Hostile Territory

by Paul Greci

  Brooke sighs. “As much as I want to just set up my tent and crawl in, I think you’re right. We should walk, that is, if Shannon’s recovered from the EpiPen.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Shannon smiles. “Slow miles are better than no miles.”

  “I like that.” Derrick repeats Shannon’s rhyme. “I’m going to use that phrase on my dad next time he gets on me to hurry up.”

  I crack a smile, but I’m thinking, Yeah, I hope you see your dad again. I hope we all get to see our parents. On top of not knowing if we’ll find our way out of the wilderness before we starve, we don’t even know if any of our parents survived the quake. When I left on this trip, my main concern with my parents was figuring out how to keep them from getting a divorce. Now I don’t care if they never speak to each other again—I just want them to be alive.

  We all keep rotating our bodies, trying to dry off completely. My new shoe feels okay, but it’s not the same height as my other shoe, so even walking around the campfire feels kind of awkward, like one of my legs is longer than the other, which I guess it is right now.

  I take ten steps away from the fire toward the mountains, and Derrick says, “You leaving already?”

  I turn and walk back to the fire. “I’m just trying out my new shoe,” I say, “to work the kinks out now, if there are any.”

  I walk back and forth a few more times. I can feel the blue foam starting to slip, so I untie the drawstring and retie it tighter, hoping that will do the trick.

  I’m about thirty steps up from the fire when Derrick shouts, “We might have company.”

  I start walking back toward him. Shannon and Brooke are both standing up, looking where Derrick is pointing.

  “That’s got to be someone’s fire,” Brooke says.

  “Maybe they crossed the swamp, too,” Derrick says. “And now they’re drying out—like us.”

  “They’ve got to have a way to call for help,” Brooke says. “I just know they do.”

  As I get back to the group, Shannon says, “That’s from us. Our blowing coals have started a forest fire.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “COALS CAN BLOW THAT FAR?” Derrick asks.

  “They’re pretty light,” Shannon responds.

  “Look.” I point to the left of the first smoke plume. “More smoke.”

  “I think I can see the flames from the first spot,” Brooke says.

  “There’s another plume off to the right.” Derrick points.

  The spruce is pretty thick, running in both directions from the swamp. It’s only above us, where the wind that blew the coals in the first place is coming from, that the trees thin out and eventually disappear.

  “We should try to put them out,” I say, “before they spread.”

  “That’s a nice thought.” Shannon shakes her head. “But we don’t have the equipment.”

  “Three fires.” Derrick slaps his hands against his sides. “Four if you count ours, which will also be a bear to put out. Originally, I thought I’d be able to take a leak on it to put it out, but it’s way bigger than that now.”

  “If the wind switches,” I say, “those fires will come our way. As it is, they might come our way anyway. I mean, spruce trees burn, especially with all the needles on the ground.”

  “We need to go,” Shannon says. “Now.” She points up toward the mountain we’ve been aiming for.

  We quickly pack up and start heading for higher ground, leaving our original fire burning, because if we tried to put it out now, flames might overtake us.

  We tromp through the trees. The rope around my homemade shoe quickly loosens, and soon the blue foam is flopping all around inside the stuff sacks. Every time my foot hits the ground without the blue foam under it, I cringe, waiting for something sharp to stab through the stuff sacks and my sock.

  “You all keep going,” I say, stopping. “I just need to retie this.”

  I stoop down, reposition the blue foam, and then cinch down the rope. I haven’t done anything different, so I’m expecting it to come loose again pretty quickly. At some point, I’ll need to solve this problem, but not while we’re making tracks from a fire.

  I stand up and almost bump right into Brooke.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “You—”

  “Buddy system.” She smiles. “Let’s go.”

  Is this the same Brooke who abandoned the trapped Theo to a bear? She’s done some nice things lately, but I still expect her to behave like a selfish child, so when she doesn’t, I’m surprised. I just hope she keeps surprising me.

