The Wild

by Owen Laukkanen

  “You think I want to go home?” Dawn says. “My life’s a fucking mess, Kyla. I live with a drug dealer. You think I want to go back?”

  Kyla still doesn’t answer.

  “I wish I could still run away,” Dawn says. “You think I don’t want to just follow you out to that highway and disappear and start over?”

  “I do,” Dawn says. “I really freaking do. But here’s the thing. I’m not a fucking murderer, Kyla. I can’t just fucking kill someone to get what I want.”

  “Kyla,” Dawn says.

  “You’re not a murderer either.”

  “Don’t you let them do this.”

  Dawn is too angry at Kyla to be scared. Like, she knows she’s probably going to die anyway, but it pisses her off that Kyla’s just going to go along with it. Like, Grow some backbone, girl.

  Like, at least lodge a complaint.

  But Kyla doesn’t do anything, not one token gesture. She just wipes her eyes and looks out across the valley. “I’m so sorry,” she says again.

  Then she walks away, and that’s when Dawn knows she and Brielle are properly, truly fucked.

  She knows that in a minute or so, Warden is going to tell Brandon and Evan to push her and Brielle over the edge of this cliff. And she’ll fall, and Brielle will fall, and they’ll collide into those jagged rocks and be impaled by trees and by the time they hit bottom they’ll be barely recognizable.

  And when the rescue teams finally come and find their bodies—assuming they even find the bodies before spring—it’s going to look, by and large, like two silly girls had a terrible accident, not that they were horribly murdered.

  And Warden and Brandon and Evan and Kyla will be long gone by then, disappeared into the ether, and Brielle and Dawn and Lucas and Alex and Christian and Amber will just be six casualties in a terrible, terrible catastrophe.

  Dawn can see it play out.

  And even if she doesn’t have the details quite right, what she’s one hundred percent sure of is that Brandon is going to push her over the edge of this cliff.

  And she’s going to fall.

  And she’s going to die.

  (OF COURSE, THIS ISN’T TRUE.

  You know that’s not how this story ends.

  And you’ve maybe even figured out how Dawn and Brielle are going to extricate themselves from this sticky, shitty situation.

  That’s right.

  Our old buddy, Lucas.)

  THIS IS THE MOMENT Lucas has been waiting for his whole life, if we’re being perfectly honest.

  He’s managed to track Dawn and Brielle down the ridge to this very moment, the last possible seconds before their terrible deaths, limping, bleeding, exhausted, and as he hides behind a boulder a few feet away, Lucas knows his time is now.

  (It had damn well better be.)

  He listens to Dawn try to reason with Kyla. He recognizes pretty quick that it’s not going anywhere. He leans down and fumbles in the snow and comes up with the only weapon he can find.

  (A large rock.)

  He hefts it. Tests its weight.

  And then, before Warden can tilt his head and give Brandon and Evan permission to do the thing…

  Lucas steps out to save the day.

  DAWN HEARS A CRAZY kamikaze scream from somewhere behind her, and then she hears Warden swear, and then it’s like a million different things are happening at the same time and her mind can’t even process.

  Brandon loosens his grip on Dawn enough that she can turn and see Lucas appearing out of nowhere, holding a rock over his head and staggering toward Warden, his face contorted in, like, a heroic expression.

  Everyone stops to look at Lucas—

  (except Brielle).

  Brielle wrenches free of Evan’s grasp—

  (there is a brief, desperate struggle)

  —and then Evan goes tumbling off the edge of the cliff.

  And from the sound he makes when he lands,

  Dawn can tell that it hurts.

  ALL GOOD, RIGHT?

  Except…

  At exactly the same time as Evan’s taking his final flying leap, Warden is sidestepping Lucas’s attack and slashing Lucas with the knife again, making Lucas cry out and knocking him to the ground.

  Brielle, now free of Evan forever, rushes toward Warden to help Lucas.

  This leaves Dawn and Brandon at the edge of the cliff. It leaves Brandon still gripping Dawn’s shoulders, both of them teetering on the precipice, above the rocks and the trees and Evan’s broken body far below.

  The way Brandon’s shoving Dawn forward, Dawn can tell he means to send her down after his bestie.

  And she’s struggling to get free, but Brandon’s grip is just too tight.

  IT’S LUCAS WHO SEES that Dawn is in trouble.

  Lucas, who’s doubled over in the snow, grasping his bloody stomach and trying to find a way to force himself to stand up again. Lucas, who looks up and sees how Brandon is trying to maneuver Dawn over the edge of the cliff without falling himself.

  And it’s Lucas who forgets about the second big freaking stab wound he’s just sustained and who launches himself up to his feet again toward Brandon and Dawn, intent on saving the day again, only better this time since the last time didn’t work out so well.

  Dawn doesn’t see Lucas coming. But she feels him hit Brandon, feels the breath from Brandon’s lungs expel right into her left ear, feels Brandon’s legs start to give out and both of them start to fall.

  She feels their mutual equilibrium start to teeter over the edge.

  And then Brandon lets her go.

