Ashley James and Tucker Lee have been friends for years. They are city boys but long for life on the open trail. During a three-hundred-mile hike from the Southern California desert to the mountains around Big Bear Lake, they make some pretty amazing discoveries.
One of those discoveries is love. A love that has been bubbling below the surface for a very long time.
But love isn’t all they find. They also stumble upon a war—a war being waged by Mother Nature and fought tooth and claw around an epidemic of microbes and fury.
With every creature in sight turning against them, can they survive this battle and still hold on to each other? Or will the most horrifying virus known to man lay waste to more than just wildlife this time?
Will it destroy Ash and Tucker too?
Original Review October 2017:
When Ash and Tuck decide to go for a hiking adventure, there is no half measures when it comes to their devotion to make it fun but they are definitely determined to research it thoroughly, which can only keep them safer, right? There is one thing they forgot and that is nature is not always predictable. Will they survive the journey but more importantly, will their friendship survive when it becomes more?First of all I just want to say that John Inman is King of Macabre. Holy Hannah Batman! If you doubt that Mother Nature can be frightening I highly suggest you read The Hike because it will keep you on the edge of your seat in ways you never expected. "Edge of your seat" may be a cliché but it's cliché for a reason, when a story grabs you like The Hike did me, you know you're reading something special.
I won't go into the plot too much but I will say that if you think the duo will meet furry and fuzzy little creatures along the way then you are reading the wrong book and the wrong author. Don't get me wrong there is plenty of friendship, love, and heart in this story that will warm your heart but its the anticipation of what is lurking around the next bend in the trail that will keep your page turning(or swiping) finger busy.
I'm just going to say it: if you love Stephen King, well then you'll love John Inman and personally, I will read Inman over King any day. King is good but Inman will take the most mundane and every day situation and turn it into the most frightening scenario imaginable. I am no hiker or camper and frankly after reading The Hike, I'm not sure I want to be 😉 This is definitely going in my re-read and my creepy/freaky library.
RATING:
Chapter One
I STARED at the pile of shiny new stuff in the trunk of my car, then tore my eyes away long enough to gaze—for the umpteenth time—at the two-foot-long sales receipt in my hand.
“Ahem,” I said. “Did we really just spend $637? I mean, seriously?”
“And that’s just the beginning,” drawled Tuck, who was also standing there staring into my trunk. “We have to come back tomorrow to choose sleeping bags and pick up our two three-season tents, which they didn’t have in stock. That’s another $500 and change. Then we have to buy enough supplies to keep ourselves fed for three weeks, not to mention the loss of wages we’ll suffer heading off into the bush and trying to stay alive for damn near a month, or at least long enough to come back and brag to everybody how we bravely faced nature head-on, fighting off wolves and hopping over rattlesnakes every five feet, and at the same time trying not to fall victim to the Zika virus after being stabbed by some asshole mosquito who flew all the way up from Brazil for the sole purpose of expanding his diet by chowing down on us.”
“Lord, Tuck,” I said. “How you do blather on. And just so you know, there’s probably not a wild wolf anywhere this side of Montana.”
“Thank God for that. But what about mountain lions? They scare the poop out of me.”
I reached into the trunk and pulled out a brand-new garden trowel with a seven-dollar price tag on it. “Which is why we bought this,” I preached. “Never forget the trail hiker’s sacred motto: Leave Nothing Behind. Even poop needs to be buried. Remember?”
Tuck blessed me with a vaudevillian shudder. “Yes, I remember, and I’m still horrendously appalled by the idea.”
We stared down yet again at the mound of very expensive stuff crammed into the trunk of my car. Two CamelBaks that held three liters of drinking water each, pots and pans, a skillet, tin plates and flatware, two tiny Coleman lanterns, four walking sticks, new boots, new hiking shorts, several packs of two-ply socks to prevent blisters, sunhats, rain gear, sunblock, insect repellants, leather anklets to guard against snakebite, boxes of baby wipes for bathing, a bag of dog food, a water filtration system, a couple of throwaway cameras, a book on how not to get killed by wildlife on the trail, and a quart of scotch (which I bought in case we almost get killed by wildlife on the trail and need something to calm our nerves afterward). And we still, as Tuck said, had to come back tomorrow and purchase everything else we needed for the trip. In spite of all this, we were having the time of our lives. Go figure.
