Breaking Free

by SM Koz

  Chapter 25: August 2 (Day 15)

  After JC kissed me goodnight, I had a hard time falling asleep. It was probably a combination of the kiss and the sadness around his impending departure. Well after midnight, I finally started to drift off, only to be immediately reawakened by a clap of thunder. Within seconds, I heard the pitter patter of raindrops.

  It was the first time it had rained during our trip and I became anxious, wondering if my tent would leak. I sat up and turned on the headlamp lying next to me.

  “You okay, Mal?” I heard JC’s whisper from the next tent over.

  “Yes. Just making sure I won’t get wet.” I crawled on my knees around the perimeter and once I was satisfied it wasn’t leaking, I climbed back into my sleeping bag and turned off the light.

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  I smiled and figured he had been lying awake all night like me. Just as I was thinking about inviting him over to finish what we had started earlier, lightning flashed through the sky and was immediately followed by a rush of rolling thunder. The rain picked up and wind whipped through the trees, howling in the night.

  I pulled my sleeping bag over my head and hummed, trying to drown out the noise.

  It was no use, though. After another two sparks of light and thunderous roars, the rain itself became deafening and unrelenting as it beat the top and sides of my tent. So much for a small storm. Chris really needed to find a better weatherman.

  I continued humming, hoping that would calm me down, but I was distracted when the hair on my entire body stood on end. I unzipped my sleeping bag to turn on the light, but was hit by a chemical smell. Then it happened. Blinding light and a sudden crash that made me scream. It was followed by the slow, creaking sound of wood splitting. I sat up and hugged my arms around my chest as the creaking grew louder.

  With one final crack and a whoosh of air, I felt something fall outside. The ground rumbled when it hit, shaking my bones and nerves. At almost the exact same time, I heard a shriek.

  I scurried to my door, unzipped it, and stuck my head out, trying to see what happened, but it was pitch black. Another scream.

  A few feet away, a light turned on and quickly approached me.

  “Are you okay?” JC yelled above the clamor of the rain.

  I nodded, wiping my soaked bangs out of my face.

  JC ran past me towards the next tent. When I turned in that direction, I finally saw what happened in the glow of his headlamp. A massive tree was lying on its side, covering Chris’ tent, which was in a heap on the ground.

  I rushed after him and we squatted near the tree.

  “Chris?!” JC yelled, squinting to keep the rain out of his eyes. I patted the tent, trying to feel her beneath the fabric.

  “Chris!” He climbed on top of the tent and started trying to find her, too.

  “Help …” Her voice was weak, but there.

  “We’re here!” I yelled, moving in the right direction, but slipping on the wet material. My knee slammed into something hard.

  “Chris?”

  “Help …”

  “JC, she’s right here,” I said, pulling the fabric up and trying to tear it with my hands.

  “You won’t be able to rip that. We need to cut it. Do you have a knife?”

  I ran my hands through my dripping wet hair, trying to get it out of my face. “Are you trying to be funny?!”

  “See if the others have one! Or try to get the hatchet out of the supply container!”

  I stood up and started rushing back towards my tent, but ran into Neeky and Mia. Neither of them had a knife so I picked up my headlamp and headed towards Bling since I knew the supply container would be locked. When I unzipped his door, I found him inside, sitting in the corner.

  “Do you have a knife?” I asked, dripping water on the floor of his tent.

  “Why?”

  “Chris is stuck. She’s hurt.” I started eyeing the contents of his tent. His backpack, fully packed, was in the corner and his sleeping bag was rolled up and in the stuff sack. It’s like he was getting ready to leave hours before he was supposed to.

  “So?”

  “We need to help her!”

  “Ain’t my biz.” He leaned back on his elbows like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Do you have a knife or not?!”

  “Maybe.”

  “Give it to me!”

  Just then, Neeky joined us, adding another puddle of water. “What’s going on?”

  “He won’t give me his knife.”

  “Give us the knife, man. She’s hurt bad.”

  “Like I says, ain’t my biz.”

  Neeky rushed in and tackled him. I couldn’t believe it. He never seemed like the aggressive type.

  “Where is it?” he asked, sitting on his chest.

  I crawled in next to them and reached my hands up Bling’s pants, feeling along his ankle. He tried to kick me, but I stayed far enough away to avoid the brunt of it. The first leg was a bust, but I got lucky on the second one. I moved closer so I could roll up his pant leg and he landed his foot right in my shoulder.

  “Don’t be a dick!” I yelled, reaching for his leg again. I followed Neeky’s lead and sat on it so he couldn’t kick me anymore. Once I did, I was able to roll up his pants and pull the knife from its holster.

  I ran back to JC and handed it to him. He sliced it through the fabric and we got our first glimpse of Chris. Her face was pale and contorted in pain.

  “What hurts?” I asked, as JC continued removing the material from around her.

  “Leg,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the rain pelting down on us. I ran back to my tent and grabbed a poncho to hold over her face. By the time I returned, JC had the tent removed as much as possible and I saw the problem. Chris’ right leg was stuck under the tree. Probably crushed. There was also a pool of blood collecting on the floor beneath her, growing a lighter and lighter pink as it mixed with rain.

