The Wild

by Owen Laukkanen

  THERE’S A FINE LITERARY TRADITION of people getting stuck in the middle of nowhere and their whole fabric of society breaking down.

  Maybe you had to read Lord of the Flies in class. Or, like, Heart of Darkness.

  If you did, then you kind of know what to expect here.

  People find themselves in the wilderness and it doesn’t take long before the rules don’t apply anymore.

  All of the unwritten, unspoken tenets of civilized life we take for granted?

  They break down in the wilderness.

  All those laws you think protect you?

  They don’t matter when there’s no one around to enforce them.

  Some people, in the wilderness, they let themselves go. They give in to the inhuman side of their brains. They build their own societies, with their own rules.

  They howl at the fucking moon.

  DAWN AND LUCAS CAN’T SEE IT, but back at the camp, the thin fabric of society has begun to tear to shreds. They didn’t see how Brandon and Evan discovered Warden by the remains of the campfire, how he coughed and choked and couldn’t breathe, and then when he finally could, he told them what Dawn and Lucas had done.

  They couldn’t see how Brandon and Evan set out after Dawn and Lucas, the gleam in their eyes as they thought about what came next.

  They can’t see how killing Dawn and Lucas isn’t a necessity for Brandon and Evan, a task that needs to be done, however distasteful, to ensure Pack survival.

  No.

  The Pack has killed twice. Alex and Christian are dead, and their deaths broke down a barrier. The rules don’t matter anymore.

  What Dawn and Lucas can’t see, but can surely remember, is how Brandon and Evan have been outsiders from day one, lurking on the margins and not engaging with any of the Out of the Wild teachings.

  Neither of them was going to be saved by this program, not while the other was around. They endured what they had to, sure. They did as little as they could while still rising through the ranks, but they weren’t going to walk out of these woods any different from how they’d walked in.

  And Warden recognized that, and he used it. And he’s using it still.

  This is the moment Brandon and Evan have been waiting for. The chains are broken. There aren’t any adults anymore, and there is an excuse.

  Warden’s focused on survival, self-preservation.

  Brandon and Evan want to sow chaos; it just so happens that Warden’s interests align right now with the sowing of chaos.

  Dawn and Lucas can’t be allowed to make it to safety. To tell what they saw, what Warden has done. Not if Warden wants to survive.

  So Brandon and Evan.

  So chaos.

  So the boys howl like animals, because the chains have come off.

  EVERYTHING SEEMS TO MOVE SLOWER when you’re being chased. Your feet scramble through the snow trying to find traction. You slip and almost fall. The cairns you’re relying on to guide you suddenly seem to shrink and turn invisible. The trail disappears.

  Behind you, the howling only seems to get closer.

  Dawn runs, or tries to, and feels a hopelessness pervade her, as she’s slipping and falling on the icy rock and snow, knowing Brandon and Evan are coming, knowing they won’t stop until they catch up.

  And then?

  Dawn doesn’t want to think about that. It will be violence; that’s all she knows. It will be violent and desperate and she’ll probably die.

  Dawn doesn’t want to think about that right now. She shoulders her pack and quickens her stride. Digs into the snow and ignores the ache in her muscles and the fatigue behind her eyes.

  From the howling behind her, she can tell that Brandon and Evan are near the top of the trench. Ahead of her and Lucas, the ridge climbs, and Dawn knows they’ll have to turn off it soon and descend down to the lake where they camped.

  There is nothing to do but to get there.

  One foot in front of the other.

  * * *

  They ditch the pack at the far end of the ridge. They have to. There’s no choice.

  “We’ll be faster if we’re lighter,” Lucas tells her, drinking from the canteen and catching his breath. “We have to assume that the others aren’t wearing full gear. They’ll gain on us if we don’t shed some weight.”

  (Lucas keeps his arm across the tear in the front of his jacket, so Dawn can’t see. She can see how he winces every time he moves. How he’s maybe a little bit paler than normal.)

  (But every time Lucas catches her looking, he turns away.)

  They ditch the pot and every spare piece of clothing. The stove and the pump, everything that’s weighing them down.

  “We can make HQ by tomorrow morning if we push through the night,” Lucas says. “We can’t slow down to cook food anyway.”

  They fill their pockets with energy bars and trail mix and refill the canteens from a meltwater stream. Dawn studies the pile of stuff they’re leaving in the snow, and none of it looks extraneous.

  What if we get lost?

  What if the snow starts again?

  What if we don’t make it back by morning?

  But Lucas is right. They can’t afford to slow down. They ditch both backpacker meals with the rest of the extra stuff.

  Dawn sheds her backpack, and they make for the tree line.

  IF YOU’RE GUESSING that Dawn and Lucas’s ridding themselves of necessary supplies will have consequences?

  * * *

  You’re right.

  IT’S FASTER WITHOUT THAT WEIGHT.

  Dawn leaves her gear behind and she and Lucas follow the cairns off the ridge along a trail through a boulder field curving down to their left. They’re dropping altitude again, and in the distance, Dawn can see the first of the lakes they’ll have to pass before they climb to the second and final ridge. Beyond that second ridge, headquarters is maybe a half a day’s hike, but just to get up on that ridge is another four hours’ hike and maybe two thousand feet of elevation changes.

