Read Online Surviving the Fog by Stan Morris - Free Book Online Page A

she said fiercely, "One
of us should be a girl."
    She stepped behind the barrel.  Some of
the kids hid their faces.  Most of them were scared, but they
still watched.  A few were just curious.  Several still
did not believe that Mike was going to do this.
    The three teenagers placed a foot against the
barrel, so that it was held firm against the tree root.  They
agreed to go on the count of three.  Someone counted.  On
three, they pushed hard against the barrel.  It lifted onto
the tree root, and then it fell over and rolled down the slope.
 The man dropped.  It sounded like something happened in
his neck.  He twitched for many seconds, and then he was
still.  His neck was bent over at an awkward angle.  His
body released its waste.  Some of the kids turned away and
were sick.  Others began crying.  Others just stared up
at the body.
    Slowly, they all made their way back to their
camp, some pushing the barrel.  Mike was exhausted that night,
but he found it hard to sleep.  He remembered the terrible
sights that he had seen, and once he awakened from a bad dream.
 Sometimes, he felt tears trickling down his cheeks.
    The next day Mike asked Ralph to make a sign.
 Ralph agreed, and using a piece of cardboard, he made a sign
and he went over the hill and down to the hanging body, and he
attached the sign to the stomach of the body.  The sign said,
"Murderer and Rapist."
    After a few days, some of the kids wanted to
bury the man, just as they buried Jackie and Pete down at the west
end of the meadow on the boys’ side of the river.  Mike
refused to let them take the body down.  It hung there until
the following spring when Mike was finally moved to bury the bones
close by the Hanging Tree, where they had buried the bodies of the
other three bikers.
    The following days seem to pass in a haze.
 The kids moved around in a stupor much of the time, except
when someone breathlessly warned that something or someone had been
heard.  Then they would all cringe and cower for awhile, until
it became apparent that it was just another false alarm.  The
wood on the bridge was removed, but it was placed close by in case
it was needed.  Howard found the cover for the five gallon
bucket so that the gasoline would not evaporate.  During this
time, Mike posted a guard on the gravel road at the top of the
hill.
    Mike managed to get the kids to dig two
graves.  It was not easy to dig graves in the rocky soil with
just the simple picks and shovels that they found in the storage
room.  But doggedly they stayed at it until Jackie and Pete
had been buried.  Much harder, Mike discovered, was the need
to say words over the graves as the sad group of campers stood by.
 Thankfully, a boy named Luis found the right words.  On
the third day, they moved the body of the dead motorcyclist from
the parking lot down to the Hanging Tree.
    On the fourth night after the hanging, Mike
called a meeting.  It was difficult to meet in the dining
hall, because the boys were still sleeping there.  This had
caused problems.
    "I want to get back in my bunk," a boy
insisted.  "Let the girls sleep in here for a change."
    "We need more privacy than you guys," a girl
responded.
    "Yeah, that's another thing," a boy said.
 "They keep trying to come in and sneak peeks at us in our
underwear."  The girls hooted with laugher when they heard
that.
    "Oh, like you have anything we'd like to
see!" a girl jeered.  "And besides, you guys keep trying to
peep into the showers when we're in there."  A few of the boys
blushed at that.
    "That piece of wood fell out accidentally," a
boy protested.
    "All right, all right," said Mike raising his
hands.  "We need to decide how to arrange it so that everyone
has a decent place to sleep."
    No one spoke for a moment, and then a girl
raised her hand and asked timidly, "Do you think it would be
alright if we slept in our cabins again?"
    That was the question on every one's mind.
 Was it safe?  How safe was it?