  I’m sort of sliding my foot along, hoping that the blue foam will stay in place longer if I don’t lift my foot up so much.

  Brooke and I walk without talking, and when we break out of the trees and are wading through brush—mostly blueberry and willow—we spot Shannon and Derrick ahead of us. They’re on a little rock outcropping, staring back the way we came.

  We catch up to them, and Derrick points. “Look.”

  Down below we can see orange flames consuming trees and black smoke billowing.

  “And smell,” Shannon says.

  I inhale through my nose and take in some smoke.

  “The wind direction is starting to change.” Derrick coughs. “It’s blowing at us. I don’t like this.”

  “Maybe this fire will attract some attention,” Brooke says. “Maybe it’ll get noticed, and if we’re not too far from it, we’ll be rescued. This could be a good thing for us.”

  “Either way,” Shannon explains, “we need to be farther away than we are right now. Fire can travel fast when conditions are right. It can scream up a hill if the wind is behind it. This brush will burn. Easily. And quickly.”

  We keep heading up. Aiming for that same mountain we’ve been looking at for the last couple of days now.

  I have to retie the rope four or five more times, but it sure beats walking with just a sock on for protection. Now that we’re in steep country, I’m pretty much keeping up with everyone. If I were out of shape, no way would I be keeping this pace with the number of stops I’m making. The shoe situation is just kind of leveling the playing field. Instead of me stopping and waiting, I’m just maintaining the slower pace that these three naturally walk and then jogging to catch up after I’ve stopped and retied.

  The brush thins out, and now we’re walking on low tundra plants interspersed with rocks. When I turn around to check the wildfire’s progress, I see that it’s reached our campfire spot and is spreading out, consuming trees to the left and right, and marching up the hill.

  Everyone else is stopped, too, watching.

  “We want to stay out of gullies and ravines.” Shannon’s voice sounds strained. “Anywhere that could funnel wind is a potential death trap.”

  “Let me guess,” Derrick says, “you took a wildfire class?”

  “Not exactly,” Shannon says. “My mom’s old boyfriend was a firefighter. I learned this just by talking to him.”

  “What I don’t get is how you remember everything you hear,” Derrick says. “If I had half your memory capacity, my dad would be through-the-roof happy.”

  Shannon cracks a smile. “Dude, we’ve all got our strengths.”

  I look at the blue stuff sack surrounding my foot and think about how my main strength, being able to cover distance at high speed, has been cut down. Derrick’s got physical strength and a sense of humor. Shannon’s got brains. Brooke is becoming more giving and resilient. It’s just me who’s diminished, but I’ll do everything I can to not let anyone down.

  The breeze is blowing smoke toward the mountains. I taste it with every breath. “We should keep moving,” I say. That’s one strength I have: I’m a relentless pain in the ass when it comes to staying still for too long.

  “Look at the gray smoke.” Brooke points downhill and to the left.

  The fire has reached the brush we’ve just crashed through, and it’s not slowing down.

  CHAPTER 43

  “THE SCREE SLO
PE HAS THE least amount of vegetation,” I say. “It should offer the most protection from the fire, right?”

  Shannon nods.

  We’ve walked maybe a half mile since the brush started burning, and now gray soupy smoke is cutting our visibility down.

  I hear Brooke coughing. We were going to fill our water bottles from the swamp and use our tablets to purify it, but since we had to leave in a hurry, no one has any water.

  I take a step from the tundra onto the scree and immediately wish I had real shoes on both feet. The brown rocks covering the slope are pointy, and lie on top of one another every which way, making for sharp angles. Most are the size of loaves of bread but some are bigger.

  I turn around. “I’m going to try to angle up one way and then switch back so we can zigzag up.” I want to stay as far from the edge as possible because that’s where the vegetation is.

  No one argues with my zigzag idea, so I keep going. The blue foam provides a lot more protection from the rocks than a sock would, but I can feel their hardness poking through with every step. Don’t try to go any faster than you reasonably can, I tell myself.

