Hostile Territory

by Paul Greci

  This conversation is happening, and it’s about me, but I can’t take part in it. I can’t say, Yeah, give me some water to drink. Or, No, I can’t swallow anything.

  I push up with my arms so I’m in a sitting position, and I hear this weak groan come out of my mouth. More water splashes on top of my head and runs down my face.

  “Josh,” Shannon asks, “are you feeling any better? Is it burning less? Don’t try to talk; just nod yes or no or something.”

  I hold up one hand and rotate my wrist so it twists side to side, making the universal more-or-less sign.

  “Do you want to try drinking some water?”

  I nod.

  I hear a pack being opened, and then there’s a water bottle brushing against my hand. I grab it and slowly lift it to my mouth and take a small sip and swallow. Then I cough. I hold the bottle out and someone takes it.

  The heat on my face is growing in intensity, and I realize that no one has poured water over my face in a few minutes.

  Then an idea pops into my head about how to treat this accident. I try to talk but still can’t get my vocal cords to create intelligible speech, so I try to show Shannon, Derrick, and Brooke what I want.

  CHAPTER 31

  “WAAAAA,” I SAY, TRYING TO get the word out of my mouth. Except I don’t want to drink it. I reach out with my hands and move my arms side to side until I feel someone. I use their shoulder to stand up.

  “Josh, man,” Derrick says. “Take it easy. You’re going to be okay. But we can’t go anywhere right now. Not until you can see.”

  I let go of whoever’s shoulder I’ve used to help me stand up. I force my eyes open for an instant, and see Brooke, Shannon, and Derrick standing in front of me, but the burning forces them closed again.

  Now my entire head is on fire. If I had a cooler full of ice, I would stick my head into it and leave it there forever. Anything to dull the heat waging war on my face.

  “Swamp,” I try to say. I raise an arm and point and take a step in the direction I think the swamp is in. And since it’s on two sides of us, I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance that I’m right. Two directions out of four.

  I swing one leg forward and take a small, blind step in the direction I’ve pointed, hoping that they’ll get the idea. I know there are small spruce trees dotting the dry land we’re standing on. And that the ground is bumpy. And there’s brush. Lots of things to trip on and bump into if you’re walking blind, but I need to get to the water.

  Now.

  Before my head totally burns up.

  I force my eyes open again, and then blink and blink and blink.

  “Head.” But that’s all I can manage to get out of my mouth before my throat constricts in rebellion.

  I think about running with Theo. When we would jog, we could just talk, but as we increased the pace, our conversation would become a series of single words or short phrases uttered between the constant sucking in of air we needed to keep the pace up. One word at a time, I think, that’s how I’ll communicate.

  “Under.” My voice sounds alien. Or like an old person on their deathbed saying their last words. I don’t know if any of them have understood what I’ve said because they haven’t responded.

  “Water,” I manage to get out before wheezing. Then I take another blind step in the direction of the swamp. My arms are still outstretched. I don’t want to fall, but I need to get there.

  “He wants to put his head in the water,” Brooke says. I feel a hand take my arm. “We’ll get you there. Shannon, grab his other arm.”

  I feel another hand on my other arm.

  “Keep walking,” Brooke says. “Small steps.”

  “And lift your feet high,” Derrick adds, “to keep from getting snagged on the brush. Thirty or forty feet and you’re there. For a runner like you, that’s nothing.”

  In my brain, I smile.

  “Come my way a couple of feet.” Shannon gently tugs on my right arm as I continue to walk.

  “We’re going to turn you sideways now to squeeze through some trees,” Brooke says as they shift my body around.

  I feel spruce branches brushing up against my back. One grazes the top of my head.

  Then they turn me back the way I was, and the three of us are walking in unison. They tell me it’s a straight shot now, and I even feel the pace pick up slightly.

  We stop.

  Derrick says, “Kneel down.”

  “We’ll help you.” Brooke increases the pressure on my left arm. “On the count of three.”

