The Wild Lands

by Paul Greci

  Maybe Chena just had to pee and she chose those rocks. Maybe she wasn’t responding to someone else’s markings. She hasn’t stopped once to pee in the forest.

  We step over a few fallen trees and my hopes sink even lower. People who use a trail regularly keep it clear. The trail starts angling back toward the shoreline, then makes a big sweeping turn until we’re staring down at a cove.

  The hillside behind the cove is forested but there are several breaks, and in those breaks there are huts or structures that have been dug into the hillside, contoured to fit the curve of the hill. At the far end of the cove, a stream flows into the ocean.

  We all just stare. I count six structures in total, but there might be more. I study the area for movement. I mean, the place doesn’t look like it’s falling apart or anything, but I don’t see any evidence that there are people down there either.

  Max points at the huts. “Whoever built these worked with the land. They didn’t just level everything or cut down massive amounts of trees. You can feel the respect here.”

  “Let’s hope they’re as friendly to us as they’ve been to the land,” Tam says.

  We head down the trail and then we’re standing on the shore.

  “Hello,” I shout. “Hello.”

  I tell Jess to keep Chena close by.

  “Let’s poke our heads into one of these huts and see what we see,” I say.

  We check every hut and find them empty, completely empty, but in good shape. The smallest of the huts has a woodstove in it and a couple of benches built into the walls. And under the benches there’s wood cut to fit into the stove. We decide this must be a sauna.

  I’m puzzled. Who would leave a place like this? And why? Unless there was no food to be had around here. Unless they were starving. But the place doesn’t have that feel to it. Starving people usually can’t take care of themselves, and they leave things in a mess.

  We search the opposite side of the cove for a trail, but the land is steep and we can’t find one. We check the forest behind the huts and find nothing.

  “The water,” Max says. “Whoever was here must’ve left by water in some type of boat.” We walk along the shore, searching for any evidence of a mooring, a place to anchor a boat, but find nothing.

  We decide to sleep in the sauna. It’s small, but it’s the only hut with a heat source. By the time we’ve made a couple pots of tea on top of the stove, the place has heated up so much that we’ve taken our clothes off just to be comfortable. Luckily, it’s dark in here, because just the thought of seeing Tam fully naked is causing a major and prolonged response just south of my stomach.

  Chena whines until we let her sleep outside. We hear her settle in right next to the door. I still haven’t told Jess that tomorrow I’m going to kill Chena. Maybe I’ll do it early in the morning before she has a chance to protest. If I let her say goodbye, I doubt I’ll be able to go through with it. I already hate myself for what I’m going to do.

  We talk in whispers, discussing what we should do next. Try to climb the next headland and keep going down the coast? Go back to the end of the road to see if we’ve missed anything? Try to head inland behind the huts, following the stream to see where that leads?

  None of the options seems like the right one, but we’re out of food and can’t just sit here. I think of Chena again. I hope Jess will eat the dog stew. I hope she’ll understand.

  There’s barely room for four of us to lie down together, and I end up with Jess on one side of me and Tam on the other. I’m on my back and my body is humming with anticipation. I take a deep breath and tell myself to just chill. I feel Tam’s hand brush mine and our pinky fingers lock and my whole body aches for her. Tam’s pinky squeezes mine and I squeeze back.

  But there’s no way to do anything more. Like Tam can read my mind, she lets go of my pinky and I hear her exhale. I suck in some air through my nose and relax my face.

  I must’ve finally drifted off because I wake to Chena’s barking. Maybe there’s a bear or a wolf outside. Or a deer. I wish I had some type of weapon beyond a pocketknife from the old man’s pack and the hammer.

  I grab the hammer and open the door to see what the barking is all about. A rush of cold air against my naked body sends a chill up my spine.

  Chena isn’t in front of the hut but instead is down on the shore.

  My heart jumps to my throat. “You guys,” I say. “Look.”

  CHAPTER

  77

  I STUFF MY FEET INTO my shoes and run out the door, the hammer still in my hand. The cold air stabs me like knives, but I can’t waste a moment.

  “Hey!” I yell. “Hey!”

  Out in the cove are two kayaks with people in them—a man and a woman.

  “Come here!” I yell. “Stop!”

  I realize I’m naked and put my hands over my crotch. Jess, Max, and Tam appear moments later, yelling and waving. They have their shirts and shoes on but no pants. Jess hands me my shirt as the kayakers edge their way toward shore.

  “We heard the dog or else we wouldn’t have stopped,” the woman says, her long dark hair blowing in the breeze.

