The Wild

by Owen Laukkanen

  Not when someone in the Pack stabbed Alex to death.

  (Somewhere inside of her, Dawn knows that Cam and Wendy believed they were Doing the Right Thing by sending her to Out of the Wild. She knows that running away to live with a drug dealer was emphatically the wrong thing to do. She knows that she hasn’t been Doing the Right Thing for a long while now, probably ever since her dad died.)

  (But that doesn’t mean she can’t start.)

  * * *

  As quickly and as quietly as she can, Dawn gathers her supplies in Kyla’s tent.

  Warm clothes.

  Camp stove.

  Water pump.

  (Just the basics.)

  She leaves the books behind. Too heavy. She doesn’t pack her sleeping bag, either, or her tarp, for the same reason.

  (She’s going to need to be quick.)

  It will take two days to get to headquarters, she imagines. She’ll be lighter and faster on her own than with the rest of the group, but the storm’s coming back, and that’s going to be a big problem.

  The weather will slow her down, make it hard to navigate. It’s going to be a difficult hike. But what choice does she have? Amber’s depending on her. And Alex deserves justice.

  Going for help is the Right Thing to Do.

  * * *

  When Dawn has her bag packed, she slowly, gingerly, leans over and unzips the tent flap. Pulls her jacket tight around her and laces up her hiking boots and slips out into the storm.

  (Behind her, Kyla stirs, but she doesn’t wake up.)

  It’s nearly pitch dark and the rain is starting to spatter.

  The wind is blowing and the air is raw.

  Any normal person would just crawl back in their sleeping bag and zip the tent closed, and Dawn’s really tempted to do just that. But she keeps thinking about her dad, and what he would want her to do.

  And she knows it isn’t even a question.

  * * *

  Dawn raids the Pack’s stash of food. Lowers the bag down from the tree where it’s hanging and turns on her headlamp and combs through it.

  Thing is, there isn’t much food left. Dawn manages to salvage a couple of canteens and a pot. Emergency matches. Some energy bars and some trail mix, a pack of rehydration gummy candies. Two backpacker meals—Santa Fe Chicken and Bombay Delight—and three packages of instant oatmeal. She leaves the lentils.

  It’s not much food for a solid two-day hike. Dawn knows she’ll be starving by the time she gets to headquarters, but so be it. Those Out of the Wild office nerds can cook her a freaking buffet when she gets there.

  Dawn zips up her backpack. Buckles it closed. Lifts it onto her shoulders and fastens the straps. It’s lighter without her tarp and the books and her sleeping bag, so that’s a plus. All that remains is to take the first step, and the next.

  All that remains is to Do the Right Thing.

  But of course it’s never that easy.

  DAWN’S CREEPING PAST the other tents when she sees him. Warden, sitting at the remains of last night’s fire, now just smoldering, flickering charcoal and ash.

  Smoke, and cold rain.

  Warden’s sitting on a log with his hoodie pulled up. At first, he looks like a statue, or any one of the boys, but then a log pops and blows sparks in the air, and Dawn can see that it’s Warden.

  And she can see that he’s watching her.

  “What are you doing?” Warden asks. He stares at her, not moving, his face half engulfed in shadow and his voice chillingly calm. Beside him on the log sits Christian’s knife and Amber’s bear spray. Dawn tries not to focus on the knife, tries to meet Warden’s eyes.

  She doesn’t say anything, and Warden picks up the knife. He stands and walks toward her. “Dawn?” he says. “I asked you a question.”

  Dawn is terrified.

  Naturally.

  She feels her whole body start to shake involuntarily and she prays that Warden can’t tell. His face dissolves into shadow as he moves away from the fire, and he’s just a silhouette and the silhouette is holding a knife.

  Dawn swallows and tries not to look scared. “Where did you get that knife?” she asks.

  Warden glances down at the blade in his hand. “This thing?” he says. He studies it, absentmindedly. Turns the blade over in his hand, watching how it catches the light. “It’s Christian’s knife.”

