Read Online The Hike by Drew Magary - Free Book Online Page B

picking up bits of dust and sand along the way. Finally, he was able to make out a red side to the disc and a white side. The red side said 61. The white side said 12. He turned to the controllers and spun the knobs to line up the combination: Red 61 on the left, White 12 on the right.
    He yanked the lever and it flipped back effortlessly. Out the window, he saw a churning in the ocean where the giant silhouette was. The water roiled and bubbled, and up from the shallows a 70-foot-long hovercraft emerged, with a clean white body made of reinforced fiberglass and a thick rubber skirt splaying out from the bottom. The hovercraft faced out toward the ocean, and Ben could see its massive, twin-propeller airfoil tower up at the rear. It looked as if it could blast away the entirety of the sea. The hovercraft was tethered to a cleat in a dock slip that was shaped like a giant tuning fork, and Ben watched as the path in the sand reformed and created two distinct parallel lines leading to the dock.
    â€œOh,
that’s
what that was,” Crab said.

CHAPTER TEN
THE CRAFT
    B en’s hand was still bleeding from the fight with the cricket. He was all out of cheesecloth, so he wandered down to the beach—staying within the path—and washed his sliced palm in the surf. It wasn’t an easy task; the incoming waves kept kicking up loose sand that spilled into the cut. He found himself having to endlessly rinse everything off. Crab waited ten feet behind him.
    The hovercraft was enormous, a mansion on the sea. Ben had never ridden in one before. Given recent events, he didn’t expect anyone to be inside the thing.
    â€œAre you coming with me?” he asked Crab.
    â€œThat boat looks fancy as hell. I’d get on that.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI need water and food, though. If you don’t feed me, I’ll just pitch over the side and you can go eat shit.”
    â€œI’m sure we can figure out something. Do you know who’s doing this?”
    â€œDoing what?”
    Ben gestured all around. “This. Is this God?”
    â€œWho’s God?” Crab asked.
    â€œAre
you
God?”
    â€œYou call me God, I call you Shithead. Same deal as calling me Frank.”
    Ben searched for the beginning of a proper explanation. “Do you know what humans are?”
    â€œYes. I’m looking at one right now. Not a very impressive one.”
    â€œOkay, well, humans have families. Male humans and female humans get together and have human babies and all that.”
    â€œSounds like a riot.”
    â€œI’m trying to make this as clear as I can. I’m not trying to wow you.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œI have a family. We live in a place called Maryland.”
    â€œI know Maryland. I got family there.”
    â€œGreat. Yesterday I took a trip, away from Maryland, and I got lost. You with me so far?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAnd then I ended up here, and I don’t know where I am. I don’t know which way Maryland is. I don’t know what town this is. I don’t know what ocean that is out there. I don’t even know if I’m still on Earth, or if I ate some kind of bad mushroom or something. I don’t know anything. But this path opened up and anytime I leave it, something tries to kill me. And so here I am. I have to have keep following this path. I have to
hope
that it will guide me back home somehow, when it’s this same path that keeps leading me farther and farther away from it. And I don’t know who’s doing this to me. So I’m very frightened, Crab. I feel like my family has died, or maybe
I
died. I didn’t even get to say good-bye to them. It just hurts. Does that make sense to you?”
    Crab waited a moment to answer.
    â€œI thought you said you were gonna get me food.”
    â€œJesus Christ.”
    â€œWho is that?”
    â€œJust get on the boat.”
    Crab skipped lightly over the gaps in the dock as Ben