The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  We have our jars of salmon, but anything fresh would mean that we can save our food for later. But it’d take ammo to kill a bear. I only have two slugs left, and they’re our major protection against people.

  “The land is coming back.” Max puts her arm around Jess, then faces Dylan and says, “How did you know that bear was there?”

  Dylan just smiles and raises his eyebrows at her. Max smiles back, and now Jess is smiling at Dylan, too.

  I don’t know how Dylan knew about the bear. And somehow, he’d found that beaver. But something still bothers me about him, about how controlling and uncompromising he’s been. And about how he and Max smiled at each other like they’ve got some secret between them, or that they understand each other and no one else does. Back at the shelter, Max hadn’t even trusted him. Now she’s all in.

  I think of Jess and her connection to Max and then I worry even more about Dylan. If Max is quick to follow Dylan, and Jess follows Max the way I’ve encouraged her to, then Dylan’s got some influence over Jess.

  “We need to move,” Tam says. “There’s someone on our trail.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  “WALK IN THE WATER,” I say. “Then they won’t know if we’ve crossed or gone downriver.”

  I lead the way through shin-deep water and keep glancing across the river, catching glimpses of the bear moving around in the hills. I just don’t get it. It must have come from the south, across the mountains, but why?

  Years ago people found a beluga whale hundreds of miles up the Yukon River. And polar bears, before they died out because of the sea ice melting, had survived for a while by migrating inland. There’s even evidence of polar bears mating with grizzlies.

  And who knows what the state of the land is east of here. I mean, Northern Canada might not have burned. Once we didn’t have power, there was no way to communicate. We only knew what was happening as far as the eye could see. And that closes you in, but it also forces you to look closely at what’s around you, because what’s around you is now your whole world.

  We’re approaching another set of bluffs now as the river meanders west. No one is talking. Just forward, single-file movement as our feet shuffle through the silty water, sliding on top of rounded rocks that we can’t see.

  “The water’s gonna be deep under those bluffs,” I say. “Probably over our heads.”

  Mike steps up beside me. “There’s a way into the folds, some tiny steps my dad cut, just as we start around. I’ll lead.”

  * * *

  “Jason and Patrick,” Tam says, “we wouldn’t have survived the fire without them. We wouldn’t have survived. Period.”

  Max and Jess are on watch at the entrance to the cave—another one of Dylan’s dad’s hideouts—in the side of the bluff. And Tam is telling us some wild stuff.

  “They had a yurt they’d stolen from the Air Force Base before the government pulled out. We were wandering. Only four of us were left out of eight from the group home. We had nothing and were heading east, scavenging from abandoned houses as we went. We were starving.

  “You could see the burnt-out hulk of the Air Force Base, but behind it, way back in the hills, before they burned, was this circular brown structure. We headed for it, hoping it was abandoned, but it wasn’t.

  “Jason and Patrick had solar panels compliments of the Air Force, and a wall of big batteries. They’d found an old truck with a little fuel. Packed it full of supplies and drove it into the hills and no one came after them. No one cared. Most of the enlisted men and women just wanted to leave on the transport planes while they had the chance. Just like most everyone else left on the buses except for the people who were intentionally left behind, like us. But not Jason and Patrick. They wanted to remake their life up here.

  “We stayed with them for a couple months. They shared everything. Invited us to stay indefinitely to form a family. But when the fires got closer, Willa wanted to leave. She had a bad feeling about the place. Patrick and Jason gave us our packs and clothes, and my bow, which I’d practiced with the whole time, and took us to a gravel bar in the river a few miles from the yurt. They’d cut all the trees down around the yurt for a couple hundred yards and had a water pump they were running off the solar panels, pulling water from a small lake. They were sure they could protect the yurt.

  “But those fires, they burned everything. Patrick and Jason didn’t have a chance.” Tam pauses. “We had to lie in the water, and even then we could feel the heat. Hot coals rained down on our wet clothes and we’d brush them off over and over.

