Disappearance at Devil's Rock (3 page)

As the Western Trail gave way to the French Trail, Luis's prophecy was realized. The terrain became hilly and craggy, full of knotty, python-thick tree roots, jagged rocks, and boulders the size of small cars. They had to walk their bikes. They weren't good enough or strong enough riders, and with the exception of Josh's bike, they didn't have high-end mountain bikes built for such expert-level terrain. Tommy's bike was a beater his mom bought on Craigslist; only the rear brakes worked correctly. Luis's bike was a cheap knockoff from a generic sporting goods box store.

French Trail became the Northwest Trail, and the going was even
rougher. Walking their bikes over minimountains was tiring, time consuming, and at times near impossible, and they had to carry their bikes over the steepest and rockiest sections. They briefly considered ditching their bikes and continuing on to Split Rock by foot, but they were afraid that even out here, deep in the middle of the woods, their bikes could still be messed with or stolen. As middle schoolers they lived in fear of being bullied and harassed by high schoolers who could be lurking around any bend in the trail.

They pressed onward. They had to backtrack on the Northwest Trail when they missed the not-very-well-marked right turn onto the lower loop of the Granite Hills Trail. Announcing that he was sweating his balls off and sick of walking his bike, Tommy tried riding for a stretch in the lowest gear he had, and he crashed almost instantly. His rear tire got pinched between two rocks, and he was tossed from his bike, skidding hands and knees first at the bottom of a small slope. He popped up quickly and said, “I'm good. No brain damage.” He had a couple of raspberries on his knees. He wiped and checked his palms repeatedly as he breathed harshly through clenched teeth.

Luis laughed, said, “Dude. You okay?”

Tommy nodded as he walked his bike next to Josh. Josh could tell that Tommy was really hurting. His face was red and he blinked quickly like he did when he was trying not to cry.

Finally, they came upon the Split Rock trail sign. Two feet tall, planted in the middle of the path like a wayward garden gnome, the wooden sign was painted brown with carved, white lettering. A short walk later, they arrived at a wooden plank bridge that lay on top of a swampy patch, and it emptied them at the base of Split Rock.

Tommy: “This has got to be it, right?”

Josh said, “Yeah. This is it,” and if his words lacked enthusiasm it wasn't because Split Rock was disappointing, but to acknowledge how hard their journey had been.

They sloughed off their helmets and dumped their bikes on the pine-needle-covered ground. Tommy set his bike loose on another ghost ride that ended as they usually did, with a metal-scraping and tire-spinning crash.

Split Rock was an impressive, glacial boulder; twenty feet tall, sixty feet at its widest. Calved neatly in half on its north side, there was a three-foot-wide crevasse through to the boulder's center. The boulder was a giant cake that had a thin piece cut out of it. The boys rushed inside the split and took turns taking pictures and videos of each other shouting, “Hardcore parkour!” and “American Ninja Warrior” while trying to spider-climb up to the top. Josh and Luis weren't strong enough, and they couldn't get leverage with one foot pressed flat against each wall, and they barely got a few feet off the ground before sliding back down. Tommy must've still been sore from his bike crash, because his legs started to shake, and he gave up climbing after getting maybe six feet up.

They walked around to the south side of Split Rock, where some of the boulder had collapsed and crumbled away. They quickly found a path over those broken and moss-covered rocks and scrambled to the top of the boulder, which was flat enough to walk around on without any worries of sliding or falling off. They were high above the forest floor, no doubt, but not up enough to see over the trees of the thick, surrounding woods.

Josh said, “Think anyone can hear us up here?” They hadn't passed any other bikers or hikers along the way.

“Don't know.” Then Luis yelled, “Seven!”

Tommy said, “Catchphrase.”

Luis: “All set. No one can hear us.”

A thin crack in the rock lead away from the big split to an eight-foot-tall tree that had somehow sprouted up through the middle of the boulder. It was dead now; sun-bleached gray, petrified, its surface
stone-like in appearance. The trunk was sinewy, twisted, and pocked with knots and the stubby, sharpened bases of long-ago broken branches. The tree tapered and thinned to a spear-like point.

Tommy: “Whoa. Sick tree.”

Josh: “Looks like a weird statue.”