  “I know that,” Dawn says. “So how did you…?”

  Warden looks up sharply. Dawn can’t see his eyes, but she can tell they’re boring into her, reading her soul. “I took it from him,” he says. “On the top of the Claw.”

  It’s at that moment Dawn knows that Christian is dead.

  Because she knows Christian, and Christian wouldn’t give up his knife. Not to a Pack member and especially not to Warden. She knows if Warden took the knife from Christian, it wasn’t with Christian’s permission. That means they must have fought for it. Warden walked away with the knife.

  Dawn knows that means Christian didn’t walk away, period.

  * * *

  Warden must see the moment of realization in Dawn’s eyes.

  “Fuck Christian,” he says, and Dawn steps back, surprised by the ferocity in his voice. “He was a prison guard, just like Amber. Just like the rest of them. He wasn’t a good person, and he deserved what he got.”

  Dawn doesn’t say anything. She might be on board with this line of thinking. The counselor was a creep, after all. He’d been torturing Kyla for months. He wasn’t a good person, and if someone had to die, then maybe it’s best it was Christian.

  But Christian’s not the only one who’s dead.

  “What about Alex?” Dawn asks. “What did he do wrong?”

  It’s impossible to see Warden’s face to tell how he reacts. But what Dawn can tell, he doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak for a long period of time.

  And then he laughs. “I guess you saw more of Alex than I thought,” he says. “You weren’t supposed to figure it out.”

  Dawn says nothing. Her heart is pounding.

  “It would have looked like an accident,” Warden says. “By the time anyone found him the animals would have had their way with his body. No one would ever know how he died.”

  Dawn tries to speak but her mouth is too dry. She wets her lips. “Why?”

  Warden shrugs. “He was a liability. He would have raised the alarm at headquarters, and that would have cost us time.”

  Warden says, “He knew where we were going.”

  He says, “He chose to abandon the rest of the Pack.”

  And then he shrugs again.

  “Also,” he says, “I just didn’t like how he tried to play hero.”

  “SO YOU SEE WHY we can’t let you leave,” Warden says.

  Dawn stares at him.

  “You’re a part of the team, Dawn,” he tells her. “We have to all stick together. I can’t let you go back to headquarters, not now that you know.”

  Warden takes a step forward, and Dawn sees how the firelight glints off the knife. “You’re either with us, or against us,” Warden tells her. “Whose side are you on, Dawn? The prisoners, or the guards?”

  “Think carefully,” Warden says. “There’s only one Correct Answer.”

  It goes without saying this is not exactly the situation Dawn’s dad had in mind when he preached to her about Doing the Right Thing.

  Or maybe it is.

  Dawn stares at the shadow that is Warden and the glinting knife. And she knows she’s seeing the true Warden now, and whoever she was falling for before wasn’t him. And she knows she was foolish to even follow him this far.

  Warden watches her. He shifts the knife in his hand.

  “Silence,” he says, “will be considered an Incorrect Answer.”

  * * *

  Dawn knows there’s
no way out of this mess. She knows that in a moment Warden’s either going to:

  Do something awful, or

  Wake up Brandon and Evan, and they’ll do the awful thing for him.

  She can’t outrun Warden, not for long. But if she stays here, she’s probably dead anyway. No way Warden lets her live, not now that she knows he killed Alex. Not now that he knows she wants to escape.

  She holds her head high and stares at the shadows that obscure Warden’s face. “I’m leaving,” she tells him. “That’s my answer.”

  * * *

  It sounds brave and badass, and for an instant, it makes Dawn feel pretty good. But then Warden lunges for her and grabs her and wrenches her forward, and he’s too strong for Dawn by a mile and he pulls her off-balance and staggering toward the fire, and Warden keeps dragging her until she’s falling forward, until she’s on her knees in the mud.

