The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  “There’s more here than just salmon,” I say. Jess is sitting next to me, our backs to one of the rocks, facing downriver toward the group of trees. I take a coil of rope and three quart jars of salmon out of the bag and set them down, and I hold up the fourth jar. Inside it I see a small pistol and one of those steel fire starters that creates a rainstorm of sparks when one metal surface runs across the other. And a piece of paper, folded.

  I work the tiny pistol out of the jar and click open the dial. Just one bullet. I slide the dial back into place and set the gun down, then pull the paper out and unfold it.

  “Jess,” I say. “It looks like a letter. To us.” She scoots closer to me and I start reading out loud.

  Travis and Jess,

  If one or both of you are reading this, it probably means that something has happened to your mother and myself and you are on your own. I decided to write this after we made the decision to go north. I knew there were dangers involved. We discussed them and decided to go anyway because staying in the Sacrifice Area wasn’t working. Instead of people banding together and forming a new community, people withdrew and fended for themselves, and I had no choice but to do the same for us if we were going to survive.

  I can’t say what happened or what to expect, because I am gone, but I wanted you to know that you have options. The cache in the Sacrifice Area should provide you with enough food to head south. I only mention this because your mother and I debated for a long time about which way to go. We chose north because of the old road. We thought it would be easier.

  There are ways to cross the mountains south of the Sacrifice Area to get to the settlements that are rumored to be on the coast near Anchorage. Between the mountains and the settlements there is a Buffer Zone. I know people crossed back and forth the first couple of years after the government abandoned us. And it is unclear what the settlements are like, or if they even exist, but if we failed at going north, that was our next plan, to head toward Anchorage—or at least, what used to be Anchorage—in search of the settlements.

  And if you are still on the south side of the Yukon and all you have is the food in this bag, then please go back to the cache and head south. It is the only way to make it. I wish I was still here with you. Just know that I am, in spirit.

  Love, Dad

  P.S. Trav, I was never very good at saying this, but I just want you to know that I’m God-awful proud of you for all the ways you’ve stood by my side and done what was necessary, and I know you’ll keep rising to the challenges that you confront. And Jess, you listen to your big brother. If he’s alive, he’s in charge now.

  I flip the paper over.

  My Dearest Travis and Jess,

  I hope both of you are reading this, because I can’t bear to think about either of you being alone. There is nothing more I’d want than to be with you two right now. To watch you live and grow and discover. Just know that your lives are the greatest gift ever given to me and the best thing you can do for me is to go on with your lives and make the best choices you can. And please treat each other with kindness and compassion. I know if you are reading this that things are bad, probably as bad as they’ve ever been for you both. For that, I am sorry. Sorry that we stayed at all when we had the chance to leave. I have faith that there are places in the world where people still treat each other like humans and I hope you find one of those places. Please don’t feel sorry for me. Just knowing that you are reading this gives me hope.

  Love, Mom

  I put my arm around Jess and she leans into me. I feel my eyes growing hot and then the tears are flowing down my cheeks into my beard. A sob erupts from Jess and I hold her tighter as her body convulses in sadness. We sit like this for several minutes, saying nothing.

  I take some slow, deep breaths to clear my mind, because I am in charge now and I need to take care of Jess.

  I picture the long journey back, knowing that our house—our burnt-out basement—has probably been looted. I hope that no one has found the cache. And then we have to make our way south, just the two of us, in search of some settlements that may not even exist. As much as I disagreed with Dad these past couple of years and was totally sick of all the precautions he took, I’m already missing his driving energy. Missing him. How can I do this without him?

  I think back to what he wrote in his note. He’s counting on me to take charge. I want to curl up in a ball, roll into the river, and disappear.

  And Mom. I was hoping that once we got out of here I’d actually be able to spend more time with her because I wouldn’t have to be a continual servant to Dad’s screwed-up frontier dream. I think back to the note and his words at the end of it. At least now I know that he was proud of me, that all my hard work didn’t go unappreciated, even if he couldn’t bring himself to tell me that when he was alive.

  The sun is working its way into the northwest, just starting to shine in my eyes. I shift a little and suddenly am very hungry, like my stomach has just woken up from a yearlong nap.

  I take a breath and wipe my eyes. “Let’s eat a little salmon.”

  “I don’t want to walk all the way back,” Jess says. “And the other side of the river, it didn’t burn. I wish we were across.”

  “I think going south is our best option. Maybe our only real option given how little food we have.”

  Jess scoots away from me, then turns and looks me in the eye. “Just because you read those letters doesn’t mean that Mom’s dead.”

  “She’s not here,” I say. “I wish she were, but she’s not.”

  “Maybe she swam across, and now she’s waiting for us.”

  I glance at the river and remember how hard it was to just stay afloat for a minute or two. No way could anyone swim that, the silt filling your clothes and dragging you down. I don’t want to keep putting it in Jess’s face, but don’t want to lead her on either. Mom was strong, but she wasn’t that strong.

  “We’ll have to go soon.” I hold up a jar of salmon. “This food will only get us so far.”