  “We need help,” I said.

  “Where’s the phone?” JC asked, searching through Chris’ belongings.

  “Tent pocket. Other side,” she whispered.

  JC climbed over the tree, but returned within seconds. “Anything under there is destroyed.”

  He stood there, soaking wet, looking between me and Chris who was even paler than she had been a few minutes ago. “You need to go to the Lodge and get help,” he finally said as Mia and Neeky joined us. Not surprisingly, Bling was absent.

  “The new counselor will be here in the morning,” Mia said, spitting water out with every word.

  We all looked at Chris. With shallow breathing and blood still draining from her leg, morning would be too late.

  “You want me to go?” I asked.

  “You and Mia. You two are the best with directions. Plus me, Neeky, and Bling need to try and move the tree.”

  “You can’t be alone with Bling,” I said, kneeling down and splashing mud onto the tent.

  “He’s not going to try anything in the middle of the storm with Chris hurt. How far are we from the Lodge?” he asked her.

  “Six miles.”

  He pulled a map and pen out of Chris’ bag and then huddled next to me and Chris under the poncho. “Where are we?” he asked, holding the map next to her face.

  She barely glanced at it before pointing to a spot along a trail. “Take the trail southeast for a mile and a half. You’ll intersect a trail with yellow blazes. Follow that east for three miles then switch over to the blue blazes, north. It’s right there,” she said, pointing to an area on the map.

  I marked the spot with an X and then scribbled her directions on the edge of the map, not quite believing that Mia and I were going to do this on our own in the middle of the night during a storm. That plan had disaster written all over it.

  “You need a radio,” Neeky said. He tugged on Chris’ belt until a keychain fell off and then ran to the storage container. After unlocking it, he flipped the lid ope
n and rummaged through the contents, finally coming up victorious.

  While he did that, I watched Mia. She looked even more scared than I felt but agreed we had to give it a try. None of us wanted Chris to die.

  After organizing Chris’ daypack with energy bars, water, a compass, some rope, extra flashlights and some dry clothes, Mia and I donned our ponchos and headlamps. She hugged Neeky and JC kissed me on the top of my head. We both hugged Chris the best we could with her lying on the ground and then took off on a fast pace. We were silent. It was no use talking—we couldn’t hear each other over the rain and wind, anyway.

  I kept the radio in my pocket and checked in with the guys periodically. By the time we reached the next trail, they had freed Chris from the tree, but it sounded like things didn’t go as smoothly as they wanted. Something about the tree not moving and her leg getting even more messed up as they pulled her free. At least she was still alive.

  After another hour of hiking, the rain and wind started to let up a little. It was still a downpour, but it was coming straight down instead of hitting us from the side. Mia sped up to walk beside me.

  “You doing okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  She shrugged. “You don’t seem to handle silence very well.”

  She was right. I did terrible with silence. I must have been so preoccupied with what we were doing that I didn’t even allow my mind to wander to my own problems. “I’m good.”

  “Do you want to contact them again?”

  I pulled the radio from my pocket and called them. “JC? Neeky?”

  We were met by silence, so I tried once more, but had the same result.

  “That’s weird,” Mia said. “I hope everything’s okay.”

  “I’ll try again in a couple minutes.”

  It ended up being longer than a couple minutes because we reached a creek that had flooded. With the strong current, it was going to be treacherous to cross. I stepped in first, but was shocked by how deep it was. Right at the bank, the water was up to my chest, which meant the middle would probably be way over our heads and we’d end up drifting downstream, helpless against the current. I had done that before and didn’t want to repeat it.

  I climbed back out and we decided to explore other areas of the creek, farther from the trail. We knew we were wasting time, but we’d be no help to anyone if we got hurt. After about twenty minutes, we finally found a narrower area where large boulders jutted out of the water, making a sort of hopscotch game for us. I went first and waited for Mia to join me on each boulder. It took over ten minutes, but we made it safely to the other side.

  As soon as we were back on the trail, I tried the radio again. “JC? Neeky?”

  There was static and then Neeky’s voice, but it kept breaking up. “We … hike … Bling.”

  “What?” I asked.

  There was more static, then, “Accident …”

  Mia grabbed the radio from my hands. “What happened?! Are you okay?”

  “Bling … JC …”

  My heart stopped. I knew we shouldn’t have left them alone. Would Bling really try something during such an awful situation? Or maybe JC started it. He hated Bling and wanted to hurt him earlier in the day. Maybe he had his chance once Chris was out of the picture.

  “What happened?” Mia repeated.

  “Help … oh, God … JC!”

  That was the last we heard from them. Mia banged the radio against her hand, pushed the buttons, and turned it on and off, but nothing stopped the constant static.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said wrapping her arm around my waist.

  I nodded and we started walking again, Mia practically holding me up. I began imagining what could have happened. I pictured Bling stabbing JC. Or throwing the hatchet into his back.

  “So, Prince Jalen. He’s pretty badass for a little kid, right?” Mia asked, trying to distract me.

  Despite my fear, I smiled at her comment. “You could say that.”