  And then she looks up, and Warden’s raising the knife.

  Dawn opens her mouth to scream. It’s all she has left and she knows it isn’t much. But Warden’s raising the knife and the fire’s catching his eyes and she can see how he looks at her and there’s no Warden there—at least, not the guy she thought she knew.

  “I told you,” Warden says, “you’re not leaving.”

  Dawn opens her mouth to scream. Hoping that somehow if she screams, it will stop him. It will bring the others to help her.

  It will save her life.

  She opens her mouth to scream, but before she can get the words out…

  Warden screams instead.

  THERE’S AN EXPLOSION.

  (Not, like, a boom but a tremendous hissss.)

  And then Warden’s screaming and clutching at his eyes. He’s slashing around—blind—with Christian’s big knife. And Lucas is standing behind him with Amber’s can of bear spray.

  (The spray is so potent that Dawn’s eyes start to water and she’s suddenly finding it hard to breathe.)

  Lucas lifts her to her feet. Pulls her away from the fire and where Warden is crouched on the ground now, gagging. Lucas pulls Dawn away from the tents. Toward the trail that leads back to the Raven’s Claw.

  “Come on,” he tells her. “Before everyone else wakes up.”

  There’s nothing to do but start running.

  By the light of their headlamps, following the sketchy trail through the mud and the snow that their feet trampled into existence that afternoon. Up toward the barrier trench and the Raven’s Claw and the trail toward help.

  There’s nothing to do but start running, and they do.

  Run, and hope nobody follows.

  Behind them, the forest is silent. The trail is steep and slippery and Dawn almost bails a couple of times, and when she stops to catch her balance and regain her breath she listens, and she can’t hear Warden behind them or anyone else, just the rain and Lucas beside her, trying to catch his own breath.

  There’s no time to be scared anymore. They pause for a second and then they run again, certain that they’re dead if they’re caught. They run and gain altitude and the rain turns to snow and it soaks through Dawn’s pants and her boots and she’s sweating through her undershirt, and her hands and her knees are covered in mud and wet from slipping and crawling and trying to pull herself up.

  Around them, the night grows imperceptibly lighter. Morning is coming, but that doesn’t matter.

  All that matters is getting away.

  AFTER A TIME, THEY REACH the barrier trench, sweaty and out of breath and exhausted. It’s darker in the trench but steadily getting lighter, night turning inexorably to day.

  Briefly, they stop to sip water out of one of Dawn’s canteens, and Dawn transfers as much food as she can into Lucas’s pockets.

  There’s blood on his jacket. A tear in the lining. “Warden’s knife,” Lucas tells her. He pulls the jacket tighter; he won’t let her see. “It’s just a scratch,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

  Dawn studies his face. He stares back at her, earnest, and Dawn knows he’s probably lying, that he’s hurt worse than he’s ready to admit. But there’s no point in pushing him right now.

  (She didn’t steal the first-aid kit from the Pack.)

  “What were you even doing out there, anyway?” she asks Lucas. “Shouldn’t you have been, like, asleep?”

  “I had to pee,” he says, sheepishly. “I saw you and Warden in the light of the fire. I thought—” He looks away. “I just had to know for sure that you like him.”

  Dawn makes a face. “I don’t like him,” she says. “He’s a freaking murderer, Lucas.” She explains to him what she knows about Warden. About Christian and Alex.

  “You didn’t tell me?” Lucas says. “You knew Alex was murdered and you didn’t want to tell me?”

  “I just thought it was safer if no one knew that I knew,” Dawn tells him. “I didn’t want to tip off the killer.”

  Lucas doesn’t say anything, and Dawn can tell he’s hurt. They stand there in silence and drink a little more water.

  “Anyway, thanks,” Dawn says. “For saving my life.”

  The trail up the south side of the trench is steeper than the trail up to the Raven’s Claw tarn. Dawn and Lucas pull themselves skyward using tree roots as handholds, the weight on Dawn’s back threatening to pull her down again to the bottom, send her falling to her death.

