The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  She bends over and grabs her pants, and I catch the tiniest glimpse of a nipple on her plum-sized breast, and that sends a jolt from my eyes to my groin. She’s beautiful.

  I turn away and try to focus on the next task at hand. There are supplies in that pack and we need them.

  Hauling the pack out of the sinkhole is more difficult than I thought it would be. We try grabbing the rope, bracing our legs, and walking backward, but the rope digs into the lip of the hole, which creates a lot of friction and stops us dead. And the pack feels way heavier than Tam.

  So I go to the lip of the hole and we get a system going. I heave on the rope, raising the pack a foot or so, and Max and Tam, standing several feet back from me, take in the slack. Since we don’t know where Dylan is, Jess is keeping watch.

  The wind is still blowing and it’s starting to rain, but I’m warm because I’m sweating again. We’ve brought the pack up maybe ten feet from the bottom. I can feel the muscle strain in my neck running down the outsides of my arms. The pack is covered with mud from Tam’s wrestling with it, which adds to the weight.

  I count one, two, three. On three, I pull with my arms, back, and legs until I’m standing straight up, and Max and Tam take in the slack. We do this again and again. I’m leading with my good shoulder, but the injured one still stings every time I yank on the rope. We usually lose a little ground between pulls. Like for every two steps forward we end up going back one, but that’ll be okay as long as we get the pack out of the freaking hole.

  I glance back. “How’re you two doing?”

  “Just shut up,” Tam says. “Keep pulling.”

  “Arms of steel,” Max says.

  I keep pulling, and they keep taking in the slack, but the pack doesn’t seem to be getting much higher in relation to all the rope we’re hauling in.

  “Stretch the rope out,” I say. “Tell me how much we’ve got.”

  I glance back. Max is holding the rope tight and Tam is walking backward with the end.

  “Maybe twenty feet,” Tam calls. “And another ten between you and Max.”

  I guess we have at least another thirty feet to go.

  The pack is skidding along the sinkhole wall, getting caught below every little bump and inside every divot. Sometimes I have to let it drop a little and then yank it extra hard to clear a bump. I hate losing any ground, but there’s no way around it.

  Tam and Max are so tuned in to the process that I don’t even have to tell them when I’m doing this. They just give the tiniest bit of slack, unless I ask for more.

  The pack gets jammed below the biggest bump yet. They’ve given me a little slack, and when I call for more, they give me a couple more feet. I let out the slack and can see the pack edging out from the bump. I consider moving to the right a little bit, but I don’t want to start wasting energy moving sideways, because there are bumps and divots all over the wall.

  On three, I give a huge heave on the rope, and then it gives all at once and I’m thrown backward like I’ve been blindsided by a grizzly bear. I keep my grip on the rope as my ass smacks the ground and my wrists pull in all the way to my chest. I dig my heels into the ground and wait for the forward tug that I’m sure to feel, hoping that Tam and Max have a good grip.

  But it never comes.

  My stomach clenches. And even though I know, I don’t want to know. I just want to pretend that it hasn’t happened. I slam the rope on the ground and stand up. Max and Tam are already standing.

  All three of us walk to the edge of the hole and peer down. There, on the bottom, a tiny window of blue fabric peeks above the mud with a strand of rope snaking out from it.

  “Son of a bitch,” I say. “Christ.” I know we don’t have enough rope to get back down there. And even if we did, I couldn’t be sure that it would hold anyone’s weight after all the stress we put on it.

  I shudder at the thought of the rope breaking when Tam was climbing. But still, I want that pack. I search my brain but can think of no way to get it. At least we have the two blue stuff sacks, whatever is in them. But all that work for the pack. All that risk.

  I lift my face to the sky and feel the sprinkles of cold rain on my cheeks. We’ve wasted enough time and energy on this.

  I turn to Max and Tam. Muddy streaks run down Tam’s face and neck.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Maybe if I hadn’t pulled so hard that last time. I—”

  “Hey,” Jess calls. “I think I see something moving.”

