The New Wild

by Holly Brasher

  I can see Kitten’s horn coming our way. She’s cresting a hill and racing toward us. She slows as she comes nearer, and when she’s right in front of us, I notice her horn is a little less bright than it was a few hours ago when she left us. In fact, it looks dirty. She’s prancing in a very self-satisfied way and seems to be happy to see us.

  We press on by foot, with Kitten walking beside us. Her horn casts a yellowish, dappled glow over the earth. We desperately need to find a place to crash. I’ve lost almost all of my energy, and Xander is wilting fast. He’s still walking in front of me, but he’s barely plodding along. I know without asking that his feet hurt. Mine hurt, too.

  In front of me, Xander stops walking abruptly. He turns to face me and his mouth is hanging open. He’s looking really freaked.

  “Xander, what is wrong with you?”

  “Uh…” he utters. Something is definitely amiss. I can hear it in his voice. “Dead body,” Xander says.

  Kitten flicks her tail and chomps on some grass.

  “Yeah, I know. I can’t believe how many there are.” I rub his back. “Try not to let it get to you.”

  “Oh my fuck,” Xander manages before bending over and throwing up. He dry heaves for a good minute after that. Something is seriously wrong.

  I don’t want to look, but I have to. Something in me is forcing me to stare at whatever it is he’s seen.

  A dead man lies on the ground before us, his eyes snapped open, his skin blue. His eyes are bloodshot and covered in tiny flies. And right through the center of his chest, where his heart was, is a gaping, bloody hole so precise, I’m scared to say it could only have been made by one thing—a unicorn’s horn. The air smells like a butcher shop. I want to barf, too, but I need every ounce of energy inside me to get through this shit.

  I gulp. “Do you think that hole was made by what I think it was made by?” I ask Xander, flicking my eyes toward Kitten.

  He looks at me with fear in his eyes. “Oh, God. Maybe.”

  We both shudder. For a while, we stand there, holding our shirts over our noses to block the stench. It takes a while, but eventually, we notice a blanket of sorts to the right of the corpse. Xander yanks it away and finds two blankets, both made of warm-looking wool. “Yes!” Xander exclaims. I shoot him a look.

  “Really?” I say. “You really want us to use a dead guy’s blankets? Isn’t that a little—unethical?”

  “Why? He wasn’t using them. Besides, winter is coming fast. If we don’t take them, we’ll end up dead like he is.”

  I shake my head, but Xander has a point. I guess it’s better to take his stuff than die without it. I look a little closer at the body and see that his hand is wrapped around a thick metal chain.

  “What’s this?” I say under my breath. I follow it as far as I can within the ring of light, then trail it with my fingers as it continues into the darkness. I’m terrified to find whatever is on the other end of this chain, but something is propelling me forward. I have to know what it is, but Xander is freaking out.

  “Jackie! What the bleep are you doing? This is not okay!” I hear him hollering.

  “Come and get me then,” I shout over my shoulder. I'm determined to see whatever it is this man was holding onto. It must be good.

  Behind me, Xander is bathed in the golden white halo of Kitten's light. I can't see more than a foot in front of me, though, and it's as thrilling as it is terrifying. I inch along, grasping the chain more firmly with every step. I stub my toe on something. A ledge. I step up with both feet, but when I take another step, my foot falls, taking my body with it into a deep abyss. I shriek as I fall, grasping for something, anything. But soon enough, I'm submerged up to my shoulders in slimy, putrid water. My eyes are stinging. It smells worse than anything I could have imagined, like rotting corpses and blue cheese and dead fish combined.

  “Xander!” I scream. “HELP!!!”

  My words echo around me.

  It takes a few moments, but I hear him come running. “Jackie? What the fuck did you do?”

  “Be careful! There's a drop!” I squeal. My body is freezing, swishing in this stank water. And something—I have no idea what—is dripping onto my forehead. “Aim Kitten's horn down here and help me out!” I yell. My voice sounds louder down here, amplified on the water.

