The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  Jess nods. “I could try.”

  We climb with our packs on about a third of the way up the spine before we hit the really steep section. Tam and I drop our packs; I put the coil of rope around my neck and start climbing. Using my hands and feet, I climb toward the spot we’ve picked out, about thirty or forty feet above where I started from. It’s more vertical than I thought it would be. I’m glad Jess will have the option of some rope support. Truth is, I wouldn’t have minded some for that stretch.

  I hoist myself over a small ledge and turn around. Tam is about halfway up and moving fast. The spot I’m standing on, just back from the little ledge, is tiny. Behind me the slope rises steeply, but it’s not vertical like the climb Tam’s about to complete. When she reaches the ledge, I put out my hand and she takes it, and I help her over the ledge.

  Now we’re standing side by side, her shoulder pressing against my upper arm, her hip against my thigh. It is literally that tight of a spot for two people. I toss one end of the rope down to Jess and Max and they tie it to a pack.

  “Okay,” Max yells.

  Tam and I start pulling, and even though our arms and hands are bumping, we get into a rhythm of both pulling at the same time, hand over hand, and the first pack comes up to the base of the ledge quickly.

  I turn toward Tam and she turns toward me to grip the pack to hoist it over the ledge. It’s like we’re hugging, except there’s a pack between our heads and chests, but with our thighs brushing and pressing against each other. I can feel my heart racing, not from hauling up the pack but from the contact with Tam.

  “What should we do with this thing?” I ask.

  “You let go,” she says, “and I’ll carry it up the slope behind us a little ways.”

  “Okay, I’m letting go.” I let go of the pack and Tam scrambles a few steps up the slope, sets the pack down, and unties it.

  Back at the ledge, side by side, I throw the rope down again.

  We haul the other three packs up in much the same way. Then Jess comes up using the rope for balance but mostly climbing on her own. When she gets to the ledge, Tam and I offer our hands and help her over the ledge. When Max appears moments later, we do the same for her.

  Max and Tam lead us up the last part of the spine as it starts to level out, and I walk with Jess a little ways back.

  “You did a great job coming up that steep part,” I say, smiling at her. “You barely even used the rope.”

  Jess smiles back. “I watched what you and Tam did when you climbed. I used the rope in the spots where I couldn’t reach where you two reached.”

  “Mom and Dad would be proud of you,” I say, then feel my eyes getting moist.

  “I really miss them,” Jess says.

  “Me too,” I say. I wipe the tear that’s escaped from one of my eyes.

  “Hey,” I hear Max call out.

  I turn from Jess and we both look up toward Max. She’s at the top of the spine.

  “There’s something up here.”

  CHAPTER

  39

  “IT SURE LOOKS LIKE A bear’s work, except for the stick and stone art next to it,” I say. The first thing we encountered on the lip of the fissure was Mike’s shredded backpack, empty, with the word basic spelled out with pieces of his spear and some rocks.

  “Dylan knew we’d climb out here,” Tam says. “But we didn’t see his tracks on the trip up, so he must’ve climbed out somewhere else.”

  We’re all looking around, hoping to spot him, just so we can know where he is instead of feeling like we’re being watched. Stalked. If he can push his brother off a cliff, he’d probably have no qualms about killing any of us. And he was acting so normal right before we got to the fissure. At least we’re armed with big sticks that we hope to turn into spears.

  “I’m hungry,” Jess says.

  I search her eyes, wondering if I should bring up Mom and Dad again, to finish the conversation we were having before Max called out to us, but I decide to let it ride for now. We’re out of the fissure and I want to make some tracks heading south. Sometimes you have to put important things off in order to do even more important things. Like the way I’ve started feeling about Tam—I’m not gonna bring that up now either.

  We sit at the edge of the fissure and split a jar of salmon. Jess doesn’t make a single fish face while we eat.

  Max points down into the fissure. “I wonder if you really could live down there. You know, actually survive. I think this place is more than a fissure from an earthquake. I’m not sure what, maybe just an isolated drainage that the fires couldn’t get to. It’s like a window into the past and a door to the future.”