  CHAPTER

  42

  THE THING ABOUT THE LAND—it’s huge. But you can see especially long distances since the vegetation burned.

  The dust cloud Jess had noticed was quite a ways off. Maybe even on the far side of the fissure. I knew someone was causing it—kicking up dust as they traveled through the ash.

  My first thought is Dylan, on his way back to the Sacrifice Area to live out his dad’s vision. My second thought is Mom. She’d be coming this way if she’d survived. I don’t mention this to Jess because it is so unlikely that she survived, since she didn’t turn up before we headed south. And I know we have to keep moving forward. My mom wanted me to get Jess to a safe place. Her note didn’t say wait for me.

  We are in a spot sprinkled with boulders, so we have some possible cover if we need it. It used to be that whoever you met in the Alaska bush was probably a pretty good person. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but not out to harm you or rob you. Sure, some people ran from the law into the wilderness, but that was the exception. Most people looking to take advantage of you stuck to places where there were people.

  But the abandonment and the burning have turned everyone into potential bad guys. Desperation does that. So instead of banding together, which actually makes sense for survival, people avoid each other. Max and Tam are with us now only because we somehow worked through a showdown where I was pointing a gun at them and Tam had her bow trained on me.

  Even though part of me wants to believe that the dust cloud behind us presents no threat, and maybe even represents help, we can’t take the chance. We need to keep moving.

  I stuff the remaining rope into my pack and off we go into the boulder field, with the awareness that we could encounter anyone, anytime. The sprinkles of rain increase and now it’s just plain raining.

  Rolling hills stretch out ahead of us, so the boulders combined with the dips make for lots of potential hiding places. Except for the rain the land is dry and well-drained. We see a stray footprint here and there, but no continuous trails of tracks.

  No one says much of anything for hours as we move southwest through the boulders toward the mountains. Occasional patches of willow and knee-high dwarf birch dot the landscape. Dylan’s dad’s inferno could only reach so far. We all know that stopping in the pouring rain without any shelter is a recipe for freezing, so we trudge at what I hope is a sustainable pace. It’s fast enough to keep us from being chilled to the bone but slow enough that we can keep moving without collapsing from exhaustion.

  When we reach the base of the mountains, the rain lets up and the sun pokes through the clouds. Dark, rocky slopes cut with green bands of vegetation rise before us. Tucked into the highest valleys, we see the dirty gray of glaciers, remnants of what were huge rivers of ice.

  We eat another jar of salmon. Jess wants to open a second jar and I tell her we can’t. She makes a fish face and then stares at me with sad eyes, but I hold firm even though I want to give her everything she asks for.

  We all put on our knit caps.

  My feet are blocks of ice, and I want to be back in the fissure soaking in the warm water. I need to talk to Jess about Mom, but I can’t do it while we’re freezing.

  We decide to head west along the base of the mountains until we reach the low gap where we plan to cross.

  But before we leave, I remember the blue stuff sacks that Tam lifted from Dylan’s pack. I pull them out and what we find in them changes everything.

  CHAPTER

  43

&
nbsp; “BUT CAN WE REALLY TRUST the map?” I ask.

  “We can’t trust anything,” Max says. “But why would Dylan and Mike have carried the map if they didn’t think it was valuable?”

  “But why didn’t they say anything?” Tam asks.

  “Maybe they were gonna wait until we got to the mountains,” Jess says. “Or maybe they didn’t trust us.”

  We argue some more about which way to go. I want to believe the map will help us. I really do. Maybe it’s the best option, if we can even follow it. But it has us slanting east instead of west. And it shows a settlement at what used to be Valdez, a small town a couple hundred miles to the east of Anchorage. Valdez is where the oil pipeline ended. Or at least where it used to end before it ran dry. My parents didn’t mention Valdez as an option. As far as I knew, it had been downsized after the oil pipeline ran dry and then totally abandoned after a big earthquake.