  I remember Mom’s words about treating each other with kindness and making the best choices we can. I don’t want to drag Jess south, but I will if I have to.

  Jess just sits there.

  “Even if she did survive,” I say, “she knows what she wrote. She knows where we’ll go.”

  Jess stares straight into my eyes, and for a split second she looks just like Mom and I feel a shiver travel up my spine.

  “We’ll get through this. We’ll make it,” I say. “I promise.” I just hope I can keep the promise.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER

  12

  “YOU THINK THEY’RE LIVING THERE?” Jess says.

  “We’ll just have to watch for a while to find out.”

  We’re belly-down on top of a ridge overlooking our old burnt-out basement. I count at least four people standing outside the entrance, but it’s confusing because they keep going inside and coming back out. Like maybe they just found the place and are checking to see if anyone is coming.

  You can’t see the cache from the basement because there’s a little hill behind the basement you have to climb and then go down first, but it’d be risky to go there with people so close. But we need to go soon because we are freaking starving.

  The long walk back was brutal. More monotonous than the walk north because we knew what was coming and knew that the longer it took the hungrier we’d be. When we rested, we took turns sleeping and keeping watch. Jess always watched back from where we’d come, hoping to see Mom kicking up some ash on the road. We hadn’t seen anyone. I’m proud of Jess. We ran out of food three days ago, but somehow she found the energy to keep going. Yeah, I carried her piggyback style about a third of the time, but still, she pulled through. We filled the empty jars with water, so at least we won’t go thirsty while we figure out what to do about the invasion below.

  “Maybe they’re friendly,” Jess says. “Like Sara and Molly and their parents were.”

  I’m li
ght-headed from lack of food, but grateful that this part of the journey is almost over. My eyes keep closing. I just want to sleep and pretend that my parents are still alive and that I don’t have to live the rest of my life without them.

  It hasn’t rained in a while, and the ash has dried out, so any step anyone takes can be seen from miles around. Clouds are spilling over the mountains to the south. Mountains we have to find our way through if we are going to search for the settlements.

  * * *

  “Travis,” Jess says.

  I feel her hand on my side.

  “They’re coming.”

  I open my eyes and roll back onto my stomach. Two people have left the basement and are making their way up the hill. I hope they don’t see any evidence of the cache, or if they do, I hope they’ll think it’s just a grave. I tried to make it look natural, so the patch of ground containing the cache would be indistinguishable from the rest of the ashy surroundings.

  “Just stay down,” I say. “They can’t see us unless we move.”

  I have the pistol. One bullet. I’ve never shot anyone. Never even shot at anyone.

  They are halfway up the hill now and are carrying long, thin poles. Maybe metal rods. Probably pieces of rebar from the back corner of the basement.

  They keep stopping and looking around, but they are on a dead-center course for the cache. We are above them, maybe a quarter to a half mile away and off to the side.

  At the top of the little hill, they stop. If they keep going down into the depression, they’ll hit the cache. If they continue walking after that, they’ll be climbing toward the ridgetop—where we are. Either way, we’re potentially screwed.

  I’m sick of sitting and watching, always waiting for someone else to make a move. Just like Dad. I know there’s wisdom in not acting too fast and in studying what’s happening, and there are advantages to remaining unseen. His cautiousness helped us survive. And Dad had not been a cautious person before things got tight. He adapted. A true survivalist.

  It’s hard to know when the right time is to show yourself. I mean, it’d be easy to just keep hiding until we die of starvation, but if we show ourselves too early, or to the wrong people, the results could be deadly.

  And I have Jess to consider. I know what happened to Molly and Sara. I’d rather die than risk that happening to Jess. But I didn’t walk two hundred miles just to sit back and watch two guys dig up our cache.

  “Trav,” Jess whispers. “What if they keep coming?”

  Now I see what kind of pressure my dad was under. The macho part of me wants to stand up and tell those guys to turn around, because just lying here I feel like a wimp. But if I want us to survive, then avoiding detection for as long as possible might work to my advantage. If only I hadn’t been so insistent about approaching Clint, maybe Dad would’ve come up with a different plan. Maybe he’d still be alive, and in charge.

  “We’ve got the upper hand as long as they don’t know we’re here,” I whisper. “For now, let’s just watch.” But I know it’s a lie. They have the upper hand. There are four of them.

  They keep going down into the depression. Even though it’s a sea of gray ash, we know where the supplies are buried because I positioned two rocks so they form an equilateral triangle with the cache—about fifty feet for each side. Dad taught me that trick.

  Now they are walking around in little circles and they keep stabbing their poles into the ground. Every time a pole hits, it feels like a knife stabbing me.

  Who are they? And how could they freaking know? What did I leave that clued them in? And where? I even brushed my footprints clean coming and going every time. Dad insisted.

  How could they know?

  CHAPTER

  13

  THEY LEAVE ONE POLE STICKING up right on the freaking spot and then walk back up the little hill toward the basement and start down the other side. It’s now or never.

