Authors: Melinda Braun
“We need to get out of here,” Oscar said quietly, and I could hear the fear in his voice. “C'mon. Let's go.” I grabbed my pack and started running, my Swiss Army knife gripped like a tiny baton in my right hand. But where could we go? Were we running away or toward them? It didn't matter; we couldn't outrun them. I heaved to a sudden halt; it was almost dark. “Wait. Stop.”
“Emma!” Oscar whispered. “Don't stop!”
“We can't outrun them, Oscar.”
The pines were thick and close around us. They were coming. We were the rabbits. But we couldn't hide. There was no burrow to slip into.
There was nowhere to go.
I threw my head back, a sob threatening to break from my mouth, and when I looked up, I saw the pine branches, spreading like arms above us.
Nowhere to go.
Except up.
We left the packs at the base of the tree. I went up first, testing my weight against the branches before I grabbed Oscar's hand. Thankfully the limbs were low and thick, easy for climbing, and I pulled myself higher, five feet up, then ten, maybe twelve. I looked down; the ground looked much farther away. I swung my leg over a wide limb and inched myself forward until I was nestled in the crack where the trunk met the branch. Oscar followed until we were huddled together like a pair of baby birds.
“I hope this is high enough.”
“It better be.”
We stared into the twilit gloom until there was nothing left to see, and I kept my knife tight against my pounding chest, waiting.
I woke up shivering. I had no blanket, no extra clothes, not even a long-sleeved shirt.
The breeze smelled wet and cold, like snow.
The storm
. It was coming.
What time was it? I didn't remember falling asleep. But it seemed lighter; the sky was brighter through the trees. Was it the moon? I shivered again, little puffs of steam escaping my mouth as I looked around.
That's when I realized I was alone.
Oscar! Where did he go?
I needed to find him, and I needed to keep moving, if only to stay warm. I climbed down slowly, much slower than I had ascended.
I took a few unsteady steps. “Oscar? Where are you?” Already the path seemed clear under my feet, brighter where I stepped, and the sky above me wavered in a peculiar shade
of green. It waved and pulsed, a giant sea with pink halos blooming and ebbing. The northern lights.
I walked on, drifting in and out of waking like a sleepwalker, talking to myself like a mental patient, when I noticed something ahead. Actually, I heard it. Music.
Old music. Big-band jazzy music, the type people danced to. Someone must be having a party. That meant people! With food! And water!
I hurried forward.
Oscar must have heard this! He must have gone this way. Why didn't he wait for me?
The trees seemed to bend away for me, ushering me past them as the light grew. Yes, I'd found a fire, probably a big campsite. I could hear laughter, voices. I was so close now. The glow rose in warm flickers between the trees.
When I came through, I finally saw them, sitting around the fire. What I had thought was a large group of campers turned out to be an old man and a young girl, roasting marshmallowsâburning them to a crisp actually. The girl giggled when one melted on her stick, sacrificed to the flames. “That's all right,” the old man replied with an easy smile. “We have plenty more.” He looked up as I stepped into the light. “Well, hello there!”
I squinted, but it was hard to see his face in the flickering shadows. Still, there was something familiar about him.
“Have we met before?” And as I asked, I knew we had, but not in person. Not exactly. I recognized his face from the newspaperâhis obituary photo.
He chuckled. “Not formally, but that's okay. You are very welcome to join us, Emma.”
“How do you know my name?”
“We've been waiting for you,” he said.
I stepped back, trembling. My sister Lucy pulled the blackened marshmallow off the stick with her teeth, then licked the sticky sugar around her mouth. “Have a s'more, Emma,” she said. “They're really good. And I know you must be hungry.”
“No!” I fell forward, screaming. “You're dead! You're both dead!”
*Â Â *Â Â *
When I hit the ground, I was still shrieking, staring up at the black limbs of the pine with wide, unblinking eyes. Oscar's silhouette peered down at me. “Emma? Oh my God!”
I had just fallen out of the tree.