Tommy: “Like something out of the Nether.” The Nether was the underworld or Hell of Minecraft, a shared-world video game the boys had been playing together, off and on, since fifth grade. Tommy wasn't the best player of the three but he watched the most YouTube Minecraft tutorials and Let's Play videos. Tommy had even set up and run his own white-listed (which meant private) server for the three of them to use.

They walked the perimeter edge of Split Rock, faked pushing each other off the impressive sheer drops to the jagged rocks below, reached out to the still-living trees that had grown around the contours of the boulder, and leaped back and forth over the split. Josh's stomach tightened every time he jumped over the crevasse and he felt that empty space opening up below him.

Josh hung his backpack on one of the weird tree's jagged branch stubs. He passed out the drinks and granola bars. His first sip was too greedy, and he spilled the red drink all over his white Ames Basketball shirt from two winters ago. When Josh had first played town ball as a fourth grader, he had been the quickest kid out there and easily made the town's travel team. Three years later he was cut. He was by no means fat, but he had gained weight in his middle and hadn't gotten much taller, not like Tommy had, and he certainly had not gotten any faster or any better at basketball. Too many other kids had passed him by athletically and skill-wise. Josh couldn't keep his dribble anymore and couldn't stop anyone else from scoring. Although he'd experienced plenty of other indignities as part of the daily horror of middle school, getting cut from the travel team was the most devastating.

Josh said, “Shit, shit, shit,” and stood up, trying to keep the spilled red drink from dripping down onto his shorts and legs.

Luis: “You need a straw or a sippy cup?”

Tommy: “Chirps!”

Josh: “I'm gonna be all sticky. Bugs will be all over me now.”

Tommy: “Just like Alyssa, right?” A smile flickered, aimed at his sneakers. It was so Tommy, typically unsure of himself, like he was testing out the put-down.

Josh said, doing his best Tommy-speak impersonation, “Whoa, chirps, bruh!”

Luis: “He wishes.” He checked his phone. “Only one bar out here.”

Josh: “No porn for you then.”

Tommy: “Fap, fap, fap.”

Luis: “I can still Snapchat your mom.” He mimed taking a picture of his crotch.

Josh: “She wouldn't see anything.”

Tommy downed his bottle and put the empty back in Josh's pack. He said, “This is it. This is the perfect spot, boys.” He dragged out the
z
sound at the end of
boys
. “I'm claiming it. Could totally survive the zombie apocalypse right here.”

Luis: “Too late. Josh was already attacked by the zombie tree.”

Josh gargled and fell back against the dead tree.

Tommy: “Okay. Zombie contingency plans. Let's hear 'em.”

Tommy and his zombies. Tommy freely admitted that he was a total scaredy-cat, refusing to watch zombie/horror movies and television shows or read the comics or play the gruesome video games. Still, all he wanted to talk about lately was zombies: how they could really happen and then how to survive the coming zombie apocalypse. He'd even made Josh and Luis read some blog articles and watch a video about some weird fungus in the South American jungle that takes over an ant's brain and how it could potentially spread to humans.
In the spring, during a depressing discussion of environmental issues and overpopulation of humans and the challenge of feeding everyone on earth, their science teacher, Mrs. Ryan, had said that bugs would likely become our largest food source. Tommy—who usually didn't speak much in school, stayed hidden under his bangs—had stammered through a question: what would happen to someone if they ate a zombie ant infected with the brain fungus? He'd slunk deep into his chair after, embarrassed at the room full of giggles. Mrs. Ryan had said that while she didn't know much about that particular fungus, she was sure eating the ant wasn't a vector for the fungal infection, at least not in humans. Later that night, while online with Josh and doing battle with the sillier subspecies of Minecraft zombies (the zombie pigmen), he'd said Mrs. Ryan didn't really know and he was still convinced that human zombies could happen via the ant brain fungus.

Luis: “Keep it simple. Fortify my house. Move all supplies up to the second floor and knock out the staircase. Then use a ladder and pull it up behind me when I was up on the second floor. Boom, zombie proof.”

Tommy: “I like it, but what about emergency escape routes? And if you have to bolt, carrying supplies down a ladder would suck.”

Luis: “Could chuck stuff out the window and jump down after them.”

