Land A Stranded Novel Read online

  Chapter 6

  Four hours later Alex was definitely paying the price. Her thighs burned and her shoulders where the pack’s straps rested were rubbed raw. She had gone through her bike water bottle for the second time and was in desperate need to relieve her bladder. She was very thankful that her bike wasn’t pulling one of the child carriers and felt bad for the extra weight that Quinn and Josh were hauling.

  They had come a long way with only a few issues. The Orange freeway was heavy with car crashes but luckily, except for a few spots, it was a wide 5 lane freeway that had open sides and in some places even a pathway that ran beside it. In one of the tight spots, they had had their first problem.

  A man wearing an expensive suit and standing beside a fancy sports car that was across two lanes tried to wave them down. When he realized that the group wasn’t going to stop, he jumped out to block the road, forcing the group to come to a halt.

  “Hey, kid, I want to buy your bike!” he exclaimed.

  “Sorry, mister, it’s not for sale. Can you move out of the way please?” Cooper answered.

  “Of course it is,” said the man with a smirk, “Everything has a price, name it and I’ll pay it,” he said while waving a chequebook around.

  “Really, we aren’t selling, so please move!” Cooper said again with more force.

  “Listen, kid, do you know who I am? I’ve got an important meeting with the star of the next Lethal Action movie and I can’t get my cell working. I need your bike to get to the studio, so how much? You guys have five bikes so you can double up.”

  When Cooper just stared at the guy, shaking his head, the man got angry. “How about I drag you off that bike and just take it, you little shit!” the man spit.

  Cooper leaned back on his bike seat and with a calm face swung open his jacket and rested his hand on the gun holstered at his waist.

  “Mister, I’m sorry to tell you this but your money doesn’t mean anything and whoever you were yesterday, you aren’t anybody today. It’s a new world and it’s not pretty so go back to your worthless pop can car and let us pass before you get yourself shot. After we are gone, I would suggest you start walking. I wouldn’t worry, I’m pretty sure your meeting is cancelled,” Cooper told him.

  The man blustered some more and cursed them all but moved back to his car. Cooper waved the rest of the group forward but stayed facing the man until they were all past and down the road. Only then did he give the angry man a nod and continue after his friends. They had made another hour of riding before their way was blocked again. An eighteen wheeler had jackknifed across the road and there was no way through.

  After backtracking for ten minutes, they found an open space to get off the freeway. Quinn made good use of the wire cutters that Cooper had stolen and cut away the chain link fence. They had to walk the bikes through and carefully down the embankment to the pathway, with one person holding back the fence so they could fit through. They stayed on the pathway paralleling the freeway for half an hour before it started to angle away so they found a way back onto the road and kept going. It surprised Alex how few people they saw. Most were walking and a few were sitting beside cars obviously hurt but most of the freeway was deserted. They did see two different groups that looked like family units on bikes. They were loaded down and had small trailers being pulled behind. Alex guessed that they had the same idea and were getting out of the city as well.

  At one point they were in a tight area of the freeway and couldn’t get off when they were forced to bike through a heavy cloud of smoke. On the other side, they all had to stop and clear their smoke-saturated lungs and stinging eyes. When their eyes cleared, they looked over to the west of the freeway and saw a huge mega mall. It was on fire and burning out of control. It looked like a plane had crashed into it as the plane’s tail was sticking out of the side of a Bloomingdales. All the jet fuel had ignited and the mall was a tower of flames and smoke.

  No one else had tried to stop the group and even having to weave around wrecks they made good time. Every time they came to an area that was undeveloped Alex thought they had finally made it to the outskirts of the city, only to pedal into another suburb with row after row of housing and strip malls. Being from an area that was less populated, it was hard for Alex to wrap her head around so many houses and people living so close together.

  They were in an undeveloped area when Alex took a quick look at her watch and saw it was just after five o’clock. Even without her aching body and bladder, Alex knew they needed to stop and discuss a plan for the coming night. She yelled ahead to the others and they all pulled up into an empty area on the side of the road.

  “Sorry, guys, but I really have to go to the bathroom and we need to talk about the plan for tonight anyway.”

  With groans of relief and aching muscles, everybody got off their bikes for a pit stop. Grabbing a roll of toilet paper and some hand sanitizer from her pack, Alex headed over to some bushes to do her business. Everyone else took advantage of the break to do the same. When Alex got back to her bike she did some stretches and rubbed some ointment into her shoulders.

  “That doesn’t look good. I’ll make some padding for your straps so it doesn’t get any worse.” Cooper commented as he came up to her.