  “We come here to fish,” the man says. He sets his paddle across his kayak and scratches his beard, which is reddish-brown and ends in a point about halfway down his chest. “In the summer and early fall that creek is packed with salmon. One of the few left that get decent runs since the earthquake caused the ground to sink along a lot of the coast. This creek had just the right gradient to support a salmon run. We closed the place down about a month ago.”

  “My people,” the woman says, “have lived on this coast for a long time. But the big quake a few years back destroyed my village, which used to sit about sixty miles from here in Chenega Bay. I’m one of four survivors.”

  Max puts her palms together and does a slight bow. “I’m sorry for your loss from the earthquake.”

  “Thank you,” the woman says.

  Max nods and then asks, “What are your people called?”

  “Chugach,” the woman responds, “the same name as the mountain range you are in.”

  “I’ve heard of your people,” Max says. “They were the first to encounter the Russians way back in the 1700s.”

  “That’s right,” the woman responds. Then she glances at the rest of us. “Where have you come from?”

  I tell her we’ve come down the road, hoping to find people. And that things are bad up north, as bad as they’ve ever been. That I don’t actually know if anyone north of the Alaska Range will even survive the winter.

  The man shakes his head. “No one has come down that road for a long time. A year, maybe two, as far as I know. The maples seem to stop people. If the US government hadn’t screwed around with the ecosystem, it’d be a lot easier to get around through there.”

  “We heard that the trees were genetically engineered,” I say.

  “Not only that,” the man says. “When we took over the Outpost”—he points with his paddle down the coast—“we found old documents detailing their experiment gone wrong. Way back, like sixty years ago, when a lot of the native trees between the Chugach and Alaska Range were stressed and dying, the government did this massive maple seed dispersal by air in isolated places. And yes, the species had been genetically modified to be fast growing and resistant to the pests that plagued the birch, spruce, and aspen. The land managers figured they’d have a jump on reforestation if they needed it. The trees not only did well and spread, but then somehow, some of the remaining seed was stolen and dispersed in more places, which really did turn it into a Buffer Zone over time.”

  “Do either of you know anything about Anchorage? Or at least where Anchorage used to be?” I ask. “I mean, is anyone there?” I tell them about my parents and their instructions to head to Anchorage and how we changed our plans.

  “It’s about a hundred-mile paddle and then a forty-mile walk to get there,” the woman says. “We’ve had a few refugees show up from there this past year. I thi
nk it’s pretty unstable over there. In time we’d like to help stabilize that area, take it under our jurisdiction, but we can’t spread ourselves too thin.”

  I tell them about the community we escaped from, and the old man who owned Chena and what he said before he died, about the bodies. “He used the phrase gas tent.”

  The woman scowls. “Gold raiders from Anchorage.” She shakes her head slowly. “A gas tent is like a gas chamber. They’re usually dropped out of the sky onto places. They’re designed to kill anything they cover.”

  “You mean dropped, like, from an airplane?” Tam asks.

  The man nods. “We’ll have to bring some kayaks back for you. It might take a few days, but we’ll be back. We’re around the point and down the coast twenty or so miles. It’s possible to walk, but there’s some big mountains to cross.” The man hesitates, then continues. “We’ll have to talk it over with everyone at the Outpost, but I don’t think there’ll be any problems. We can’t leave you here. And if you can get along with the others, things should work out.”

  “We live a simple life, but we think it’s a good life,” the woman says. “Everyone pitches in, including dogs.” She points at Chena. “Male or a female?”

  “She’s a girl,” Jess says. “Her name’s Chena.”

  “Has she been fixed?”

  Jess turns to me. “I’m not sure,” I say.

  “We’ll figure it out.” The woman shrugs. “One of our females died this summer, attacked by a bear on the beach you followed to get here. But we’ve got a male, and we could use some pups.”

  “Do you have contact with the rest of the world from your outpost?” I ask. “Like with the United States?”

  The man and the woman look at each other.

  She shakes her head. “There’s a lot you’ll need to know. We’ve been at war with the United States for over two years.”

  “At war?” I raise my eyebrows.

  “It’s a long story,” she says. “The United States has continually tried to keep control of Anchorage after abandoning the rest of the state. There’s a lot of internal fighting going on over there between factions, but the United States wants to hang on to Anchorage and use it as a base to extract resources, like gold. They still have some firepower, and from what you’ve told me, they’re using gas tents on innocent people again.”

  The man says, “If you want to be considered for housing at the Outpost, or any place else in the North Pacific Confederation, you’ll have to pledge your allegiance.”