We slowly swiveled our heads around to stare at each other. Even more slowly, two grins started spreading across our faces. Tuck’s eyes crinkled merrily. My mouth fell open around a gaping smile. We grabbed hands.
“We’re going camping!” we screamed in unison.
Some butch-looking guy in biker boots and a lumberjack shirt, balancing a brand-new kayak on his head, ogled us askance as we stood there in the REI parking lot jumping up and down like a couple of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. All we needed were pom-poms and tits. Tucker and I ignored the guy. We’ve been stared at before, and for much more egregious offenses. This Paul Bunyan wannabe barely made a blip on our radar.
Maybe this is the point in the story where I should introduce myself. My name is Ashley James. Everybody calls me Ash. My fellow cheerleader is Tucker Lee. Everybody calls him Tuck. He’s my best friend in this cold, cruel world, and not too long ago, by some weird mixture of hormones and alcohol, he became an unexpected bedmate as well.
That sort of sneaked up on us, don’t think it didn’t. Being bedmates, I mean. There we were, toddling along since high school, best chums, each knowing the other was gay but never really acting on that knowledge until one day a few months ago when we drank too much tequila in a dive in Tijuana and woke up the next morning snuggled up naked in a bed inside a Motel 6 about fifty feet north of the US/Mexican border with our clothes strewn everywhere, my ass hurting that good kind of hurt, some very enjoyable memories swirling around inside my head, and Tuck snoring and drooling against my shoulder while one of my hands rested on his furry butt and my other hand cupped the back of his neck, holding him close.
It was a funny thing too. Tuck isn’t my type. I like tall, smooth-skinned, eel-thin guys with brooding eyes and big feet. Tuck isn’t eely at all. In fact, he’s shorter than me and frankly husky. Sort of stocky, you know? He also has a fuzzy chest. Well, no, he’s fuzzy everywhere, except on the top of his head, where with him at the ripe old age of twenty-five, his brown hair is already receding. And his shoes are a size seven and a half. Ballerina feet.
So here I am all of a sudden amorously attracted to my best friend—the last guy I should be attracted to if you judge me by past exploits. Me, the guy who rarely returns calls after one hookup, now can’t seem to be around this husky, short, small-footed, fuzzy best friend enough.
As if all this isn’t truly irksome, I’m also a bit disturbed by the fact that every time Tuck and I get together for some reason or other, which is almost daily, we expend a great deal of energy pretending that night in Tijuana never happened. Not once has Tuck mentioned it. And since he hasn’t mentioned it, neither have I. Now how do you suppose that makes me feel?
By the way, in case you’re wondering, like Tuck, I’m also twenty-five. I stand an even six feet, have reddish-blond hair, a smooth torso—which is in pretty good shape if I say so myself—and I like to surf and jog, work out at my gym, and run an occasional marathon. Tucker likes to sit on his ass and read books. I mean, what the hell kind of a guy does that?
But all that is another story altogether. Right now we’re in the REI parking lot, jumping up and down like morons, and I’m telling myself not to pull Tuck into a bone-crushing hug for the sole purpose of sticking my tongue down his throat.
Yep. I’ve got it bad. And Tuck doesn’t seem to care at all. Although he is excited about the camping trip; I’ll give him that.
He slammed the trunk shut. We were still beaming at each other. If Tuck had any inkling of the thoughts going through my head about how cute I thought he looked standing there, he didn’t let on. He merely reached up and flicked a speck of dust off my shoulder.
“Where to now, bwana? Lunch?”
“Sure,” I said. “Lunch.”
“How about Lettuce Entertain You.”
