The New Wild

by Holly Brasher

  “You. Heard. Me,” I say, my voice clipped. Although part of me is scared he’ll run off and leave me here stranded. He’s a god-awful person, but I really don’t want to be alone. I would never admit it to him, but I’m beyond relieved he’s here. And not because he’d save me from a bear or mountain lion—they’d probably go after his meaty bod before mine.

  He stares me up and down, slowly, and makes a face like he has something bitter in his mouth. He looks like he’s going to throw up. “You’ll be happy to know my mother’s dead. Has been for years,” he says finally, looking down. Tears are pooling in the corners of his eyes.

  “Oh,” I murmur, feeling terrible.

  His head falls down, and he stares at the ground below his crossed legs.

  “Xander, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” I offer.

  He looks up, staring deep into my eyes. My heart thuds. Despite everything he’s done, the fact that he’s been through something similar to what I went through makes me want to reach out and hug him. I want to tell him I’m an idiot and to forget I said anything, tell him my father died, too, and I know how it hurts. He leans in closer to me. I can feel his warm breath on my forehead when he talks.

  “You know what she told my dad before she died?” he says, his eyes huge and knowing.

  “What?”

  He puts his two hands together and laces the fingers like a plea. His eyebrows are pressed together. “She said,” his voice is slow, melancholy, “that she prays, deeply, that…”

  “Yes?”

  “That I get the whole chicken!” he exclaims, his face erupting in a grin.

  “You asshole!” I shout, pushing him on his chest.

  He’s laughing hard now, doubled over and clutching his stomach. I want to kill him.

  “You’re a real dick,” I say. “So your mom didn’t die?”

  “Fuck no, she’s like immortal,” he says. “Death is for losers.”

  He’s so insensitive I’d like to skin him along with the bird. My whole body is shaking, I’m so angry.

  And the worst thing is Xander’s still cracking up, paying me no mind. I shake my head and take out the knife. He eyes me cautiously, worried I’ll snap at any second. I lift the blade and plunge it into the back of the chicken as hard as I can, slicing it right down the middle. I hand him a piece of the breast and a wing.

  “Jackie, I’m twice as big as you are, with twice as big a stomach,” he says, his voice gravelly and cold.

  “You think I give a shit? You’re lucky I gave you that.”

  He scoffs, but throws the meat into his mouth immediately. I don’t get a thank-you.

  I don’t say anything or even look his way, I just start shoving flesh into my mouth. It tastes incredible. The best chicken I’ve ever had, by far. Better than the buffalo wing sub at Nightengale’s in Old Town Portland. Even better than what my mom makes when she actually cooks. Xander finishes his in record time and puts another handful of sticks on the fire.

  “Have you ever noticed how much it looks like a human rib cage?” he says out of the blue.

  “What?”

  He points to the two halves of chicken bones, picks them up, and holds them together.

  “I mean, it looks just like a person’s.”

  I look at him warily. “Uh, ew?”

  “My aunt and uncle run a poultry farm outside of Billings, and you know what it’s like?”

  “No,” I say, and something tells me I don’t want to.

  “Forty rows of birds stacked on top of each other, shitting on themselves.”

  The thought makes me want to gag. “You’re kidding me.”

  “And they feed them the remains of other chickens,” he whispers, like it’s some kind of secret.

  “Please stop.”

  “And they don’t even grow feathers, or get to stretch their wings.”

  “Xander, stop talking,” I say, shooting him a look.

  “It’s just messed up, that’s all,” he says, and starts throwing pebbles into the fire. They crack against the rocks. Eventually, he lays his head down and lets his eyes drift shut.

  The sun is nearly set now, and the sky’s a deep turquoise color, a bit lighter where the sun was in the west. I tuck into the blanket Deb gave me. It’s pretty warm out, but I can’t sleep without something to hold on to, especially now.

  My eyes are just ready to close when out of nowhere, fireflies arise, flickering all around us in a dance. There are dozens of them, blinking like golden stars, twinkling to their own tune. They’re so gorgeous my breath catches. I haven’t seen this many at once for years—people said that because of our pesticide use, it wouldn’t be long before they’d be relegated to zoos.

