A dog!
It was a dog barking! There was a dog down here! If there was a dog down here, there would probably be a person down here with the dog. If I could just walk toward the dog sounds, the person could direct me out of this forest. A wave of relief washed over me. Things were looking up.
Or so I thought.
The faraway yipping was joined by nearer yapping. A couple of dogs? That seemed odd.
Then came yelping, nearer still.
Then howling. I froze. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Then the whole forest seemed to explode in senseless dog howling. Only they weren’t dogs.
They were coyotes.
The coyotes Ellen had told us about. The ones that stole cats and ate them. Cat eaters. Meat eaters. I realized with a start that out here in this bleak wilderness, I was not some cool kid in slightly battered Nike Air Force 1s.
I was meat.
I ran.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Bad Decision
I ran along the bottom of the ravine, slipping, stumbling, reeling, sliding, panting, charging through bushes, crashing into trees. Because it was getting really dark, I ran in a very uncool manner, Frankenstein-like, with my arms straight out in front of me. All to the ferocious accompaniment of howling carnivores.
I thought fondly of the animal that had crashed onto the path. It had been a plant eater; I was almost sure of it. A very, very large plant eater. Why had I panicked then when I could have stored up the panic for now, when I really needed it?
Coyotes…coyotes, I thought as I ran. What did I know about coyotes? Well, the cat thing, but I was trying to forget that. But if they went for cats, they must hunt cat-sized prey. Or maybe the cats were sort of an appetizer. How big were coyotes? Like, dog-sized? What did they even look like? Sort of like mangy wild dogs? Wild. That was the scary part of the equation here.
A memory flashed into my mind as I ran. Our living room. Me in a texting marathon, Dad and Cassie looking at a book on the animals of North America.
“Hey, Wile E. Coyote,” Dad said, pointing at a picture. “Used to be the cartoon villain in Bugs Bunny. Pretty hopeless, actually. Always being blown up by dynamite or flattened by a falling anvil. Now these look like much more serious coyotes.”
“It’s not pronounced kai-OH-tee,” Cassie said. “It’s KAI-ote. And if you think they look serious”—she turned a page—“check out these! Wolves. Way bigger and more dangerous than coyotes. They hunt in packs! ”
Memory is sometimes not a terribly helpful thing. Sure, I now remembered how to pronounce coyote properly, but I also had a fresh new worry planted in my brain. Because that flash of memory had gotten me thinking about wolves.
Maybe this mad, yelping, wilderness howling I was hearing came from wolves, not coyotes, I thought as I thrashed and twisted through the brush. Wolves were way bigger and more dangerous…and they hunted… in packs. Packs, meaning more than one or two. A pack would mean probably four or more, I reasoned. Four or more sets of snapping jaws and sharp teeth. Four—no, wait—at least sixteen (and possibly more) sets of sharp claws for the ripping and the tearing…
Suddenly, cat-eating coyotes seemed cute and cuddly in comparison to wolves.
I slithered and pulled myself up the steep slope at the end of the ravine and took off down a hill. The yelping and howling seemed, if anything, closer. Howling is hard to pinpoint. It seems to come from all around you, which is a really wonderful thing to imagine in the middle of the forest at night when you smell of blood.
I veered off to the right, thinking the noise was marginally louder to my left.
I ran until I was completely exhausted. Not just the kind of feeling you get after wind sprints in gym class where you say you’re exhausted, and Mr. Bruseker, the gym teacher, tells you to suck it up. I had never felt this kind of exhaustion before. My legs were burning so badly they felt like they were on fire. My whole body was aching; my head was throbbing. My lungs felt raw (and when had I ever thought about my lungs before?).
By the time I came to a little river, I was pretty much just staggering. The howling, a wild, raucous cacophony, was still going on behind me. It sounded even nearer than before. I looked down along the river, which at this point was not much more than a stream of inky black water glistening in the fitful moonlight.
I looked down my side of the bank. Was that a black shape slipping along the bank? Was that several black shapes? Or were they shadows?
