in talking either. She went from sitting to standing to pacing in equal measure, driving them all insane with her inability to sit still for a moment.
Gabby packed everything away and stood up. “Let’s go.”
They’d lost a lot of time sitting next to the creek, but left with a little more oomph and one refilled water bottle. Now they were in near pitch darkness struggling through a stand of thick forest in single file. Finally, they found a small trail but had no idea how far it went. They could be in here all night.
Gabby ran straight into a branch and leapt back just before it gouged her eye out. “I think we need to turn around,” she said.
“No way. We’ve been in here almost an hour now. I’m not going all that way back,” Olivia answered. Olivia thought they were close to home. She was wrong… Gabby just knew it. It didn’t feel like home yet. Or anywhere near it.
She gave in. “Okay, but I’ve got to pee. You all go on without me, I’ll catch up in a minute.”
“You sure?” Olivia asked. “Aren’t you scared?”
Gabby shook her head, although not sure if Olivia could see her. “I’ve got the gun, remember? I’ll only be a minute. Just keep walking.” She was afraid if they stopped and sat down, they wouldn’t get back up.
The moon chose that moment to shine through the clouds and trees, throwing a patch of light onto the trail as Olivia, Emma and Mei slowly walked on.
Gabby stumbled around trying to find the perfect tree to squat in front of; a big one to lean against if she lost her balance, with a small one to hang onto next to it, hopefully with a patch of higher ground that would drain the pee away from her shoes; not on them.
Finally, she dropped her pack, removed the gun from the back of her pants, and hunkered down. As she emptied her bladder she wondered what kind of trail this was… a deer trail? A 4-wheeler trail?
It didn’t take her long to find out.
In a moment, a baby pig ran across the trail, and then turned and zigzagged back the way it’d come, nearly running right over Gabby’s feet.
Gabby gasped and froze, waiting to see if it came back. Her first thought was the bikers had found them, but this pig wasn’t wearing a skirt, and it wasn’t white. It was spotted gray and black.
It was a wild piglet.
And where there was a baby, there’d be a mama close.
She jerked her pants up in a hurry so she could warn her sisters.
Too late.
A piercing scream cut through Gabby’s heart and the woods came alive with the sound of running, squealing and snorting.
Gabby cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed, “Climb a tree!”
There was no way anyone could outrun a wild hog in the dark woods.
Her heart pounded as she gripped the pistol with one hand and blocked the branches from her face with the other. She flew down the trail guided by the tiniest bit of moonlight, feeling her skin being slapped and ripped with a torrent of limbs.
It’s going to kill them. It probably has tusks. I should have stayed with them. I’m the one with the gun… She could just see her sisters smeared with blood, laying in dripping heaps while wild animals gnawed at them. Her life would never be the same. Losing her twin sister would be like losing a limb. Losing both her sisters would be worse than death.
She shrieked again, loud and long, and raced after them. “No! No! No!” Blindly, she raced through the dark woods with one arm out in front of her, slapping away the branches and brush. Here, the trees were spread apart more.
“Don’t run! It’ll catch you!” she screamed, knowing they probably couldn’t hear her.
Climb a tree Climb a tree Climb a tree