  On three I feel the downward pressure on my arms as Shannon and Brooke start pulling, and I follow the movement, going down first on my right knee and then my left.

  “Okay,” Shannon says. “Now we’re going to scoot you forward on your knees.”

  Brooke explains, “It’s like you’re walking, only on your knees.”

  I feel forward movement and scoot one knee forward and then the next.

  “A couple more knee-steps,” Brooke says.

  My head is still a raging firestorm, but now my knees can feel a coolness through my rain pants, so I know I’m on the edge of the swamp. I picture my knees in shallow water.

  “You’ll want your arms free,” Shannon says. “You’re going to lean forward. Just pretend you’re a baby and you’re getting into crawling position.”

  I pretty much am a baby right now. I’m helpless and communicating mostly with single syllables.

  Shannon and Brooke guide my arms forward until I feel the water on my hands.

  “While you two dunk him,” I hear Derrick say, “I’ll set up a couple of tents. I think we’re going to be here a while.”

  My hands hit the grassy bottom, and I’m into the water up to my elbows in a crawling position.

  “Just keep moving your head forward and down,” Brooke says. “We aren’t going anywhere. We’ll be right here if you need help.”

  I do what she says and feel my chin touch the water. Then my nose and mouth are under. I keep going and my ears are submerged, and the only thing left above the water is the back of my head. I lean forward until that’s submerged, too.

  There’s a slight pressure in my ears, and I wasn’t able to take a deep breath before going under, so my first dunking is maybe for only five or six seconds, but the relief is immediate. If I could just live underwater, if I could just be a swamp creature, I’d be fine.

  I push up with my arms, and now my head is hovering above the water, and I can hear drips as water runs off my head and drops back into the swamp. I take a few short breaths because that’s all my lungs will allow right now.

  Then I put my head back under.

  CHAPTER 32

  “ABOUT THREE HOURS, I THINK,” Brooke says.

  I’m lying down in a tent and Brooke is sitting next to me. I’m on my back, thankful that I can see the blue nylon of the roof above me.

  “It felt a lot longer,” I say. “I mean, when you all of a sudden can’t see, you lose all perspective of time. At least, I did.” My face still burns a bunch. And my eyes still sting. And my throat still feels like it’s recovering from a fire that was lit inside it. But I can take almost-normal breaths.

  “It would have been worse if Shannon hadn’t sprayed that moose. When you stumbled away from the one on the left, you must’ve triggered something with the one on the right.” Brooke shakes her head. “It would’ve stomped you before you could’ve gotten up. Because of where you fell, she couldn’t spray the moose without also spraying you.”

  I think about how I kept pushing us forward, not wanting to stop and waste time while we grew weaker from having almost no food, and now I’m the one holding us back. “I should be able to keep going soon,” I say. But really, I’m dead tired.

  Brooke leans toward me, and I see some red puffy areas on both of her cheeks.

  Before she can speak, I say, “Did you get sprayed, too? Your cheeks, they’re red.”

  “Mosquitoes,” Brooke says. “That pepper spray. They did
n’t want anything to do with you. But the rest of us got munched on. I’m just happy we have the tents. It’s pretty brutal out there if you aren’t walking at a good pace.”

  “So when you were pouring water over me, and guiding me to the swamp, and helping me dunk my head, the mosquitoes—”

  “You got it,” Brooke says. “Even with bug dope, they were relentless.”

  I close my eyes and say, “I hope I don’t slow us down too much.”

  “We’re going to try to leave tomorrow,” Brooke explains. “Just relax if you can. We’re still in the middle of a swamp, and it’s going to suck until we get out of here.” I hear her laugh quietly.

  I open my eyes. “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking about Simon Lake and how picture-postcard perfect it was. About how I was going to show my sisters photos of this amazing place I got to go to. About how I roughed it for a whole month—even though, secretly, I couldn’t wait to get home so I could take a hot shower, sink into the couch, and just be lazy.”

