Part 7 – Ascent to Star Valley

  After they left the Attaran River Highway, they made their way southeast on Country Road 51; a two-lane road with a rail-line running next to it. To their north, there was a craggy ridge-line that buttressed upward, with a tall peak in the hazy afternoon sun, shimmering with a melting snowpack.

  Rob looked to the north. “I think that’s Sentinel Peak,” he said, turning toward Lisa. “Can you grab me that leather-bound notebook in the glove compartment?” he asked, as the truck lumbered along slowly.

  She handed him the notebook and he rifled through the pages while the women looked around. The terrain was oak savannah, with thick stands of dense oak trees and wide areas of grass with huge live oaks towering like lone guardians over the countryside.

  There were plowed corn fields that were not yet planted, but most of the terrain was wheat fields, and even some canola fields.

  Maria turned to Sarah and took her hand. “Are you scared? I mean, what if we don’t make it?” she asked gently.

  Sarah turned to Mara. “Like, we break down, or we starve and start to tear each other’s eyes out,” she asked with a scrunch of her nose.

  Maria leaned her head back on the head rest. “I hope we make it,” she said almost to herself.

  As the EarthRoamer wound onward, the horizon filled with a haze of dark smoke, as if an entire city was burning. Lisa looked across the other two women to Rob, then back out the windshield. “We aren’t going there, are we,” she asked.

  Rob pulled a page out of his leather-bound notebook. “No, that’s a city called Reston. We’ll make a turn into the wilderness before there,” he said.

  A few minutes later, Rob pulled into a gas station that was in the middle of triangulated cross-roads and killed the engine. He and Lisa piled out with guns in hand, and Shadow and Ranger leapt out and started to stalk the surroundings of the gas station.

  “I’m going to pump the tanks full and let’s plan to get out of here in ten-minutes,” Rob said, as he slid his Benelli shotgun around his back. “Lisa, keep an eye out,” he said.

  Rob got the hand pump out and pulled the cap off the diesel tanks and got to work, while Lisa led Sarah and Maria around the back of the gas station for a bathroom break.

  The gas station had a small country store with a sign over it; ‘Field and Stream’ – an ammo and bait shop. There were deer anlters tacked onto the side of the store and old polaroids on a message board displaying the best tags in the area; elk and deer and even big horn sheep.

  Maria looked at the other two women. “I just want to stay in the cab of the truck forever; I’m scared to…..I’m scared we aren’t going to make it,” she said, looking at Sarah again and then at Lisa.

  The other two women looked at her, and Maria turned to Sarah, her voice barely above a whisper. “What if this is it? What if we’re just four people in a cabin, waiting for a world that might not come back?”

  Sarah looked at her and then at Lisa. “We can’t be the only ones,” she said. “Earlier, those scavengers – I think they were just people trying to survive.”

  Lisa nodded and looked around at the trees just 50-yards away. “Yeah, there have to be others.”

  Maria ground the toe of her shoe into the ground and picked at some dried paint on the wall of the store, then she looked up. “Are we good?” she asked.

  Sarah looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  Lisa nodded her head. “Do you mean, the three of us women – are we in this together?” she asked.

  Maria nodded. “I mean, if this works, it’s only going to be because the three of us are…you know,” she started.

  Sarah put out her hand and took Maria’s and Lisa’s. “I’m in this with the two of you and then Rob,” she said.

  Maria smiled. “Me, too,” she said gently.

  “I’m in, too,” said Lisa.

  Sarah smiled. “Can you show me how to hold that gun?” she asked sheepishly.

  “Oh my god,” wheezed Maria, her eyes darting between the two women.

  Lisa made sure the safety was on, then handed it to Sarah. “It just fits in your hand like a glove,” she said, as the grip slid over Sarah’s palm and her fingers wrapped slowly around the grip.

  “Jeez, it feels kinda sexy,” grinned Sarah, her cheeks blushing crimson, as she turned the gun over in her hand.

  Just then, Shadow and Ranger crept toward the low brush behind the store, growing and stalking, Sarah screamed, pressing the gun toward Lisa. “Oh my god, take it,” she begged, as the three women back against the wall of the story and Lisa clicked the safety off and pointed the gun toward the bushes.