  I poke Xander’s arm. “Hey! Lighting bugs!” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” he mutters, voice full of boredom.

  “They’re so cool!” I exclaim.

  “Jackie, you have to be kidding me. I. Don’t. Care,” he says. What a douche.

  But in the glow of the firelight, I can see his pupils moving rapidly, tracing them through the air. And in the corner of his mouth, so faint you can barely see it, is a smile.

  Chapter 8

  I’ve never slept outside under the stars before, and something tells me it isn’t going to happen tonight. Weird sounds assault me from all angles. Bats swoop through the sky, screeching, their eyes glowing purple. Mosquitoes buzz relentlessly in my ear. And then there’s Xander’s heavy, heaving, bear-like snoring. I could kill him, and literally no one would know. What if I’m starving and the only thing I can do to survive is kill and eat Xander? But then who would I talk to? I laugh to myself. The fire has given up its crackling for the occasional hiss. I’m so scared of a grizzly or mountain lion lumbering out of the thick to tear me to shreds I probably couldn’t sleep anyway. No rest for the freakishly weary.

  My one consolation? The stars above us are beautiful. In Portland, you see a few here and there, but the smog and streetlights block the majority of them. Even Camp Astor only had a couple.

  Now, when I look up, I feel like I’m right on the edge of universe. There are thousands and thousands of them twinkling against the black sky. My eyelids are just starting to droop shut when I see a shooting star with sparkly, glowing tails flickering in its wake. I hope with all my heart that wherever they are, Bernard and my mom saw the same star.

  * * *

  Just after dawn, the sky is pink with a little orange to the east. Billowing clouds stretch across it in rows. The birds are chirping all kinds of crazy sounds, but Xander’s still out cold. I’m amazed he can sleep through all this stuff. I’m walking toward the brook to wash my face when a giant, condor-like teratornis swoops down from a tree, pulls out a silvery fish with one long talon, and carries it back up into the forest canopy. I jump back. Its wingspan must be twelve feet wide, almost wider than the stream. It takes me a second to catch my breath. Deb’s theory is beginning to make even more sense. That bird looks like it belongs in a natural history museum, not the twenty-first century.

  When I get back to our campsite, Xander’s still lying there, dead to the world. It’s got to be eight o’clock. The sun’s shining right in his face. We need to get moving.

  “Xander,” I whisper. Nothing. He doesn’t even flinch. “Xander,” I repeat at a slightly more pressing decibel.

  He lifts his hand like he’s swatting a fly from his ear and continues to sleep.

  “Xander!” I shout. But he ignores me. I run down to the brook, scoop up some water, and throw it over his face. His eyes crack open for half a second. “Five more minutes,” he whines before curling into a ball.

  “Xander! Get up!”

  “Wha—?”

  “Xander, up. Get up. We need to go.”

  Something in my voice gets him to push up onto his elbows and peel open his eyes, twisting his head from side to side in a stretch.

  “Coffee,” he blurts.

  I just laugh. “Xander, this isn’t the freaking Ritz. You’ve got to
get up. It’s going to take me months to get to Oregon, and I’m not delaying another minute for your lazy ass.”

  “Fine!” he shouts, then expels a series of groans.

  I start throwing a few things into my bag. The chicken feathers from last night are still floating here and there; a lot of them are stuck in my scratchy, wool blanket. Xander moves like molasses.

  “I’m leaving without you,” I say. I grab the axe and throw it over my shoulder, Paul Bunyan-style, and start walking. The pin in my compass wobbles for a bit, but soon enough, it’s pointing firmly north. I head west, away from the sun.

  For a minute or two, I’m worried Xander won’t follow me. As much as I hate him, I’d rather be stuck in a tiny cell with him than on my own. That’s how people go insane: the loneliness. Everywhere birds are shrieking, trees rustling. It’s a recipe for lunacy. Just as I’m starting to ponder where the expression “losing your marbles” came from, Xander barrels from the woods behind me. He knows he has to get home.

