The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  We put on our hats and gloves and wade into the river, the current tugging at our knees. “Remember, keep your head pointed upstream.”

  After a couple more steps, the bottom falls out from under us. I kick with my legs and pull with my arms and try to breathe steadily. I swim the sidestroke so I can keep an eye on Jess. The cold water is squeezing me. I feel a shiver run up my back. Even with gloves on, my fingers are already turning to ice.

  Jess is keeping the angle, kicking with her legs, and doing a doggie paddle with her arms. She doesn’t have much experience swimming. The few pools in town were shut down by the time she was old enough to enjoy them.

  I see her head go under once, but it instantly shoots back up with her gasping, and then she’s holding steady again.

  I’m feeling the weight of my waterlogged clothing and start kicking harder to keep my head above the water.

  “You’re doing great,” I call. “Just keep going.”

  Jess doesn’t turn or say anything, just keeps kicking.

  I swivel my head around, trying to get a sense of how we’re doing. We’re only a freaking quarter of the way across. The current is carrying us downstream at a faster clip than I hoped.

  “Jess,” I yell. “Kick a little harder if you can.” I take in a mouthful of silty water and cough it out, but it leaves a gritty layer on my teeth.

  Maybe the current is just getting stronger the farther we go from shore. I don’t know if Jess can kick any harder than she already is, but if we want to have any chance of catching that eddy, we need to speed up.

  I think about having Jess hang on to me while continuing to kick with her legs, but I doubt we’ll be able to go any faster than we’re going now.

  I’m right next to Jess now. Any closer and our shoulders will bump. “Keep it steady,” I say. “Don’t talk. Just keep kicking and pulling.”

  I know she’s doing her best, and she hasn’t freaked out, but we’re just not going to make it into the eddy at this rate. It’s like we’re in an express lane in the middle of the river with no exits in sight.

  I swivel my head again, trying to figure out if we should head back to shore now to save our energy for the next try, or just abort this crossing idea altogether, and that’s when I spot movement. One person is walking downriver on the shore we started from. I imagine our heads as dots on the water. If he didn’t see us wade in, he might not know we’re here.

  But soon he’ll come upon our footprints leading from the burial spot under the big rock to the shore. Then he’ll know.

  CHAPTER

  52

  I DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO Jess about the person on the shore. I just keep pulling with my arms and kicking with my legs. My chest and back are going numb, like they’ve been completely wrapped by ice packs. I know my arms are still moving, but I can barely feel them.

  Jess seems to be holding up okay, but just like me, she has to be freezing.

  I keep repeating the word eddy over and over in my mind. My legs are starting to hang straight down. I’m still kicking them, but it feels like I’m going in slow motion. One of my feet hits a rock on the bottom. I stumble and my head goes under. The current pulls my hat off and it’s gone. My other foot kisses the bottom, and I push upward. My legs hang down and they bump the bottom again.

  “Almost there, Jess,” I call. “My feet touched bottom.” Then my toes are dancing on the bottom with my head still above the water for a moment, but just as fast the bottom drops out and I go under again.

  I come up coughing and spitting. I just need to keep my nose above the surface, I think. Just my nose. My feet hit bottom again. Now they’re bouncing along and my whole head is above the water. Jess is still just in front of me, upriver. We’re approaching the far end of the eddy but are still in the current on the outside of it.

  “Go for the point,” I yell. “With me.”

  I windmill my arms forward. I know the channel will cut back across the river on the far side of the point. We have to make it to shore before we reach that point.

  Jess’s shoulder bumps mine. I put my arm around her and keep kicking. I’m pretty sure the water is only four feet deep but it’s freaking zipping along so fast you can’t stand up without being knocked down.

  My free hand grazes the bottom while my head is still above the water. I let my legs fall and my feet and shins bounce along the rocky bottom. I push Jess forward and let go of her.

  “Shore,” I try to yell, but it comes out garbled.