  “CALL YOUR FUCKING DOGS OFF,” came a growling voice from the brush.

  “Come out,” demanded Lisa, as she held the gun in the direction the voice came from.

  Rob came running over. “What the hell is going on,” he spat, skidding to a stop near the three of them. “Did one of you scream,” he breathed, looking back over his shoulder at the truck.

  “There is someone in the bushes,” Maria said, pointing.

  “Call your damn dogs off,” the voice came again.

  Rob whistled Shadow and Ranger reluctantly stalked to his side, but they were still growling.

  Out of the bushes, two women emerged, both with bandanas over their faces and tacked-together cloths. They looked like they were wearing prison uniforms underneath. They both had baseball bats, and one had a crowbar; scavengers, by the look of them.

  “Who the hell are you,” demanded Rob.

  Rob’s eyes flicked between the two women, gauging their intentions. He could see the tension in Lisa’s grip on the gun and the way Maria’s breath quickened. This wasn’t just a chance encounter – it felt like a trap slowly closing in.

  “It’s not your fucking problem,” spat one of the women. “Where’d you get those guns,” she growled.

  “Not your problem,” Rob reminded her. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Not your problem, asshole,” growled one of the women.

  It was clear to everyone that none of them were infected.

  “Where did you two come from?” he asked.

  The two women looked at each other, then they glared at Rob. “We’ll tell you if you help us get these bars off these damn windows. You’ve got a wench on that truck,” one of them sneered.

  Rob looked at Sarah and Lisa and Maria, and they each nodded. Then, he turned to the women. “Okay, we can do that, but then we are leaving, and we are leaving without you,” he said.

  “We don’t want your damn truck anyway,” one of them glared.

  Twenty minutes later, as they pulled away from the gas station, the air felt heavier, as if the weight of the world pressed down on them. The trees closed in, and the road ahead seemed to narrow, leading them deeper into uncertainty. The EarthRoamer rumbled down Dog Town road, and as the road dove into a thick patch of trees, they could see a little town nestled at the inflection of the mountains to the north and wheat fields to the south.

  The little town in the wheat field wasn’t on fire, but they were done with towns, and they just rumbled on past. As the road sank into an oak forest, Maria turned her head around when they passed a sign; “it says that town is called Oakborough,” she said, swiveling back around.

  Sarah looked up. “Those girls,” she said. “Escaping a government train when bandits hit it. What the hell is going on,” she pleaded.

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  Lisa tapped the dashboard, this time sitting next to Rob, with Sarah next to her and Maria at passenger-side door. “A government train sounds like relocation,” she said.

  “Are there going to be scavengers where we are going,” Maria wondered aloud.

  The road wound along a river to their right and the oaks opened up into broad, open terrain; oaks and chaparral and grass and granite.

  Down further to the south, the river snaked its way toward what looked like a town nestled in a wide valley, and there were columns of smoke wafting skyward, then slanting horizontal, pulled by the prevailing wind once the heat dissipated from the column.

  “Oh, God. Please say we don’t have to go through that town,” Sarah pleaded.

  Rob looked up. “No, I think we take a dirt road coming up here soon,” he said. “I think we’ve had enough towns on this journey.”

  “Are we close?” asked Maria, apprehensively.

  Rob looked at her. “Another 50 miles, but the rest will be on a dirt road, and then no road,” he said.

  The women looked at each other, and their eyes fixed on the burning town further to the south, their fingers tightening into clenched fists.

  Two hours later, they were thirty-miles deep down a disappearing dirt road, diving into the wilderness that stretched on seemingly forever. In front of them, oak and grasslands spread far and wide, and in the distance to the east, there was a suggestion of highlands rising up out of the endless stretches of oak.

  They’d not seen a soul since the gas station with the scavengers, and the last tendrils of smoke had been miles and miles behind them. And now the road was decaying with each mile – hardpack gravel had turned to hardpack dirt, and now the dirt became green grass that hadn’t seen a truck in ages.

  The oak forest around them pressed in, branches scraping the camper like ghostly fingers and then opened like a great oak savannah; the wilderness breathing like a set of lungs. The trees broke, and grasslands stretched far in front, and ahead to their left a massive lake stretched out nearly to the horizon.