  Xander walks ahead sometimes, but mostly, I lead. The undergrowth is so thick I have to hack it away with the axe before we can get anywhere. My arms are getting so sore from swinging this thing. Every once in a while, we have to scramble up a boulder or even a whole wall of them. Before long I’m going to look like a professional body builder.

  We keep on this way for days. Without music or T.V. to entertain us, we talk endlessly about anything and everything, from our life stories to how much we both miss French fries dipped in mayonnaise. It’s not long before I know more about Xander than I ever wanted to know about anyone. I know little, disturbing things, like how often he goes to the bathroom (way, way too much). How he got the jagged scar that runs up his right shin (car accident right after he got his license, his fault). Why he has a recycling symbol tattooed on his calf (he started a recycle/salvage program at his high school, the first of its kind). Why he was at Camp Astor (caught smoking dope, he was sent away for a summer of, as his dad put it, “wholesome teen fun”). Regrettably, I even know how many girls he’s slept with. Two. The last one broke his heart by hooking up with his best friend, and made him hate all teenage girls (“until now,” he says, which is a nice save). For some reason, when we talk about her, I get a knot in my chest.

  I tell Xander everything he needs to know about me but leave out the stories that might make me cry in front of him. I don’t mention details when it comes to my dad and his cancer, or how my heart is gnawed with worry when I think about Mom and Bernard. I don’t want to go there. I’m also worried that I’d get emotional and he wouldn’t hug me or try to make me feel better, which might piss me off worse than the things he did at camp.

  We try to find a source of water every night to camp near, then go about finding dinner from our surroundings. A floppy-eared hare was the most disturbing thing to kill. I made Xander do it, and he winced the whole time. He even scraped out the furry gray hide and hooked it on a belt loop “to dry for winter, when it gets cold.” He’s so weird.

  * * *

  We’re in central Pennsylvania now, according to the rare etched-stone town sign we’ve come across: HYDESPORT, INCORPORATED 1731; SHARON TOWN, INCORPORATED 1790. We’ve still seen more of them than people, of which we’ve met a few, including a fourteen-year-old Asian boy headed for New York City, where he figured he could find some of his friends, and a sixty-seven-year-old black lady who wanted to stay right where she was in an old, charred school bus. No crazies, no zombies. And it is nice to know we’re not completely alone out here.

  I am a little surprised by how few humans we see. If Deb’s theory is correct, Mother Nature was really picky about who she let live. Everyone seems to think they’re still here because they’re The Best Friend Earth Could Ever Have Ever, but I know that isn’t the case with me. It’s certainly not the case with Xander. But we are both “granola” in our own way, and there must be something in us that made her want to keep us alive, something she thought we’d add to future generations. That is, if we can make it.

  So far, nobody has wanted to join us on our journey west. Everyone’s hoping they’ll find someone, somewhere, that they know, to get through this mess. I hope it’s true, for all our sakes. We’ll all have to settle down and rebuild some type of home, somewhere.

  Xander walks ahead of me as dusk falls like a quilt being pulled over the shoulders of the world. The fireflies swarm all around us again, and Xander catches as many as he can in my jar.

  “A lantern! I made a freaking lantern!” he announces proudly. There are about twenty of them trapped inside, flickering on and off at different times, so it does cast a continuous glow, albeit a weak one.

  Giant Japanese maple trees stand on all sides, and in the light of the bug-tern their branches look like the twisted, sinewy arms of my grandfather. Ferns the size of houses tower around them. Their stems are nearly as thick as Xander’s legs and covered in thick brown fur. In the distance, I can hear wolves howl into the twilight. My stomach lurches. The whole scene is like a horror film, especially with those damn purple-eyed bats swooping above us. Xander keeps his right arm over his head as he walks and barks at them. “Stay the fuck out of my hair, you rabid vampires!” I laugh, but the forest says nothing—just rustles a reply.