  Now I’m in knee-deep water, crawling right for the point. My hands are unresponsive hunks of frozen meat. Through my hair, I can see Jess lying facedown in the water a few feet from the shore, just inside the point.

  I crawl toward her, slipping on rounded river rocks being scrubbed by the current.

  “Jess,” I yell. “Jess.”

  I pull her through shin-deep water. Get her to shore, my mind screams.

  She was fine all the way in. All the way to when I let go of her, she was still kicking. I drag her out of the water and roll her on her side. A little dirty water trickles out of her mouth and nose. I put my hand in front of her face, but my fingers are so numb I can’t tell if she’s breathing. I roll her onto her back and put my ear to her chest and feel for the thump of her heart.

  CHAPTER

  53

  I RUB HER ICY CHEEKS and say her name over and over. Then I grab her hand and her fingers curl ever so slightly, just like when she was a baby and I’d put my finger in her hand and she’d grab it.

  I put my lips to her ear and say her name again. She squeezes my hand, then lets go. Then squeezes again, and my eyes grow hot.

  “Jess,” I say. “My Jess.”

  She squeezes my hand again.

  I scoot back and sit up so I can see her face. I brush her cheek with the back of my hand and see her closed eyes tighten, then relax.

  “Jess,” I say. “Can you open your eyes? Can you do it for me?”

  The river is rushing by our feet. On the other side I can see the person. Did he have something to do with all the bodies in the river?

  I look down at Jess again and see the rise and fall of her chest. Is she hurt or just exhausted? I put my hand on her forehead and start to gently pull one of her eyelids up with my thumb. She turns her head sideways and I stop.

  I know we need to keep moving. Work our way to the road and then try to find the cache. Try to find anything. Find Max and Tam.

  Can Jess walk? Is she in danger of freezing to death? Her face is pale but her lips don’t look blue, just a light pink color. I know she can move her fingers, and she turned her head away when I touched her eyelid. Maybe she’s in shock. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I’ve heard the term.

  I replay the scene in my mind. She was swimming. We got into the shallows and then I saw her floating facedown, but not for very long.

  Something happened. But what? Did she just pass out in the water?

  I slip one arm under her neck and another beneath her knees, and I slowly stand up. When Jess was little, I used to carry her to bed when she’d fall asleep in the family room. I used to like doing that. She almost never woke up. But the more my dad put me to work after the buses left, the less I saw of Jess. My dad thought with a simpler life we’d be even more of a family, but when I look back on it, I see that the main thing it did was divide us. Me and my dad scavenged and worked the land. Mom took care of Jess and did all she could at the house. Family time pretty much disappeared so we could focus on survival. On this journey, I was slowly getting my sister back. I can’t bear to lose her now.

  On the far side of the river the person is walking toward the big rock where we buried our stuff.

  I turn away from the river and start walking, my eye on the small bluff I need to climb to get out of the floodplain and onto the old road. With her soaked clothing, Jess is extra heavy.

  The cold, which settled into me like I was wearing a suit of icy armor, starts to fade as I warm from carrying Je
ss. She grunts a couple of times when I stumble, which actually gives me some relief. I mean, any response is better than no response, but let’s face it, if our situation doesn’t change soon, we’ll end up a couple of corpses. Like the ones we stumbled upon in the fissure.

  And where are Max and Tam? I could sure use their coveralls to keep Jess warm.

  I’m confused and pissed off. I mean, if I’d crossed the river on the body bridge and they hadn’t, I would’ve tried to track them along the shore, not lose sight of them, so I’d know if they made it across and where. And I think they’d do the same for us, but we’d never talked about what we’d do if we got split up with a wide and raging river between us.

  The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that they would’ve stayed if it had been possible. Something dangerous must’ve been going on over here that I couldn’t see from across the river. Or maybe we were gone up the creek for so long that they thought something had happened to us.

  At the base of the bluff I sit down facing the river, keeping Jess draped across my lap. If only she were just asleep, like when she was little. If only she wasn’t soaked and cold and barely responsive. If only it wasn’t my plan that put her in this condition.

