by Paul Greci
“Right,” I say.
“Then you see a little break or space, and then more orange pole. Right?”
“Right,” I say.
“Look at that space.”
I focus on the dark space between the two segments of orange, and at first all I see is nothing. Like maybe a rock smashed the pole. But then I see something else. Movement. A dark-skinned hand is barely opening and closing around the pole. There’s only one person at the camp whose hand that could be.
“Theo!” I shout. “Theo. We’re here. Are you okay?” I press my ear to the hole and listen but hear nothing, and my heart sags. Maybe he’s unconscious. Or maybe his face is so trapped that he can’t yell. But his fingers—they moved—so he’s got to be alive.
I sit up and turn to Brooke. “Help me. We’ve got to get him out of there.”
“Brooke. Josh.”
Brooke and I turn toward the voice, and there’s Shannon, almost on top of us.
I stare at the side of her face. “Are you okay?” Some of her hair, which is usually tied back in a ponytail, is plastered to her cheek—anchored there by blood.
“I’m fine. I took a fall and landed on my face.” She motions at the buried camp with her hand. “I’ve got nothing to complain about.”
When I look closely at Shannon’s eyes, I can see that she’s holding back tears, just like I was when I first took in the quadrillion tons of rock that now cover the camp and everyone who was down here.
I point down and say, “Theo’s under there. Brooke spotted his hand through this hole. We’ve seen it move. We’ve got to get these rocks off him now.”
“I’m surprised there’s no one else here,” Shannon says. “With all the planes and helicopters flying around, I was sure that a helicopter would’ve landed down here.”
“Helicopters?” I say, looking at Brooke. “All we saw were planes flying super high.”
“There were helicopters lower down. Lots of them. You probably didn’t see them,” Shannon explains, “because of the steep slopes surrounding the lake.”
“Helicopters or no helicopters,” I say, “we’ve got to help Theo.”
For the next few minutes we work together, trying to move the smaller of the two rocks on either side of the opening. If only there were some trees around, we could use a big branch to create some leverage. Instead, Shannon and Brooke are pulling on the rock from behind and I’m pushing on it. We’ve gotten it to move maybe a foot, but it keeps sliding back to its original spot whenever we let up. It must weigh at least two hundred pounds, and it’s mostly wedged in place.
If Derrick were here, it might make a difference. He’s the biggest of the four of us. And that gets me wondering where he is and if he’s okay. I mean, his camp is about as far away as Shannon’s.
“What if we all push it?” Shannon says. “But not in the direction we’re trying right now.” She points. “Let’s push it down the hill instead of across.”
Brooke says, “There’s not much space for all of us on the uphill side, but it’s worth a try.”
We regroup so we’re three across on the uphill side. I’m in a half squat, and I’ve got my arms and chest pressed up against the rock like I’m trying to tackle it. Shannon and Brooke are on either side of me, pushing on the rock above where I am, their sides pressing into the tops of my shoulders.
“Okay,” Shannon says, “on the count of three.”
But she doesn’t even get to one before the ground starts to shake with a strong aftershock.
“Hang on.” I hug the rock and feel Shannon and Brooke collapse onto it as well. My feet slide backward, and now I’m on my knees and my head is being jostled between Shannon’s and Brooke’s hips, but we’re all leaning onto the rock, riding out the aftershock. I don’t know if it’s because of the aftershock or in spite of it, but I can feel the rock starting to give. Starting to slide downhill.
CHAPTER 5
HIS GRIP IN MY HAND is weak. “Theo,” I shout. “Theo. Hang on. We’re going to get you out.” I drop his hand and turn to Shannon and Brooke, who are moving smaller rocks away from where we think Theo is buried, based on the angle and position that his hand is in. We’re trying to clear where we think his head is in case he’s having trouble breathing. The big rock that slid during the aftershock has made removing other rocks easier, but there’s no telling what got rearranged under the surface.
“Help me with this one,” Shannon says, her hands under one side of a rock the size of a daypack.
I squat and put my hands under the opposite side of the rock, and on three we lift it enough to tip it out of the way.
“I need both of you for this one,” Brooke says. The rock she’s working on is easily twice as big as the one Shannon and I just barely moved.
The three of us work at it and manage to move it about a foot and a half, and by doing that we can see another part of Theo.