  Finally, we spot a creek, which is our cue to bed down and prepare ourselves for another long day ahead. But when we get closer to it, we notice smoke rising in the air. I freeze, urging Xander to turn around and re-route. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

  “Jackie,” Xander says, in the haughtiest tone he’s ever used, “Don’t you know anything? There’s a difference between smoke and steam. That right there is steam.”

  “I don’t care what you call it, we don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Well, fuck. I do. Use your brain, woman. It’s a hot spring.”

  He looks sternly into my eyes until it clicks. Hot spring = nature’s hot tub.

  “This is gonna be good,” he says, darting off toward the water.

  “Xander, we need to set up camp! We can’t do it in the dark.”

  “I don’t care. This is too great,” he says, stripping down.

  “What the hell are we gonna eat?”

  “You just had more bananas than I’ve ever seen in a supermarket.”

  It’s true. I did. We were walking along and I saw them dangling in one ginormous yellow clump and ate as many as I could.

  “I mean, you’re a freaking gorilla,” he says.

  “All right, all right, fine. I get it. Fine. Go in. Whatever. I’m setting up camp.”

  By the time I passive-aggressively throw my pack to the ground, he’s already down to his plaid boxers. This is the first time I’ve seen all his skin. It’s super pale but covered in freckles. He’s also, I should mention, incredibly, freakishly buff. He is gorgeous, especially now that his face is so tan.

  The steam rises from a little eddy in the creek surrounded by boulders. It smells faintly of eggs. I guess that’s the sulfur. There are wildflowers among the rocks, tiny pink bells that quake in the breeze, hairy yellow roses, clumps of violet flowers whose stems are as purple as their petals.

  Xander sticks one toe in to test the temp, then jumps right in.

  “Ugh,” he sighs. “Done.” He turns to look at me as I’m sparking up a fire, or trying to. “You really should get in.”

  “Uh huh,” I mutter, pretending not to feel the lure of a soak.

  “I mean it. It’s almost like a real bath. I’m smelling better already.”

  “God, let’s hope so,” I say.

  “Hey! You’re no bar of soap, either.”

  “Can you really smell me past your layers of stank?”

  He looks down into the water. “Well, no, but it can’t be pretty.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  I get a little fire going and boil some water for drinking. In the hot spring, Xander is spread across the surface, floating, sucking air in and out of his chest.

  “C’mon,
get in here!”

  I really want to. I just really don’t want you seeing me basically naked.

  “Jackie, it feels incredible.”

  “All right. Close your eyes,” I resign.

  He rolls his eyes and turns to face the stream, crossing his arms over a low boulder.

  I strip down to my ugly granny panties and a black tank top. When I dip my foot in, Xander turns around and looks me up and down.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hey,” I reply, wary.

  “Wow. I almost forgot you were a girl.”

  I start to lower myself into the water, wincing.

  “Xander, do you always say whatever asinine thing you’re thinking?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “I thought so.”

  The water is hot. I slowly dip my stomach in. When I catch Xander staring at my chest, I submerge completely, letting the water lap at my neck. It feels better than any spa I’ve ever been to. My whole body relaxes in an instant. All the muscles that held so much hurt now feel like butter.

  “God,” I can’t help but say, closing my eyes.

  “And you wanted to turn back.”

  “See smoke, flip shit: that’s my motto.”

  Xander laughs.

  The sun is all but set now, the sky cobalt blue. The firelight is casting weird reflections across the water. Xander’s staring at me, his eyes scanning my whole body. It’s making me uncomfortable.

  “What?” I say, staring back at him.

  “Nothing,” he says, his eyes looking down into the water. In the firelight, he looks like he’s glowing. His skin glistens. Fireflies flicker in circles all around us.

  “What!” I press.

  “I just think you’re really…pretty, that’s all.”

  Suddenly, my head is spinning. The same guy who has treated me like shit for weeks thinks I’m pretty? He’s waiting for me to say something, to give him some compliment in return. I’m ambivalent. I feel just like I did that day back at camp when his stares made my heart beat faster, but they turned out to be a big joke. He caught me off guard, and I’m totally frozen. I can’t bring myself to say anything. But Xander keeps staring into my eyes. He shifts closer to me.