  “Wait,” I say. “I’ve never heard of the North Pacific Confederation. What—”

  “We’re a coastal people,” the man says. “Trying to live sustainably, locally, in peace. The United States, really the Disunited States these days, doesn’t always make it easy. Once you’re at the Outpost and you’ve been questioned and we’re satisfied that you’re not plants from the United States, then you’ll learn more about the situation we’re in. And”—he hesitates—“did you walk all this way?” He glances at our legs. “Without any pants?”

  We all laugh, and I say, “When I saw the kayaks, I just started running. I didn’t want you to leave.”

  We help them pull their kayaks ashore. We talk some more, but they are hesitant to share specific information about the Outpost in case we’re captured by the United States before they come back to get us. They leave us with some dried fish and tell us they hope to be back in a few days.

  Before they paddle away, the man says, “If we’re not back in seven days, then you’ll have to proceed on foot. Stay as close to the coast as the land will let you, and you won’t miss the Outpost. Hopefully you won’t need to do that, but if you do, at least you know that much.”

  Chena runs along the shore and barks as they paddle away. I look at Jess and say, “I’m glad you made friends with Chena. If it weren’t for her, we might’ve missed those people.”

  Jess smiles and says, “If it weren’t for you and your plan, I’d still be a prisoner at the compound.” Then she turns to Max and Tam. “And without you two, I wouldn’t have made it to the yellow cliffs.”

  “But if you hadn’t done your part so well,” Tam says, “we wouldn’t have had the chance to help you. We’d still be prisoners, too.”

  “That’s right, girl,” Max says to Jess. “You’re the best.”

  I think about what Max said about her grandma and how when you work with other people, when you’re committed to having everyone succeed, the energy created is way more than if each person were working alone. And no way could any of us have ended up where we are if we’d each tried to go it alone.

  I hope this outpost will be a stable place even though there’s a war going on. A place where we can live, where Jess can settle in and maybe even be a kid, if that’s possible after all she’s been through. I grab her by the hands, and even though the back of my arm throbs, I swing her around until she screams with delight. Then I set her down and Chena straddles her and licks her face, and Jess laughs and laughs.

  I look at Max and Tam but they’re both staring at Jess, smiling.

  Chena jumps off Jess and barks.

  A loud blow, like nothing I’ve ever heard, invades my ears and we all turn toward the water. Then we hear another and another. Dark, rounded backs break the surface and blow water skyward. A pod of orcas, six or seven whales of varying sizes, are heading toward the point the kayakers rounded a few minutes ago. I think, Hopefully, we’ll be rounding that point in a few days, starting a new life.

  Then a rumble invades my ears. We all turn and look skyward and see a formation of jets that have materialized above the industrial wreckage across the inlet. I can just make out a blue star on the side of the nearest jet as they zip by us, well offshore, and disappear around the point where the orcas are headed.

  We hear the muffled report of an explosion.

  We can’t see anything, but we hope the kayakers are okay.

  I glance at Jess, then at Max, and then at Tam.

  No one says anything.

  Then we all fix our eyes on the point and wait.

  The jets don’t come back.

  I study the mountains that frame the inlet. Steep forested land gives way to even steeper rocky land as mountain after mountain stretches up the coast.

  If no one shows up for us, we’ll just have to walk to the Outpost.

  It won’t be an easy walk, but we can do it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to all my friends who’ve spent time with me on wilderness trips over the past thirty-five years. All of those experiences have played into the creation of this story. Thanks to my early readers Terry Lynn Johnson, Nancy Fresco, and Elana Johnson. A big thank you to my agent, Amy Tipton, who believed in this story from the very beginning and worked tirelessly to find a home for it. Thanks to my good friend and expert scientist Carl Roland for taking the time to entertain my steady stream of natural history questions ranging from sinkhole development to hypothetical plant species distribution.

  This book would not be what it is without the expert eyes of my editor John Morgan, who got behind this book early and provided valuable direction throughout. Thanks also to my publisher Erin Stein at Imprint, whose careful reading and comments helped make this book the best it could be.

  Thanks also to Natalie C. Sousa, Dawn Ryan, Raymond Ernesto Colón, and Allison Hughes at Imprint and Macmillan for putting in the time and energy to make this book a reality.

  And finally, thank you to my wife, Dana, for reading multiple drafts of this story and always offering her genuine and honest responses.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Paul Greci has lived and worked in Alaska for over twenty-five years as a field biology technician in remote wilderness areas, a backpacking trip leader for teens, a teacher, and a naturalist for several outdoor education programs. His middle grade adventure novel, Surviving Bear Island, was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Scholastic Reading Club Pick. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Part Three

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Part Four

  Chapter 57