“That place that serves nothing but salad? Are you nuts? I need grease. I need cheese. I need great flat wheels of dough. I need pizza.”
He frowned but said, “Okay.”
So off we went.
At our favorite wood-fired pizza joint in downtown San Diego, Tuck prissily nibbled away at a single slice while I consumed six slices in the same span of time.
“What the heck is that all about?” I asked, pointing at his empty plate.
Tuck had the cuteness to blush. “I’m trying to lose weight. I look fat next to you.”
Boy, did I have an answer for that. I wanted to say, “Next to me, you look sexy as hell naked and hungover and humping my leg. Period. All other considerations are moot.” But I didn’t. What I said was “What brought this on?”
He blushed redder and shrugged.
I tried harder. “You weigh the same as I do, Tuck.”
“But you’re six inches taller.”
“Okay, but your dick is bigger.”
A smile, finally. “Yeah,” he said. “There is that.”
We were sitting at an outside table with the whole of downtown traipsing past. I felt the weight of his foot against mine under the table. Tuck didn’t seem to notice, but I did. Disconcerted by how much I noticed, I snagged another slice of pizza from the box between us while a crocodile of grade-schoolers marched past single file on their way to kiddy time at the San Diego Public Library, all the while casting envious glances at our pizza, or what was left of it. Don’t they ever feed those kids?
For about the gazillionth time, I opened my mouth to ask if Tuck remembered that night in TJ at all, then chickened out and kept right on eating. I stared at his strong, meaty hand resting on the table in front of me. It had a brush of dark hair sweeping across the back and also a sprinkling of hair adorning the skin between every single knuckle. How sexy is that? I seemed to remember that very hand doing things to me under the covers in that room at the Motel 6 that could get you strung up by your neck from a baobab tree and stoned to death on most of the African continent.
Again I opened my mouth to bare the elephant in the room (or the elephant in the street-front café) but chickened out a second time.
“Should we pack a snakebite kit?” Tuck asked out of the blue.
“We’ll ask the REI guy tomorrow when we pick up the tents.”
“How about one of those foghorn things to scare off the wildlife?”
“Are you expecting an errant T. rex to chase us down the trail?”
“Black bears,” he said. “And don’t tell me there aren’t any of those within a thousand miles, because I know there are.”
“The only bear I expect to see on the trail is you, Tuck.”
At that he coughed up a wry chuckle. “Am I a bear?”
“You’re hairy from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head.” I glanced at his receding hairline and amended my statement. “Almost. So yes, that makes you a bear.”
I don’t know if it was the way I was looking at him or because he suddenly entertained an unexpected flashback concerning our one and only night of carnal explorations just north of the Mexican border, but Tuck blushed again.
He tried to cover it up by wiping a napkin over his forehead. “It’s hot out here.”
“And getting hotter by the minute,” I said before I could stop myself.
Maybe because he didn’t know what else to say, Tuck grunted, “Fuck it,” grabbed the last slice of pizza out of the box, and poked it into his mouth with one of those hairy-knuckled fingers I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of. Seeing me watching him, he smiled. It was a good smile too. Very expansive.
“Wow,” I said, honestly startled. “You’ve got dimples.”
Tuck stopped chewing and stared at me. As soon as he could swallow the glob of pizza crust in his mouth without choking to death, he said, “I’ve always had dimples, Ash. You’ve known me for ten years and you never knew I had dimples?”
I came this close to reaching out and stroking his hand, but at the last moment I didn’t. God knows what sort of can of worms that would have opened up. I did, however, allow myself to take a teeny tiny stab at flirting. “Your dimples are nice,” I said. “Very cute.”
Tuck stared at me. His foot nudged mine beneath the table. An accident? He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then opened it again, but still no sound came out. Finally he said, “We’d better go,” and after checking the bill the waitress had left on the table, he slipped a twenty under it and scraped his chair back so he could stand.
“Let me pay the bill,” I offered.
“Too late. It’s paid.”
“Let me give you half.”
“Stop it,” Tuck said with a dour expression that came out of nowhere.