“I'm okay,” I choked out, and rolled over onto my stomach, gasping like a fish. Blood pooled in my mouth, and as I struggled to push myself up, I heard the snarl, so close in my ears that I jerked sideways in reflex, curling myself into a ball. Only one animal made that sound.
Wolves
. I blinked frantically, seeing nothing but blackness until the dim gray outlines took shape. The wolves stood motionless across a small clearing, camped out under another pine tree, watching me.
“I'm coming down.”
“No!”
Doesn't he see the wolves?
“Stay there!”
I thought the nightmare I had had was bad. This, obviously, was worse.
“I'll climb back up,” I said, still breathless, and pushed myself back against the trunk, reaching overhead for a branch. They were ten yards away, coming toward me in a steady walk. My right hand clenched the knife, but my left arm wouldn't work. It hung by my side, useless; I couldn't lift it above my shoulder to grab a branch.
At five yards the big one stopped, lowered his head at me, and curled his lips back, revealing a row of pearly teeth, the longer, crescent-shaped canines reminding me of daggers. The others stayed behind him, and I was strangely relieved to see all four. That meant they hadn't found Isaac and Chloe. Just us.
“Emma? Climb up now!”
“I can't.” I flipped the blade open. It wasn't much, but right now I was grateful for something to hold on to, no matter how small.
The big wolf took another slow step, head still low, but he was no longer growling. He seemed to look through me; he cocked his head, his attention trained into the thick brush behind me. He snuffled deeply, his lips still pulled back in a hungry smile. His tongue moved across his muzzle, anticipating.
Branches rustled and snapped overhead. “I'm coming down!”
And before I could reply, Oscar was on the ground in front of me, somersaulting sideways onto his shoulder a second after landing. He swore once in pain, but popped up instantly only a few yards from the big wolf. I jumped forward, grabbed
the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled him back against me, horrified and thrilled. “What are you
doing
?”
“Something really stupid,” he replied weakly. “That wolf looks a lot bigger than it did from the tree.”
“No kidding.”
Pine bark grated against my shoulder blades. Again I reached up, but a spasm of bright pain shot through my shoulder, making me yelp and see stars. Every breath hurt; every inhalation was a stab in my lungs.
So this is it. This is how it ends.
Of all the ways to go (and I had thought a lot about that in the past year), I had never imagined this. But of course it would be this way. It's always something you never expect, never plan for.
It figures.
Halfway down, my swallow got stuck in my throat. I closed my eyes with the effort and held on to Oscar.
I hope it doesn't hurt too much. I hope it's fast.
Something swelled behind me, rolling forward in the dark. I could feel it rise up, and even with my eyes closed my neck hairs rose. Something big. Something coming this way. My eyes snapped back open; the wolves were still crouched low, but they didn't move.
What are they waiting for?
The animal burst past us with such speed and bulk, the breeze of it tilted me sideways. As it hurtled into the circle of wolves, then cleared the waiting pack, it bellowed a moan that sent electric tremors up my legs.
A moose!
That's what they had been tracking. That's the animal that had
come into our camp. And now it disappeared into the trees like a runaway bulldozer, still booming, cracking tree limbs as it ran.
The wolves turned as one, snarling in synchronicity, ready to give chase.
We waited at the pine tree until the sky had a lime-green edge on the horizon, and the view around us was a dim landscape of shadows. Then we started walking.
I gave the whistle two sharp tweets and waited. Silence. We walked another hundred yards, and I tried again. Nothing. On the third try I heard a tinny sound, the clang of a rock against metal.
I blew three more times. Short. Short. Long.
Three bangs echoed back, and I had to smile.
Chloe.
“C'mon.” I grabbed Oscar's hand. “We're close. This way!”
Once the campsite came into view, we saw Chloe running toward us. “Did you find water?”
“No,” I said, suddenly exhausted with failure. “Sorry.”
She shook her head, undaunted. “I found some.”
“You did?” Oscar asked. “Where?”
“It was just a dirty puddle, barely enough to swallow,” she said. “But it was better than nothing.”
“Oh.” I exhaled, trying not to sound how I felt. “Where's Isaac?”
“There.”