  Alex smiled her thanks at him and couldn’t help thinking that he didn’t seem like such a bad boy to her. The way he handled that jerk on the freeway had impressed her and he seemed pretty smart, always thinking ahead for what they would need. She rummaged through her pack, came up with a couple of power bars and handed one to him.

  “How far do you think we’ve come?” she asked him.

  Cooper thought about it for a minute and finally said, “I would guess about forty-five or fifty miles so far. Not bad considering some of the detours. We were lucky that first freeway was a straight shot in the right direction. We should take a look at the map and see what’s coming up so we can plan for when we stop for the night.” He pulled the map out of his inside jacket pocket and moved over to the others.

  While the boys were looking over the map, Alex went over to Dara who was searching through her pack and handed her the hand sanitizer.

  “Thanks, that’s what I was looking for,” she said and coated her hands. “How are you feeling? My legs feel like wet noodles,” she laughed.

  “Tell me about it. I think we’ll be paying for this tomorrow which really sucks as we’ll be biking even farther.” Alex groaned. “I’m not looking forward to sleeping on the ground tonight. Do we have any Advil? Like by the case?” she joked.

  Dara laughed, “Yeah, why didn’t we hit a drug store before we started. There’s that first aid kit we took out of the police car. Let’s hope it has some.”

  The boys called them over to the map and explained the game plan. Quinn told them, “We did really well so far and we aren’t that far from being away from the major suburbs. So I think we should try to go another twenty miles, so about two more hours and call it a night. We need to decide if we should camp-out, off of the road, or try for a hotel.” He scanned the group for opinions and when no one answered he continued, “I think it would be safe for tonight to stay in a hotel. Most people would have been walking and will be tired so there shouldn’t be any problems. It’s tomorrow and the coming days that things are going to get crazy. What do you think?” he asked the group.

  Alex and Dara looked at each other and said in unison, “Hotel!”

  “Okay, keep your eyes open for something after about an hour. There’s a junction coming up soon that we need to take north again and it’s going to be going uphill more so we’ll really feel the burn. We should try to be settled before it gets dark. With no street lights or business lights, it will be hard to find anything after dark. So let’s fill up the bike water bottles and grab a power bar and hit the road. The longer we aren’t pedaling, the stiffer our legs will get,” Quinn said, standing and folding the map that he handed back to Cooper.

  Alex was glad that no one seemed to ha
ve an issue with Quinn taking the lead and was again thinking that Cooper was a good guy. Dara still confused her. They had spoken more today than in the past few years and she wondered again what had caused her to leave the group all those years ago. Maybe on this long trip home, she would get a chance to find out.

  As Alex was adjusting her pack, Cooper came over with a couple of T-shirts. “This should help for now but I’ll figure out something better when we stop for the night,” he said while wrapping the shirts around the shoulder straps and padding them to protect Alex’s sore shoulders. He tightened the straps, and in a surprising move, tucked a stray curl up under Alex’s hat. He stepped back and said, “All set. That should help for now.”

  Alex could feel the blush rising on her face and ducked down so her hat blocked his view. “Thanks,” was all she could get out. She could see his feet turning away so she risked a quick look to see if anyone had noticed the unexpected move and came face to face with Dara’s raised eyebrows. With her blush even redder, she just shrugged her shoulders and started pedaling.

  As the group got up to speed, Alex let her mind wander. “What did that mean? Was he just being nice? Was he interested?” She felt like a silly girl that had just noticed boys for the first time. She had dated other guys and even made out a few times with them, so what was it about Cooper that made her so unsure and nervous? At that point, Alex almost drove off the road so she shook her head and parked those thoughts for later, especially as she heard a small giggle coming from Dara behind her.

  It was soon hard to think about anything except the road ahead and the burn in her thighs. She had lost all feeling in her butt a while back and counted that as a plus. They were definitely climbing higher and the pace they were going was slowing down. No one was talking, needing all their energy just to keep pedaling. It seemed like forever before Alex heard Josh wheeze out something. She hadn’t lifted her head to look around in a long time, concentrating on the road ahead so she wouldn’t run into any stalled cars. The road they were traveling on must not have been very busy this morning when everything stopped because the cars were spread out and most had just stopped. There weren’t any crashes either, so it was easy to navigate. They hadn’t seen any people around but after ten hours most would have walked away to find help. As she lifted her head and looked around she spotted what had gotten Josh’s attention. Down the road about half a mile was an old looking motel. It was one story and the doors all faced the parking lot in front. There was an even older looking gas station attached to it and what looked like a mobile trailer off to the side. The group pulled up just before the entrance and scanned the building looking for trouble. At least half the room doors were open to let the light in and there were some people sitting at picnic tables at one end of the parking lot.

