The Wild

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Why are you here?” Dawn asks Brielle.

  Brielle hands Dawn her canteen. “What do you mean?” she replies. “I told you, I’m going to headquarters. Someone has to save Amber.”

  “No, I know that part,” Dawn replies. “I mean, why are you here? The program? What are you in for?”

  Brielle sucks on her candy and doesn’t reply for a moment. She looks out across the ridge and down toward the snowy forest below.

  “Let’s just say my parents and I have fundamentally different opinions about certain aspects of who I am,” she says, finally.

  Dawn stares at her, not really getting it.

  “They’re pretty religious,” Brielle explains. “I’m…not. They thought that sending me here would convert me.”

  “To a religious person?” Dawn asks.

  “No,” Brielle says. “To a straight one.”

  Dawn frowns. Brielle catches her expression, and for the first time, Dawn thinks the other girl looks unsure of herself.

  Just as quickly, though, Brielle’s expression hardens. She closes up again. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

  “It’s cool,” Dawn says. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know it’s cool,” Brielle replies. “Thank you. End of discussion.”

  Dawn doesn’t say anything. She takes a drink of water and when Brielle reaches for the canteen, Dawn hands it back to her. They stand in silence for a few awkward minutes, Dawn wanting to apologize but afraid of pissing off Brielle more than she has already.

  Then Brielle shoulders her pack again. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get moving.”

  “I just,” Dawn says.

  Brielle stops. Looks at her. “What?”

  Dawn hesitates. Can’t look at Brielle. “You’re going to go back to headquarters,” she says. “You’re going to turn yourself in.”

  Brielle says slowly, “Yeah?”

  Dawn gestures to Brielle’s pack. “You could have gone for the highway,” she says. “They’ll just send you back to your family.”

  Brielle doesn’t say anything for a beat. Just looks out across the forest some more.

  “Amber needs saving,” she says, finally. “Lucas, too. I’ll deal with my family later.”

  Then she turns and walks away.

  “I KILLED MY DAD,” Dawn tells Brielle. She’s hurrying to catch up with the other girl, feeling like she has to say something, confess something, to evaporate the awkwardness between them. “I messed up, and my dad died, and that’s why they sent me here.”

  Brielle stops walking. Turns back and looks Dawn over, appraising her. “Explain,” she says.

  So Dawn explains. About Olivia and Madison and Avengers. About the party and how she’d puked and had to call her dad. About how her dad had come to get her, and how the drunk driver had run the red light. And how it was Dawn’s fault, all of it.

  It feels good to talk about it. To confess.

  And then Dawn tells Brielle the rest, what came after. How she couldn’t cope with the grief or the guilt. How she began to cut class, how she began to self-medicate.

  How her mom met someone new, and Dawn ran off with Julian.

  “None of it would have happened,” she tells Brielle, “if I hadn’t killed my dad.”

  Brielle shakes her head. Her lip curls. “That’s stupid,” she says. “You’re not here because you killed your dad. Your dad’s death was an accident.”

  Dawn starts to argue. Brielle cuts her off. “You’re here because you don’t know how to cope. Because you chose drugs and some asshole named Julian instead of dealing with your feelings like an adult,” she says.

  Brielle says, “But you didn’t kill your dad.”

  “And you already know that,” she says.

  Dawn stares at Brielle. She doesn’t say anything.

  Brielle meets her eyes and just shrugs. “Real talk,” she says. “Sorry. But you know who is a killer?”

  Beat.

  “Warden,” Brielle says. “And probably Brandon and Evan, too. And if we don’t keep moving, we’re going to be their next victims.”

  IT TURNS OUT BRIELLE is from the same part of Oregon as Warden. It turns out she knows a little bit more about Warden than Dawn. And it turns out Warden wasn’t exactly truthful when he was telling Dawn his Origin Story.

  “It was in the news,” Brielle tells Dawn. “All over the place. I can’t believe they let him into this program.”