  “And that’s funny?” I ask.

  “Josh.” Brooke puts her hand on my arm. “This might be it. We might not ever see our families again. We might be the last people we ever see. What I thought was important—me having a cool experience my sisters couldn’t say they’d had—was so stupid.” She takes her hand off my arm.

  I close my eyes because they’re starting to burn. “I hear you,” I say. “Running cross-country was so important to me. Even during the quake when my calf smashed into a rock and got bruised, my first thought was about whether the injury would hurt my running performance this fall. Stupid. I didn’t even think about my parents until later. I wonder if they’re even alive. No one came for us. That has to mean the quake killed a lot of people. Maybe none of our parents are alive.”

  I reach down and pull the sleeping bag that’s draped over my legs up to my chest because I’m starting to get chilled. I realize my pants are damp, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now.

  I feel the bag being tucked around my chin and know that Brooke is doing that. “Thanks,” I say, keeping my eyes closed.

  “I’m just glad you didn’t die,” she says. “When you couldn’t talk, I thought your throat was starting to swell shut.”

  I ask Brooke to tell me everything she remembers about what happened from the moment I got sprayed until they got me into the tent.

  She recounts it to me, and I realize that I remember pretty much everything, except for the planes that flew over when I had my head underwater.

  “They were big military transport planes,” Brooke says. “That’s what Derrick called them. They were flying way too high to see us.”

  “How many?” I say.

  “Twenty. Maybe twenty-five,” Brooke says. “Canadian was Derrick’s guess.”

  My mind flashes back to the earthquake and how much destruction it must’ve caused. I hope the tiny town we’re trying to get to still exists.

  CHAPTER 33

  “THANKS FOR WASHING MY RAINCOAT,” I say.

  “I’d be careful with it,” Shannon says. “It could still have some pepper residue on it, so if you touch it with your hands and then rub your eyes, they could start burning.”

  “I’ll try to remember,” I say.

  A tiny breeze blowing keeps most of the mosquitoes away. And the clouds on the horizon are threatening to erase the blue skies that are above us. I take a deep breath and pretty much fill my lungs without coughing. My eyes are mostly back to normal, but I feel like they’re in a permanent squint.

  I notice that Brooke’s pack is full like the rest of ours and realize that she’s back to carrying her own stuff. “Your feet,” I say to her. “They’re okay.”

  “They’ll have to do,” she says. “And yeah, they’re healing. And it’s a good thing because I’m almost out of Band-Aids.”

  The tiny solar panel that keeps her phone charged is clipped to the top of her pack. I point at it, and before I can ask, she says, “Still just the red screen.”

  “Red seems to be the theme,” Derrick says. “Cell phone screen. Canadian maple leaf on the birds.” He points to the sky. “Welts from mosquito bites. And, let’s not forget the bear spray.”

  I let out a small laugh.

  Shannon smiles.

  Brooke shakes her head and then laughs, too.

  “That’s something I’ll never forget,” I say.

  “Me too,” Shannon says. “I’m just glad I didn’t kill you.” She looks down at the ground. “First, I forget my bear spray and get cut off from camp by the wolves, and now this.” She raises her head and looks at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you talking about?” I clear my throat because it’s still itchy from the spray. “You were spraying a moose that was going to stomp me, and I stumbled into the attack. And,” I add, “I was the one pushing us to try to pass by the moose. If anything, the whole deal is on me. It’s my fault. I—”

  “Dudes,” Derrick breaks in. “We’re here and we need to get over there.” He points to the mountain that is still in our sights. “Can we like walk and talk?”

  We all shoulder our packs and start picking our way through the trees with the swamp on both sides of us. We go single file with Derrick leading, followed by Shannon, Brooke, and then me.

  The corners of my eyes itch. It feels like there are tiny grains of sand in them even though I know there aren’t. I blink a few times to try to get some tears flowing but don’t feel any improvement. At least I can see.