  They’re nowhere near safety.

  Dawn is exhausted. She hasn’t slept well since Amber fell. Even before that, she was half-dead from fatigue from all the hiking. That’s the point of the Out of the Wild program, after all: grind down the bad kids until they’re too tired to talk back. Until they’re so broken they’ll agree to do anything just to get the chance to sleep in an actual bed again.

  Right now, a bed is a foreign concept. Same for a shower, or an actual meal.

  But there’s no point in dwelling on it. Right now, it’s move or die. Dawn and Lucas descend from the first ridge toward the lakes in the distance. Beyond the second lake, Dawn can see the second ridge rising high into the sky again. Her legs ache at the thought of climbing back up to altitude. Her brain’s weary and her thoughts are getting fuzzy.

  But there’s no point in complaining.

  Dawn gobbles down a handful of trail mix and hurries to keep pace with Lucas. They keep hiking.

  IT’S ALMOST SCARIER when you can’t hear the howling.

  Dawn and Lucas descend back into forest and emerge at the end of the first of the lakes. It’s long and narrow and ringed by avalanche paths: big, gigantic boulders that were a bitch to cross the first time and will be even worse in the snow.

  Behind them, Brandon and Evan have stopped yelling, or maybe it’s just that their voices are muffled on the other side of the ridge. Either way, it’s eerily quiet down here by the lake. Dawn and Lucas could be the only people left alive in the world.

  It’s also beautiful here, if you can find a minute or two to stop and appreciate the surroundings. The lake is an emerald-colored jewel and the snow surrounding it is pristine, blanketing the mountainsides and the forest in unblemished white. There are no cell phones allowed in Out of the Wild, but if there were, Dawn would be an Instagram legend.r />
  But, of course, she has other things to worry about.

  She and Lucas skirt the side of the first lake, following a narrow trail between pine trees, and clamber across the avalanche fields, careful not to fall into the deep holes between the rocks. They stop to refill the canteen and drink greedily, and the water is frigid and refreshing and invigorating.

  It does nothing to calm Dawn’s nerves. The boys behind them have stopped howling and they could be anywhere. Dawn keeps glancing behind her, sure that Brandon and Evan are going to appear on the trail in the distance, running like killer zombies with only one thing on their minds.

  She starts to think that maybe the boys have already made it past them, that they’re waiting on the trail somewhere up ahead, planning an ambush. She tries to walk quietly, not make any noise. Strains to listen through the silence for any sound that will give away Brandon and Evan’s position.

  She hears nothing. Her whole body is tense, and her mind, too, like a soldier waiting for the next bomb to hit.

  The boys are out there; Dawn knows it. She doesn’t know where, and that’s the part that really sucks. She starts to think maybe it would be better if she could hear them howling, just so she wouldn’t feel so damn paranoid.

  Then the howling starts up again, and Dawn immediately wants nothing more than to make the noise stop.

  SHE AND LUCAS ARE AT THE END of the first lake when they hear the howling behind them again. There’s a little rise of land that separates the two lakes, and they’re about at the summit of it when the noise tumbles down from high atop the ridge, blows across the lake, and assaults them with that eerie, inhuman, predatory laughter.

  Lucas stops and turns back. Squints up at the ridgeline.

  “They found our stuff,” he says. “They’re coming down off the ridge.”

  Dawn follows his gaze, but she can’t see anything but snow up there. Regardless, if Lucas is right it means the boys are less than two hours’ hike behind them. It means there’s no time to stop and consider which Instagram filter would look best with this lake.

  “Come on,” Lucas says, turning to follow the trail over the rise and down toward the second lake. Dawn studies the ridgeline a moment longer. Feels her fear start to grow into panic as she thinks about what’s up there.

  Who’s up there.

  She pushes the panic down as best as she can. Turns to follow Lucas again.

  * * *

  The next few hours are a slog, exhausting and terrifying in equal measure. Dawn and Lucas find their way down to the second lake, the lake which they camped by on the second night of the trip. They troop past the campsite, empty and abandoned now, and Dawn sees the place where she set up her tarp, where she and Lucas argued over whether the mountain they were going to climb should be called Fart Mountain or the Raven’s Claw.

  Dawn sees the place where Lucas marched off to find firewood, after he’d informed her that Warden and Amber were hooking up.

  And she sees the place where she lay under her tarp all night, thinking about how Warden had probably saved her life, and hoping what Lucas said wasn’t true, that Warden wasn’t sleeping with Amber after all.

  Hoping that Warden might want to hook up with her.

  She hurries past the campsite and doesn’t look back.

  * * *

  The second lake is smaller than the first, with fewer avalanche paths to cross. They make it to the other side in decent time and find where the lake drains into a little river that they have to follow farther down, another half mile or so, before they reach the steep little valley that leads up to the second ridge.

  They stop at the river and each eat a hydration candy.