  “The yurt turned into a tiny black lump on the land. The lake boiled dry. Patrick and Jason had a little piece of paradise going with those solar panels. A ton of freeze-dried food from the military. A big garden, too. But where could you get solar panels after the fire? Where could you get anything after those fires?

  “We couldn’t even find their remains.”

  * * *

  Jess walks into the cave and says, “Those guys that were following us walked over the bluff.”

  Max crowds in behind her and says,“They probably walked right on top of us, but they’re downriver now. It looked like the same guys, minus one.”

  I know it was necessary to pull that trigger, but it still bugs me. There has to be a better way than killing, but when someone is going to kill you or someone else who doesn’t deserve to die, what choice do you really have?

  I scoot over and make room for Max and Jess to sit down.

  Mike and Tam get up and leave the cave. It’s their turn to go on watch.

  I take an oily strip of salmon and pass the jar to Max.

  “Real food,” she says. “It powers the body and the spirit. You eat the land. You become the land.”

  “You see the land,” Dylan says. “You become the land.”

  “Exactly,” Max says, then passes him the jar and smiles.

  I don’t know if he’s just saying stuff to impress Max or if he really means it. But Jess is sitting there, too. Absorbing every word.

  If those guys keep going south and bypass the braided area downstream a couple miles, we’re going to follow them, but then cross the river.

  “Trav,” Jess says. “Do you think there’ll be schools in the settlements? And stores? And houses? Real houses?”

  “I don’t know what’s there,” I say. “No one does. I don’t even know if they actually exist, but I hope they do.”

  “Then why are we going?” Jess asks.

  “So we can have a life. So we can see what’s there. So we can live in a place with other people. In a place that isn’t burnt-out and dead.”

  “But you just said you don’t know what it’s like.” Jess sighs. “Maybe it’s burnt-out, too.”

  “Jess—”

  “She’s right,” Dylan says. “You don’t know.”

  “I never said I knew. But look around. We’re in a freaking cave eating the last food we have.” I turn back to Jess. “We can’t stay here. We’ll die. That’s why Mom and Dad wanted to leave. I—”

  “But it’s an adventure,” Dylan interrupts, smiling at Jess. Then he turns toward me. “My dad, he wanted to stay. He was going to stay. I might still stay.”

  “Stay?” I laugh. “Go ahead. It’s your life. Waste it however you want.” If he stays, I don’t think I’ll miss him.

  Dylan takes some salmon and passes the jar to Jess. Jess makes her fish face and Dylan laughs and makes one back at her. I feel my ears getting hot and I take a breath. I don’t want to lay into Dylan too much in front of Jess because it might backfire. Jess is starting to share Max’s fondness for him. So I just smile and pretend like it’s funny, hoping Dylan will lay off being so combative toward everything I say.

  Jess eats a piece of salmon, then lies down and rests her head in Max’s lap. We sit in silence, and I can tell Jess is drifting off. I’m glad she’s taking a nap now, because once we start moving there’s no guarantee as to when we’ll be able to stop and rest again.
>
  Max says, “Your dad had to be quite a visionary to make shelters that would survive the fires.”

  “My dad had a vision,” Dylan whispers to me and Max. “He believed burning the land would cleanse it. People think the government started all those fires. Maybe they started some, but my dad and a couple other people started most of them. And I helped.”

  Max moves one of her hands so it covers Jess’s ear. Then she turns to Dylan.

  He gets this glazed look in his eyes and just keeps whispering. “Dad had been stockpiling gasoline. I always thought it was to use in the boat motor or the chainsaw, or in his truck. You know, for when times got tough. But Dad, he had other plans. Big, beautiful plans.

  “When the government started pulling out and burning their buildings and anything else related to serving the area, Dad just laughed. He wasn’t expecting the government to help him do what he was already planning on doing. Cleansing the land. Burn it and burn it hot. Start over. Push the reset button. Let the postindustrial healing begin.