I froze, sweating and groggy. The wind whipped along the river, and I shivered. I picked up a thick stick by my shoe and turned, facing the shadows. Then I swung around to the river.
Wolves and/or coyotes behind me, possibly slinking along toward me at this very minute.
River in front of me.
Death or dismemberment, or ruined Nikes and wet socks.
No contest.
I lunged into the river.
CHAPTER NINE
Wet Socks
Aaaah! The water was shockingly, unbelievably, numbingly freezing.
My whole body recoiled. It felt as insane as wading into a fire. I forced myself to go on, feeling my way first with the stick. I scrambled up onto a fallen log. It seemed sturdy enough, but you never knew with logs. They roll. All I needed right now was to roll and slip and drown. That really would have been the last kick of a really, really crappy day.
I inched my way carefully along the log, pushing the stick in the water. I tried to reason things out. If the water was up to here on the stick, it would maybe be up to a coyote’s chin. Or a wolf ’s chest.
“You guys can’t swim, can you?” I muttered through chattering, gritted teeth. “Not big swimmers, right? Nah, didn’t think so. Seems a shame when the water’s so great.”
I inched closer and closer to the far bank, until I really thought I had made it.
Then I slipped. I caught myself from doing a sprawling belly flop, but the water engulfed my feet and then my ankles again in a freezing, biting, vise-like grip. I swallowed back the panic rising in my throat. It tasted sort of like Ellen’s vegetarian stew.
I staggered the rest of the way across the river without actually submerging my whole body. My freezing hands felt like clubs. My feet and ankles were completely numb. The word hypothermia floated through my brain. There had been something in those sheets of Cassie’s about hypothermia, some sort of super-serious condition like frostbite that you can get from the cold. Cold water in particular, I thought, but I honestly hadn’t been paying much attention. Because it was only supposed to be a risk of hypothermia, right? Just the risk of it…
By the time I had sloshed and squelched up the bank on the other side of the river, the shadowy shapes on the other bank, if they had ever been there at all, had vanished into the forest. Probably joining the screaming and wailing party, I thought. By this time I had convinced myself that I was going to die, not from being torn apart by carnivorous predators but from the cold water. And dying from a little cold water would be supremely humiliating.
“Nope,” I said out loud, panting. “Not dying yet…” I slapped my wooden arms to my sides and stamped my leaden feet. Not much feeling in any of them.
All of a sudden I was mad. I needed those arms and legs for the basketball tryouts coming up. We needed to beat Valley Heights, our main competition this year, and I was the only one who could drain three-pointers semiconsistently. And you definitely couldn’t shoot a three-pointer without arms. Or legs, really. Given my predicament, that may have been a stupid or irrelevant thing to think about, but it kept me going.
I found a small clearing on the bank and forced myself to do the basketball defense drill I usually despised. It got us sweating hot in a hurry in a gym. Why wouldn’t it warm me up on the bank of a freezing river in the middle of a barren forest?
I crouched low in the dark, bloodied hands by my knees, and moved my feet up and down, faster and faster. It looked nothing like the drill we did in practice, where Coach blew the whistl
e and pointed and we moved in that direction, our pounding feet sounding like a drum roll on the gym floor. It looked like a bent-over, soggy kid moaning and sobbing and making slow, squelching little steps with his aching, bruised legs in his ruined shoes.
Somewhat warmer, I staggered through the forest, feeling my way with my club hands. I clenched the heavy stick in my frozen right hand. Maybe it was actually frozen to my hand, or my hand was frozen around it. Either way, it made me feel better to have some kind of weapon, though I might optimally have chosen a Skyrim-style crossbow.
I soon realized it was so dark I couldn’t go any farther. I felt my way around a big tree and slid down, keeping my back to the trunk. At the base, the roots had come away from the ground a bit, and there was a small hollow. I started to dig at the crumbly earth.
Then I heard something scuffle. I wasn’t sure where the scuffler was, but I stopped digging and banged on the trunk a couple of times with my stick.