“What’s wrong?” I said, more hurt by that look on his face than I wanted to admit. “What did I say?”
Tuck shook his head, tapped his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and cell phone and everything else people lug around with them these days, then cast his eyes toward the gate in the fence that led out onto the street.
“You ready to go, Ash? I need to get home and walk Hannah.”
“I guess,” I said. Standing, I did my own pocket patting routine, then followed Tuck as he weaved his way between the tables and headed out into the throng of noontime pedestrians milling back and forth along Broadway.
Since we’d arrived in my car, we headed for the high-rise parking structure where I’d parked. By the time we got there, the awkward moment had passed, and we were joking and kidding around, getting excited all over again about our upcoming hiking trip.
“Are we really taking the dogs?” I asked.
“Hannah and Cho? Hell yes. What else are we going to do with them? They’ll love being in the desert with us.”
Cho is my beagle, named for Margaret Cho. Hannah is Tuck’s Irish setter, named for his old-maid aunt, who died of a fatal bowel blockage twelve years prior. Tuck wasn’t particularly imaginative when it came to naming his pets. Somehow they always ended up being named after a dead relative who had died in some bizarre fashion, which Tuck’s family seemed to be prone to. Poor bastards.
Once settled in the car, I cranked up the engine, but before I could pull out of the slot, Tuck’s hand shot across the space between us and landed lightly on my arm, like a bird.
“We could save money by using one tent on the trip instead of two,” he said softly.
When I turned to him, our eyes met in the way I had been wanting them to meet for a very long time. “That would save us a lot of money,” I said.
For just an instant, his warm fingers brushed through the hair on my forearm, as if he was testing the way it felt. He was still staring at my face, our eyes remaining pretty much locked together.
With the flash of one tiny dimple, he said, “Plus, I’m a city boy. I’ll feel safer having you close.”
My voice wasn’t much more than a squeak. “Really? You’ll feel safer?”
His other dimple made a brief appearance. “Yeah, Ash. I will.”
“Uh, just so you know, I’m a city boy too. I’ll probably be worthless in the wild.”
“I’ll feel safer anyway.”
“Oh, well good, then, Tuck. I want you to feel safe.” I gave him a smile and that was that.
After a tick, he removed his hand from my arm and turned to stare through the windshield while dragging his seat belt over his chest and clipping it snug across his lap. For some reason, he was whistling.
I put the car in gear and started steering it through the confusing tangle of ramps and switchbacks, seeking the exit to the parking structure, shooting off this way and that like a lab mouse working his way out of a maze. Tucker tuned my radio to a country music station, which he knew I hated, and left us to be blatted with an old Merle Haggard hit that set my teeth on edge.
Not that I much minded at the moment.
“I’ll feel safer having you close,” Tuck had said.
“I want you to feel safe,” I’d answered back.
All the way home, I chewed on my lower lip, wondering what the two of us really meant by that little exchange, and what it would be like for the two of us to sleep in the same tent on the trail. Would we be too tired to do anything? Did he even want to do anything? Tough questions, but like I said, all I could do was wonder.
And all the time I was wondering, Tuck kept right on whistling.
John Inman is a Lambda Literary Award finalist and the author of over forty novels, everything from outrageous comedies to tales of ghosts and monsters and heart stopping romances. John Inman has been writing fiction since he was old enough to hold a pencil. He and his partner live in beautiful San Diego, California. Together, they share a passion for theater, books, hiking and biking along the trails and canyons of San Diego or, if the mood strikes, simply kicking back with a beer and a movie.
John's advice for anyone who wishes to be a writer? "Set time aside to write every day and do it. Don't be afraid to share what you've written. Feedback is important. When a rejection slip comes in, just tear it up and try again. Keep mailing stuff out. Keep writing and rewriting and then rewrite one more time. Every minute of the struggle is worth it in the end, so don't give up. Ever. Remember that publishers are a lot like lovers. Sometimes you have to look a long time to find the one that's right for you."