  There’s a big black X marked over the word Anchorage.

  “Dylan was pretty whacked,” I say. “Maybe the map is just what he freaking imagines is there.”

  “It could be the best way to get through the mountains,” Max says. “Remember how Dylan led us across the swamp, and how he could pick out the old lakeshores? He may have been crazy, but he also had a gift. If he imagined all that, he did a damn good job. Maybe it’s his way of helping us, continuing to guide us even if he’s gone back home.”

  “Why would he guide us?” Tam says. “I mean, he killed his brother. It’s not like he’s a nice person. He hated me and I hated him. Even if he’s dead, I still hate him.”

  I stare at the map. It’s an ancient highway map with some colored lines penciled in. Solid black lines show the two old highways. One leads from Fairbanks to Anchorage, the other from Fairbanks to Valdez.

  “He must’ve been marking our progress in secret,” I say. “See the red marks.”

  A solid red line starts at a place marked home on the Tanana River, cuts a jagged line south, and ends just after a place marked fissures. Dylan also labeled the lake we’d gone around and the place we’d killed the bear. And then at the fissures is Mike’s name and, next to it, a little cross.

  “I wish we could’ve talked to him in the fissure,” I say. “Before we got to the rim he was acting kind of normal.”

  “I think he drew all the red lines after we separated at the fissure,” Max says. “It would’ve been hard for him to pull out the map and not have any of us notice.”

  I nod. I only saw the stuff sacks once, and Mike and Dylan said what was in them was personal, and no one challenged them. One is labeled with the letter D and the other with an M.

  From where the solid red line ends at the fissures, a dotted red line takes over and runs east until it meets up with the black line—the old highway route to Valdez that used to parallel the oil pipeline. Just south of the pass where the old highway used to cut through the mountains is a place marked Uncle Mark’s Cache. From there, the red dotted line parallels the black line south all the way to Valdez, where the word Settlement is circled.

  Everything from the sacks is spread out before us.

  From Dylan’s sack:

  The map

  A small box of colored pencils

  A hand trowel

  A picture labeled “Mike and Dylan at the secret cache with Uncle Mark”

  From Mike’s sack:

  A necklace with a heart-shaped locket

  Two six-packs of giant Snickers bars

  A small drawknife wrapped in a cloth

  Lures and line

  “Last time I saw a Snickers bar was like six years ago,” Tam says. “It was in my last foster home. I remember having to split it with my foster brother, Chris, which was no big deal since it was back before he tried to molest me.”

  I remember Tam’s story from the night we were on watch in the fissure. I look over at her and she acknowledges me with eye contact and a nod.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” Jess says. “Until now.”

  Candy was one of the first things to go when the government took over food distribution. Essential goods only. So candy bars got axed, along with toys, board games, and soda, to name a few things. At least that’s what my parents told me. But they had no reason to lie. We were living on the edge of collapse then, I just didn’t realize it. We’d get big blocks of government-issued cheese, bags of pinto beans and rice, and powdered milk.

  “They must be old,” I say. “Think they’re any good?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Max says. She glances down at the pile of stuff. “Candy. Not bad.”

  Tam nods and says, “Score.”

  The wind is blowing a cold wall of air down from the mountains. More cold means it’ll take more food to stay warm.

  I pick up a package of Snickers and tear the wrapper open. When I was Jess’s age, seven years ago, you could pretty much get any kind of candy you wanted. Then bam, the year after that, you couldn’t get anything except baker’s chocolate. And a year later that was history, too.

  I keep the bar in the wrapper and just feel it. “It’s hard as a rock.”

  We pass the Snickers around. When it comes back to me, I say, “I’ll cut it into four pieces.”

  I tear the wrapper lengthwise. The bar is bumpy and sprinkled with an off-white color. I sniff. “Smells like chocolate,” I say. “But the white stuff—”

  “It’s okay,” Tam says. “At the group home we had some ancient chocolate chips that were speckled with white, but we still ate them and they didn’t make us sick.”