  I touch her cheek, and it’s chilly compared to my fingers, which have warmed from the walk. Then I put my hand on the top of her bare head—she must’ve lost her hat, too—and run it down one side of her soaked hair, like my mom used to do countless times when Jess would curl into her lap or grab her leg for a hug. And that’s when I feel the bump.

  CHAPTER

  54

  JESS’S BUMP ISN’T SUPER BIG and there’s no blood. But she’s unresponsive besides a grunt every now and then, and squeezing my finger when I put it in her hands.

  Head injury, I think. Then I rack my brain for information about how to treat someone with a head injury. Not that I have anything to treat her with. My teeth grind together. I feel helpless. Why did I insist that she swim the river? And why did I have to let go of her at the end?

  I replay the scene in my mind. Her swimming, then the next time I see her she’s floating facedown. I don’t know how long I lost sight of her. Maybe just a few seconds. A minute at the most. If she was pointing downstream, the current could’ve slammed her into a rock—headfirst. Hard.

  The sun breaks through the clouds as I work my way up to the old road with Jess. At the road, I set her down and rest.

  She is curled into the fetal position, which I take as a good sign since she did it on her own.

  I pull out the map. I can pick out where we are because I can see where Black Rapids Creek pours into the river, and that spot is on the map.

  The spot marked with C for cache is still down the road, either at the high point in the pass or just after it.

  It’s easy enough to follow the old road with my eyes, but walking on it is going to be just as bad or worse than traveling cross-country since it’s so torn up.

  “Mom,” Jess says softly.

  I put my hand on her forehead. Then I press my cheek against hers. Through my beard I can feel the coolness of her skin.

  “Jess,” I whisper into her ear. “Be okay. Please be okay.”

  I turn and wipe the tears from my cheeks before they can flood Jess’s face.

  “Mom,” she repeats. “Hold me.” Her tongue reaches out of her mouth and licks her lips. Then she’s still again, but I can see her chest moving up and down with deep, even breaths.

  My heart aches for her, for her loss. Because right now, she’s with our mom, but if she’s going to live, she’s going to lose Mom again.

  “Jess.” I gently shake her arm. I take her and hold her and rock her. I put my lips to her forehead, feel her clammy skin, and cradle her tighter.

  * * *

  Jess is moving pretty slowly, but at least she’s moving. I’d held her for maybe three or four hours before she fully opened her eyes. Then we sat for a while longer talking about what happened during the crossing. She remembers getting almost all the way across and me giving her a big push, but that’s where her memory of the crossing ends.

  Steep, raw valleys with ribbons of willow cut into the mountains to the east of the road. There used to be glaciers up these valleys that fed the streams, but they’ve mostly melted.

  Because this place hasn’t burned completely, it feels almost relaxing. I mean, even though we’re out of food and don’t know what’s ahead, at least we’re in a place that isn’t so spent. Like it wouldn’t be a bad place to die. Not that I want to die, but I’d rather try to survive here than in a burnt-out basement in the middle of a burnt-out landscape.

  I’m alternating between letting Jess ride piggyback and having her walk. I carry her on the smooth sections of road, but she walks the rough ones because I don’t want to take a chance of falling with her on my back.

  When she’s on my back, she asks into my ear, “Where do think Max and Tam are?”

  I stop and scoot her up my back farther. “I hope they’re around here somewhere,” I say. “But I haven’t seen any signs that they are.”

  Truth is, I’m confused. I would’ve waited if I had been in their position. Unless … unless something happened. Like if they had to run from someone or hide or fight. My chest feels raw. They have their spears, but nothing else. Two girls, alone. Not that they couldn’t protect themselves as well as anyone. But my mind flashes back to the Yukon and my parents alive one moment and dead the next. I pick up the pace a little. If Max and Tam are around here, I need to find them.

  * * *

  “This tastes nasty,” Jess says.