  “I’m about done with this bike courier job. So I think this is home sweet home for the night,” Josh joked.

  Quinn and Cooper exchanged looks and then shrugged. “I don’t see any badasses over there, just some tired people. Let’s check out the office and see what the deal is,” Cooper said.

  They biked over to the office and as they were getting off of their bikes, an older woman came out to greet them.

  “Hello there...Why, you’re just kids!” the woman was surprised. “What are you kids doing all the way out here? she asked.

  Quinn stepped forward and replied, “Hello, ma’am, we are trying to get home but we’ve been traveling all day and can’t go any further. Do you have any rooms left that we could rent?”

  The woman had a sympathetic look on her face and was nodding her head. “Yes, I do have a room left. It’s a double so it would be a tight fit for the five of you but that’s all there is. There have been so many people walking in from the highway. I haven’t been this full in years. There’s no electricity and the water isn’t flowing but there’s an old hand pump on the well back behind that you can use.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Quinn said. “Is it okay if we take the bikes into the room? I’m afraid if we left them out they would be stolen by morning. We would pay extra for that,” he asked with a boy next door grin.

  The woman waved her hand in dismissal. “Don’t you worry about the bikes. Take them in and keep them safe. It’s more important that you kids get home quickly than a little wear on old carpet. And don’t worry about paying me. If it was my own kids out on the road all alone, I’d like to think that someone would do the same. Besides I’ve made more money today than I have in the last two months,” she said with a laugh. “Now, what about food, it looks like you have some supplies in your little trailers, are you okay? I sold all the snack food and sodas to the other guests so I don’t have anything to offer you.”

  “We’re just fine for food and thank you so much for the room. I can’t tell you how relieved we are, knowing that we will have a safe place to sleep tonight but please let us pay you. We have cash and it would only be fair.”

  Alex thought Quinn was laying it on a little too thick with the charm so she quickly stepped forward and handed the lady some cash.

  “Which room is still open?” she asked, flashing her dimples.

  “Oh, just let me get you a key and a bucket. You can send one of these strapping boys to fill it so you can clean up. The toilets will flush if you fill the tank. Hold on, be right back.” and she turned back into the office. Alex gave Quinn an elbow in the ribs and rolled her eyes at his “Who me?” look.

  The lady came back out and handed a key to Alex and a bucket to Quinn.

  “There you go, dear. It’s the last room at the end. You come see me if you need anything else. Have a good rest.” She smiled as they pushed their bikes toward their room.

  The people sitting at the picnic tables were staring at them as they made their way towards the end unit of the hotel. An older couple and a mother and her little girl sat at one table with chip and snack bags and soda cans spread in front of them. The older man gave the kids a nod as they came closer. The other table had three men, one in a suit and two in dusty dirty jeans and tank tops. They were drinking beer and empty beer cans formed a pile on the ground beside them. The man in the suit was taking in the bikes and trailers with a thoughtful expression. The two greasy guys were giving Alex and Dara the once over. Alex felt a shiver go down her back at the leering looks and pushed her bike closer to the boys.

  They got to the room and opened the door to a blast of hot, stale, cigarette-tainted air. With no air conditioning and being shut up all day, the hot California sun had heated the room up. Dara and Alex went in first and pulled all the curtains back and opened the front window and the small window in the back bathroom hoping for a breeze. The only thing that the open windows really gave was some natural light to see the inside of the room. The girls moved the small table and chairs out of the way so there would be room for the bikes and then helped the boys bring them in and squeeze them into the front area of the room. This worked easier once Josh and Quinn unhooked the trailers from their bikes. It was so hot in the room that they were all sweating in minutes. Cooper grabbed a pillow and started fanning it back and forth in front of the door trying to get some hot air out of the room. He kept it up for a few minutes and then gave it up as a lost cause throwing the pillow back onto the bed.

  Quinn went to the door and looked out as everyone slumped down on the beds with aching muscles. “I don’t like the looks of those beer drinkers out there. If we are going to have problems, it will be from them. I think we’ll have to post watches tonight just in case. Can someone make sure the bathtub is clean? I think we should fill it up now with the bucket so we won’t have to go out back later. Once it gets dark, I don’t think we should leave the room. Our bikes are worth gold right now and our supplies even more.”

  “The way those guys were looking at Alex and me, it wasn’t the bikes they will be after,” Dara said with a grimace.

