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  Down The Path 2

  Copyright © 2012 by Travis Mohrman

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The only exception to this is if you happen to be made entirely of black jellybeans. If that’s the case, rip it off however you see fit.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2013

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  ISBN-13: 978-1482715644

  ISBN-10: 1482715643

  [email protected]

  To Alejandro and Cooper,

  may your skills and intelligence

  guide you through all of

  life’s adventures

  Prologue

  As Handro crouched down amid the undergrowth, the thin layer of mud paste spread over his body cracked and splintered around his joints. He remembered when his parents first made him cover himself in this fashion and how itchy it seemed once dried. Many years had passed since that time; the man Handro had grown into didn’t even notice the itchiness anymore.

  Instead, he focused on the sound he could hear coming up the river. It was unlike any sound he had ever heard before. It was a rumbling noise, almost a coughing, and it seemed to drive all the other animals away. Handro was nervous. He had learned it was best to trust the cues given to him by the animals, and right now they all ran away.

  Still, he was curious by nature and more wily than the birds and rodents. He was confident he was well hidden and allowed his curiosity to override his fear. As he sat there, still as the rocks themselves, the noise grew louder. He dared not peer out into the river channel and expose his hiding spot; he had to remain motionless and allow the noise to come to him. This was a trick he had learned while hunting, and it had honed his patience like a weapon.

  Finally, the edges of a craft appeared in his view. It was a large box-shaped boat being pushed up the river. Men were on it as well! It had been years since Handro had come across other living people.

  The craft had grown close enough now for him to be able to hear their conversation but he couldn’t understand what they were talking about. He could clearly see and hear two men on the front arguing with each other. One was yelling ‘Malt’ while the other yelled ‘Hops’. Handro was unfamiliar with either of those words, so he just stared at the craft in wonder.

  The noise seemed to be coming from the machine mounted on the back. It must be what was pushing the craft upriver. He could not see any oars or anything else that might be able to thwart this river’s current. Never in his life had Handro seen anything like that powering a vessel of any kind. He didn’t have much time to try to visually identify how it worked.

  As they passed him by, Handro had a decision to make. Should he follow them? The boat was not moving very fast, but he spied two dogs on board. They would certainly alert the men to his presence eventually. He had known several dogs in his time and knew them to be one of the few animals he could never seem to outsmart with his stealthy abilities.

  He also saw one of the men staring onto the shore, near where he was hiding. He appeared to be keeping a lookout. The strangest thing was, this man appeared to have bright orange hair. Handro had never seen anything like that. This boat seemed to be full of new things, but he knew it was very risky to start following them right now.

  He decided against tracking them up river. Instead, he would travel in the direction they came from. His journeys had never brought him this far to the east, so he was unfamiliar with this particular river, but he knew the coast wasn’t too distant to the south. He could always follow them later; a craft that size could not be removed from the water and rivers would be the easiest paths to follow.

  Once he could no longer hear the rumble of their machine and the birds had begun signaling that everything was clear, Handro silently stood up and began walking south.

  Part I

  The Children

  1

  Cooper jerked awake from his slumber. He hadn’t expected to doze off while coiling rope, but the sun out on the barge seemed to sap his strength. Something had woken him up.

  Looking around, he saw Scoob driving the barge with a big grin on his face. FZ and Lakewood were in the front arguing about hoppy beer vs. malty beer...again. Seabee was close to them, goading the argument by randomly agreeing with both men at different times. Tim was leaning against one of the boxes of supplies scratching both Rufus and Lupe. He couldn’t see Doc anywhere, but he had probably nodded off near all the barrels of fuel.

  “Hey Coop, what’s going on?” Scoob asked.

  Cooper was still in that slight daze that comes along with waking up from a nap in the daytime, not entirely certain he wasn’t still dreaming. He glanced over at Scoob and could see his flat-topped, knitted hat pulled down tight to protect his bald head. He swore the ladies loved him in that hat. Cooper had seen evidence to the contrary but always kept it to himself.

  “Nothing. Just woke up from a nap with a strange feeling. You ever have that feeling you’re being watched, Scoob?” he asked.

  “Oh, all the time buddy, but it’s usually because I’m wearing my lucky hat and I am being watched!” Scoob pulled his hat down a little tighter, touching it more for encouragement than anything else, and laughed at his own joke.

  In Cooper’s previous journey down the river, the only time he felt like he was being watched was when Lupe was actually watching him, before she had saved his life from the spotted disease.

  Always being cautious, Cooper stood up and began scanning the shores of the river, looking for anything unusual. He saw the same trees dotting the riverbanks as everywhere else. Nothing seemed out of place. He didn’t see any other people, or dogs for that matter, staring at him.

  “Relax, Coop. I doubt many people are left anymore and anyone living around here would have already bumped into you on your trip downriver.” Scoob said with an air of confidence. “You probably just had a strange dream and it’s got your radar turned on high. Do you remember your dreams?”