  “Uh, I can't… She ran off again…but hold on, I’ll be there soon.” In the distant glow of the waning moon, I can see him hovering far above me, looking down. “Jesus, woman… You tumbled into a manhole.”

  I'm losing patience. “Xander, I don't care if I fell into buried treasure. Get me out of here! For the love of GAWD!” The light from the moon is illuminating the length of this chamber, but it softens as it nears me. I have no idea what's surrounding me, but in the water under my feet, the surface is uneven. Crunchy.

  I can hear waddling rats scurrying around the tiny ledges next to me. The water is absolutely stomach-churning—if I could see it in the light, I know it would have an otherworldly green tinge. One of the rats plops into the water and lunges at me. I can feel its thin, spindly whiskers flicking against my face. I scream at the top of my lungs—this thing could be rabid.

  “Xander, I don't know how much longer I can take this!” I shout. “Xander? " There's no answer. My heart sinks. What if something happened to him? What if I’m alone down here?

  I grab at the rat with a grunt and pull it down into the water, shuddering the whole time. I want to twist its neck until it’s dead, but the thought of that is too gross, so I hold it under water until it drowns. Its wet, furry body moves frantically for a while, then stops. When it does, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  I frantically scan the walls of the manhole, looking for something to grab on to. I see only bricks and scurrying rodents. I try to grasp the bricks above me but can’t get a hold and sink back into the rancid water. Just when I think I'm ready to slip down and drown or be eaten alive by vermin, I see Xander again at the top of the hole.

  “Where were you?” I scream at him.

  “You don't want to know, Jackie,” he says somberly. “I'm going to lower this chain down and lift you out.”

  The chain. He must have pried it from the corpse’s hand. I want to puke, but in this water, I know that would make me even dirtier, so I grab hold. He lifts me out like some kind of he-man, grunting savagely until my fingertips reach the lip of the pit. The rats lunge at my feet. When I’m standing again on firm ground, it’s all I can do to stop myself from throwing my soaking, putrid arms around him. What a man. He’s still clutching the chain, and I notice a hand dangles on the end of it, freshly cut.

  “What were you doing, Jackie?” he says, brushing the hair back from my forehead.

  I look at him with tears of relief in my eyes. “I wanted to see what was on the other end of this chain,” I say, somberly.

  “Do you still want to know?”

  “No!” I wail, choking and burying my head in his shoulder. “I don’t ever want to know.”

  Chapter 15

  We walk as far as we can without Kitten, who has disappeared once again. I’m almost starting to get used to her comings and goings, but every time she leaves, I worry I’ll never see her again. It’s not long before we find a softly flowing stream that seems clean in the glow of the firelight. As Xander sets up the tent, I slip out of most of my clothes and into the water. I have to get this nasty, putrid stank off me as best I can. It stings a little where the bandage holds firm against my side, but I need to wash that off, too. I don’t want whatever was in that manhole giving me gangrene. I palm my compass in my hands. It’s waterlogged now and filled with debris. I open the case and rinse it out. Oddly enough, it still seems to be working. They really don’t make things the way they used to.

  When I’m out of the water, I rinse my clothes, then use a little more of the whiskey in our kit to wash out our wounds. Xander’s appear to be healing nicely, but mine need a thorough cleaning after that manhole debacle. I tremble every time I think
of it.

  In the dim glow of the fire, I can faintly make out Xander’s smile. Maybe it’s because I watched him almost die, or because he saved my life, but I suddenly want to give up our snarky back and forth for good and hold him. After the way I rejected him, I wonder if he could ever trust me. Lately, we seem to tiptoe around each other. Life is hard enough as it is without throwing love into the mix.

  When I look over into his eyes, it feels like it’s the first time I’m really seeing him. He’s beautiful.

  “Yes, woman?” he says, snide as ever.

  I smile, thinking how grateful I am to have him here. “You saved my life.” I say.

  He laughs. “Well, I couldn’t have saved yours if you hadn’t saved mine,” he says. “Call it even?”