  “Good point. You and Alex should stay inside so they aren’t tempted to start anything.” Quinn said with a fro
wn.

  “Sounds good to me, you big strapping boys can fetch our water and Dara and I’ll stay here and paint our toes!” Alex teased.

  As if planned, the three boys lifted their arms and flexed their biceps in muscle men poses. After the laughter had died down, Josh said, “How about you little women make us men some dinner?”

  “Oh yeah, that would be great. I’m starving,” Cooper chimed in.

  Quinn was nodding his head too but then stopped to think, “We can’t have anything hot. The smell would let everyone in this place know what we have. They probably only have snack food and the smell of hot food would draw them right to our door. So it will have to be a cold dinner.” Groans all around answered that. After the work they did getting this far, they all wanted a good hot meal but they wanted a fight even less.

  Quinn and Cooper went out with the bucket, leaving Josh to guard the door. Alex used some of her water bottle and a hand towel to wipe the bathtub out and made sure the plug was pushed in. The toilet still had water in the tank so it was good for at least one flush. They would have to remember not to flush it after every pee or they would go through the water very quickly.

  Of the five one gallon jugs that they had brought from the camping section, half was already gone. They would fill them up in the morning and try to keep them filled every chance they found water. Five people on bikes went through a lot of water and Alex was worried about the next couple of days. The route they had planned would take them past Las Vegas and it was in the middle of desert country. Water would be very important and she was worried that they wouldn’t have enough.

  Leaving the bathroom, Alex saw Dara pulling beef jerky and trail mix from the trailer, covering the freeze dried camping food with a sleeping bag so it couldn’t be seen. Alex got out one of the camping stoves and fuel and a pot so she could boil water. Even though they weren’t going to eat a hot meal, they could have hot water to clean themselves up with and a hot drink.

  Quinn and Cooper came in with a full bucket of water and went to pour it in the tub. Coming back into the room Quinn said, “This is going to take a lot of trips. That barely covered the bottom of the tub.”

  Alex followed them to the door and saw Quinn approach the table with the older couple and mother and child. After some conversation, the man got up and headed to a different room. He came out with a bucket and went into the room beside his and emerged with another bucket. He handed his extra bucket to Cooper and the three disappeared around the back of the hotel. Loud laughter drew Alex’s attention to the other table and she saw the three men still drinking. It seemed the pile of empties had grown and Alex wondered if the men had carried the beer from wherever they had been stranded. She saw that they were looking her way so she quickly backed into the room. She found herself hoping that they would drink so much that they would pass out and not cause any trouble.

  It didn’t take very long for Quinn and the others to come back with three full buckets of water and the tub was filling up faster. After one more trip, the tub was half full and they decided it was enough for the night.

  “We’re going to help Mr. Thomas fill his tub up now. They’re going to share their room with the mother and little girl out there. So give us about twenty minutes and we’ll be in for the night,” Quinn told Alex, Dara, and Josh.

  While they were waiting, Alex and Dara used the steaming water from the camp stove and some hotel soap and wash cloths to clean off the dust and sweat as best they could. It wasn’t a hot shower but after putting on clean shirts, they felt much better. Alex swapped out Josh from the door and he handed her his gun. She made sure the safety was on and tucked it into a pocket of her cargos. She stayed back from the door but had a good view of the drinking table. The older woman and mother and child had gone back into their room so the men were the only people outside that Alex could see.

  On one of their earlier pit stops, Josh had gone over the basics of handguns with her and she felt more confident carrying it. It wasn’t that different from a rifle and Alex was a great shot, having hunted with her dad and done target shooting with her brother.

  Josh had used the last of the hot water to clean up so Dara refilled the pot and set it on the stove for the other two boys to have hot water. The room only had two coffee cups beside the now useless mini coffee maker but they could take turns having a hot drink after they ate their meagre supper. While waiting for the boys to return, Dara and Alex set up the small table between the two beds for more seating and placed the food and drinks as well as the map on it. It was getting dark outside when Quinn and Cooper finally came in and emptied one last bucket full of water into the tub. Alex was surprised to see the time was almost eight o’clock at night. As the two boys got cleaned up with the hot water she got out the lantern and a fat camping candle from the trailer and lit it. Alex went to the door and took a quick look out, noting that the beer drinkers were gone. She shut and locked the door and then pulled the heavy curtains closed. It wasn’t nearly as hot in the room as when they first opened it up but it was still very warm. Having the door open had helped keep it cooler but Alex felt safer with it closed and locked now that it was getting dark. By the time she got the lantern lit, everyone had gathered at the table to eat.