  Releases her, just like that, and all of a sudden Dawn is weightless, and she can feel that she’s falling and there’s no way she can stop it.

  Time seems to pause. Dawn hangs there in place. Knowing that at any instant time will restart again and she’ll be falling, hard, to her death.

  Except…

  Lucas.

  * * *

  Lucas reaches out and grabs her sleeve. Saves her freaking life. He holds on to her jacket with hands slick with blood and he pulls Dawn back over the edge and to solid ground.

  But.

  In doing so, he opens himself up to a counterattack from Brandon, who seizes the opportunity to shove Lucas out into thin air.

  Lucas releases Dawn just before he starts falling.

  Dawn stumbles onto the rocks and turns around to help Lucas.

  But Lucas is beyond help.

  Dawn sees his eyes go wide as he realizes what he’s done. Sees his arms reach out and flail for something solid; sees his hands grip Brandon’s jacket but fail to hold on.

  She sees Lucas disappear over the edge of the cliff.

  She screams.

  DAWN BLACKS OUT, A LITTLE BIT.

  Like, something else takes control of her body. She’s not even thinking about killing Brandon, but it happens anyway.

  She’s just so shook about Lucas.

  Brandon’s standing there at the edge of the cliff, triumphant, looking down at Lucas falling, and Dawn hears Lucas hit something and it’s like someone dropped a couch from the top of a ten-story building.

  She realizes that Lucas is probably dead, and then she stops thinking.

  She football-rushes Brandon as he turns from the cliff, that shit-eating, hyena grin still plastered on his face. She collides with Brandon with both of her hands outstretched, hits him with her full body weight and sends him flying backward.

  Sends him falling off the cliff.

  It takes all Dawn has not to go over with him, to slow her momentum on the slippery rocks and squirm away from his scrabbling hands, but she does it.

  She dodges Brandon, and she watches him fall. But she turns away before he hits bottom. She doesn’t want to see Lucas down there. Not now.
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br />   IF YOU’RE GOOD AT MATH, you’ll recognize that leaves four contestants.

  Warden and Kyla.

  Dawn and Brielle.

  Kyla isn’t much of a horse in this race. She isn’t fighting anyone, anyway; she’s just standing off to the side with a look of, like, panic on her face.

  A look of, like, What the fuck have we done?

  Kyla’s a noncombatant.

  That leaves Dawn and Brielle to take care of Warden. And at any other time, Dawn would be feeling those odds.

  Except right now, Brielle is flat on her back in the snow. She’s bleeding from somewhere and she isn’t moving.

  And Warden is standing above her with that big hunting knife.

  Brielle is neutralized.

  And Warden’s turning around to take care of Dawn next.

  DAWN VERSUS WARDEN. Warden versus Dawn.

  (You had to know this was coming.)

  These are not odds that Dawn thinks she can handle. Not faced off with Warden on the edge of a cliff, Warden holding a bloody knife and with murder in his eyes.

  Dawn can see the real Warden now, the boy who earned his sentence to Out of the Wild by killing somebody, the boy who hurts people for his own gain and probably enjoys it. The boy who doesn’t belong here. Who belongs, like, in jail.

  He’s not looking at Dawn with that cocky smile anymore. No, he’s breathing heavy and looking up at her from underneath a fallen lock of hair, and he’s still smiling a little bit but it’s beyond any smile Dawn has ever seen or wants to see again.

  He’s enjoying this, very much.

  And he’s so looking forward to the thrilling finale.

  The whole mountain seems to go still.

  There’s nowhere to run.

  It’s fight for your life, and Dawn knows she can’t win. She gets ready to fight anyway.

  Warden seems impossibly large as he looms over her. The knife in his hand is still stained with Brielle’s blood, and Lucas’s. He raises it over his head as he closes the distance between them, and Dawn backs up and braces herself and hopes she can dodge him.

  But she can’t dodge forever.

  Warden’s smile is gone now. He’s five feet away and closing. He swings the knife back and takes aim at her head, and Dawn knows he’ll kill her with one swipe if he hits her.

  She scrabbles around for something, anything, to protect her.

  Her hand comes up empty.

  Warden lunges.

  BUT WARDEN’S LEGS CRASH OUT from under him before he can slash open Dawn’s skull.

  He falls to the ground hard and the knife skitters away, and behind him, Dawn can see Kyla, standing there gripping a tree branch like a baseball bat, an Oh my God, I’ve fucking done it now expression on her face.

  Even as Dawn and Kyla make eye contact, Warden is scrambling to his feet, swearing and fumbling for the knife.

  Kyla hits him again. Then she drops the branch.

  Looks at Dawn and says one thing:

  “Run.”

  DAWN RUNS. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t know if Kyla keeps hitting Warden or if Warden stabs Kyla or if a UFO lands between the two of them and abducts them to a strange and unfamiliar galaxy.

  She doesn’t know anything.

  She just runs.

  Her feet slip in the snow and her busted ankle screams. Her vision tunnels into nothing but the ridge ahead of her and a blur on either side; she zeros in on one merciful cairn standing dead ahead, and scrambles over the rocks toward it.

  It’s pure adrenaline now.