“I need this tree more than you do right now,” I said loudly. “I really do. So if you’re in there, ready to give me rabies with your vicious little teeth, please, please don’t. That’s all I need right now. I’m sure you have other trees or burrows or relatives that you can crash with just this one night.”
It was a big enough hollow to huddle in, if I didn’t mind a knob of root sticking into my back. Believe me, I didn’t. I was ready to curl up, and this place seemed at least semiprotected.
I slumped down, shivering uncontrollably.
“It’s just shock,” I whispered. My mouth was numb, my whole jaw chattering alarmingly. “Shock and cold and freezing wet jeans. It’s not hypothermia. It’s not rabies…”
I tucked my knees up under my chin and wrapped my throbbing hands around my knees, relieved that it was so dark I didn’t have to look at the blood.
“I’ll just wait here. Mom and Dad will come to find me. I just have to wait here. I just have to listen for them.”
I held on to the thought of Mom and Dad coming to rescue me. Then I thought of Joe and Ellen. Now they might be a better bet in the rescue department, being far less clueless and more experienced in forest skills. I started hoping for Joe and Ellen. Then anyone, really. I wasn’t feeling picky.
What were they all doing now? Surely they would be worried. Surely they would be looking for me. I must have been gone for hours…
I strained my ears to hear if anyone was calling my name.
I could only hear the yelping on the other side of the river, but it seemed fainter. Maybe the ferocious wolves had sort of run out of conversation. Maybe even coyotes get bored. The more I listened, the more I wondered whether the sounds were actually fainter or whether I was slipping in and out of consciousness.
“Yeah, that’s right, wolves and coyotes! You crawl on home. Home to your little…burrows. Dens. Whatever,” I called, semideliriously. “See that river? That river is The Line. Your side is there. Mine is here,” I ranted. “I may be wet and bloody and hopelessly lost in the backyard, but this”—I waved an arm at the forest behind me—“this is my side of the forest.”
A heroic speech, which I just managed to finish before I fainted.
CHAPTER TEN
Night
I have no idea how long I was out, but I awoke with a start to pitch blackness.
Was that a cry? Was someone calling my name? Was it someone coming to rescue me?
I sat up, cracked my head on the tree root, swore, rubbed my head and listened. Nothing. Silence.
Surely Mom and Dad would yell a few times. Many, many times. They wouldn’t yell just once, then shrug their shoulders and head back. Would they?
A terrible, terrible worry had been growing in my head. Would Mom and Dad remember our conversation about those two survival books and actually, conceivably think I’d meant to walk into the forest and live off the land? They would never think that. Would they? Maybe they thought I wanted to be like that kid in My Side of the Mountain who left the city to try his hand at surviving in the Catskill Mountains. Maybe they’d come around in a few months, expecting me to make them Christmas dinner, forest-style.
Of course they wouldn’t think that. This was me, Flynn. Their son. They knew me. I laughed out loud. But the laugh sounded forced and artificial. And it only started as a laugh: by the end, it was a sob.
It was so dark that I had to put my hand up to my eyes to make sure they were open. My hand was shaking with cold, my whole body shivering. It was incredibly, stupidly cold.
Somehow I had to get through this night without freezing to death.
“Covers, some kind of covers,” I muttered, feeling around like there might be a feather duvet or a wool blanket within reach.
I crawled out of my little hole and groped around the base of the tree. A mass of cold dead leaves gave off a dank, earthy smell as I clawed them into a pile. I stuffed them down the arms of my hoodie, then zipped it right up and shoved leaves up the front and back as far as they would go. It actually worked pretty well if I didn’t move around too much—I tended to shed leaves at the slightest movement. It vaguely reminded me of a padded Incredible Hulk costume I had when I was five. Only in that costume, I looked jacked and superpowerful. Or so I’d thought when I was five. In my current outfit, I just looked odd and desperate, but I didn’t care.
My legs were a bigger problem. The bottoms of my jeans were freezing into two icy cylinders. I tucked my hands up my sleeves and beat at the bottom of my jeans, trying to thaw or at least soften them.
