State of Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read Free

was here, I think we all respected him to some degree. The guy knew his stuff. He’d already shown us that when we thought we had reached our breaking point, we could go further. That’s why most days we hiked for miles upon miles. He said it allowed us to think about where we had come from and the choices that had led us to being here. Initially we all just thought he was full of shit and was trying to punish us.
    Within a matter of minutes, all of Luke’s stuff was scattered on the ground. Murphy began fishing through the sealed-up bags of dry food.
    “He has it up his ass,” Billy said.
    Luke frowned. “Screw you, Manning.”
    “No, I’m telling you that’s where these guys like to store it. I knew a dealer a few towns over that kept his gear inside a tied baggie and then shoved it up his rectum, leaving just a small amount of the bag hanging out. That way if the cops ever raided his place he wouldn’t get caught.”
    “And you know this because?” someone in the group asked.
    “Everyone knows it. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
    “Whatever, man,” I replied.
    “Alright, get up and head over to the bushes,” Murphy said.
    “You can’t be serious?” Luke protested.
    Murphy didn’t even need to reply. We had all become accustomed to Murphy’s stare. Come to think of it, we had become accustomed to a lot of things that he, Dan and Officer Shaw didn’t like. Unlike the people who ran some other correctional camps, these guys didn’t get angry or upset at us. They wore us down by not giving in.
    We watched Luke trudge off into a thick set of bushes. Billy laid back on his sleeping bag and chuckled to himself. “What a guy.”
    A few minutes later Murphy reappeared from behind the bush. Using twigs like BBQ tongs, he held out in front of him a small plastic bag full of tobacco and papers. Murphy tossed it on the ground and proceeded to make a fire to burn Luke’s private stash. When Luke emerged, he was red in the face and downcast.
    “I told you,” Billy crossed his arms behind his head and breathed deeply. Truth be told, both of us had used the same dealer. I’d passed by Billy on numerous occasions. Back then we never said a word to each other. That’s how I knew there was truth to what he had said. The dealer was pretty straight up about it. Almost boasting that he hadn’t been caught because it was an old method used by criminals and no cop in a small town was going to go through the trouble of doing a cavity search. The county didn’t pay them enough, he would say.
    We all spent the next twenty minutes constructing our makeshift tents out of branches and tarp. They weren’t ideal and there had been a few nights it had dropped below zero but they kept the rain off our heads. The only thing I worried about were rattlesnakes. I hated them. The thought of waking up in the night with one of them inside my sleeping bag was disconcerting.
    We had set up camp close to the Kootenay River. All of us were involved in gathering wood, cooking and whatever else they wanted us to do.
    “So Murphy, you ever had any runners?” Corey asked.
    He gazed into fire and prodded glowing embers with the end of his stick. “A couple.”
    “Did they get far?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “Look around you, guys. You want to hike out of here, be my guest. You won’t get far.”
    He was right. After all the walking we had done, by the time we dropped our gear none of us had the strength to try and escape. And there would have been no point. The local cops would have picked us up and brought us right back. Every single one of us was here because the court had ordered it. Murphy and Officer Shaw knew Judge Wickins. They had made some agreement with him to send troubled teens to their camp. So, it wasn’t just a case of our parents saying that we were out of control and two months in the wilderness would solve all our problems. We had ruffled the wrong feathers, and even the judge wanted to wash his hands of us.
    I