The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  Silently, we watch as single bodies become dislodged and float downstream. Then rafts of ten or twelve bodies are floating downstream.

  Quickly, the bridge is gone.

  “Now what do we do?” Jess asks. “If we hadn’t waited so long, we would’ve been across.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “I—”

  “Waiting is what screwed us up. You’re just like Dad. Just like him.”

  “Christ,” I say.

  “See?” Jess says. “You sound just like him, too.”

  I stand there for a minute, then finally say, “Okay. Maybe I am a little like him. But we’ve still got to figure out how to get across. Come on.” I grab her hand. Jess drags her feet for a few steps, then starts walking.

  We walk upriver to where Black Rapids Creek pours in and then follow the creek, looking for a place to cross. The creek bends away from the river, which we can still see in the distance, and still need to cross once we figure out how to cross the creek.

  Tam and Max are heading upriver. At least that’s what we think from our attempts to communicate by shouting and hand signals. We hope to meet up with them on the other side as soon as we get ourselves across.

  I know that every step upstream is a step farther away from the river, but the stream is a rage of silty water. We use our spears as walking sticks, keeping the pointed ends upward.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find Max and Tam?” Jess asks.

  “I think so,” I say. “If we can cross this creek and then the river, they should be pretty easy to find.”

  We keep walking upstream with the wind at our face, crossing in and out of shadows cast by gray clouds scudding across the sky.

  The higher we climb, the more tiny green plants poke out of crevices in the rocks. We’re in a green band that’s been spared by the fires, but not much grows here because it’s mostly rock. If we can get through the pass, maybe there’ll be actual trees.

  “This is the spot,” I say. The land has leveled out for a short distance and the creek has fanned into several channels across the flat spot. “A natural crossing. Too bad we had to walk so far to find it.” The river is a tiny ribbon in the distance, five or six miles away, I guess.

  We cross the knee-deep channels, then sit down and split a jar of salmon. I can’t help thinking of my mom. All the time she spent canning this fish, keeping the fire in the woodstove hot enough to keep the water boiling, the canning jars sitting on the wire holder in the bottom of the three-gallon pot.

  My mom, sweat dripping from her chin, covering her neck, just doing the job without complaining even though she wanted to be on a bus heading north, then on a ship sailing across the Arctic Ocean to a better place. She must’ve really loved my dad to agree to stay, to stop herself from presenting him with an ultimatum. But the sad thing is, if she’d said she was leaving and held firm, I think he would’ve agreed to go.

  But that hadn’t happened. She had given in. Now they’re gone and we’re here. Almost out of food, a big river to cross, and the wind blowing cold air up our sleeves and under our collars.

  We finish the jar and I’m still as hungry as I was when we opened it.

  I stand up and look toward the river, searching for braided spots, but we’re so far away and the light’s almost gone, so it’s hard to see anything but an inky-black line. I don’t want to go upriver any farther than needed because the river is starting to bend away from the road. Plus, the bodies came from upriver, and I’m not actively seeking their source.

  I just want to cross, make it to the road, and then follow the road through the pass into the Buffer Zone, and not get killed doing it. And meet up with Max and Tam.

  Simple.

  CHAPTER

  50

  WE PICK OUR WAY DOWN the other side of Black Rapids Creek in the fading daylight.

  “If you’re up for it,” I say, “I think we should keep walking—all night. We’ll just have to be more careful in the dark.”

  “Can’t we stop for a while?” Jess asks, then looks at her feet.

  “We’ll take short breaks,” I say. “But if we stop for too long, we’ll get cold, and there’s nothing to make a fire with.” I wouldn’t make one even if I had the wood, because I don’t want us to be seen. Those bodies are still fresh in my mind.

  I feel a burning in my chest, like the salmon I’ve eaten wants to come out the way it went in, so I swallow and take a couple of deep breaths.

  “Trav,” Jess says, walking next to me, “do you think I’m a fighter?”