  Dawn frowns, confused. “What do you mean?” she asks. “I thought he just…stole a truck, or something?”

  Brielle makes a face. “He’s dangerous,” she says. “Like, violent, but you know that. Pretty much the whole county wanted him thrown in jail.” She shrugs. “Rich family, though. They talked the judge out of it. Sent him here instead of jail, and now here we are.”

  Dawn takes a moment to digest this. “Okay,” she says. “But what did he do?”

  Brielle meets her eyes. “He attacked some guy,” she tells Dawn. “Warden and his friends. Beat him nearly unconscious and left him by the side of the ocean.” She shakes her head again. “The guy drowned when the tide came in. Warden’s friends went to jail.”

  Brielle shrugs again.

  “Rich family,” she says again.

  * * *

  There’s no time to process this new nugget of information. Not with Warden at large and Amber and Lucas both getting closer to death with every minute that passes.

  (Assuming they’re not dead already.)

  Dawn and Brielle stop talking. They focus on covering ground. It’s easy now, in the daylight, with decent visibility and the top of the ridge more or less a straight line, albeit a line with plenty of ups and downs, over boulders and small rises, and down into narrow valleys.

  They move slowly, and it’s not just because of Dawn’s ankle. Warden and the others are out here somewhere, and Dawn knows the last thing she and Brielle need is to stumble upon them accidentally. Ideally, she and Brielle will be able to just dodge the others completely, find a way to sneak past them and continue down to headquarters without Warden or anyone else even realizing they’re there. It sounds like the easiest solution to the Warden problem, and given the latest developments, it honestly might be the only solution.

  There’s no way Dawn and Brielle are going to overpower three big teenage boys (plus Kyla, wherever she stands).

  So they hike, and hike cautiously, scanning the ridge ahead of them and stopping every few minutes to listen. They don’t hear anything; the ridge is still spooky quiet, and so they keep going and hope that, I don’t know, Warden and the others fell to their deaths somewhere in the night.

  (It feels weird to Dawn to be hoping that other people are dead or at least grievously injured, but whenever she starts to feel guilty she pictures Alex all beaten up and bruised at the bottom of that ravine, and she knows Brandon and Evan will gladly do the same to her if they catch her. It’s kill or be killed at this point.)

  Dawn and Brielle hike for an hour or so. They climb over the last mini mountain on the top of the ridge, and then the ridge turns southeast and begins to drop altitude, and from what Dawn can remember this means there’s only maybe another hour or two in the alpine before they pick up the trail again through the forest.

  And after that it’s another solid five or six hours, maybe, back to headquarters, but they’re traveling light and there’s plenty of daylight left, and even though the trail is going to take them right past the spot where that angry mama bear tried to attack her on the outbound hike, Dawn isn’t thinking about that right now. She’s starting to believe that even on her busted ankle they can make it back, past Warden and the others and even that scary bear; they can make it to safety before darkness sets in.

  It’s a good thought and it buoys her spirits and gives her energy, and she kee
ps hiking, following Brielle and putting one foot in front of the other and blocking out the pain and the fatigue and the hunger. They chew up the trail and now and then there’s even a cairn again, and even knowing that Warden and the others are out there, Dawn can’t help feeling just a little bit optimistic.

  She’s survived the ridge, and it could have killed her. She didn’t freeze to death or plummet into the abyss, and Brandon and Evan didn’t catch her. Hiking, in daylight, with Brielle, everything seems safer somehow.

  Dawn’s even starting to think about what will happen when they reach headquarters, when Brielle stops dead in front of her, and Dawn nearly runs her over.

  “Hold up,” Brielle says. She’s staring at the ground. Dawn looks over Brielle’s shoulder, and sees what Brielle sees.

  Footprints.