  “Just chew on it,” I say. “For as long as you can.” I’m sitting in the fading light against a rock and Jess is leaning against me. We’re still damp. I know the willow bark is bitter, but it’s better than nothing. I peeled a bunch of bark off some shoots before stopping here.

  I don’t want to keep walking at night, because I don’t want to miss any signs of Max and Tam. Maybe they’re up one of the creek valleys and have left a marker by the road. It’d be nice to have a fire, but the glow would make us a sitting target. But then again, the glow might be seen by Max and Tam.

  I follow our progress on the map. It’s pretty easy because of how the river bends away from the road. We’ve still got some miles to cover to get to the cache, if it even exists and if it’s accurately marked on the map.

  A few stars appear in the sky, and I wrap my arms around Jess to keep her as warm as possible. It’s a good sign that she can walk and talk, because after hauling her out of the river and seeing her just lie there, I thought she was history. Or that she’d been hurt so bad that I wouldn’t be able to do anything except watch her die.

  At first light I rouse Jess and we keep going down the road. The sun spills over the ridge to the east, bathing the valley bottom. I can still see the river in the distance even though it has already bent away from the road.

  Jess is walking beside me, not saying anything. We hit a bend in the road. A small creek flows over brown rocks, then over the road, and plunges off the bluff into the valley. Above the creek on both sides, brown and yellow cliffs rise in front of the mountains. I glance down the road. The brownish rock runs at least as far as the next bend a couple miles away and maybe farther.

  I stop and reach into my pocket and pull out Dylan’s photo. I nudge Jess. “See this,” I say, pointing at the photo. “The rocks are brown, just like the ones around here.”

  Jess stares at the photo and nods.

  “I don’t know how far the brown rocks go, maybe all the way into the pass, which is another thirty miles or so, or maybe they’re just in this section, but keep your eyes peeled. Anything you see that’s odd—anything—you tell me. We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, but hopefully, we’ll recognize it when we see it.”

  What I don’t tell Jess: If we don’t find that cache, we’re as good as dead.

  CHAPTER

  55

  JESS AND I ARE HU
DDLED under a rock overhang about a hundred feet above the road, but because of the fog I can’t see what’s below. I can’t see five feet in front of me. I’m raining sparks on tiny willow shavings that I made with my knife, but they just won’t catch. I wish I had some birch bark or some matches. Anything that will make this stuff catch. And some food, any food.

  I think about those bodies floating down the river. No way, I think. I’m not that hungry. I’ll never be that hungry.

  My stomach lets out a long growl.

  I reach over and touch Jess’s arm. I don’t know how far I’d go in order to keep my sister alive. Would I insist that she eat human flesh? Or could I trick her into eating it if we came upon more bodies?

  Then I hate myself for even thinking about it. But I can’t control my mind, especially when I’m starving. Maybe there are caribou and moose in the Buffer Zone. And fish and berries. I mean, there are willows here. This place didn’t burn twice in two years like the land around Fairbanks did. And there weren’t a ton of people down here before that, people killing everything in sight just so they could eat. But I haven’t seen any animal tracks either.

  Some places are emptier than others, Dad had said. Animals, they move. You can’t count on them being where you think they’ll be. Especially not now.

  I know what he’s talking about. With the wacky weather patterns—more extreme hot and more extreme cold—some plants and animals are slow to adapt. And if they don’t adapt—they die out. Moose didn’t exactly die out, but the moose tick population exploded years ago because the winter temperatures didn’t get cold enough to put a check on them. I saw pictures of moose covered with moose ticks. One moose had over ten thousand ticks on it, and those ticks were swollen with the blood from the moose, making it look like the moose was covered in grapes.

  So the tick infestation killed a lot of moose and kept the population way down.

  And you might think that you can survive anything because you have a house and a job and food at the store, but take all those things away and what have you got? The two of us huddling under a rock in the fog, starving, without any way to make a fire. Maybe Jess even has a concussion, but I don’t know how to tell or what to do if she does.