Scott Williams - The Pulse

He could give all the pep talks he wanted, Casey thought, but there was no way to describe riding in this heavy rain as anything short of misery. She had to squint and keep her head down just to keep from being blinded by the pelting drops that splattered on her forehead. The pavement beneath her tires was two inches deep in standing water that couldn’t drain off the roadway as fast as it came down and made steering and braking treacherous. As if that weren’t enough, the fenderless front wheel threw spray in her face from beneath while the rear wheel kicked up a rooster tail of more spray that soaked her back side from the bottom as thoroughly as the falling rain drenched her from above. In less than twenty minutes, everything she had on was soaked through and through.

The highway took them through the town of Folsom, but in the rain their passing was hardly noticed, a decided advantage of traveling in these conditions. “Not many people are going to be out in this unless they really have to be,” Grant said. Though they continued to pass disabled vehicles on the side of the road, no one was out and about in Folsom except for a handful of people standing around here and there under the shelter of awnings in front of darkened storefronts and gas stations. Some waved as they passed, and one man yelled out to ask where they’d come from and if they had any news about the power outage, but no one harassed them or asked if they needed anything. Once they were north of the city limits, they had the road to themselves again, though in the limited visibility it was hard to be sure there were no potential threats lurking just ahead, out of sight. The terrain had changed from flat to rolling hills, and with every climb Casey and Jessica slowed to a crawl.

“It’s only about nine more miles to the river,” Grant said as they passed a fork where Highway 450 split off to the northwest and 25 curved away to the northeast. “Highway 25 will take us almost parallel to it for a while, and then it crosses over on the bridge at Franklinton. We’ll camp for the night somewhere before we get to the bridge, though. Franklinton is a bigger town than Folsom and I don’t want to be close to it tonight. We can ride through tomorrow morning and then keep going north until we get to the state line. Then it’s only a few miles to the cabin.”

Two more hours of slogging through the rain at a slow pace put them past the side road leading to Bogue Chitto State Park. Grant said it would normally be a good place to camp, but considering the conditions, it would be better to avoid any kind of developed campground and ‘stealth camp’ somewhere just off the highway where no one would see them. They found a spot on a dead-end logging road leading off the highway to the east. The muddy dirt track was too slippery to ride on in the rain, so they dismounted and pushed their bikes a hundred yards to where it ended at the edge of a dense forest of river-bottom hardwoods. Pushing on a short distance into the trees would have made them completely invisible to anyone passing by on the highway even if it had not been raining, but, much to Casey’s disappointment, a steady shower continued to fall. Grant dug the nylon tarp out of his backpack and began unwrapping the cords attached to the grommets in its corners. Then he stretched another piece of rope that was wrapped up in the tarp between two trees that were spaced about 10 feet apart. This line he pulled tight and tied off so that it was parallel to the ground and about four feet high. “This is our ‘ridgepole’,” he said. “Help me pull the tarp over it and we’ll pitch it so that it’s like an A-frame tent.”

Casey and Jessica did as he asked and Grant secured the two corners on one side to the bases of nearby saplings. There was nothing convenient to tie the remaining two corners to, so he took out his machete and quickly cut two stakes from another inch-thick sapling, sharpened the ends with a few deft strokes of his blade, and then pushed them into the soft ground. When he had pulled these last two corners tight, the tarp did resemble an A-frame tent, only one with no walls and no floor.

“Wow, you know what you’re doing, don’t you?” Casey said.

“It’s just basic stuff,” Grant said. “We used plastic tarps similar to this in Guyana. Our Indian guides there were the real experts in setting them up in no time flat. To them, any piece of plastic is a luxury. They can build just as dry a shelter with palm fronds or other foliage, but it takes a little longer.”

“But this is hardly going to be dry,” Jessica said, pointing out the wet leaves and muddy ground under the tarp as they crawled under it to get out of the rain.

“No, it’s not going to be all warm and cozy, but at least it’ll keep the rain off of us while we try to sleep.”

“I don’t know,” Casey said. “It seems pretty cozy to me. Especially with all three of us crowded under here.”

“Just be glad Joey didn’t come too,” Jessica said. “I know I am. He couldn’t have handled this anyway. He would have freaked out so many times already.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Casey said. “I’m glad it worked out this way. He wasn’t good for you anyway. You’re better off without him—we all are.”

“Well, I want you both to know I’m really proud of you,” Grant said. “You two have been real troupers ever since we left the city. I knew you could do it, though.”

“Not without you making us, Grant,” Casey said. “I still can’t believe you wanted to be burdened with us tagging along. You could be sitting by that woodstove right now, in the comfort of your cabin.”

“And then what, sit there with no one to talk to for no telling how long until this gets fixed? No, thanks. I spend enough time alone in everyday life. I wouldn’t have this any other way. I’m just glad you two were insane enough to come along with me, and I hope you don’t go stir-crazy from being stuck there with me.”

“After what we’ve seen since we left yesterday, we’d be crazy to do anything else but go with you, I think.”

“Yesterday…” Jessica said. “I can’t believe it was only yesterday that we left. It seems forever ago…so much has happened. That dead man…the motorcycle gang…crossing the Causeway…. It’s hard to believe that just yesterday morning I was stupid enough to follow Joey back to his house.”

“Time does seem distorted,” Grant agreed. “That happens with this kind of stress.”

“I just have to wonder what tomorrow will bring?” Casey asked. “Besides more rain, that is.”

“The rain is a given, I think. But so is getting to the cabin if our luck holds out. Right now, I think we should try to get a little more comfortable and get some hot food inside us. That does more to make a person feel better in these kind of conditions than anything else.”

Grant unpacked the sleeping bags and Casey and Jessica spread one of them out and temporarily suspended it from the overhead guy line for some semblance of privacy so she and Jessica could get out of their wet clothes on one side while Grant changed his on the other. They all still had some dry items of clothing protected by the garbage bags lining their packs that Grant had given them before they left. With dry clothes and sleeping bags, the night under the tarp would be much more tolerable. The garbage bags and their wet clothes under them provided some insulation from the ground and a relatively clean surface upon which to spread out the sleeping bags. This done, Grant assembled the stove and boiled water to cook a couple of packages of rice pre-mixed with dried cheddar and broccoli, and they ate huddled together under the tarp as night closed in and swallowed their hidden camp in inky blackness. A compact LED headlamp that ran on two AAA batteries provided enough light to eat by when Grant hung it overhead, but beyond the tiny circle of illumination it cast, the darkness in this dense stand of forest was more complete than anything Casey and Jessica had ever experienced.