I groped some more and found a few pine branches at the bottom of a nearby tree. I dragged them over to my little hovel and covered my legs and feet. I curled up again against the tree. It was, admittedly, not perfect. Slightly less comfortable than a feather duvet. But it blocked some of the wind. I was still miserably cold, but not quite as miserably cold as I had been.
I refused to think about any insects that could be on the leaves. Insects? Don’t make me laugh (then sob). Insects were the least of my worries.
Where were Mom and Dad? Seriously, where were they? It had to be the middle of the night now. I had an absurd mental picture of them sitting around the fire at Joe and Ellen’s, talking and laughing, and then one of them saying, “Wow, 3:00 AM already! We should probably be going. Wait—where’s Flynn?” Crazy. Of course they had missed me; of course they were looking for me. It was just that it was night and absolutely black out here in this lonely forest.
Inky black. In the city, it’s never pitch black. There are streetlights, house lights, car headlights. Lights. And there are always a few people around, no matter how late it is. Some places, like airports, hospitals and McDonald’s, even stay open 24/7. But out here, I couldn’t even see the moon. Or even one star. It had been a cloudy day, I remembered.
I slumped against the tree with my eyes open. I knew they were open because when I shut them tightly for a while and then opened them again, I could distinguish slight shapes in the gloom. Pitch-black trees against a charcoal sky. I had to stay awake, had to listen for the sounds of the huge rescue operation that was likely under way.
I began to hear distinct noises. The river was a constant background sound, but it seemed to be getting louder. The wind would build up steam, whine and moan, then die down. And you might think trees are silent, but they creak and crack, and they drop cones and branches and leaves. The tree I was sheltering under even vibrated slightly in the wind. This will sound stupid, but for the first time in my life, I actually thought about trees as living things. I mean, I’d always known they were alive, but now I really felt them living.
“Hey, tree?” I whispered to the one I was resting my back against. “Thanks. Thanks for letting me hang with you, and being big, and…you know, having my back and everything.”
There were other noises. Ones I feared. Animal noises. Scuffling, scurrying noises. Small creatures stupidly bustling and banging around with the sole purpose, it seemed, of waking up predators.
Shut up, you stupid, scurrying things
. Do you have some kind of creepy rodent death wish? Do you want to be a midnight snack? Do you? Nothing is so important to do that it can’t wait until morning. So just curl up quietly in your hole in the ground or in a tree or something.
I heard an owl hoot and saw a dark shadow take off from a tree and soar noiselessly away. Speaking of sinister night fliers, I wondered if there were bats out here. I tightened my hood.
Once I heard another far-off howling sound. Not the kind of sound that lulls a kid to sleep, let me tell you.
I lay there, red-eyed and alert, teeth clenched and chattering, stiffening in the cold. I jumped at every faint sound. There was no way I was going to sleep. I would stay up all night long. All I had to do was hang on until morning. Everything would be better in the morning. Someone would find me in the morning. If Mom and Dad had given up, surely Joe and Ellen would take a turn, and when they got tired, maybe somebody would alert the authorities.
“Aaooooowwww…” The far-off coyote or wolf howled again, like that last annoying kid who just will not shut up at a sleepover even though everyone else is ready to sleep.
And that was when I had a feverish thought that made my goose-bumpy skin pucker and get even goose-bumpier: wolf or werewolf?
I thought of a movie some of my friends and I had seen last week at a “horror-thon” at Nick’s place. We’d all laughed at it then, but right now that werewolf seemed very, very plausible, slinking through the darkness, desperate, so desperate, for the taste of blood…
I whimpered. The trees cracked and moaned and shivered around me.
The taste-of-blood idea made me think of vampires, and vampires made me think of zombies, and zombies made me think of orcs, and orcs made me think of homicidal maniacs in hockey masks, with chain saws…
“Stop it!” I said out loud. I dug my chipped fingernails into my bloody hands. “Just stop it. Get a grip on yourself, Flynn. It’s a forest. Just a forest. Joe and Ellen live out here.”
Lost in the Backyard Page 4