  Dawn’s legs are burning. Her knees hurt and her hands are numb. But she can’t afford to stand around feeling sorry for herself.

  (Lucas was, after all, stabbed. And he seems to be doing okay.)

  Gradually, Dawn and Lucas climb out of the trees again, and back into the falling snow and the wind. It’s light enough now that they don’t need flashlights, and if they look back across the barrier trench, Dawn and Lucas can see the shadowy visage of the Raven’s Claw looming over them.

  Ahead of them is more bare rock, a trail marked by cairns across the alpine. Dawn knows they’ll follow this ridge for a few hours before they descend again to the lakes where they camped, and then after that, they’ll climb up to another ridge, a longer ridge, and after that they’ll drop back into the forest and follow the trail toward headquarters.

  Dawn remembers how long it took to hike this far from headquarters. How tired she was.

  It seems like a LONG WAY AWAY.

  She was walking right here when she and Warden traded Origin Stories, Dawn remembers. Following this ridge but in the opposite direction, the Raven’s Claw looming ahead of them and nothing but blue sky around it, no hint to the drama and awfulness that waited for them on the mountain.

  She walks beside Lucas away from the Raven’s Claw, and Lucas doesn’t say anything, just keeps hiking, one foot in front of the other, and Dawn thinks about Warden and how she might have actually fallen for him, and she feels stupid and naive and kind of hates herself for it.

  But also, she kind of misses that moment, too.

  If that makes any sense.

  Lucas walks quietly beside her, solid and dependable and never missing a step, a golden retriever with a job to do. He doesn’t look scared anymore.

  They hike in silence, steadily climbing through fresh snow, marking their progress by the little rock-pile cairns that sit half buried on top of bare rock. Above them, the weather is calming, the snow easing off, and they can start to see a couple of cairns ahead, start to see the mountains on either side of the ridge and the valleys in between them, the dark, inky-black lakes where they’re headed.

  Lucas says nothing, and Dawn says nothing, and they keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other. And for a while it’s like they’re completely alone, like they’re the only people left alive in the world.

  It’s the howling that chases that train of thought from Dawn’s station.

  IT’S NOT WOLVES THAT ARE HOWLING. That might almost be better. It’s no
t any wild animal making those noises, strange and unnerving and otherworldly, echoing up from the bottom of the trench.

  (If you’ve ever heard a wolf howl, it sounds, well, romantic. Lonely and plaintive and wild. These howls are not romantic; there’s a cruelty to them that’s hard to explain. Like a gleeful, chilling, mocking quality that immediately scares the shit out of Dawn.)

  Lucas glances back, over his shoulder. His eyes go wide. Then, suddenly, he pulls Dawn to the ground, nearly toppling her over onto her backpack.

  “What the hell?”

  They wind up behind a boulder. Lucas grips the shoulder strap of Dawn’s backpack, holding her in place, as they peer over the top of the boulder toward the Raven’s Claw.

  The storm has dissipated entirely now. The Claw stands tall and proud in all of its evil, jagged glory. It’s covered in fresh snow, but the sheer rock faces are black. Looking up at the mountain, Dawn can’t believe they were ever near the summit. She can’t believe Amber fell down one of those black faces of rock and lived, however briefly.

  She can see the tarn now, too. The tarn and the boulder fields are probably two or three miles away over vast, open air, but Dawn can see them, and the tarn is a black speck like a pimple against the white of the mountain.

  But the howls steal her focus back before too long.

  (Picture those smug, self-righteous smirks that Brandon and Evan are always wearing. Now imagine those smirks as a noise, except totally unhinged, and that’s what the howls sound like.)

  The howling is coming from the barrier trench, and Dawn knows that means only one thing: Warden’s told the others that Dawn and Lucas have turned back. And Brandon and Evan are coming to find them.