  “Deal,” I say, though secretly, I want to kiss him for pulling me out of that rat-filled abyss. I wonder what it would be like. He seems like he’d be a good, firm kisser—he’s spirited and steady at the same time.

  Chapter 16

  Walking the next morning, the plains seem to stretch out forever, rolling back to the horizon. The sky above us is a perfect, bright shade of blue, the clouds like billowing balls of cotton. Bubbles float around us again. I race after them with a stick to pop out tawny black-eyed susans and fuschia pom-pom-looking things that shoot over six feet tall the second I burst their bubble. When they open, they release a fragrance so thick and spicy I might as well have stuck my nose in a jar of nutmeg.

  Kitten comes back out of nowhere, walking straight up to us like she’s been there all along. I know we should be terrified to see her, but Xander’s right: I think she does love me. I’m not so scared. And she’s never really threatened Xander, either. Besides, if she’s alive, there might be other unicorns, too. Not-so-nice unicorns that stab people through the heart. I try to focus on the halfway-nice unicorn in front of me instead. She drops to her knees, and we silently climb on. When she’s around, we go as far as we can, sometimes hundreds of miles, sometimes at full gallop, sometimes full trot, stopping only to eat and sleep. Every time she runs off, walking gets harder and I want to call it quits, curl up, and die, but Xander snaps me out of it, reminding me that she always comes back. Life continues this way day after day, week after week, until somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I start to think we’re lost.

  We‘ve been moving west according to Bernard’s compass. But now part of me wonders if maybe we’ve been going southwest for days. We’ve been passing giant cacti and the occasional waddling armadillo. What’s more southwest than that? The sun sets over the Pacific in Mexico the same way it sets over the Pacific in Oregon. Couldn’t we be way off? Xander thinks I’m crazy, but I can hear a little uncertainty in his voice. What if I’m right?

  When I’m starting to freak out, Kitten stumbles into a ditch, and we go flying. I hit the dirt, and my vision goes white. I take a few seconds to recover, blinking hard, while Xander scrambles onto his feet. I stay there in the dirt, looking into the sky, terrified that I’ve seriously injured myself and I’ll never have my mom to hold me when I fall again.

  If we’re heading southwest, we’ll hit the ocean and then have to walk north until we get to Portland. No thanks. I’m starting to worry that we’ll never make it. What was I thinking trying to cross the country on a freaking unicorn with nothing but an old-ass compass to guide me?

  I can’t help it, I start to cry. First because of the pain from the fall, which truly knocked the wind out of me, and secondly, because I’m pretty sure we’re screwed. Like, super-screwed.

  Xander rushes over to me. Even Kitten comes over and sloppily licks my face.

  “Are you okay?” Xander says, concern spreading over his expression.

  “I’m fine,” I manage. “I think…”

  “Can I lift you?” he asks.

  “You can try,” I say. Being the hulking man he is, he picks me up off the ground with little effort. My back tingles where he touches me—an electric jolt.

  “Are you hurt?” he asks.

  “No, not really, I guess… I just…” I’m actually blubbering. If I wasn’t so defeated, I’d be embarrassed.

  “What, Jackie?” Xander blurts. He has no patience for me and my tears. He can probably taste Montana in the air and doesn’t want to wait a second longer.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” I shout.

  I’m sad and mad all at once. I feel like we’ve been facing death every day for nothing. We could have stayed back in Amish country and been totally fine. I could have stayed with Deb and probably built my own house by now, right on the grounds of Camp Astor.

  He looks around, his brow furrowed. “No we’re not,” he says. “We’re not going the wrong way.” His voice sounds oddly certain all of the sudden.

  “How do you know?” I beg, tears rolling down my cheeks. The thought of getting to the west coast, but the southwest coast, has me sobbing.

  “Well, Kitten didn’t fall into just any ditch,” he says.

  “She didn’t?” I say, looking at him cockeyed.

  “No. Look closer.”