  “So he hung on to his gas that winter after the buses hauled all the sissies out of here. He made the rounds when things were still abundant and people still talked to each other and shared what they had. But Dad was looking for like-minded people. People with his vision or people who’d come around to seeing things his way. He was recruiting. And he didn’t tell me or Mike or Mom any of this at first.

  “When he wasn’t recruiting, he was poring over topo maps and street maps. And he went about this with the same gusto he’d used to build and stock these shelters along the river. I kept bugging him to tell me what he was doing, and finally, after I promised that I’d help him if he told me, he did. And his plan, it was beautiful, and pure.

  “Dad waited until it’d been hot and dry. And windy. Hadn’t rained in a month and we’d had a low snowfall year. And a bunch of lightning strikes had already started things burning. He sent his buddies, two guys, upriver in a canoe with instructions for when and where to set their fires. ‘Start at the farthest-out point and float down, setting fires on both sides of the river,’ he said. ‘Then return to the shelter.’ We know they set the fires, but we never saw them again.

  “Dad and I started from the shelter and went downriver, setting fires. And it was cleansing. To see everything getting erased for miles around, and to be making that happen. Being part of the re-creation. To feel the land being consumed. Reduced to its basic elements. The burns got so hot that they even burned what the government had burned the year before. A deep cleansing, Dad called it. Burn the old crust off the earth. Only the purists would stay now. We could rebuild in the right way with the right kind of people. I wish he were still here. If he was, no way would I even think about leaving.” Dylan lies on his back and closes his eyes. “Everything’s different now. Messed up.”

  I glance at Max but she’s just staring at the ground. I’m not sure what she thinks. I want to say something to Dylan but I’m at a total loss for what it would be. Actually, I want to bash his head into the ground. He doesn’t deserve to live. I feel my arms trembling. Instead of doing anything to add to the craziness, I stand up and whisper to Max, “I’m gonna trade watch with Tam so I can talk to Mike.”

  * * *

  The sun has swung back around and is in our faces. We can still see our friends downriver. If they disappear around the next bend, we’re going to make a dash for the crossing.

  “Dylan’s telling some far-out stories about the fires,” I say, wondering if Mike thinks his brother is nuts or if he is on board with the fire-setting, too. “Makes me nervous.”

  “My dad was gifted but he went nuts,” Mike says. “And Dylan, he’s gifted in a lot of ways most people aren’t. He’s supersensitive to his surroundings. Like the way he knew that bear was across the river before we saw him. And how he grabbed my spear and jabbed it into the water and came up with the beaver. I don’t know how he does it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But the way he talks, he thinks the fires were a good thing. Does he even know how many people those fires scorched? How many people he killed? Does he even care that he killed hundreds of people? That he burned them up? And then in the winter, masses of people froze to death and others starved. He helped wreck this place.”

  “Travis,” Mike says softly, “you’ve got to let me handle Dylan. He’s my brother, the only family I’ve got. When you challenge him, you’re just pushing him further away, and we need him. We need his gift. The reason we took so long to pack up is that I had to convince him to come. If it weren’t for Max, I think he would’ve stayed back at our place. Let me handle him.”

  “He could screw this up for everyone,” I say. “And when you mess up these days, there usually aren’t any second chances.”

  “You think I don’t want to get out of here?” Mike asks. “But I want Dylan to make it, too. I don’t want him to turn out like my dad.”

  “What happened to your dad?” I ask. “And your mom?”

  “Forget my parents,” Mike says. “They’re gone. Will you just promise me you’ll lay off Dylan and let me handle him?”

  “As long as you do handle him, I’m willing to give that a try. But I can’t have him trying to talk people into staying. That’s a death sentence.” I step up closer. “I’ll do anything to protect my sister. Anything.”

  Mike just stares back at me and I think, I’m going to have to keep a close eye on both of them.

  CHAPTER

  22

  “NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT mind would cross this swamp,” Dylan says.

  “That explains why you’re crossing it,” I say over my shoulder, then keep going. I know I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m sick of his negative thoughts and his let’s-go-back mentality.