Tommy: “You're such a hardo.” A hardo was someone who tried too hard to act tough or smart or cool. “No way, you jump and hurt your ankle and you might as well be a bucket of chum.”

Luis: “Chum this.”

Tommy: “I'd use Split Rock.”

Luis: “You can't live on this rock.”

Tommy: “No, but it could be, like, an extra holdout, or a—a safety station. Build a shelter or even set up a little tent here or something so you can come here in case your house or whatever gets overrun, or you need to hide from the noninfected for a few days.”

Josh: “I'd be at the mall.”

Luis: “Nah. No good. First place zombies go is the mall. Good for supplies, but you have to get in and get out, quick. See
Dawn of the Dead
.” Luis, unlike Tommy and Josh, had watched every horror movie they'd ever heard of with his older sisters. “Tommy, you seen it yet?”

Tommy shakes his head no.

Luis groans. “Jesus, you're such a movie wuss. Just watch it. There's a zombie that looks totally like you in it. I mean, it's the seventies version of you. So weird. You have to see it. Even if you don't see the whole movie, YouTube that zombie.”

Tommy: “YouTube search what?
Tommy zombie
?
Luis is a dick
?”

Luis: “That's a different movie.”

Josh: “Hey. A school would be good place to hide, fight off zombies. Lots of supplies there.”

Tommy: “It's okay. But you can't stay there all the time. You keep a bunch of small bases, right? Spread out the supplies. Don't rely too much on one place. Living inside a fortress, that's a mistake. You need more than one place. I'd make this rock one of my bases. Definitely. It's up high like your stairless house, and you could hear and see the zombies coming from like a mile away.”

Luis: “So where's your emergency escape route from the rock?”

Tommy: “Just slide down that tree over there like a fireman's pole. It's better than jumping out a window. And the rock would be easy to defend. We could lure them into the split, yeah? Stab them in the head with long spears.”

Luis: “If there's a big herd, they'd fill up the split and they'd keep coming right up against the rock, crush into each other, and wash over this thing like a tsunami, man. Just like in
World War Z
and
Walking Dead
—”

Tommy: “That wouldn't happen in real life. They can't herd through these thick woods. It'd slow them down big-time.”

Luis: “Yeah they can. They wouldn't have to stick to the trails, either. They'd stumble into the easiest way out here.”

Tommy gingerly probed his scabbing leg wounds. “Nah. We're high enough that we'd see them coming, hear them coming, too. We'd be all right . . .”

Josh didn't like horror movies like Luis did, and he wasn't newly obsessed with zombies like Tommy. Those two had totally ignored his school suggestion for the apocalypse, and he felt dangerously out of their conversation loop. Which pair of the three friends was best friends and which one was the third wheel was always the unspoken fear, the unspoken competition. Tommy and Luis kept going back and forth, rapid-fire, like they'd rehearsed this zombie give-and-take without Josh. Maybe they had. Josh scrambled to stay relevant, to come up with something clever to add.

Josh said, “It'd be too cold out here at night.”

Tommy: “We could keep a fire going—”

Luis: “Outdoor fire. Might as well ring a bell, send invitations to the zombie barbeque.”

Josh: “Mmm. McRibs.”

Luis laughed. Josh exhaled.

Tommy: “The cold would help, actually. Cold is good.”

Luis: “Fuck that. Living out here in the cold would blow donkey balls.”

Josh: “Zombie donkeys?”

Tommy: “I'm talking about the zombies. They'd totally freeze up. They're not alive. No body heat, right?”

Josh: “So you're saying they're what—like lizards? Cold-blooded? They need to sun themselves on rocks or something?”

Luis laughed again. “Zombies getting a tan. Hot.”

Tommy: “Winter hits and it'd be zomb-cicles everywhere. Wait them out until everything freezes, then you could take them out so easy.”

Luis frowned and furrowed like he was considering a great wisdom. “They didn't freeze up in
Dead Snow
—”

Josh: “What the fuck is
Dead Snow
?”

Luis: “Nazi zombie movie in—Finland. I think. I don't know. Some icy-ass country. The Nazi zombies didn't freeze and ran through the snow and everything. But they came back to life because of a shitty curse or something stupid.”