L Akers - Fight Like a Man

Again.

Flip. Flop. Flap.

Flip. Flop. Flap.

The slapping of Olivia’s flip-flops was driving everyone insane, on top of the waves of heat rolling up off the asphalt, giving more weight to the feeling of being in hell. To her credit, Olivia had run like the wind earlier in them, but now they were nearly destroyed, the rubber almost completely melted on the soles. Gabby watched as Olivia exhaustedly measured each step while looking down and gripping the stubborn piece between her toes that barely held the shoes together. Her toes were bunched up, crooked and strained, and when she raised her feet, there was a gaping hole in the bottom of each shoe, clearly showing the dirt on Olivia’s feet.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

“Stop, Olivia,” Gabby said, feeling guilty that in her rage she’d stupidly made Olivia leave the bike. She could have ridden it to save her feet some grief.

Olivia didn’t argue. She stepped off the road to the ditch and heavily sat down, stripping off her shoes and rubbing her feet.

Gabby dug through her bug-out bag. “There’s got to be something in here to fix them.”

She found a pencil, wrapped in layers of silver duct tape. “Aha!” Silently, she thanked her husband for listening to Grayson and packing her a bug-out bag. She’d meant to do it herself, but never got around to it. Jake had done well. Quickly she focused on the flip-flops before thoughts of Jake crippled her.

She wound the duct tape around Olivia’s shoes multiple times, covering the holes and giving her more padding to replace what had melted or been worn away. She handed them back to Olivia, not even earning a thank you.

She sighed.

After an hour of arguing, her sisters—and Mei—had lost the fight, and they were sulking. They wanted to step off the interstate, and cut through the country, hoping to get away from the energy-depleting heat and into some shade, and shave time off their long walk home.

But someone had dropped the map.

Gabby cringed again. She’d let Olivia believe it was her, having left it in the car when they’d first arrived at the rest area. But actually, Gabby had picked up the map and the picture of her and Olivia standing in front of Jake’s truck and had put them in her back pocket before their snafu in the woods with the bikers.

Gabby had left the bike. And Gabby had lost the map. And the picture. Three screw-ups. Maybe more… And without the map, she couldn’t be sure they’d find their way home if they left the interstate.

But the girls had another point, too. If and when the bikers fixed their tires, they could be right behind them. They’d hedged their bets, planning to run and hide if they heard motorcycles, and so far, they hadn’t. But their luck had to run out sometime. They would be harder to find if they took a shortcut and got off of the highway. But, they were all directionally-challenged and relied far too much on the modern conveniences of google maps and GPS’s. She didn’t trust them to find their own way home without that map, which had their route highlighted all the way to the homestead.

She watched as they shared a last bottle of water, passing it around between the three of them. Finally, Mei handed it to her.

Gabby shook her head.

Penance for her unspoken crimes.

Let them have it.

“Okay, I give. Let’s get off the road.”

As night began to fall around them, their hearts fell with it. At this point, after hours of walking, they had no idea how close or far from home they were. They’d lost sight of the interstate long ago and only hoped they were still walking the right direction.

Mei was in the front now, where they could prod her along and keep an eye on her. Although they didn’t know exactly how old she was, Gabby felt sure she was very young. Mei should be stronger than all of them, not weaker. She had been through a lot, but in the past few hours she had really slowed down, and even more worrying, she was convinced they didn’t want her there, and didn’t want her to come home with them. Repeatedly, she’d offered to just go it alone and head a different direction.

At this point, Gabby could admit to herself, she didn’t want her there. She had a feeling Mei had some very serious issues. But Mei had said she had no one and nowhere else to go, so Gabby kept her mouth shut when Olivia and Emma stepped in to reassure her she was wanted.

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.