  I’m planting my next step when a thunderous roar almost knocks me down. I step sideways and lean into the steep mountainside, supporting myself with one hand. Ear-splitting roars continue for several seconds and then they’re gone.

  “Sonic booms,” Derrick says. “From fighter planes.”

  “Maybe they had to get somewhere in a hurry,” I suggest. “I mean, if you had to get somewhere to help with the earthquake, that’d be the fastest way, right?”

  “I guess,” Derrick says. “Or maybe they’re assessing damage or taking pictures or something. It’s not like they can just land anywhere like a helicopter can.”

  “Not very likely they saw us through the smoke,” Brooke says.

  “No,” I agree. “But they’ll probably report the fire, and that might get someone else out here.”

  Shannon hasn’t said a word. She’s just staring back the way we came. Now she turns forward but still doesn’t say anything.

  I keep moving upward at an angle. I glance over my shoulder. We’re spread about ten feet apart, all climbing at the same slant.

  The gray smoke is a constant, and I can only see a couple hundred feet in any direction, but that’s far enough to see that we need to make a turn to stay in the middle of the slope, so I pivot and head in the opposite direction, starting our first switchback.

  The scree slope isn’t the route we would have taken if the fire weren’t chasing us. We’d be below and to the left, climbing through a vegetated saddle—a low pass in the mountains.

  As I keep going up, I’m not sure there’ll be a way off this slope without retracing our steps back down.

  Everyone has made the turn, and we keep walking in silence. I make a second switchback, then a third, and then a fourth. Now the rocks are bigger, like flat slabs the size of school desktops. But I’ve got a rhythm going, and the angle I’m tackling the slope with isn’t so steep that we have to use our hands. And now that the rocks are big enough, I can plant my foot down in the center of some of them and not subject my improvised shoe to all the sharp edges.

  As I work my way up the scree, I think about all the groups of planes and helicopters we’ve seen, and the fact that none of the sightings resulted in a rescue. I think about the note we left at Simon Lake and wonder if anyone has been there, and if they have, whether they figured out there was a note in the canister surrounded by flags. And just how long has it been since the actual earthquake? We stayed at the lake for six days, and now we’ve been walking for at least three, maybe four days.

  I want to believe someone is searching for us, but when I try to convince myself that it’s true, I get this sick burning feeling in my stomach.

  I turn to start another switchback, and the rock I step on starts sliding beneath my foot. I scramble forward, and the blue foam padding in my shoe contraption shifts sideways.

  “Rock!” I yell to warn the others as the rock tumbles downslope.

  The sliding rock sets off a chain reaction, and the rock above it skates forward, coming to rest on my ankle, and then the rock above that one tumbles on top of it, and now my leg is pinned from the knee down, and I can’t move.

  CHAPTER 44

  I TWIST MY UPPER BODY around, look over my shoulder, and see Shannon and Brooke standing below me. Derrick is down on his knees with both hands pressed to his forehead.

  “I’m trapped,” I yell.

  Shannon looks toward me, then down at Derrick, and says, “Brooke, go help Josh while I deal with this.”

  “Be careful coming up,” I say. “There’s loose rocks everywhere you step.”

  Brooke takes her pack off, sets it down, and then slowly works her way toward me.

  Shannon’s pulled out her sleeping pad and has it oriented so that when she guides Derrick to lie down his head is on the uphill side.

  “Just keep pressure on the wound,” I hear Shannon say. “Foreheads tend to bleed a lot no matter how deep or shallow the cut is.”

  Brooke scrambles over the last of the rocks that are separating me from her.

  She looks down at my leg. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “I mean, it hurt when it slammed into me, but I’m hoping I’m just trapped and not injured too badly.”

  Brooke nods and then looks downslope where Shannon and Derrick are. “When we move this rock, we’ve got to make sure we don’t send any more strays down that way.”

  “What happened to Derrick?” I ask.