  My stomach tingles. We had chocolate that first winter three years ago. We found someone’s stash in an abandoned house. But we’ve had none since then.

  I take my knife out of my pack and saw the bar into four pieces. Little flakes of chocolate break off, but the wrapper catches most of them. We each take a piece, but before anyone eats, I hold mine up and say, “Here’s to the next part of our journey, making it safely through the mountains, whichever way we go.” I push my piece forward and so does everyone else. We let our chunks of stale candy bar touch, like glasses clinking in a toast. Tam and Max and Jess crack small smiles and I feel myself doing the same.

  How did Dylan even know the way from here? But then there’s the picture of Dylan and Mike with Uncle Mark at the secret cache. And they look young—maybe eight or nine years old. Uncle Mark has a brown beard that matches the color of the rocky bluffs behind the three of them in the photo. But why didn’t they tell us any of this? And why didn’t they just leave on their own after their parents were dead? They could’ve taken a direct route instead of wandering west with us. Is their uncle Mark still alive? Is he living in some secret place in the pass just before the Buffer Zone? And if he is, does that mean there are others?

  My mind runs with all these questions as I let the Snickers soften in my mouth. I remember sharing chocolate with Stacy. Eating a hot fudge sundae made from homemade ice cream and homemade fudge after store-bought ice cream and chocolate became a memory. Two spoons. One bowl. All in secret when her parents were out.

  My chest feels raw, like I’ve just inhaled some fragments of glass. I wonder where she is. Had her family gone east or west? I don’t even know.

  I glance at Jess. She has her eyes closed, concentrating on the chocolate in her mouth, like she used to when we ate blueberries that we’d picked before the fires came. Then I think of Mom and Dad, and how they would have loved to see Jess now. To see how she’s adapted and how she keeps rising to every challenge that’s put in front of her. My eyes grow hot. I wipe a tear away before it has a chance to run down my cheek.

  We have a decision to make. Go toward Valdez like Dylan’s map suggests or toward Anchorage like my parents instructed. And we need to make it soon.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER

  44

  WE STICK TO THE EDGE of the mountains and follow the map, walking east for three days, only stopping to eat Snickers bars and salmon, and to rest our feet, w
hich are continually wet from creek crossings. Towers of dirty, gray ice fill some of the valleys, while others are ice-free.

  The glaciers have been on a melting rampage for almost a century and will probably be gone in another twenty years. At least that’s what I learned in school before it closed.

  Supposedly, all the glaciers in the Brooks Range between Fairbanks and the Arctic Ocean have already melted. But not down here in the Alaska Range. No one predicted that. My dad was fascinated with how things worked in the natural world. He told me, You just never know what’s going to happen. There are too many factors involved to make accurate predictions.

  Then, once the oil started getting scarce worldwide and Alaska was in the long process of getting cut off, the science up here pretty much stopped. No one was flying over glaciers and taking measurements, and no one was getting paid to study anything, not for years. My dad said it was foolish not to put money into studying the ways the planet was changing, because ultimately, there’d be nothing to do with money if we didn’t have a livable planet. It was like feeding wood into your woodstove on one side of the house while an out-of-control fire was raging on the other side and coming toward you.

  We follow Dylan’s route marked in red, toward the old road, as best we can. The Richardson Highway, it used to be called, before the Tanana, Delta, and Gulkana rivers chopped it into pieces, reclaiming parts of the valleys they’d carved out thousands of years ago.

  “When we do get to the old road corridor,” I say, “we’ll have to be even more careful.”

  “How will we even know when we’re there?” Jess asks, standing on one foot and then the other.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to see old sections of pavement,” I say. “Or stray pieces of pipeline that weren’t hauled away.”

  “You can always tell when people have changed something,” Max says. “Even if the injury happened a long time ago, the scars remain.”

  “And depending on how far the fires reached,” Tam says, “we might see some old buildings or fences, or cars.”