Owl's Keep Five... Leaving Behind the Bethany.. Onto the Pacific Trail.

The Pacific Trail.

They continued on their northern course following the Pacific trail, and after they had put a full seven miles between them and the Bethany, Mox noticed that the male and the female, had followed them. Trip pulled up beside of him, keeping up a brisk pace.

“What say you Mox? We get them up in the hills and lose them after dark? Or stick to the trail and simply out pace them to the ocean?” He asked.

“We’ve got at least another twenty-five or so miles to cover to reach the ocean. They’ve lasted a full seven from the Bethany. We keep our pace up, see how long they shadow us, Fishbin is another thirty miles from here. That's a lot of ground to cover on foot before nightfall so if we don’t make it, we’ll head up to Leeks cave below Tehachapi peak and camp out there for the night, we’ll try and keep them below us where we can keep an eye on them.” Mox told him.

“You think they’ll try something with us?”

Mox stopped and looked at Trip and then back at the distant strangers.

“Well-They did knife four of Morg Creel’s boys and then smashed their heads in with rocks. I don’t know Trip.  What do you think?”

They returned to their brisk pace. Trip stared straight ahead.

“We get up to Leeks, we’d best keep an eye on them.” He agreed.

The trail began to wind its way up into rolling grassy hills, trees on the hillsides were becoming more frequent, and large jutting rock formations cropped up all over the landscape, they would on occasion catch sight of a wild rabbit or two, which made them think of supper time. They would exchange small talk for the next two hours and their pace-because of the steadily growing incline, began to slow a bit, but nevertheless they kept walking. And for a time they almost forgot about the two strangers behind them who were slowly but surely gaining ground, and Morg Creel who was now more than likely not far behind the two strangers never strayed far from their thoughts. Mox used his crossbow to bag them a rabbit just before the trail turned towards Leeks cave, through years of practice he’d become quite the accomplished hunter with the single shot weapon. The shadows from Tehachapi peak grew closer as they reached the entrance of Leeks cave with two hours of daylight to spare, giving him plenty of time to skin and clean his prize while Trip built the fire in the mouth of Leeks. 

They’d briefly lost sight of the two strangers, but Mox spotted them near the bottom of the hill some one hundred and fifty yards away, sitting amongst some logs and trees. It appeared as though they had no desire to come any closer until morning, and it was becoming more and more apparent to both Mox and Trip that the only reason they were following them in the first place was because they were hopelessly lost. They sat by the fire for most of the night, neither one able to get much sleep, their thoughts kept returning to the two people at the bottom of the hill. But eventually the long day's walk overtook them, and they could no longer fight it, and both drifted off into a peaceful sleep by the fire. The next morning however met them with a bit of a surprise as they awoke to find the female that had been following them sitting at the mouth of the cave stoking the fire. Mox jumped to his feet and quickly alerted Trip to the presence of the intruder. Trip slowly stirred.

“I wasn’t going to try anything, your fire was going out, so I put some more wood in it. Besides, I was getting cold out there.” She said.

Mox slowly looked back and forth.

“And where is your friend?” Mox asked.

“He snuck away in the middle of the night while I was asleep, he took all of our dried goods and weapons with him.” She told them.

Mox took out some dried beef and handed it to her.

“We ate all the rabbit last night, so this is all we have left, until we get to Fishbin. We have a friend there who’s a local merchant, he’ll set us up with a meal and some dried goods. We’ll get you as far as there, then you’re on your own.” He told her.

They headed back to the Pacific trail and once again headed northwest towards Fishbin. As they walked, both Mox and Trip introduced themselves, and she told them her name was Ava, and she came from a town that was a bit farther inland to the east called Briars Branch, after 18 years of misery there she had decided that she’d had enough of the rough life and originally headed north to join up with a caravan of hoarders that had passed through her township one month and a half ago, one of the wagoneer’s offered to teach her to be a team driver, and she had been on her way to meet up with them at their base camp near the town of Dewfork. She met up with Murph on the trail eleven days ago, and they seemed to be going the same way, so they stuck together. Slowly, Murph had convinced her to continue on with him to Sawtooth near Scale Harbor, where they were supposed to meet up with a person named Clinton Scarsdale. Exactly what the meeting pertained to- she wasn’t really sure, except that this Scarsdale person was going to tell Murph how to get to some special place somewhere deep up in the mountains that he’d been searching for, for a long, long time. Mox stopped in mid-stride and cast a puzzled look towards first Ava and then at Trip, he wondered about the strange man that they had met up with on the Temblor Traverse.

“He’s not looking for Owls Keep, is he?” Mox asked her.

She turned to face him.

“Yeah, I think that’s what he called it- now that you mention it. Why? Have you heard of it?” She asked.

Trip kept walking, though slower now, Mox moved alongside of Ava.

“I thought everyone has heard the legend of Owl's Keep. You mean to tell me you haven’t?” He asked.

She shook her head no.”

“Owl's Keep is supposed to be one of the last remaining cities with ties to the old world. People have been trying to find it for years now, no one ever has, though. They say that they have hot and cold running water inside the buildings there, Food is plentiful, and there are some who believe that much of what existed in the old world still exists today in Owl's Keep.”