  I pass the jar to Tam. I think of the burnt land surrounding it for hundreds of miles. “It’d have to be pretty extensive or pretty rich to sustain even a few people.”

  “Maybe we’ve only seen a small part of it,” Max says.

  Tam gives the jar to Jess and stands up. “Maybe. But the part we did see had a pile of skeletons. Not a good sign.” She’s bouncing up and down on her toes like she’s ready to run. “Why does it matter anyway?”

  “When I first went to the group home,” Max says, “I thought it’d be a short-term thing. But then more things started falling apart. Not just in my life, but everywhere. You know, the aspen trees dying on the heels of the spruce trees, the yellow jackets taking over the skies, people looking out for themselves so much that they didn’t care who they stepped on. We were poised for a big fall. But this land, it will come back. And so will I. Someday. This fissure or valley, or whatever it is, is a seed bank for the future. It could be a place to build from.”

  Jess eats the last piece of salmon and says, “The only reason I’d come back is if my mom were here.”

  I put my arm around Jess and pull her close. When we stop for the night, I think, we’ll have to talk about this. Right now we have to get moving. And we’ve got to keep a sharp lookout for Dylan.

  * * *

  We’ve been walking for a couple of hours, and now we’re on drier ground because the land is slanting ever so gradually toward the mountains. Jess has been walking next to Max, sometimes holding her hand. Inch-high willows poke through the ash in places. These will be good browse for moose, if there are any moose left. We still hit the occasional patch of swamp, but even in those spots the water is only ankle deep. We’re heading south and west for a distant notch in the mountains—the one that looks the lowest—that we hope to pass through. We spotted it when the haze covering the mountains cleared for a few minutes. We can’t see the notch now, but the tops of the two peaks bordering it are poking through.

  We’ve seen some tracks here and there, but not a continuous trail because the wind is constantly blowing and rearranging the ash. And in lots of spots the ground is rocky. No one has said much of anything, but I’m pretty sure they’ve been thinking the same thing I have.

  Dylan. Where is he? And what the hell is he doing? Did he kill Mike? Is he watching us?

  We hit a stretch where the land is pocked with craters of sucking mud. Some are only a few feet across and deep, but others span forty or fifty yards, their bottoms fifty or a hundred feet down. And there are boulders dotting the land, half-sunk into the mud in places.

  “Sinkholes,” Tam says. She turns to Max. “Remember the one that opened up down the street from the group home and swallowed that blue house?”

  Max nods. “One day that house was there when we went inside to do our schoolwork, and it was tilted sideways and smashed up at the bottom of a hole when we had our afternoon break.”

  Sinkholes are kind of spooky. I’ve never seen one open up before my eyes, and I’m sure some open more slowly than others, but still, stories like Max’s make you pause, make you realize that the ground under your feet—the ground you want to be stable—just isn’t.

  I poke my stick into the mud covering a shallow hole, and it goes down several feet. “Like quicksand,” I say. “My dad told me about big holes close to the mountai
ns formed by huge chunks of underground ice. The ice melts and the ground caves in. Maybe that’s how these holes and craters formed.”

  We pick our way along, poking the ground with our sticks and staying away from the rims of the larger holes.

  A little while later we’re detouring around a huge hole when Tam says, “Stop. I think I see that bastard.”

  CHAPTER

  40

  “DO YOU THINK HE’S REALLY under there?” I say.

  Tam says, “Who else could it be?”

  We’re all peering into a monster of a sinkhole. At the bottom is a blue backpack partially sunk into the mud. An outline of arms and legs stretch out from the pack under the mud, like someone was skydiving.

  “It’s gotta be him,” Max says.

  Jess takes a few steps back from the edge and sits down.

  “Do you think he fell in or jumped?” I ask.

  “Maybe the ground collapsed underneath him,” Tam says. “I don’t know how to tell how old a sinkhole is.”

  I nod. The rim of the sinkhole doesn’t look newly formed to me, but I’ve never studied sinkholes. If these holes formed the way my dad said they did, I think it’d take years for a chunk of ice to melt and have the ground collapse. But the edges could be unstable.