  “Sometimes, but not this time. You’re probably right.” It hadn’t felt like a dream, but it made sense. He certainly hadn’t run into anyone on his trip down, nor did he see any signs of any other people until he met up with Tom and the residents of the village. Cooper decided he was being paranoid and began finishing his job of coiling the rope, otherwise it would inevitably be a tangled mess when it was needed.

  At night they lashed the barge onto the shore in several spots to make sure it didn’t float all the way back home. The ropes tended to get tangled if they weren’t coiled right and a knot in the rope weakened it. Tying their craft up for the two nights they had spent on the river had been the only time anyone had actually needed to do anything. It was a very different journey than the one that brought him down the river to the unknown village.

  So much had changed for Cooper in the year he spent at the village. His entire life had been turned on its head, for the better of course. When he was bored, his mind would wander back to everything he had learned in the village and the wonderful people who lived there. With all the great friends he had made and now this expedition to save the rest of the people from his own city, it was almost too much to believe.

  Before he knew it, the rope was all coiled into tight and tangle-free loops ready to be used when they needed to tie up the barge. It looked like they had almost half the day to go before sunset, so he tied a small string around each bundle of rope to keep them from tangling if a person, or dog, kicked them.

  With his only chore done,
he decided to join Tim in some dog scratching, hoping he could stay out of the argument about beer styles. It was obvious that hoppy was better, but FZ would argue the counterpoint until someone gave up or agreed.

  “Hey bud, how much longer you think this boat ride’s gonna last?” Tim asked. He hadn’t bothered to look up as he was currently in a fairly intense staring competition with Rufus. It was a game that the black dog loved, even though he almost always lost. He was easily distracted and once Cooper had actually seen him fall asleep while in the middle of a match!

  Leaning down to give Lupe a big ear scratch, Cooper responded, “Well, I can’t tell exactly how far we’ve gone. We’re moving pretty fast though, so I expect to get to the bend in the river tonight or early tomorrow. From there it shouldn’t be anymore than a day before we have to ditch the barge and start walking.”

  “That’s good news! I like lounging around, but I’m starting to get pretty bored.” Tim was excited now and that had broken Rufus’ concentration. Yet another match lost. “Ha, you’re not even a challenge, pooch.”

  “You could just try Doc’s method to counteract boredom and be drunk all the time,” Cooper said, while glancing around for Doc. He still hadn’t seen him anywhere and was starting to wonder where he had gone.

  “Hey you little carrot headed weasel…I’m not drunk ALL the time,” Doc yelled from behind the supply boxes on the other side of the barge. “Besides, I have been working on things to make our journey better. See? I made these this morning.” Doc held out some of the knives that they had brought with them, the handles of which were now several feet long.

  “You took our regular knives and put long handles over them?” Tim asked.

  “Sure. You never know, maybe we will need to poke something from far away,” Doc said. He was obviously proud of his accomplishment and Cooper waited for Tim to begin ridiculing him. The jabs never came, though.

  “Ahhh, that’s a fine idea. Hey, we could put long handles on lots of stuff!”

  “That’s what I was thinking! Come on, help me dig through this crate and find some more stuff.” Doc was thrilled to have a partner. It took everything Cooper had not to start laughing at the pair of them. Instead, he decided to walk over to the front of the barge to watch their metal craft push the muddy waters out of the way.

  The argument had stopped for the moment and the men had gone to the rear of the barge to fish. Cooper had the bow all to himself, although Lupe was by his side. The pair would often come to the bow and lean into the wind, like they were the tip of a spear slicing through the wind and making the barge move even faster.

  +++

  He had been sitting on the front of the barge for some time, leisurely watching the trees flow past just as the water did. Cooper felt a little bad for Scoob, having to drive the whole time and not being able to relax. It was his own fault though, Scoob refused to let anyone else drive the barge. Ever. He said that he had spent so much time building it, as well as the engines that he totally rebuilt, if anyone was going to accidentally crash it, it had to be him.

  The redhead didn’t really understand the logic, but he saw no reason to argue. It was just another one of the quirks of the people from the village that he had grown to love. Apparently, when people aren’t depressed all the time, as the folks in his home city were, they developed goofy quirks. He wondered if he had any that he didn’t realize.

  As he was trying to figure out what his quirks might be, he heard a ruckus from the back of the barge where the men had been fishing. He stood up and started strolling that way but he could never seem to walk in a perfectly straight line while the barge was moving. His course had several sways in it as he tried to keep his path straight.

  “C’mon Coop, grab a stick, we’re actually catching some fish,” yelled FZ, holding up a small whiskerfish.

  “Be careful with those, I told you the story of what happened when the poison spine went deep into my hand!” Cooper replied, remembering the lingering pain and infection from that one fish sting.