  Brooke seems to be walking normally, but I bet her feet are hurting. She’s gone from being a complaint factory to just sucking it up.

  That thing she said last night. That this might be it. That maybe we’ll just starve out here. Now that we’re walking again, I don’t feel so doomed. Like I feel like we’ll probably make it to Talkeetna if we can keep moving. But still, we just as easily could walk and walk and walk and never get where we’re going because really, we don’t know exactly how to get to where we are going. We don’t have a map or a GPS or even an old-school compass. So starving still isn’t out of the picture. It just feels like less of a possibility when we’re moving.

  The trees get thicker, and now we’re bashing our way through spindly spruce over uneven ground, which is getting squishier and squishier.

  “Cranberries.” Shannon stops and points downward. Derrick turns around and comes back to join her as Brooke and I catch up.

  “They’re last year’s,” Shannon explains, “but they’re still edible.” She squats and pulls some berries off the plants that grow just an inch or two above the ground. “Try one.” She puts a couple of berries in my hand and does the same for Brooke and Derrick.

  They are a rusty brownish color and small, about as big as an eraser on the end of a pencil. I pop them in my mouth and chew. They’re kind of mealy and tart, but food is food.

  Now we’re all on the ground, devouring every old berry in the patch.

  “We’ll have to keep an eye out for more patches,” Derrick says. “Maybe we can eat our way to Talkeetna.”

  “It’ll take a lot of berries to do that.” I stand up. “I’ve cleaned this area out.”

  “There’s plenty over here,” Brooke says. Then she motions me over with her arm.

  I walk over to where Brooke is kneeling, squat next to her, and pick a few more berries. “Thanks,” I say.

  “They’re not mine,” she says. “They’re for everyone.”

  Is this the same Brooke who didn’t want to dig Theo out and then wanted to leave him as bear bait while he was trapped and still alive? Now I’m liking her, like I did when I first met her and wanted to get to know her better. Truth is, I am getting to know her better. We’re all getting to know one another better. I want to tell her everything. About how I felt when I first met her and then how I felt after the earthquake and how I feel now. Next time we stop for a real rest, I think, if we’ve got some privacy, like if we’re sharing a tent again, I’ll t
ell her. When I think of doing this my heart races a little. Yeah, I like her.

  We keep walking single file with about five feet separating each of us. The ground stays squishy and the trees stay spindly. We don’t see any more of last year’s berry patches. The clouds are starting to block out the sun, and I’m glad we’ve all got rain gear because pretty soon we’ll probably need it again.

  Derrick puts his arm up and we all stop behind him.

  What does he see now?

  Another moose?

  A bear?

  A wolverine?

  A pack of wolves?

  We all crowd in behind him and then we see it.

  Water. And it’s everywhere.

  CHAPTER 34

  “HOW FAR ACROSS DO YOU think it is?” I point to the narrowest spot. “Can we just wade, or will we have to swim?”

  The strip of soggy forest we were hoping to take to dry ground ends in the water, surrounding us by swamp on three sides.

  “We could go back,” Brooke suggests, “and look for another way.”

  The mosquitoes are starting to gather around us and it seems like the bear spray flavor has worn off enough that they’re now as interested in me as they are in everyone else.

  We’re all waving our hands in front of our faces as we talk to keep the bloodsucking insects from landing. Even with our bug dope on, they’re still harassing us.

  “This whole valley could be a sponge,” Shannon says. “We could retrace our steps, however many miles that would be, and then still have to cross a quagmire.”

  “Quagmire?” Derrick says. “Give it to me in English.”

  “It means swamp,” Brooke cuts in. “Even I know that.”

  “And,” Shannon adds, “it also describes our situation in general since the earthquake. That we’re in a messy and kind of hazardous spot in our lives.”

  Like my parents, I think. Their marriage is a quagmire, that is, if they are still alive. “Okay,” I say, “so we’ve got two quagmires. One right in front of us”—I point to the water—“and the other that basically goes with us wherever we go until we find help.”