  “We have to start rationing,” Lucas says. He says it like Dawn’s been pigging out on their meager supplies, like it was her idea to throw the backpacker meals away.

  (Like he actually brought any food on this misadventure.)

  “We have a long way to go yet,” Lucas says.

  * * *

  The valley up to the second ridge is steeper than Dawn remembers. And the trail is much slipperier now that it’s covered in snow.

  They don’t have their packs, so they’re lighter and can move around more easily, but still. It’s a long, grueling climb, and once or twice Dawn nearly loses her footing and slides down the hillside, almost erasing an hour of work.

  She catches herself just in time.

  She pulls her way up the mountain until she’s sweating through her undershirt and her clothes and her hands and her face are covered in mud. Until she can barely feel her fingers, which are bloody and raw and cold.

  Until she emerges at the top of the valley trail into the alpine again, and the second ridge is just ahead of her and Lucas is behind her, still climbing, panting and sweating and trying to keep up, clutching at the tear in his jacket, at the wound he still won’t show her underneath.

  He’s hurting, Dawn can tell. Hurting bad.

  Maybe you should find somewhere to hide, Dawn wants to tell him. But she doesn’t.

  She’s afraid if he lies down to rest he might not stand up again.

  THE BAD NEWS IS THAT IT’S afternoon at this point. From what Dawn can remember, it’ll take the better part of a day to traverse the second ridge. That means they’ll be doing at least some of it in darkness.

  The other bad news is that the weather’s turning again. As Dawn was climbing up the narrow valley, she noticed the first drops of more rain coming down through the trees. Here, in the alpine again, it’s not rain but snow. Not heavy stuff, but a little bit.

  And visibility is fading. Clouds are rolling in, low and dense, bringing with them wind and a penetrating moisture. Dawn stops to catch her breath and drink from the canteen and she’s shivering almost instantly.

  Up here, in the alpine, there are no trees for protection. Nowhere to hide from the wind or the snow. “We need to get across that ridge,” she tells Lucas. “Quickly. Before the weather gets any worse.”

  Lucas is on board with the idea. He’s lagging behind, and visibly struggling. But he must know they could very well die of exposure if they slow down now.

  So they keep climbing, up through boulders and along rocky cliffs, using lichen and shrubs and outcrops for handholds, pulling themselves higher as the clouds descend around them.

  There isn’t a trail up here; it’s cairns again. The first few are easy to spot.

  But then the cairns disappear.

  “I don’t get it,” Lucas says, scratching his head and searching through the fog for the next pile of rocks. “I don’t remember this being so hard.”

  They know if they follow the spine of the ridge, they probably won’t get lost. So they do that. Here and there is a rock pile after all, that seems to be pointing them in the right direction.

  But there were more cairns, Dawn remembers. Every fifty feet or so, clearly visible. Even with the fog, they should be able to see at least two cairns at all times, one ahead and one behind. Now, they’re lucky if they can see just one.

  “Are we going the right way?” Dawn asks.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Lucas replies, but he looks as confused as Dawn feels. “I remember that traverse right there. I remember there used to be a big old pile of rocks beside it.”

  It’s a part of the ridge where it rises in a hump and the trail swings around the east side of it, and Dawn remembers it, too.

  She thinks she remembers it was the spot where she nearly died, where Warden saved her life. And when she thinks back, she can see the rock pile that Lucas remembers. In her mind, at least.

  It’s not there anymore.

  * * *

  They make the traverse anyway. Skirt around the hump and rejoin the spine of the ridge and keep going, and here and there is a sketchy trail through the alpine grass, and every now and then a rock pile.


  By now the clouds have settled in so thick that it’s impossible to tell which way you’re walking; if Dawn and Lucas were to somehow get turned around, they could be walking back toward Brandon and Evan without ever realizing what had happened.

  This is stressful. It is stressful even without knowing there are two maniacs nearby who want to kill you.

  It’s stressful because hypothermia is a thing and Dawn threw away most of her spare clothing, and if they get stuck on this ridgeline they could easily die.

  It’s stressful because it slows everything down.

  Dawn and Lucas aren’t running anymore, or even walking quickly. They’re wandering, squinting through the fog for the next indication of where the trail goes, the ridge rising up in impassible cliff faces and sheer drops without warning, forcing them to retreat and try other directions.

  Every second they waste is a second Brandon and Evan can gain on them.

  But there’s no other hope. There’s only one way across this ridge, and if they deviate from it, Dawn knows they’ll be horribly lost. They have to take the time to find the right trail, no matter how long it takes.

  No matter how much it lets Brandon and Evan gain on them.

  Dawn tries to focus on helping Lucas find the trail. They’re standing at the top of where the ridgeline drops off, and far below she can see a path leading into the fog.

  Just have to get down there, she thinks. Then we’re fine.

  But the cliff is too steep to just walk down, and Dawn knows there must be a marker somewhere to guide them. She walks along the lip of the cliff until she finds an easier descent, a notch in the side of the ridge that looks like a trail.

  “Found it,” she calls to Lucas, who at this point is just a ghost in the fog. She stands there and waits for him to find her.