  “Tell me one of his stories.”

  The rest of the way, Mia and I took turns making up Prince Jalen stories, each more outrageous than the previous. Like always, the stories kept me from thinking about a more dangerous topic, but this time, that topic revolved around JC, not Jenna.

  When we reached the Lodge, it was five-thirty in the morning and still dark outside. The door was locked. We pounded and kicked on it until a bleary-eyed person I didn’t recognize emerged.

  He must have known who we were, though. “What in the hell are you doing here?” he asked, opening the door wider and ushering us inside.

  “There was an accident.”

  After changing into dry clothes, we relayed what we knew while he made tea in the office. As soon as we got to the part about Chris’ leg being crushed by a tree, he was on the phone. In no time, three people were due to the Lodge and a helicopter was on standby for search and rescue at daybreak.

  I clung to my cup of tea as we told him the rest of the story and how we were worried something had happened to JC. By the time I finished, the crew had arrived and was organizing packs to start their rescue mission from land.

  At six-thirty, both the helicopter and land teams left. Someone I had never met before stayed with me and Mia in the Lodge, telling us we should get some sleep. We lay down next to each other in the small bed in the loft, but had a hard time dozing off. Whenever I was on the verge of sleep, I’d jerk myself into waking up. That inevitably woke Mia up, too.

  “They’ll be okay,” she’d murmur, patting my shoulder.

  Eventually the complete lack of sleep must have caught up with me because when I rolled over and opened my eyes, the storm had passed and the sun was out, shining brightly overhead. Mia was sitting near the window, watching the forest.

  “Did they find them yet?”

  “No. They weren’t where we left them. They must have tried to hike back but got lost.” She was looking out the window, avoiding eye contact.

  “You know something else.”

  She slowly turned around to face me. “They found a bloody knife at the campsite.”

  “No, no, no …” I mumbled, drawing my knees to my chest.

  “It could be Chris’ blood. She was bleeding a lot. Maybe they tried to cut her pants off or something.”

  I nodded, but didn’t believe her. I was convinced it had something to do with JC and Bling. Something bad had happened out there.

  Mia joined me on the bed and wrapped her arms around my back. I clung to her, scared and nervous.

  “Our parents are coming. They want us to leave.”

  Unwinding myself from her grip, I said, “We can’t leave until we know what happens!”

  “They said they’ll call.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “You can take it up with Tammy, the director of the program, but she seemed pretty adamant.”

  I jumped up from the bed and stormed to the ladder. As soon as I looked down from the loft, I knew things were as bad as I suspected. The office had a window into the open room so I could see how it was teeming with people. Directly below me, EMTs waited, next to stretchers and toolboxes filled with medical stuff. Through the big window at the back, I could see even more people outside—park rangers, policeman, and ordinary, but frightened-looking people who could be JC, Bling, and Neeky’s parents.

  I climbed down the ladder and rushed to the office. When I opened the door, a woman I didn’t know came to my side. She was wearing a nametag that read Tammy. “How are you feeling, Kelsie?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, ignoring her question.

  “We’re still looking for them.”

  A radio crackled and then a male voice said, “Update. We found a men’s hiking boot, size 13 in the river.”

  “Location?” a man in the room asked.

  The voice gave a series of numbers and then someone else made an X on a large map taped to the wall.

  “What’s the boot look like?” I asked.


  The guy glanced at me and then asked the person on the other end of the radio. As soon as he told us it was gray with orange accents, I fell against the wall. It was JC’s shoe.

  “Kelsie, you can’t be in here,” Tammy said, laying her arm on my shoulders and leading me out the door.

  “It’s JC’s shoe.”

  “We’ll find them, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not leaving until you do.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. It’s better for you to go home where you can rest and be with family. We’ll let you know what happens.”

  “I’m not leaving!”

  Mia and I spent the next two hours sitting in folding chairs outside the office, watching everything that happened through the window and making ourselves even more anxious. Every time someone sighed or rubbed their eyes, my muscles tensed, expecting the worst.

  “What kind of second-class operation is this?” The high-pitched voice made me groan. Rotating in my chair, I saw Sheila stalk through the door in her high heels, casting angry glares at anyone who looked in her direction. She spotted me and stopped in her tracks. “At least my daughter isn’t lost, roaming in the forest. Let’s go, Kelsie.”

  “I can’t.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me as her lips tightened into a straight line. “I dropped everything today to spend hours on a plane to retrieve you. Now let’s go.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not leaving until I know everyone is safe.”

  She took a few steps closer to me. “Your father’s pilot is only available until eight tonight. We need to leave now.”

  “You go without me. I’ll fly commercial when this is over.”

  She placed her hands on her hips and scowled at me. I scowled back. There was no way I was leaving.

  Just then, the people in the office started scurrying around more than usual. Mia and I stood as someone exited. “They found three of them. They’re boarding the helicopter now. We have no information on the extent of their injuries, but they are being flown straight to the hospital for treatment.”

  “Who’s missing?” I asked.

  The person retreated to the office without answering my question. I chased after him and barged into the room. “Who’s missing?!”