  He’s so goddamned full of himself right now I half want to punch him in the face. But then I do as I’m told. The ditch is about a foot wide, two or three feet deep, and goes on for miles, toward the sunset. There’s another identical one sitting parallel a few feet away. Weird.

  “Can you tell yet?” he says.

  “Dude, shut up. Tell me what you’re trying to say.” I hate know-it-alls.

  “Did you ever play the Oregon Trail app?” He asks me, before adding, in a computer’s monotone voice, “You die of dysentery.”

  “Oh yeah!” I yelp, staring at the ruts. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” The ruts from the wagons of the actual Oregon Trail, which led from Missouri to Oregon in the early 1800s, are still imbedded (almost fossilized, really) in the dirt. They should help point us most of the way home. Beyond that, the thought of people having made this journey before—under slightly different circumstances, but with a lot of the same challenges—seems to put some wind in my tired sails.

  “Crazy,” I sigh. My eyes follow the ruts all the way to the west horizon line. Chimney Rock stands in the distance, a three-hundred-foot tower of sandstone. We definitely did get turned southwest somehow from Chicago—we should be in the Dakotas. Instead, we’re somewhere in western Nebraska—but I’m glad this route will at least point us the right direction.

  We follow the wagon tracks for hundreds of miles, carefully avoiding the ditches themselves. I can’t believe people did this hellish trip back in the day with kids and babies, though I guess they did have wagons and plenty of other supplies. Still, it’s insane. Xander keeps cracking jokes and quoting the game. “Your baby is run over by a wagon wheel,” “You are mauled by a bear,” etc. It would be funny if it weren’t so completely possible.

  As soon as we get to South Pass in Wyoming, which still has a sign etched into a boulder courtesy of the National Park Service, Xander turns to me, a sad look in his eyes.

  “Jackie,” he says. “This is it.”

  “What?”

  “This is where I get off.”

  My stomach sinks, and I look away. Tears are pooling in my eyes, and I don’t want him to see. I knew this would happen when we got close to Montana. But I didn’t think it would come up so quickly.

  “They’re alive, Jackie,” he says. “I know they’re alive. And I’m so close to them! So close. All I have to do is head north here, right up the continental divide, and I’ll finally be home.”

  At the word home, Xander’s face brightens. I can tell he’s excited. I couldn’t imagine how sad this would make me, or how nervous. I’ve gotten so used to having him around, and I can’t see proceeding without him now.

  “They won’t believe how I’ve changed, Jackie,” he says. “I am a totally different person than the one that left for camp. God, my dad is going to flip.”

  Xander’s practically dancing, he’s so excited.

  I shudder
and scoff.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?” he says, his eyes pleading.

  “You can’t just leave like that, Xander!” I practically scream, my heart sinking in my chest. “We’re a team.”

  Xander looks down at his feet for a while, like he’s thinking things over. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so nervous. My pulse is racing.

  “So…” he says, looking deep into my eyes for a moment too long. “You’ll come with me?”

  I think about my mom and Bernard and how they could be right at the other end of this trail. Then I put myself in Xander’s shoes and picture my whole family just a little bit north of here. Xander’s eyes are pleading. Despite everything, I have to say I’ve come to care about him, and I know he cares about me, too. I’ll detour. If we work it right, it won’t be that far out of the way, and I feel like he’d do it for me.

  “Yeah, I’ll come,” I say. “But once we find them, you have to come on to Oregon with me.”

  “Okay,” he says without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Okay?” I say, grinning.

  “Done, woman,” he says, shaking his fists to the sky. “Done.”

  Chapter 17

  We’re a day north of South Pass when we see the buffalo. I remember learning in school that they used to be everywhere around here. At some point in the 1800s, these prairies reverberated with millions of them running, the constant pounding of their hooves so intense that people called them “the thunder of the plains.” But later that century, they were all but extinct thanks to Buffalo Bill and the government, who killed them off to cut off the food supply for the Indians. When I was in middle school, we would drive out to the country to see the last standing breeds, but even they were more beef than bison. Within the confines of their feedlots, they looked tired and inconsequential.