  “Mm-hmm, just what I wanted after a hard day’s work! Beef jerky and trail mix. This sure will hit the spot,” Josh joked sarcastically.

  No one was happy with the supper but they all understood it was better to be cautious about advertising what supplies they had. As they were eating, they discussed what their plan was for the next day. Looking at the map and trying to figure out distances wasn’t all that easy. Alex couldn’t help wishing for Google earth to zoom in and see what was ahead of them.

  She wondered if she would ever see a working computer with internet again, or if someday her future children would. It was those thoughts that finally brought the whole situation home for Alex. She had to quickly leave the table and race for the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before throwing up what little she had eaten. Alex flushed the toilet and splashed some water on her face. She stood shaking in front of the mirror trying to get herself under control.

  A knock on the door and Dara came in. “Are you alright, Alex?”

  Staring at Dara through the mirror, Alex let out all she was thinking, “No more Google, no cars, no planes, no grocery stores, malls, cell phones, Facebook, new jeans, prom, Glee, no more iTunes and damn it, we will never see the last Twilight movie,” she ended with a half laugh, half sob. Dara’s eyes had gotten wider as Alex listed the things that were gone.

  “Oh my God! I think I’m going to puke.” She covered her mouth.

  “Feel free, I already did,” Alex told her. “It just hit me. We’ve been go-go-going since the moment this happened that I finally realized that it’s done. All the things in our lives that we took for granted every day are over. If we want music we’ll have to make it. If we want food we’ll have to grow it. It’s like we just got cast in a really bad Pioneer Village reality show.”

  “Oh shit, do you think we’ll end up sister wives, pumping out babies and farming?” Dara exclaimed.

  Alex couldn’t help it. It was all too much to process and she burst out laughing and couldn’t stop, even with tears rolling down her face. Dara started giggling and they both ended up howling with laughter and holding onto each other. The boys must have thought that they had lost it because none of them came to check on them. After they settled down and caught their breath they washed their faces and went back out to the main room.

  All the guys were staring at them, afraid to say anything, and that set the girls off laughing again. The table had been put back and the food cleared away. There were two mugs of steaming hot chocolate sitting on the nightstand between the beds and the girls immediately claimed them, sitting back on one bed to drink.

  “Sooo, you guys okay?” Quinn asked. When Alex and Dara only nodded, he continued. “Alright, Cooper is taking first watch until midnight, then me
until three am and then Josh until six. You two can have tonight off and take a turn tomorrow night. Josh will wake us in the morning and we should try to be out of here by six thirty. Hopefully, the drunks won’t cause any trouble and will be sleeping it off when we get away from here. I say we bike for an hour and then stop and cook a good breakfast. We are aiming for somewhere between the two small towns, Yermo and Baker for the end of the day. That’s only the best guess we can make. It will depend on how the road is and what we run into on the way. It’s going uphill a lot so that will slow us down. We also have to be careful about our water and keep an eye out to fill it up whenever we can. We’re really lucky it’s only April so it’s hot during the day but not scorching. That’s about it. We should get to sleep as soon as we can, tomorrow is going to be even harder than today was,” he finished.

  Alex and Dara made up two more mugs of hot chocolate for Josh and Quinn and Alex put a little more water on the camp stove for Cooper to have his own wash. When Quinn and Josh finished their drinks, they laid down on the double bed closest to the door. Alex and Dara climbed on the other bed and settled down to sleep.

  Alex was so tired that she thought she would be asleep in a second. The belly full of warm chocolate and the soft bed should have done the trick but she couldn’t stop thinking. Her thoughts were full of her parents and brother. “What was happening at home? Were they all okay or hurt? What if they were driving at the time and had a crash?” After a hundred what-ifs, Alex couldn’t bear it anymore and switched her thoughts to Emily. “Where was her best friend right now? Did they make it to a boat? Would she be okay with the jerks she was traveling with?” Alex couldn’t stop thinking and didn’t think she would be able to sleep. After tossing and turning, she gave up and just stared up at the ceiling.

  She could hear Josh snoring and Quinn breathing and Cooper shifting on his chair by the window. Just as she thought she might as well get up and do something like filling the water bottles in the bathroom, she felt her hand being held. Dara gave Alex’s hand a squeeze of comfort and then just held it in the dark. Alex realized that her parents and best friend might be far away, but she had a friend right beside her, one that she didn’t even know she had been missing so much. With that thought, Alex fell asleep still holding her friend’s hand.