  I stand up. “Jess, we’ve got to get down there before they come back. They probably went back for the shovels we left in the basement.” I grab the sack with the jars and rope and start down the hill, the pistol in my other hand.

  Jess catches up, but before she can speak I say, “We’re going to run to the cache, grab the metal pole they left there, and run to the top of the little hill. If we can control the hill with the gun and that metal pole they left us, we can keep them away from the cache.”

  “But you’ve only got one bullet.”

  “They don’t know that,” I say. “Maybe I can even persuade them to give us a shovel.”

  “What if they have guns?”

  “I didn’t see them carrying any. I know that doesn’t mean they don’t have any for sure.”

  “Trav, I—”

  “We need that cache—bad. And it’s ours. Not theirs, whoever the hell they are.”

  I break into a jog and Jess keeps pace. I know those people are probably as desperate as we are. Still, we did the work to catch and can and bury that fish. Not them.

  Ash is puffing up all around us, betraying where we are, but we need to get in position so we can point the gun at them from the top of the little hill above the basement. If they have guns, we can lie down and keep them from coming up. I can do that while Jess digs in safety behind me. And if we have to fight them hand-to-hand, we can break some jars and use jagged glass.

  We hit a level stretch. I pick up the pace and Jess falls back a few steps, which is fine with me. I’d rather have her behind me. A little ash has worked its way into my eyes and they are itching like they used to in the spring when the birch trees would put out their pollen.

  The cache is still a ways off, maybe a hundred yards, and the top of the little hill another hundred. My stomach clenches when I see two heads pop up, then two more. And all of a sudden there are four people, dressed in bulky camo clothing, like what soldiers wear. All sporting green hats like some badass military group. Three of them carry shovels and the fourth has a bow. They’ve topped the little hill and are heading for the cache.

  I run faster. Now, I just want to get to the cache before them. Show them I mean business. But I’ve got to admit, they look pretty intimidating. And they just keep walking like they own the place, like I don’t even exist. Part of me wishes we were back up on the ridge, watching and hiding, but it’s too late for that now. The guy out front is taller than the other three.

  I reach the cache and drop our green sack. I try to yell for them to stay back, but I can hear my voice cracking. My throat is coated with ash. Maybe they see my gun, because they finally stop.

  Jess comes crashing in behind me, bumping my back. I stumble a little but recover.

  The person without the shovel is down on one knee with an arrow nocked into his bow.

  “This is ours,” I yell. “We buried it. Me and my sister.” I point to Jess.

  The man keeps his arrow trained on me. I hope he isn’t a good shot, because he’s close.

  The lead guy, the tall one, holds up his hand, and the person with the bow points the arrow toward the ground.

  “I think these guys are starting to see things our way,” I whisper to Jess. “Maybe they aren’t as tough as they look.” Maybe I can even force them to hand over a shovel or two, I think.

  Jess takes a step up so she’s beside me. “There’s a lot of them,” she whispers. “And they’re kind of big.” I see a few tears trickling down her cheek.

  “Without the gun, we would’ve been sunk,” I whisper.

  “Listen up,” I yell. “This is our land. That basement, too. We were gone but we’re back now. You’ll have to leave.”

  The lead guy with his hand raised puts it back down, and the person with the bow points it back at me. I go down on one knee to make myself less of a target. Jess steps behind me and I feel her hands gripping my waist.

  I only have one bullet, and if I get hit by an arrow I don’t know what will become of Jess with these green monsters. But I can’t give in. We need the food and everything else in t
he cache.

  “If it wasn’t for your sister, we would’ve already fired,” says the guy who has been raising and lowering his hand. Except it doesn’t sound like a guy. “If you put the gun down, we’ll put the bow down.”

  “The leader’s a girl,” Jess says.

  I take a breath. Girl or no girl, we still need the food.

  “We usually shoot to kill when threatened,” she says.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I say. “I just want what’s mine. What’s ours.”

  “We’ve got the shovels. You need the shovels,” their leader says. “Can’t we work together?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  “THERE USED TO BE EIGHT of us. I won’t tell you what happened to the other four before they died,” Willa says. She’s the tall one who was out front and seems to be the leader of their group. We’ve already dug up the cache and hauled it all down to the basement. Jess is inside helping to organize it. Me and Willa are on watch at the edge of the hill.

  I ask her about her parents.

  “Parents?” she says. “I never knew them.” She scratches at the scar running across her cheek. “Gave me away right after I was born, I’ve been told.”

  I shake my head. “Where’d you live before the government pulled the plug?”

  She sighs. “In a group home. It was an actual house, but it was pretty extreme. They always kept it locked and it had a big fence around it. It was a place for any girl who didn’t fit in, or didn’t have parents, or whatever. Just somewhere to put people they didn’t know what to do with. A very restrictive place.”

  She tells me about how they let them out as the fires were approaching. They thought they were going to be bussed out, like everyone else who wanted to go, but instead they were abandoned.

  I tell her about how my dad turned down the offer to get us out because he wanted to stay.

  “I can’t believe you could’ve gotten out, but didn’t,” Willa says.