  “A what?” I say. “A fighter? Why do you want—”

  “That’s what Max called Tam,” Jess explains, “when Tam was so upset.”

  “We’re all fighters,” I say, “in our own ways. And you might just be the biggest fighter out of all of us.”

  Jess shakes her head. “I’m the smallest.”

  I stop walking and turn toward Jess, and she stops, too. “That’s exactly why you’re the biggest fighter.” I pause. “Every step we take, you’ve got to stretch farther than anyone else, and you still keep up with everyone. You’ve got to be a fighter to do that. Understand?”

  “I think so,” Jess says. Then she tilts her head sideways a little and asks, “Trav, we take care of each other, right?”

  “Of course we do,” I say. “You and me have been taking care of each other for a long time.”

  Jess smiles. “Then we’re good friends, too? Just like Max and Tam, right?”

  I touch her cheeks with my hands like my mom used to do with her. “Not just good friends. Great friends.” I wish my mom and dad could see Jess now, not just because of what she’s done but because of how she’s thinking and asking questions. “We have to take care of each other the best we can, no matter what happens.”

  “But not just us, right?” Jess asks. “Max and Tam, too.”

  “Right again, sis,” I say. “In this world Max and Tam are basically family, too.”

  “Do you like Tam?” Jess asks. “I mean as more than a friend.”

  “What?” I say. “What makes you ask that?”

  “You keep looking at her when she’s not looking at you,” Jess says.

  Has it been that obvious? I wonder. I feel the corners of my lips curling upward. “Yeah,” I say. “I think I do. I mean, yeah, I like her.”

  Jess nods. “She does the same thing.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You know,” Jess says. “She keeps looking at you when you’re not looking at her.”

  My heart does a little leap. “Really?” I say. “Are you sure?”

  “Max pointed it out to me the day we found Dylan’s pack. She thought it was cute because Tam’s never had a boyfriend.”

  “Still,” I say, “she might not like me the way I like her. You never know.”

  “No,” Jess says, “not unless you ask her.”

  We walk in silence for a while. My feet burn with every small step, the jagged rocks poking me through my thin rubber soles. The constant rush of the creek fills my ears, making it hard to hear anything else. I think about what Jess has told me. Tam likes me the way I like her? Maybe? Not that any of it matters if we don’t survive. But if we do make it to the coast and we do find a safe place to live, then maybe we could be together. My mind jumps back to our thighs pressing together as we hoisted packs out of the fissure.

  And then how she stripped down and climbed into that sinkhole.

  Fearless.

  Strong.

  And beautiful.

  My chest feels tight. Like there’s something squeezing it, but not in a bad way. It’s like when you are hoping for something or looking forward to something. Like the way I used to feel before I’d meet up with Stacy. We’d make a plan to be alone and as the time approached, my chest would get tight in anticipation.

  Me and Tam together. I like the way it sounds in my head, and the way it makes me feel in my chest, but if I spend too much time or energy obsessing over it, I might s
crew up and die. You don’t survive out here by letting your mind wander for long.

  Plus, if we don’t find a way to cross the river, I may never see her again. Even if we do cross, I may never see her again. It makes me feel like I’m mourning a future without her, mourning what could have been, even though I don’t know for sure what it could be.

  It starts to snow, giant, sopping-wet flakes.

  We keep walking and angle away from the creek just enough so its roar isn’t so overwhelming. I want to be able to hear other noises—animal noises.

  People noises.

  The snow keeps falling but not quite sticking, and the wind, blowing down from the mountains behind us, pushes it in front of us in swirls. I hear some sounds coming from Jess, like she’s crying but trying to hide it.

  We stop on the lee side of a rock the size and shape of a school bus. I pull Jess to me and wrap my arms around her to keep her warm.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” I say. “We’ve just got to make it through this night. That’s all that matters right now.”