  “It seems like a crazy way to commit suicide,” I say. “Maybe he was standing on the edge of the hole and the rim collapsed and took him with it.”

  “If you’re going to commit suicide, then maybe you’re already kind of crazy,” Max says.

  I think of Willa and Randie. And Mike. Now Dylan. “Right now, we’ve got a fifty percent survival rate.”

  I think of my mom and dad, and Clint with his group on the banks of the Yukon. And all the charred bodies I’d seen after the fires. The land is consuming everyone and giving back nothing in return. Maybe that’s the true definition of dead. To keep taking without giving back.

  I think about our food. Fourteen jars of salmon. I’m always hungry. I look down at the partially submerged pack and the body outline beneath it, at least fifty feet down. Is it floating or settled on a solid surface? I don’t know.

  “Whether Dylan is buried under there or not,” I say, “we need that pack.”

  * * *

  I look Tam in the eye. “We won’t let go.” She’s perched on the edge of the sinkhole. We are ten feet back, in a line. Me, Max, and Jess, all hanging onto the rope. We have our gloves on and the rope wrapped around our hands.

  “Okay,” Tam says. “Here I go.” She’s taken off her camo clothing because she knew it’d be a hot job. She has a T-shirt on. If she has underwear, it’s hidden by the T-shirt. I swallow the lump in my throat that has formed and double down on my grip on the rope. She’s lean, her arms and legs ribbons of muscle. She’s beautiful. Like a wild animal.

  Tam’s blond hair disappears over the ledge, and we all lean into the rope to counterbalance her weight. We’re too far back from the ledge to see her, but I can feel little tugs as I imagine her bracing her feet against the sinkhole wall as she scoots down the rope hand over hand.

  My triceps tense each time I feel a tug. We’re silent. Listening for anything Tam might shout from below.

  My hands grow hot from wearing the gloves and gripping the rope. And my injured shoulder starts to ache.

  “Halfway,” Tam shouts.

  I take a breath. I wish she were farther. I glance over my sore shoulder and see Max’s face glistening. She flashes a quick smile. Behind her, Jess has her head down and is leaning back, putting all her weight onto the rope.

  I feel some bigger tugs and guess that Tam’s letting more rope slip through her hands before grabbing it, probably becoming more comfortable with the descent.

  “I’m down,” Tam calls. Her voice sounds small, like she’s ant-sized, at the bottom of a tin can.

  The rope goes slack for a moment, and then a big tug almost yanks my shoulders from their sockets. I stumble forward a couple steps, then lean back.

  “Sorry,” I say to Max and Jess. I hear a couple of grunts from them, and nothing else.

  It feels like someone has stuck a knife in my injured shoulder and left it there. I roll my shoulder back and forth in little circles, but it does nothing to ease the pain. Sweat runs down my forehead and into my eyes. I work my face toward my sleeve and drag my eyes across the fabric. My eyes start burning and I realize there’s ash on my sleeves.

  I keep squinting and sweating, not knowing what’s happening down there. The tugs aren’t coming in a set pattern or direction. And every so often I don’t feel any tugs, just a constant pressure, which is just as painful. How long has she been on the bottom? Four minutes? Five minutes?

  Is she in the mud? Or standing on top of the pack? Is it dry enough to stand without sinking? But if it were dry, I think, she wouldn’t be putting so much pressure on the rope.

  There is at least ten feet of free rope that she can use to tie onto the pack.

  Another jolt pulls me forward. Then another. I lean backward and try to regain some ground.

  “Climbing.” Tam’s voice sounds far away and deeper, like her throat is clogged or her mouth is full of mud.

  I dig my feet into the ground and keep leaning back. But the rope keeps willing me forward. I feel a couple of tugs and then a rest. A couple of tugs and then a rest. But the rests aren’t really rests, just a constant pressure sucking every ounce of energy out of me. She feels a lot heavier coming up than she did going down.

  Tam has to be more exhausted than we are. I wish we could help pull her up, but if all went as planned, the bottom of the rope is attached to the pack and no way could we pull both of them up.