Ava stopped and gave him a puzzled look.

“Like what things?” She asked.

“Well things like. Electricity.” He answered flatly.

She shook her head as she sat down on a stump near the side of the trail.

“That’s impossible. Nobody has had working electricity in over one hundred years.”

Mox sat down on one side of her and Trip on the other. She looked more confused than ever. He patted her hand, and began to tell her about the legend of Owl's Keep. She listened with growing interest.

“There are people who say that they have rooms upon rooms filled with books there, that can teach people who know how to read-how to build things Ava, things like machines that can generate electricity using the natural currents of the water from a river. And how to build things to mend clothing, books on medicine that teach people how to heal the sick. And they say that there are people there who still have direct ties to what it was like before. Their grandfather’s and mothers taught their parents who taught them, knowledge passed down through generations from a time before the machines quit working, before the governments died, before all the great cities were evacuated and left to rot. Before the sickness Ava, Before the whole world went dark, they say that the people with this knowledge fled to the mountains and settled Owls Keep. And one day when the time was right-their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren would return to the world and teach whoever was left everything that they had preserved. That was over one hundred and thirty-five years ago Ava, no one came, no one taught, because Owls Keep is nothing but a myth, and the only electricity that exists today lives in the sky.”

They pressed on until the they reached the part of the pacific trail where it turned from cracked crumbling chips of asphalt into a wide pure dirt trail for the next three miles and would run back into the same crumbling asphalt just nine miles from the outskirts of Fishbin. They walked for what seemed like hours until they began to feel the rumblings in their bellies returning. Mox held them up and pointed up to a hilltop.

"There’s a couple of wild fruit trees up there, we should be able to get something to eat if nobody has picked them clean yet.” He said.

They followed a narrow, winding pathway that lead up to the top of the hill, aside from a few rocks and some small, prickly bushes, there was little in the way of obstacles to hinder the climb to the top. Twenty feet from the first fruit tree Mox made a discovery. He motioned for Ava to come up beside of him. He pointed just to the left of the first fruit tree.

“Is that one of your packs?” He asked.

Her eyes lit up and she began to hurry up the side up the hill, her feet struggling to maintain their grip on the slick grassy terrain. Mox and Trip both followed up immediately behind her in case she slipped, but she made it twenty feet ahead of them to the pack. She turned to Mox.

“It is, it’s the pack with the dried goods. But I don’t see Murph anywhere. I wonder where that snake slithered off to?” Ava asked.

She and Trip rested under the fruit tree while Mox climbed farther up the hill to investigate the other side. Having been there before- he knew that the slope on the other side of the hill was much steeper and if his suspicions were correct, it would be easy to lose your footing and fall to the bottom. And once at the top he saw that his suspicions were indeed correct, as there at the bottom in a ravine of jagged rocks was the twisted body of Ava’s companion Murph.

“He must have been looking for the trail when he fell.” He thought to himself.

He carefully made his way to the bottom until he reached Murph’s body, there still clutched in his hand was the small pack of long knives that belonged to Ava. He left Murph there and climbed back to the top, being ever so careful as to not meet the same fate as Ava’s traitor. When he reached the top and was looking back down at the body, he found it somewhat odd that the first word that popped into his head as he looked down at Murph was “Karma.” he walked back to the tree where he’d left Ava and Trip and found them eating something from her dried goods pack. She threw a piece of dried beef to Mox which he happily accepted. He set the pack of knives beside her and sat down on a boulder next to the tree.

“Murph?”

He shook his head no.

“Dead.. I think he fell down against the rocks on the other side of the hill.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” Trip muttered

They chewed on the dehydrated beef in silence each pondering the possibilities of what had actually happened to Murph. Why had he left the pack of dried goods under the tree when he’d went to the other side of the hill?  Suddenly a thought occurred to Mox as his eyes carefully scanned the landscape, perhaps Murph heard something that drew him away from the pack. A strange noise perhaps... Maybe... An animal? Suddenly he felt his heart sink. The color began to leave his face.

“Ava?” He whispered. “How many knives are in that pack?”

His sudden look of concern alarmed her.

“Four. Why?”

He swallowed hard.

“Get one out.  Slowly-  for yourself.  Trip? How many bolts do you have left for your crossbow?”

“Twenty or so. I think- why?”  Trip answered.

“Load it.. Slowly.”

Without actually hearing the words.. Trip was staring wide eyed.. Straight ahead.  Ava slowly sat upright  beside  him..

“Uhhh.. Mox?” He whispered.. “Is that what I think it is?”

He stared straight ahead but slowly nodded.

“Yep.”

Ava still unsure as to what exactly was going on, deferred to Mox’s lead. They all slowly got to their feet. Mox instructing them every step of the way.

“Don’t make any jerky or sudden moves. Single file we make our way back to the trail. Slowly. Ava you stay between Trip and me.”

He looked back at Trip.

“You see it yet?”

Trip slowly nodded.

“Yeah, she’s about sixty yards over that way in those trees. Think we’ll make it to the trail?”

Mox studied the wind direction.

“We have a good chance in we stay down wind, she won’t pick up our scent at least.”

~Scratch.. A.B.T. Copyright © 2014~