  THERE’S JUST ENOUGH SNOW HERE that the footprints show up clearly. They’re muddled, some of them—most of them. You’d expect that from a group all following the same trail. But here and there are distinct prints in the snow. Various sizes, but mostly large sizes, boys’ sizes—and they’re all headed in one direction: east.

  “We’re still behind them,” Brielle tells Dawn. “So that’s good.”

  Dawn stares down at the footprints and knows this gives them a serious advantage. So long as there are prints to follow, they’ll know where the boys are. That means they probably won’t get ambushed, at least if they’re careful.

  It’s a good sign, but it’s spooky, too. It’s a clear sign the boys are out here.

  Still looking for Dawn and Brielle and Lucas.

  Somewhere between here and safety.

  * * *

  Dawn and Brielle follow the footprints.

  Well, they follow the ridge and keep the footprints in sight, making sure the prints don’t wander off or deviate or circle back or do anything else unexpected.

  The prints lead where Dawn and Brielle are heading, down the ridge as it loses altitude and toward the southeast end where it drops into the forest. It’s more sheltered here, on this end of the ridge; it’s still bare rock and minimal trees and shrubs, but the wind is coming from the west, and so as Dawn and Brielle descend, the ridge forms a natural barrier behind them. It’s warmer, marginally. The snow thins out a little bit.

  Dawn thinks about Lucas. She wonders if he’ll be okay, and for a moment she feels guilty that she abandoned him. Feels like maybe she should have stayed with him, left Brielle to save the day.

  He’s alone back there, after all. He could have frozen to death in the night, or bled out from the stab wound.

  Lucas could be dead, and it would be Dawn’s fault.

  Just like her dad.

  Right?

  * * *

  Brielle stops walking again. This time, Dawn doesn’t nearly run her over.

  But this time, Brielle doesn’t look quite so confident.

  She looks back at the trail behind them, then stands on her tiptoes and cranes her neck toward the end of the ridge, a couple of hundred yards away. She frowns and looks around, to the right, where the ridge drops away into a vast, forested valley. And to the left, where it climbs to a stubby summit a few hundred feet above them.

  “What?” Dawn asks, the look on Brielle’s face starting to scare her. “What is it?”

  Brielle doesn’t answer right away. She gestures to the ground in front of them. Dawn follows her eyes and sees pristine snow, and for a half second, she doesn’t quite get it. Then she does. “The tracks,” she says.

  Brielle nods, grim. The tracks they’ve been following, the footprints they were so sure meant Warden and the others were still ahead of them?

  They’re gone.

  Disappeared without any kind of warning. Ended right here on a flat patch of smooth rock, as if at random.

  They’re just gone.

  Dawn stares down at the snow, trying to process it. Her exhausted brain can’t figure out what it means. And then Brielle stiffens beside her, and Dawn senses movement in her peripheral vision.

  And she turns just in time to see Warden step out from behind a massive boulder, ten or maybe twenty feet back the way they’ve come. Brandon and Evan flank him, grinning like a couple of maniacs.

  (Kyla follows the boys. Reluctantly, from the looks of it.)

  (She’s not smiling anyway.)

  Warden doesn’t look quite so crazy as Brandon and Evan. But Dawn can see the glint in those green eyes. He meets her gaze, and his lips curl into a smirk. She can tell he’s savoring this.

  “Gotcha,” he says.

  BRIELLE TAKES OFF. Drops her pack and starts running, without a word. Warden glances at Brandon, and Brandon and Evan launch themselves after her, blowing past Dawn like she isn’t even there, looking like a couple of hyenas chasing down lunch.

  Warden doesn’t move, and neither does Dawn. Neither does Kyla for that matter, but Dawn isn’t worried about her, not just yet.

  She’s just hoping that Brielle can get away.

  Warden studies Dawn and looks pleased with himself. “We spotted you coming,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder up the ridge to the northwest, the way they’ve come down. “A long way back.”

  Dawn wishes she could smack the cocky grin right off his face, but she doesn’t bother to try.