  “ Yeah, yeah. We all remember what happened with your hurt little hand. You can wear those bright gloves, then!” Seabee laughed at him as he pointed over to the old, ratty, yellow gloves they used to scrub out the barrels. “Tom, back at the village, showed us how to hold them right. Here, look,” and Seabee held up the fish with his hand gripping the belly tightly, two of his fingers looped around the poison fins on either side. This kept them straight out and didn’t allow the fish to wiggle. “You can also hold them from the top like this.” Seabee transferred the fish to his other hand but gripped the back of the fish instead, with the fin on the back pressing between his fingers, keeping all three fins immobilized. “That looks like it works pretty good. Can I try it? Cooper asked.

  “Gotta catch your own to practice! Here, grab a mug of beer out of the cask over there and a stick with line on it, then have a seat,” Seabee said, patting the spot next to him on the edge of the barge with small smirk on his face.

  When Cooper sat down with his equipment and beer, Seabee promptly took the beer from him and began drinking it. “I didn’t say the beer was for you.” Everyone laughed, and he heard several people comment that he had fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

  The sky was finally starting to get dark. Everyone who had been fishing had caught several whiskerfish. The crawdads along the river bank were excellent bait and they had been gathering some every morning before firing the barge back up. Cooper had mastered the art of holding the fish without any fear of being stung and he was now excited for dinner. These fish were delicious!

  Scoob announced that he was pulling the barge over and everyone hopped up, ready to follow orders even though they had done this several times and knew what was expected of them. They all grabbed some rope and tied it to the barge while Scoob navigated the shallow side of the river until the barge came to rest in the soft dirt. Then the men jumped out into the knee deep water and trudged onto shore, securely tying the boat onto the stoutest, healthiest looking trees near the water’s edge.

  Before long, they had a fire going on the shore and were drinking beer while the fish cooked. Cooper was trying to decide if he wanted to sleep atop the barge again or over on the shore. He usually slept on the barge just because it was perfectly flat and surprisingly comfortable, but tonight he decided he would sleep amongst the trees.

  As expected, the fish tasted delicious and it was plentiful, so everyone was quite stuffed. The beer didn’t seem to help the full belly feeling much, but it tasted so great in combination with the fish that no one could resist having a few mugs. Soon Lupe and Rufus, also full of fish, were lying under a large tree while Cooper was next to them on his back, staring up into the stars.

  Cooper was trying to imagine what the situation would be like in his city. He wondered if anyone was actually expecting him to return. This is the time frame when they had decided it would be best, so hopefully they were waiting for him.

  They would be in for a shock when he told them his plan to move all the city inhabitants down to the village. He hoped it wouldn’t take too much persuading, especially after they saw what these people were capable of. He hoped they would see how much better of a life they could all lead down south. He was also looking forward to meeting back up with John, the slow-witted bear of a man who had grown close to Cooper just before he left on his adventure.

  They had a ways to go before reaching his old city, the hike being the only difficult part, but he was still very excited to go home and rescue all those people.

  2

  John was out on the lake again, catching more carp with one of the children, a boy named Albert. He was barely even six years old but was nearly twice the size of the other boys and could work a net and gut fish like a grown man. One day when John went out to fish for the tiny remainder of his city, Albert just followed along. John had assumed that the child just wanted to watch him go out on the water, but the young boy scurried into the boat with him.

 
That day was only a few weeks ago, but since then Albert had become John’s right hand. The boy seemed to be able to do almost anything and was sharp as a tack. He reminded the older man of a certain red-haired friend of his.

  John still had hope that Cooper would return, but had settled into this season and tried not to think of it too much. He had 13 children, including Albert, to take care of. Those were all of the young ones from the city. The few elderly people that he was taking care of had all either passed away or left. He had not seen any other people besides his small flock in weeks. He tried not to think about them as he had plenty to worry about already.

  Little Albert had really saved John in a way. When all the other people disappeared, it had hit John hard. He was already depressed, having watched his home spiral into darkness as so many died in the winter. Then the living that remained abandoned each other. It was then that the chubby-cheeked, black haired boy had stepped up, reminding John he had a job to do and showing him that he would not be left alone to do it.

  John’s new friend wasn’t very talkative, but he hummed almost constantly. John found it very comforting and had caught himself humming right along with him several times when he was able to keep pace.

  “John, where do you think all the others went?” Albert said in his high-pitched and nasally voice.

  “I don’t know, but I wish they hadn’t left,” groaned the older man.

  “I’m glad they’re gone. They never helped us with anything anyway. Good riddance.” Albert went back to humming a melody that John had heard many times before.

  John was learning to tell Albert’s mood by the many various things he would hum. This particular song usually meant that the little man was angry. He had a right to be angry, John figured, so he never interrupted him or bothered him with more questions. The odd pair just went back to lugging in the nets and collecting the carp.