  “But that’s not all that matters,” Jess says. “What about tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that? What about Max and Tam? And all those dead people? And all the miles we still have to walk? What about—”

  “Jess,” I say. “If we don’t survive tonight, none of that will matter. We can take care of each other. Focus on tonight. One thing at a time. It’s too much to think about otherwise. Your mind will get so crowded you won’t be able to think. You won’t be able to move. Think about how you used to do jigsaw puzzles. You would focus and work on one until you got it, and no one could drag you away until you were finished. That’s what you need to do now. Only instead of a jigsaw puzzle to focus on, you need to breathe and hunker down and rest so you have energy to keep going. I’m going to be right here with you, doing the same thing.”

  I can feel her sobs against my chest. Then her whole body shakes. I hug her a little tighter. It’s true that she’s a fighter and it’s also true that she’s only ten years old. “We’ll stay right here for a little while, slip on our coveralls, and give the clouds a chance to snow themselves out. Then we’ll keep moving. Maybe it’ll even be getting light by then.”

  We get into our coveralls. I sit and lean against the rock and my back turns to ice. Jess sits in front of me and leans her back onto my chest, and I cradle her with my arms and legs, trying to blanket her from the cold. “That’s the way to do it. Curl up. Lean back. Relax.”

  After a while I feel Jess’s even breaths as sleep takes over. I sit as still as I can, hoping for her it is a restful night.

  A few hours later, yellow light stretches across the southern horizon. The snow has let up and hasn’t stuck, but it’s a warning. Our days of surviving without winter gear are numbered.

  * * *

  We’re standing on the riverbank, the water rushing by, a formidable barrier bending away from the road the farther upriver we walk.

  “We might have to ditch our packs and swim,” I say.

  “No way,” Jess says. “We need our stuff—all of it.”

  “We need to cross the river.”

  “So let’s say we swim and we don’t drown, then what?”

  “Hopefully, we’ll find Max and Tam, and the cache.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “If we don’t, we still need to keep heading south. And the road has to be the fastest way to go from here. Maybe we’ll try to spend the winter in the Buffer Zone if we don’t find the cache.”

  “What are we gonna eat?”

  “Jess, we’ve got a few jars of salmon between us. We could finish these off, swim to the other side, and still be hungry. I don’t want to lose everything: the coveralls, the glass jars, the rope, our spears, the arrowheads. I can put the fire starter and the knife in my pocket. And we can wear our hats and gloves, but the rest of the stuff—we’ll just have to leave it. The more we carry, the more chance we have of drowning.”

  “I’ll freeze without my coveralls.”

  “We’ll eat the rest of the salmon, then we’ll bury everything under a pile of rocks, and depending on what we find on the other side, maybe we’ll be able to come back and get it. Who knows what’s over there. Could be a canoe or a rowboat.” I grab Jess by both arms and look her in the eye. “But most likely, we’ll never see this stuff again.”

  Jess squirms out of my grasp and says nothing.

  “We’ll be able to walk faster without the packs,” I say.

  “Do you remember last night?” Jess asks. “We would’ve froze without the coveralls.”

  “All the more reason to move. The Buffer Zone will have wood for fires, I hope.”

  “I don’t like this plan,” Jess says.

  “Neither do I, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

  “Let’s stay on this side.”

  “That’s one way to die,” I say. “Is that what you want?” I pause. “If you’ve got a way to get our stuff across the river, I’d love to hear it. I was hoping for a braided place to cross, but there isn’t one. And I’m not going to keep walking farther from the road. Those bodies came down the river. Whoever put them in the water is probably still by the river.”

  “You don’t know if any of that is true,” Jess says.

  “Remember the Yukon? How fast it happened? How quickly we went from two parents to no parents?” I glance upriver. “People might be watching us right now. Evil people. Or people so bad off that they’ve turned evil.”

  “You sound just like Dad,” Jess says.