  With every mile, the air grew crisper, the scent of pine mingling with the sweet smell of wildflowers blowing in from the east. Birds flitted overhead, their cheerful songs a stark contrast to the silence and chaos they had known for the last few days

  “Oh my god, how big is that lake,” breathed Sarah, as the truck thudded along hardpack dirt and grass slid along the undercarriage of the truck.

  Rob looked out the driver’s window. “That’s Spirit Lake. It’s about 5-miles long and a mile or so wide,” he said, as the women just stared at the glassy rippling blue waters.

  As they rounded the lake at the far eastern side, a lone, weathered hut stood battered from the elements.

  “Is that it?” Lisa asked, her eyes darting from landmark to landmark.

  “No,” Rob said. “Just a relic from an old mining region. We keep going. Up the mountain,” he said, gesturing to the daunting rise that lay ahead of them to the east.

  The road was gone now, and what remained was untamed earth with some old weather ruts from trucks and jeeps that had made the trek; a slope of dense pine trees and a staggered climb upward hundreds of feet in elevation. When the truck lurched hard into the incline, the women shrieked, the lambs bleated. Rob gripped the gear shift, then sank the transmission into ‘Low 4x4’, and the engine responded with a deep, growling purr, ready to claw its way up the mountain.

  Built on a Ford F-750 chassis, the EarthRoamer XV-HD was supercharged and designed to endure. Rob guided the truck up the mountain, his knuckles white gripping the steering wheel, hoping against hope.

  Near the final stretch, just below the crest, the truck teetered dangerously to one side. "Oh my god," he muttered as the women braced themselves, their faces pale with fear. He brought the truck to a precarious stop; the driver’s door and frame leaned heavily against a massive pine on the downslope, with the upslope wheels of the truck lifting off the matted forest floor. The tree blocked Rob’s door from opening, but it was the only thing keeping the truck from rolling down the mountain and into disaster. He exhaled sharply, his chest heaving, while the others hyperventilated but remained focused.

  Lisa gripped his leg tight, leaning upslope into Sarah, who had both hands on the dashboard. “Rob, we are going to flip,” she bellowed.

  Rob looked across the women. " Maria. Oh, shit. There’s a winch on the front. Can you climb out and unwind it. And that huge tree up there, about fifty yards up," he started, pointing. "Can you wrap it around the base and clip it back onto the cable. As low to the ground as you can.”

  Maria’s gaze was fierce, full of determination, like a mountain lion ready to pounce.

  She nodded and leapt out, wrenching the cable and hook loose and scrambling up the slope, skidding as she went. Pine needles stuck to her palms, and her knees were streaked with the black earth of the forest floor; the metal hook thudding into her thigh as she crawled the remainder of the slope. The path between the truck and the up-slope tree was clear, but it was impossibly steep.

  Moments later, she had the cable secured, and she slid back down to the truck, breathless. "Oh, Rob, we’re almost there," she gasped, climbing in. “I can see breaks in the trees further up.”

  Rob handed her the winch controls. "This button here—this is up the hill," he said, pressing it for emphasis. The winch was strong enough to pull them up the side of Half Dome, but it wouldn’t stop them from rolling over.

  "Okay, Maria. Let’s do it," he said.

  The winch hummed to life, the cable tightening as the front of the truck was pulled uphill. The tires slid sideways before Rob wrestled the steering wheel and aligned the tires with the pull of the winch up the slope. The truck rotated slowly, nearly ninety degrees, as the trailer groaned under the shifting weight. He pressed the accelerator lightly, feeling the tension, coaxing the rig into motion. The trailer lurched, then followed, and the slow sideways roll of the truck eased as the winch pulled them up the steep face of the rise.

  Rob managed to maneuver the truck in between two trees and from there, the crest was visible just ahead, the last barrier between them and solid ground.

  Rob leapt out of the truck and disconnected the winch from the tree. They had crested the steepest part of the climb, but the contents of the trailer had shifted and the sheep and goats were complaining; the chickens just clucked in their cages.

  Rob continued to drive through the densely wooded pine forest for another mile while Sarah, Lisa, and Maria watched with bloodshot eyes, the intensity of the climb still coursing adrenaline through their blood.

  "I can't believe we survived that slope," Lisa breathed.