  “Found a nice hiding place,” Warden continues. “Then we retraced our steps a little bit, to confuse you.” He grins wider. “I guess it worked, huh?”

  He takes a step toward her, then another. His eyes don’t leave hers, and the smirk on his face fades into something else. Something…remorseful.

  “I wish you hadn’t run,” he tells her. “I really wish you hadn’t run, Dawn.”

  He’s going to kill her.

  A million cliché lines from a million cliché movies run through Dawn’s head.

  (You’ll never get away with this.)

  (You don’t have to do this.)

  (Just let us go; we won’t tell on you.)

  (I (*sob*) trusted you.)

  (Whyyyy?)

  But as exhausted and hopeless as Dawn is feeling, it’s not enough to send her into full cliché mode, not yet. She’s not going to fall for Warden’s charm, either, or wish things were different or even feel dumb about possibly falling for him. She’s not that girl anymore.

  Those days are over.

  Dawn looks at Warden and doesn’t even notice those green eyes or the obvious muscle beneath his jacket. She doesn’t see a busted love triangle when she sees him.

  She sees an asshole.

  She stands there and looks at him and doesn’t say anything, and just hopes that Brielle can get away.

  BUT BRIELLE DOESN’T GET AWAY. Brandon and Evan drag her back to where Warden and Dawn and Kyla stand. It’s taken a disappointingly short amount of time for them to capture her.

  Like, less than ten minutes.

  Brielle struggles against them and swears and generally makes it known she doesn’t appreciate this treatment. But Brandon and Evan are bigger than her and they grip her tight, and no matter how hard Brielle fights, she can’t get away.

  (Evan does have a bloody nose, though.)

  (And Brandon appears to be limping.)

  Brandon and Evan march Brielle to where the others are standing, and they present her to Warden with undisguised pride. And Warden looks at both Dawn and Brielle, and Dawn can see how he’s so in love with the idea of himself that he’s going to force them to listen to him talk before he kills them.

  And at this point, Dawn figures she would probably just prefer death. “Just fucking do it already,” she says, before Warden can open his mouth. “Whatever you’re planning, spare us the monologue and just get it done.”

  Warden blinks.

  Looks surprised.

  Looks almost human. (For a fraction of a second.)


  Then his eyes narrow. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s get it done.”

  Evan keeps holding Brielle as Brandon comes over to Dawn. He takes her by the shoulders, rough, and grips her so she can feel his fingers through the material of her jacket.

  He leans in close to her and Dawn can smell sweat and dirt and boy, unwashed hair and unbrushed teeth, and even though she knows she must smell nearly as bad, somehow Brandon’s stench seems like the olfactory manifestation of who he is as a person. Which is to say, foul.

  Noxious.

  Evil.

  Dawn can feel his stank breath in her ear and she knows he must be grinning, knows he’s enjoying this, and she tries to ignore him and tries not to feel scared and pretty well fails at both objectives.

  Then Warden tilts his head toward the south edge of the ridge, where it drops into the valley, and Brandon shoves Dawn forward and Evan shoves Brielle, and Dawn realizes the boys mean to throw her and Brielle off the edge of the cliff.

  She realizes this is it.

  “KYLA,” DAWN SAYS when Warden’s led them to the edge of a precipice that doesn’t seem nearly as high as the abyss into which Dawn and Lucas nearly plummeted last night, but is still plenty high enough to kill them.

  (And is studded with jagged rocks.)

  (And trees.)

  (And other painful obstacles.)

  “Kyla,” she says, and hates how shaky and desperate she sounds. “Kyla, are you seriously okay with this?”

  She twists around in Brandon’s grip to meet the other girl’s eyes, but Kyla won’t look at her. Stares down at the ground instead. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just can’t go back where I came from.”

  “They’re going to kill us,” Dawn tells her. “You know that, right?”

  Kyla doesn’t answer.