He was propped against the trunk of a pine tree, his sleeping bag draped around him so only his head showed. Even from this distance I saw the pale, sickly sweat shine on his face.
“He doesn't look too good,” I suggested.
“He has a fever,” Chloe said dully.
I glanced at Oscar; he looked wan and sick too. Fever meant infection, I knew that much.
“I heard the plane. Then I heard your whistle. I wasn't sure what to think.”
“That plane buzzed over us so fast we barely saw it,” Oscar said.
I nodded, dejected. “I think it was going to the lake.” Had it been my idea to leave? Isaac's? I guess it didn't matter anymore. Here we were.
The sky lightened, clouded blue. Would it be sunny today? Would the watch-compass work? We should get going. We would have to figure out how to carry Isaac. We still needed to find water. We needed to keep going.
*Â Â *Â Â *
“I feel like I haven't slept all night,” Chloe said. “I just need to rest.” She looked over at me. Her eyes had lost their gleam. They were dull, empty. “The Zippo's done for.” She held
Isaac's lighter in her hand, turning over the metal cube like a coin she was going to flip. “Then I used up the matches, but I couldn't keep the fire going with the wind. It just died.”
“We should go then,” I said, noticing how bloodshot her eyes were.
“Okay, but I need to rest a bit,” Oscar said. “Isaac can't really walk, and he's kind of heavy to carry.”
“I need to rest too.” Chloe yawned and lay down, closing her eyes. “I don't think I can carry Isaac right now. I'm so tired.” She rolled over onto her side.
“Okay, we'll rest a little.” Their fatigue was contagious, and I sank down on the leaves.
Oscar lay down next to me. “Wake me in an hour,” he mumbled into my arm.
I nodded, my head still foggy. “Okay, I will,” I promised. “In an hour.”
Sleep. That's a good idea. Just go to sleep.
I closed my eyes and drifted.
*Â Â *Â Â *
A buzz. A puttering hum. A mosquito in my ear? I slapped my cheek. The buzz returned.
Through slitted eyes I saw dirt. A leaf. An ant on a leaf. The sunlight slanted through the trees, late-afternoon gold. The light went away with a gust of wind, and I rolled over onto my back, forcing my eyes all the way open. The clouds were everywhere, heavy-looking. Another damp gust of wind sent shivers through my back.
Will it rain?
The clouds
were definitely full; I opened my mouth when a flicker of something hit my nose. But it wasn't rain. Another splotch dissolved on my tongue. Snow.
The storm. It was here.
I pushed myself up in shock, and my head throbbed, protesting the sudden motion, but when the ache subsided, I saw everyone was in the same position.
We looked like a crime scene. We looked like dead bodies.
“Oscar? Chloe?”
No answer.
Another buzz. Not a mosquito. It was way too cold for that. What is it?
“Oscar?” It sounded like I was being strangled.
“Mmm?”
“Oscar, we need to get up. I hear something.”
“Okay,” he sighed, but didn't move.
I crawled over to Isaac, and his eyelids fluttered when I said his name, but they didn't open, not entirely. His shirt was darkened with sweat, and his face was bright, smoothed over with a waxy sheen like a mannequin. His chest rose and fell with the shallow speed of a bird's, heat shuddering off him in fevered bursts. “Isaac?”
“Mmm,” he muttered, not really awake. “What do you want?”
“I hear something. We need to go find it.”
“Go find it,” he murmured blankly. Suddenly his eyes snapped open, wild and unseeing. “I would have left you!”
“Isaac, it's me . . .”
“I would have left all of you!”
He's crazy,
I thought.
Or maybe he's dying. Maybe this is how it goes.
I grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. “You didn't leave us.”
“Please don't!” he whimpered. “Please don't hurt me!”
“Isaac, what are you talking about?”
“Stop it, Dad! Please stop it! Don't hurt me!”
I froze.
Dear Jesus, that's who put those cigarette burns there.
“Isaac, it's all right. It's me, Emma. I'm right here. No one's going to hurt you. No one's going to leave you.”
Something in my voice seemed to clear his head; the wild look in his eyes subsided. “I was going to leave!” he protested, almost crying.