  A weight Rob had carried since Eastport began to loosen in his chest. They had made it – now the real work could begin.

  After a mile of navigating the forest, the slope began to flatten out and gently descend. The trees started to thin, and ahead, the scene slowly widened. As the truck left the last of the trees, a sweeping expanse of grassland and mountain meadow unfurled before them, interspersed with thickets of trees. The area was so vast that it felt almost impossible to take in. Everyone's breath caught in their throats as Rob stopped the truck, and they all piled out in utter amazement.

  A river gently meandered through the meadow, creating wide, lake-like regions and swifter spots of rushing water. The sun was setting behind them, casting a golden glow that slanted through the trees—the grass and foliage looked like they were on fire, incandescent in their brilliance. Deer and elk loped and bounded through the grass way off in the distance, while the river sparkled in the fading light, inviting and serene.

  "Oh my god!" Sarah exclaimed, her voice a slow, awestruck whisper. "I have never seen..." she started, her words trailing off.

  "I can't believe my eyes," Lisa added, her astonishment palpable.

  Maria closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the pulse of the valley. "You have brought us home," she said reverently, her voice filled with emotion.

  Rob stood beside the three women, his arms wrapped around them as they absorbed the meadow and the surroundings. "Welcome to Star Valley," he finally said, a sense of pride swelling within him.

  Star Valley stretched for nearly three miles north to south and four miles east to west, forming a large oval of grassland and meadow traced with slashes of pine and oak. To the north, the valley transitioned into a steep set of ascending highlands, culminating in a snow-capped range twenty-five miles north that ran east to west as far as the eye could see.

  In the south, the valley gave way to renewed highlands, home to some of the largest and oldest trees on Earth, their towering forms casting long shadows over the forest floor.

  To the east, a series of ragged mountains pierced toward the sky, their craggy, barren peaks suggesting the march of high desert further on.

  To the west, in the direction they’d come from, the oak savanah stretched for miles and miles, with long-forgotten mining and logging infrastructure from a bygone era when extraction was the name of the game in these parts.

  Star Valley sat in the midst of this tempest of landscapes, just below the snowline and teeming with life. The vibrant meadows and the distant calls of wildlife filled the air, creating a stark contrast to the chaos of the world they had left behind.

  After the initial amazement wore off, everyone piled into the truck. Sarah and Lisa and Maria buzzed with excitement, their voices overlapping in a joyful chorus. Sarah smiled, "Star Valley is amazing, Rob! Let's check out the north end and follow the North Star."

  As night slowly descended, they made their way toward the northern end of the valley.

  After another hour of meandering through the meadows, they stopped for the night. The northern border of the valley was just a half-mile away, and the river gurgled quietly within easy reach. Rob parked the truck and turned off the engine, a collective sigh of relief echoing among them. He flicked on the floodlights powered by the huge battery banks in the truck, and everyone piled out.

  "We need to get the animals out and corralled into makeshift pens," Lisa said, while Maria grabbed the crates of chickens and Sarah opened the camper to let out the bleating sheep and goats. Rob unpacked some fencing he had picked up at the hardware store and quickly set up temporary enclosures for both the sheep and goats, and separately for the chickens.

  Ranger and Shadow had been loping through the grass, exploring the area around them. Now, they sloppily drank from the nearby river and happily stalked through the night as everyone worked to set up a temporary camp in the darkness.

  Rob checked on the deer stuffed in the refrigeration unit; they were icy cold. He paused, watching the women as they worked around him. Unpacking the ladder from the back of the truck, he smiled at the sight of everyone working hard to prepare for the night. "I want to show you all something," he said, gathering their attention.

  "What is it?" Maria beamed, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. Rob smiled back. "Climb on up," he encouraged, and one by one, they climbed onto the roof of the camper with eager excitement.

  "Ready for this?" he asked, his heart warming at their bright smiles. He pulled out his truck key and pressed a button. Suddenly, the lights went out, and the night sky erupted in magic.

  All at once, each woman's breath caught in her throat as they stared upward into the heart of the swirling galaxy. The sky came alive with stars like they had never seen before. Silent gasps filled the air as they lay back, taking in the true wonder of Star Valley.

  "Welcome home," Rob said softly, as they gazed into the soul of the universe.

  March 17th, 2024; Population 4