-Complete- #happinessawards24
A zombie apocalypse with a twist of Native American Lore.
It all began from a sequence of events so absurd, complicated and uncommon as to be unbelievable but an ancient Hopi Pueblo Prophecy predicted a time when the...
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Nothing Else Matters
Morning came before daylight, because Len woke them up with a rushed whisper. Lara untangled herself from Nathans warmth and looked around.
The children all slept still, so Len waved them out. Nathan touched Deag on his way through the tent and the two of them woke Donelle and Verbena, the only ones left asleep.
Len already had coffee made in a large boiling pot and he dipped them each a cup and talked quietly while they woke up. "We had company last night."
"What do you mean we had company, Len?" Nathan asked giving Len a stern look.
"Actually, it was just a little while ago. I think we're being watched or followed. I spotted movement in the edge of the Woodline near the road."
"You think it's just other travelers?"
"I don't know, they worked hard not to let themselves be seen but I knew they were there. I don't think they had good intentions for that reason. If I hadn't noticed when I did, I think they would have tried to slip up on us."
"We better break up camp," Hollis urged. "I'll get the horses ready. Cole you and Seth come help me, they can break down."
The three of them headed off to where Hollis had the horses strung, while Lara, Verbena and Monica fished out some snacks for the kids and went to wake them. As soon as they got the kids up, Nate, Deag and Keith took down and rolled up the tarps.
Monica helped Haven with the baby and thirty minutes later they were mounted and ready to go. Len pushed ahead of them and not far down the road he veered into a wooded path that took them downhill, twisting through small ravines and barren stretches of scrubby grassland.
They stayed on this bridleway route until ahead of them a barbed wire fence ended the way forward. Hollis jumped off his horse, took the baby and gave her to Lara, while he and Len dug around on the packhorse. In moments, Len, with the wire cutters he'd brought for this reason, had the fence snipped and pulled back cramming it into a snarl of yaupon bushes that were entangled in the fence. He mounted up and they made their way single file through the gap and kept going.
"We're across the border now," he informed them turning around in his saddle to see how Lara was doing with her new passenger. "Do you got her Lara, or do you want me to take her back?"
"No, I'm good," she called out watching both of the dogs as they trotted faithfully along side her horse.
Len nodded and as they rode on in peace, he began to lessen up the pace feeling they were not being stalked now, but he would not let up his guard.
The landscape opened up to deep gorges, desert scrub and the twisted shapes of bristlecone pine and yucca tree. These ancient trees stood as witnesses of a time gone by, though by anyone's standard not much had changed. It was wild, rugged and deadly, but it had it's own beauty with a backdrop of faraway mountain ranges and lone towering sandstone monuments blown by the wind into colorful plateaus that dotted the desert like abandoned buildings with flat top roofs.