  There’s nothing else. Nothing left. Just heart-charging adrenaline and the knowledge that it’s death if she so much as slows down.

  So she doesn’t.

  Dawn reaches the first cairn, and then she sees the next, and when she reaches that one, she sees the ridge drop away and the trail snake out before her into the rain forest, and she descends from the ridge at an unsafe speed and somehow manages not to die.

  In the blink of an eye she’s in the forest and there’s snow but not as much as on top, in the alpine, and the trail is visible enough as it cuts through the trees.

  There are still miles to go. There are miles and miles to go. Warden is somewhere behind, and Dawn is still running. She runs through the forest and she continues to run, and for a while she doesn’t feel tired; she’s too scared. She’s too aware of how everything now depends on her.

  The fear gives her strength.

  The strength gives her speed.

  Dawn runs down the trail and she doesn’t slow down.

  DAWN RUNS UNTIL SHE’S SURE her lungs will burst, and then she keeps running.

  She runs until her busted ankle feels forever broken and irreversibly ruined, until she can’t take a step without the pain bringing fresh tears to her eyes.

  And she keeps running.

  She runs as the trail winds down through the forest, curling into the subalpine and below, the air getting warmer and the snow disappearing.

  She runs until she can’t possibly run anymore, and then she runs more.

  Dawn runs.

  But eventually…Dawn stops running.

  She’s standing beside a small lake. It’s a lake she remembers from the hike up. She remembers it because the Pack camped near it on their first night out from headquarters.

  She remembers it because of the bear.

  * * *

  Somewhere near this lake is where that pissed-off mama bear found Dawn, and tried to make her dinner. The trail Dawn is following circles around the west side of the lake and then continues its drop through the trees, and somewhere before that drop is where the Pack camped their first night, and where Dawn nearly died.

  Dawn didn’t plan to stop here. Didn’t realize she was stopping until her body ceased to move. It’s like she tripped some switch inside herself, some override trigger, and it slammed on the emergency brakes.

  And now she stands in the woods on the shore of this lake, breathing so hard she thinks her heart might burst loose from her chest.

  And the air is still. No sign of mama bear.

  Dawn dares to look behind her. She imagines that Warden is right on her ass, that he’ll tackle her from behind and cut her open with that knife and that will be the end of this story.

  But Warden isn’t behind her. The trail she’s run down is empty. It could be that Warden never followed her at all. It could be that angry bear is the only thing standing between Dawn and freedom.

  Dawn wishes she could believe that. It would make the next couple of hours of hiking seem a lot shorter.

  But she knows Warden’s out there.

  He has to be.

  Stories like this don’t just end without that final battle.

  And it’s funny: a few days ago, that pissed-off mama bear was the scariest thing Dawn could ever conceive of having to encounter in these woods.

  Now? She’ll take her chances.

  Dawn keeps going.

  If the bear is still out there, maybe it will kill Warden instead.

  DAWN’S JUST ABOUT at the other end of the lake when she looks back across the water, and that’s when she sees Warden.

  He’s just coming out of the trees on the far shore. He’s running, but in that way athletic people sometimes do where it doesn’t look like they’re expending any effort at all.

  Dawn catches herself staring. Like in that sick, fascinated way you would stare at, like, a big hornet. Or a poisonous snake. Or, I don’t know, a police car you just blew past at twenty-five over the speed limit.

  Like when you know it’s dangerous and possibly fatal to just stop and stare, but something triggers in your mind and you can’t take your eyes away.

  That’s how Dawn feels, watching Warden. He runs down to the shore of the lake and then starts a
long the trail that skirts the water. He is as big and dangerous and unstoppable as any monster in any horror movie. Dawn watches him and knows she should run, but she can’t.

  She’s frozen.

  And then Warden looks up and sees her and he starts to run faster.

  And suddenly Dawn is unfrozen again.

  THE TRAIL DROPS FROM THE LAKE through the forest. It switchbacks down the side of the mountain, and at the bottom is a wider off-road track and if you follow that track for, like, maybe a mile, you’ll come to the clearing where the Out of the Wild headquarters waits.

  But there are a lot of switchbacks before you reach that track.

  Dawn finds her strength again. She starts running. Clear of the lake and down into the forest again. There is no snow here, just wet ferns and moss. Tall trees block out the sun and cast gnarled roots across the trail at irregular intervals.

  Dawn follows the trail to the first switchback and pulls a 180 and continues the descent. Her legs are weak and her ankle is sore and somebody is going to have to amputate her knees when all of this is said and done; they’re throbbing from the constant pounding, the stress of her body weight colliding with hard earth at a rate of about two collisions per second.

  She’s so hungry and thirsty that she can’t really see.

  She’s so scared that it doesn’t matter.

  Dawn hits the second switchback and grabs a tree trunk to swing herself around. Keeps running. Then she hears Warden above her. Crashing through the forest, coming in hot.

  Dawn glances back and sees him upslope. He’s not on the trail.

  He’s not using the switchbacks.

  Warden’s coming down the mountain in a straight line, aiming for Dawn like a guided missile.

  He’s closing in fast.