  Tam’s risking her life. It made sense that she’d be the one to go down. I’m strong enough to climb but too heavy to be supported. Jess is the lightest, but I wasn’t sure if she’d be strong enough to climb back out or wrestle the pack off Dylan. Tam is taller than Max but lighter, and maybe stronger. Back in the day, she would’ve been a star in any sport she chose. Now she shoots arrows at armed men and takes backpacks off of dead bodies in sinkholes.

  I glance behind me. Max is a rock. She’s squatting, her knees spread with the rope running between her legs. Jess is kneeling now and leaning back like she’s in a limbo contest. I have one foot in front of the other and am pulling from the side.

  Another big tug slams my triceps. I hear a deep grunt from the direction of the sinkhole. She must be close.

  Come on, I think. Just get here so I can rest.

  Then this dark head pops over the edge and my heart leaps to my throat. Tam is a blonde.

  CHAPTER

  41

  I GLANCE AROUND. BOULDERS SPRINKLE the land to the south. Lots of hiding places, I think.

  Tam was covered in mud when she emerged from the sinkhole, making her blond hair look brown. I told her I had wanted to let go of the rope when it looked like her hair wasn’t blond, and if I hadn’t been paralyzed by fear and confusion, I probably would have.

  She told us about not finding a body even though from above it looked like there’d be one. It was just streaks of mud that radiated out from the pack. Maybe they were created by the impact of the pack hitting the bottom of the sinkhole with a big force.

  Then she told us about tying the rope around her waist so she could use both hands to work on the pack. And how she could float on the mud, but at the same time it grabbed her and didn’t want to let go, and it had this smell like rotting leaves.

  She’d had to get her shoulder under the pack and tilt it to the side to expose the straps, so she plunged completely into the mud to get underneath it. Pretty much mud wrestling with the pack. And for a while she thought it would win.

  The top of the pack had been partially open, and two small blue stuff sacks tied together by their drawstrings had fallen into the mud during the wrestling match. She’d slung the bags over her shoulder and around her neck and closed the pack as much as she could.

  “Those sacks.” I pick them up
. “Mike and Dylan, they each had one.” I stuff them into my pack so no one else has to carry any extra weight.

  “The pack down there was so overstuffed,” Tam says. “He must’ve taken all of Mike’s stuff. It was a bitch wrestling that thing.”

  “I’m glad you won,” Jess says.

  Tam smiles at her. “Thanks.”

  Any doubt that Dylan is responsible for Mike’s death and the disappearance of his body is erased from my mind.

  Tam points into the sinkhole. “The pack is tied on, resting on top of the mud, but it’s probably sunk down some since I’ve come up.” She shakes her head. “I was so angry with Dylan when I learned that he’d started the fires. I wanted to kill him. And given what happened to Mike, I still do. But seeing his pack down there still kinda makes me sad. I mean, he must really be nuts. Can’t last long out here with nothing.”

  “His dad got on that basic kick, where he chucked everything,” I say. “Remember? Maybe this is Dylan’s way of following his dad’s vision.” I glance around. “He could be anywhere. He could be watching us right now. Whether he’s completely nuts or not, he’s dangerous.”

  The wind is starting to blow. I can feel the sweat drying beneath my clothes. Tam puts her arms around her chest. She is mostly mud, with only a T-shirt on. If we were still in the fissure, she could’ve washed off in the warm creek water. I’m sure we’ll find some water up here, but it probably won’t be warm.

  She starts brushing the mud off her legs. Jess steps up and helps her. So does Max. I don’t know what to do. Is it okay for me to put my hands on her and help out, too? I step behind her and run my hands down her back, trying to get some mud off her T-shirt. She smells like rotting leaves, like the land before it burned. I take another sniff.

  “Forget the shirt,” Tam says. She grabs the bottom edge and pulls it over her head. Then she slips out of her muddy underwear. Her white backside stands out, bordered by her mud-covered neck and legs. “I’ll just put my camo clothes on over the mud. I’m starting to freeze.”