  “That rock you tried to warn us about,” Brooke says, “it clipped him in the forehead. He’s bleeding.” Brooke coughs a couple of times. “Nasty smoke.”

  “I didn’t know it was coming loose until it came loose. Everything had been so stable, I think I let my guard down.” I grit my teeth. I hope Derrick will be okay. His injury—it’s on me and I feel awful about that. More than awful. Guilty.

  Brooke’s voice breaks into my thoughts and zaps me back to the present. “We should move the rock to the left.” Brooke points. “That way, it won’t be directly over where Derrick is recovering.”

  I glance back at Derrick’s position and nod. “Okay.”

  Brooke grabs the rock with both hands. “I can pull while you push.”

  We do that, and the rock moves to the left.

  “One more time,” I say.

  We do it again, and now I can see the rock that’s pinning my ankle.

  “My knee feels okay,” I say. I press on the side where the rock hit, and it hurts a little bit. “It might be bruised, but if that’s all the damage, I’ll be happy.”

  Brooke looks down past my knee. “Where’s your foot?”

  “It’s down there.” I point. “Under that rock.”

  The rock pinning my foot just above the ankle is smaller than the one that slammed into my knee, but it’s also wedged in more firmly.

  “I think we’ll need to move a couple of rocks before we can move the one that’s pinning me down,” I say.

  Brooke glances down the slope to where Shannon and Derrick are, and I follow her gaze. Derrick is still lying on his back with both hands pressed to his forehead. Shannon is sitting with him.

  “Same plan?” Brooke says. “We’ll move rocks to the left to avoid our friends.”

  She lifts the topmost rock on the downhill side and places it a few feet to the left. I want to help lift the rocks, but I can’t reach where we need to put them because I can’t move.

  “One more,” Brooke says, “and then we’ll work on the one pinning your foot.”

  She lifts another rock and moves it just far enough away that the rock pinning my foot is now totally exposed. I try to slide my foot out from under it, but it won’t budge.

  “We’ll have to lift this last one,” I say, “or at least tip it up.”

  “I can pull up on the lip of it.” Brooke points to the downhill side of the rock. “And you can try
to slide your foot out.”

  Brooke positions herself on the uphill side and grabs the lip of the rock.

  On the count of three she lifts and I slide my foot, which comes free partway and then stops. I can see the edge of the blue stuff sack. “I’m caught on something.”

  “Okay,” Brooke says.

  She pulls the rock toward her, and at the same time, I move my foot away from the rock and then take a step back.

  “I’m free,” I say. I rotate my ankle and bend my knee, and everything seems to be working. I look for blood seeping through the blue stuff sacks but don’t see any.

  I turn to Brooke. “Thanks. That was close. I could’ve just as easily broken my foot. Especially with this soft shoe.” I point at my foot.

  Brooke just nods and looks downslope. I follow her eyes. Shannon is still sitting next to Derrick. She’s leaning over him and talking softly so I can’t hear what she’s saying. But one thing is for certain. Derrick hasn’t moved the whole time Brooke’s been helping me.

  CHAPTER 45

  “I’M SORRY,” I SAY. “THAT rock coming loose took me by surprise.”

  Derrick gives me a tiny nod. His hands are still on his forehead applying pressure to the wound.

  “About four more minutes,” Shannon says. “Then we’ll take a look.”

  Shannon goes back to counting quietly to herself so she’ll know when approximately fifteen minutes are up.

  The smoke is skidding up the scree slope. Down below, we can see where it’s burned the brush up to the start of the scree. The fire is working its way up the tundra bordering the left side of the scree. We’re safe from it though—for now.

  I wonder how Shannon decided on fifteen minutes but don’t want to ask her and screw up her counting.

  Brooke takes her phone out of her pack, turns it on, and shows me the screen. Still red with an outline of a bear. She turns it off and puts it away.

  Now that we’re just sitting, I’m starting to cool off a little bit. The sweat that I didn’t realize I’d worked up is starting to dry.