Fed has taken off for the nearest town in search of cell reception and Tex is left back with the car. The sun has set, and a chill is setting in. How will our heroes survive? Find out now in the conclusion to our six-part adventure…
PART TWO:
Sunday Afternoon- Fool Of A Took
I picked up my pace as my imagination began populating the darkening shadows with the forest with the slinking movements of wolves out for an easy meal. My legs burned from the continuous pumping, but I breathed a sigh of relief upon reaching the restroom and locking myself within. The light was fading, but there was still enough for me to take care of business. I was a bit disappointed to have been unable to use the woods for this particular endeavor, but preferred disappointment to death at the jaws of wolves. I finished up, and after reassembling my outer protections, left the restroom five minutes later. The world had taken on that eerie glow that oft transpires when the soft and hazy fading light reflects back up and off the fallen snow, and the car looked twice as far away as it had before. I prayed I’d make it back before the wolves could get me, and kept running calculations of the chances of my survival should the pack break cover from behind the dusk and launch themselves toward me. I didn’t feel even remotely safe until I’d made it back inside the car, with doors now locked and heat on full.
Sunday Evening- Shadow and Flame
I finished drinking the water I’d melted, and filled the bottle up once more, ready to trade my body heat for something else to drink. I’d polished off the granola bars, and made a sizable dent in my supply of jerky, and was counting down the list inside my head of all the things that could have befallen Fed. 6:45, and I’d seen no sign of him for over eight hours. I had figured that he’d either have found a tow truck, or failing that, come back here to let me know he wasn’t dead. I stepped out of the Subaru and lit up another cigarette, turning my gaze briefly toward the treeline, and again toward the the direction of the Forest Road on which I hoped that Fed was returning. The night seemed to close around me, and I sucked deep on my smoke, trying to finish and get back to safety. And then I saw it. A light, still some distance away. I ground out the Marlboro in a nearby bank of snow, tossed it in my Monster ashcan, and hopped back in the car to wait.
Twenty Minutes Later…
The headlights finally turned around the bend, and began heading down toward me. I opened the door again, lighting one more smoke, and waiting to see what new development had befallen me. Another five minutes, and a dull red tow truck propelled upon a caterpillar track came to a stop just yards from the front of the car, and Fed popped out from the shadows and rushed past me into the car. The tow truck driver then stepped in between the two vehicles and began hooking the tow line up to the Subaru. I grunted a welcome, and popped back inside the car.
“It’s gonna be really hot in here for awhile.” Fed turned to me, crystals of ice beginning to melt in his beard.
“That’s fine, it’s fairly chilly out there. So what happened?”
“Give me just a few minutes to warm up, and I’ll tell you everything.”
The driver got us connected, and we began our inching crawl out of the wilderness. Fed was driving, focused on trying to keep the car in line with the tow truck, but finally looked over and said, “I am so glad to be somewhere warm.”
“So what happened?”
Sunday Morning- There And Back Again: Fed’s Tale
He told me that he’d walked for the better part of two hours before seeing another soul. Down along the Forest Road, and just across the bridge. Then another pack of roving snowmobilers had come upon him, and offered him a lift back into town. He’d burned through the battery on his iPad, and was happy enough to shorten the journey. A glance at my phone had told him he was still in a dead zone for service, so he jumped up onto the back of a snowmobile and was carried into the town of Ronald, and dropped off just outside of The Last Resort.
The power was out, there and at the convenience store next to it, and my phone was still unable to find a single bar of service. Fed tried over at the snowmobilers’ clubhouse, where at least it was warm, and waited for the power to come on.
The car began fishtailing in the wake of the tow truck, slipping off the tracks and into the snow on either side. The driver hopped out and asked Fed to pop it back in neutral. Fed made the adjustment, and we began moving forward once again. A thick fog of exhaust spewed out from the tow truck as we continued on our way.
The power finally came back on, and the ‘bilers were kind enough to loan Fed the use of their phone. He called up a local towing service and waited for them to come and pick him up. He tried my cell again, and saw just how much coverage I was getting for my monthly mobile payment. The tow truck soon arrived, and he hopped in and directed the driver back toward my location. They reached the turnoff where the pavement ended and began the Forest Road. The driver took a look ahead and called an audible. He turned around and drove them all the way to his shop back in Cle Elum. They were going to need a bigger boat.
The driver loaded a flatbed truck up with the caterpillar tow truck, and they began their return journey. The caterpillar ran about five miles per hour, and it didn’t have a cab; the entire hour and a half journey was spent riding in the freezing cold and breathing in the diesel fumes. No wonder he’d been so eager to get back inside a warm vehicle, enclosed, and safe from the elements.
The driver tried a couple times to let us loose, and we barely cleared any distance before stalling out again, and waiting for him to catch up. But it looked like the path was getting easier to manage, and on the third attempt, we pulled away, and kept moving forward until we reached pavement once more. It took about a half an hour for the driver to cover the distance and catch up to us. We took the chains off of the tires and remembered, with fifteen seconds left to play, that the Seahawks game might still be on. Fed found the game, and we capped the day’s adventure with the sweet relief of hearing that our boys in blue and green just clinched a spot in the post-season with a 35-6 win over the Cardinals. Fed looked over at me and said, “All I want to know is, how did they score 6?”
And so the Adventures of Tex and Fed in the Land of the Murdertrees (and their Escape from Murdertree Mountain) have come to their end. They drove safely back to Seattle, and reveled in the knowledge that not only did they survive the weekend, but their football team survived the regular season.
The Vaults of Uncle Walt will return to its regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. I hope everyone had a Merry Saturnalia, and I’ll see you back tomorrow and thereafter with new content until New Year’s Eve.
-Tex