  “If I’d listened to Dad on the Yukon, maybe he and Mom would still be alive. I’m the one that talked him into approaching Clint. Maybe we’d all be on a boat headed across the Arctic Ocean if it weren’t for me, if we’d stuck to ourselves and built our own raft. What happened on the Yukon, I can’t let that happen again.”

  “So we’re just going to abandon our stuff for something that may or may not exist? Maybe those bodies had been piled up for months and an earthquake or landslide sent them into the river.”

  “Didn’t look like they’d been dead long to me,” I say.

  “Maybe the people who dumped them in the river are on the road.” Jess pounds the ground with the butt of her spear. “Maybe it’s safer on this side.”

  “If we follow this side and don’t find a place to cross, we’ll hit some lakes miles and miles from the road. Then we’ll have to go around the lakes and cross all that land just to get to the road. And we’ll miss the cache.” I pull out the map and show her. “We’ll run out of food way before we get to the road.”

  For a couple of minutes Jess just stares at the map, silent, like she’s hoping to find some undiscovered detail that will make everything okay.

  Finally, she turns her face toward me. “I’m scared to swim across the river.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “So am I.”

  CHAPTER

  51

  WE PICK A SPOT UNDER a towering rectangular rock to bury our packs and hide our spears. It’s set back from the river about a half mile and partway up a hill, prominent enough to see because the rock rises at a slight angle and the top is about thirty feet high, the base about ten feet wide.

  “All we do is bury stuff,” Jess says. “First it was the cache at our place before we went north. Then Dad made you bury that stuff sack before approaching those people on the Yukon, and now this.”

  I force a smile. “We’re kind of like dogs.” I bark once.

  Jess laughs and that makes my smile real.

  I picked this rock because I’m pretty sure Jess could find it on her own if she needed to. I hate thinking about this stuff, about my sister being alone, but I can’t help it. Even if you were as careful and cautious as my dad, you could still end up dead.

  I take the map and the photo labeled “Mike and Dylan at the secret cache with Uncle Mark,” and the letters from our parents, and put them into the Ziploc bag, then fold it up and stuff it into my pocket. I pu
t the fire starter in my other pocket along with my knife.

  I pick up the drawknife. It would be useful if we had to work with logs, but there’s no way to take it. I think about tying one of the stuff sacks around my waist or my shoulder and putting it in there, but I don’t want the extra weight and don’t want anything that might snag on a rock and pin me to the bottom.

  I wish we could somehow take the coveralls, but their weight, once they’re soaked with water, would drag us down like we had cement blocks tied to our feet.

  We finish filling in the hole, eat the last of the salmon, then pick our way downslope to the river. The wind is blowing through my clothes, and gray clouds threaten rain or snow.

  At the bank, Jess and I stand side by side as I study the water, trying to figure out the best way to approach this suicide mission.

  After a minute I say, “The current will pull us away from shore. Don’t fight it head-on. Just swim at an angle against it. That’ll move us across the current, but it will also keep us from being swept too far downstream.” I put my arm around Jess and say, “See that point of land jutting out on the far side of the river and downstream a bit?”

  “Yeah,” Jess says softly, “I see it.”

  “We want to be on the other side before we reach that point,” I say. “There’s an eddy there, you know, where the current flows backward just before the point. If we can get in that eddy, it’ll help pull us toward shore.”

  I turn to Jess and have her repeat what I’ve said to make sure she understands the plan.

  “I’ll stay downriver from you,” I say. “If we miss the eddy, we’ll be swept around that point and the current might try to pull us back toward this side because of the way the river bends. Hopefully, that won’t happen.”

  “But what if it does?” Jess asks.

  “We’ll have to see where we are,” I say. “If we’re exhausted, we might have to just head for this side, rest a little, and try again.”

  “Again?” Jess says. “If we don’t make it, I don’t know if I could even try this again.” Her face is shaking.

  I put my hand on her arm. “I hope we make it on the first try. But if we don’t, it’s good to have an idea of what we might do next.”