Madelyn's Nephew by Ike Hamill

Author:Ike Hamill [Hamill, Ike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, sci-fi, action, Adventure
Publisher: www.ikehamill.com
Published: 2016-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

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She lost track of the days.

Looking at the map, she could only account for the first three or four days of hiking. After that, she had dropped down into the valley and lost track of everything. She had no excuse. The route through the valley was a result of pure laziness. If she had stayed up on the ridge, she would have been able to track her progress by the changing horizon. But that route required a lot of bending, stretching, and climbing. She had taken the softer valley route because her middle aged bones demanded it. Now she was lost.

She walked for hours with the compass in her hand. She followed the wall of the canyon as it curved around to the east and then spat her back south. She never saw any good way to climb the rocks. She never found a stream or a creek. There should have at least been a dry riverbed to follow. Her world was featureless and there was no way to escape.

She was lost.

If she ignored everything she knew about the journey to get there, Madelyn could look at the valley and guess where she was on the map. Never mind the fact that it was impossible, she seemed to be just south of a feature marked, “Garret Bend.”

It was funny that she had never seen that name before. “Garret” was what her grandmother had always called the little loft of the cabin, where Madelyn still slept.

“Get your butt in the garret before I beat it dry,” her grandmother would call each evening.

Madelyn had never thought to look up the word.

Her water was running out. In a desperate move, Madelyn turned south. With each step she moved farther away from her cabin and her dread grew. Darkness was beginning to fall as she climbed the rocks to leave the valley. There was no good place to make camp. Every flat surface was covered in jagged rocks. There was nothing to do but climb. As her legs got weaker, the light grew dim. The next step might result in a twisted ankle, or a fall.

She was old enough to stay away from big risks. Her downfall was going to come from a stack of poor decisions. On their own, none was catastrophic. They would pile up until she died alone.

A rock shifted under her foot and Madelyn nearly went down.

She paused, hunched over, and looked at the ground.

“I’m not going to die like this,” she said aloud. “Meditating about failure will only bring failure. This is not the person I want to be.”

She straightened herself slowly until she was standing tall. She took a deep breath and stared at the horizon. Maybe it was just the last of the setting sun, but she thought she could see the glow from the bonfire down there. Was that really keeping her safe? She hadn’t heard a trace of Roamers the whole trip. Sleeping outside, she had been on guard, wondering when her time would come.

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