  We crossed the river without incident yesterday, and truth be told, Dylan led the way and somehow kept us out of the deep water. And the men who had been hunting us didn’t try to cross. When we reached the other side, Dylan turned and challenged them to follow. He screamed and cursed and Mike didn’t even try to stop him. One of the men had yelled back, “You’ll die over there.”

  Now we’re slogging through a knee-deep slurry of ash and water, avoiding deeper holes as best we can.

  Some dark peaks rise above the haze to the south. They used to be covered in snow and ice year-round, but a lot of the glaciers melted off years ago.

  Dylan catches up to me and grabs my arm. “Did I read you wrong, or did you just call me a nutcase?”

  Max, Tam, Mike, and Jess are about a hundred feet back.

  I pull my arm toward my body and take a step back to get Dylan’s hand off me. “Just keep your negative thoughts to yourself. My little sister doesn’t need to hear all that crap. This is hard enough for her as it is.”

  “Your sister is going to have to grow up,” Dylan says. “People talk. All the time. They say all kinds of shit. As a human you’ve got to learn what to take in and what to let go.”

  I look Dylan in the eye. “That’s basically true, but it doesn’t mean you should be able to say whatever the hell you want anytime you feel like it.”

  Dylan spits into the swamp. “Hypocrite. What were you doing when you called me a nutcase?”

  “I said what I said because whether you’re crazy or not, you act like you are. Maybe it’s all an act. Maybe that’s just the way you are.”

  Dylan takes a step toward me. I tower over him by at least four inches but he’s stocky. He runs a hand through his thick hair and says, “Did you ever think that maybe you’re the crazy one?”

  I laugh. “I didn’t torch the land and then say how freaking great it was. Cleansing? That’s total bullshit. And if you don’t know that, you are full-on crazy.”

  “You’re blind,” Dylan says.

  “Look around.” I sweep my arm in an arc. “Blind? I wish.”

  “You fuck with me,” Dylan says softly, “and you’ll be sorry. I’ll haunt you forever.”

  “I already am sorry.”

  The rest of
the gang has caught up.

  “Are we stopping to rest?” Jess asks, holding Max’s hand.

  Everyone looks at me except Dylan, who is now staring back the way we came.

  “Not here,” I say. “Too wet.” I point south. “Just a couple more miles. In those hills, there’s probably better drainage.”

  “I don’t see any hills,” Jess says. She’s leaning against Max the way she used to lean against my mom. I know she’s tired, but standing around in this slurry of ash won’t revive her. She needs to sit down.

  “We should keep moving,” Tam says. “It’s more tiring standing than walking.”

  Mike says, “Dylan, you ready?”

  Dylan holds up his hand and keeps looking back the way we came. “The grizzly,” he says, “it’s following us.”

  I turn and look and see what Dylan sees: a brown clump of fur moving toward us.

  We keep on going, but every time I glance over my shoulder the brown clump of fur seems bigger, so I know the bear is gaining on us.

  I have the shotgun with two shells. Mike carries that crazy spear with the jagged-glass point. Tam has her bow with two arrows. Max has my pistol with the single shot. Dylan and Jess just have their hands. I’m not sure what’s in her pack. Does she have anything to protect herself?

  Besides the salmon, I don’t even know what’s in the pack I’m carrying. I mean, I know it used to be Willa’s, but I haven’t had a chance to look through it.

  Back in the day, a well-fed bear would, more often than not, avoid people. I keep glancing back to make sure we don’t get too spread out. We can only go as fast as Jess can walk. She’s tired, and I want to keep us bunched up for protection. A bear is more likely to attack individuals than a group.

  The hills still appear to be a few miles off. We’ve been steadily walking toward them since Dylan spotted the bear, but they don’t seem any closer.

  The weight of the ash slurry makes for slow going. Every step is a plow through wet cement from the knees down. My next step buries me waist-deep. I turn and force my way back a few steps, not sure which way to go. The swamp—the knee-high slurry we’ve been slogging across—is changing into something worse. At least it’s only me who’s gone in.