Only it’s not the part I was expecting.
“He must be curled up or twisted or something,” I say.
I touch his newly exposed knee but don’t feel any response. I grab his hand and feel his weak grip in return, so I know he’s still with us.
“Maybe his head is over there.” Shannon points a few feet away and back from his knee. “Maybe his leg was slammed forward. Picture him in a lying position instead of standing straight up.”
“The quicker we expose more of him the better,” I say. My mind scans the rock pile, picturing twenty people buried under here. We haven’t heard one voice. But we didn’t hear Theo’s either, and right now he’s alive, so maybe more people are, too. Maybe everyone is.
We keep moving more rocks, concentrating on his hand because his arm will eventually lead to his shoulder, which has to be close to his head. I don’t know if his body is vertical, horizontal, or something in between.
After we remove a bunch of medium-sized rocks the size of shoeboxes and expose Theo’s arm up to the elbow, Brooke says, “It looks like his arm is going straight down, but with his knee right there, it’s like he’s lying down but holding his arm straight up.”
“Theo,” I yell. “We’re coming. Hang on.”
“We’ve got to make the area wider,” Shannon says. “If he’s hurt, we can’t just yank him out of there.”
“Let’s get to his head”—I point to the spot where I think it should be—“in case he’s having trouble breathing. Then we can make the hole wider to ease him out.”
The next rock we dislodge is red and sticky on the bottom side.
I get this sick feeling in my stomach. Not like I’m going to puke, but more like dread. How are we going to deal with injuries, with bleeding, when we’ve got nothing? I think of the small first aid kit back up in my tent, hours away. We each have one, but none of us brought it down here.
Shannon’s voice snaps me back to the bloody rock cradled in my arms. “We’ve got to be careful,” she says. “The rocks may be keeping him from bleeding because of the pressure they’re exerting.”
“We still have to get him out of there,” I respond.
“I know,” Shannon says. “But we might have to try to stop some bleeding along the way. I think—”
“How?” Brooke breaks in.
“Pressure.” Shannon pauses. “Clothing for bandages.”
I toss the rock aside, rip my pile jacket off, and then pull my T-shirt over my head. “We can start with this.” I set my T-shirt down and put my pile jacket back on.
Shannon kneels next to Theo’s exposed forearm. “I can’t see where the blood came from.”
Brooke and I dislodge a large rock and haul it away while Shannon holds Theo’s forearm.
“I think I see his shoulder,” Shannon says. “His arm got twisted behind him. I see where he’s bleeding. Just above the elbow. Josh, hold his arm just like I am.”
I take Theo’s arm, and Shannon reaches into the small opening Brooke and I created by moving that large rock.
“Brooke,” Shannon says, “hand me the shi
rt.”
Brooke picks up the shirt. “Couldn’t he get infected? This shirt is all sweaty. Gross.”
“Can’t be too choosy right now,” I say, keeping my grip on Theo’s arm. Brooke doesn’t say anything back. We both keep our eyes on Shannon.
After a minute Shannon says, “I’ve almost got it. I just have to make it a little tighter.”
She does something, and I feel Theo’s grip tighten.
“It’s okay, Theo,” I say. “We’re just patching you up.” I don’t know if he can hear me, but after I say it, his hand relaxes a little bit. I wish he would say something, anything. Even a muffled groan so we’d know where his head is.
Shannon shifts her body and tilts her head toward me. “I should keep putting pressure on this wound while you and Brooke move more rocks.”
“Is it bad?” I ask softly, not wanting Theo to hear.
“It’s not good,” Shannon responds. “But keeping pressure on it will slow down the bleeding.”
I nod, and as I’m gently releasing Theo’s arm, Brooke says, “You guys, there’s something moving along the edge of the rock slide.”
I stand up and see a big grizzly bear walking on all four legs, coming our way.
“I left my bear spray in my tent,” I whisper.
“So did I,” Shannon says.
Brooke takes a step toward me and says softly, “Me too.”
CHAPTER 6
THE MASS OF BROWN FUR is about two hundred yards away from us. I don’t know if it came down the mountainside like I did or if it came up from the lowlands and walked the lakeshore. Either way, here it is—way too close for comfort.
We watch as the bear climbs up on the landslide. It keeps stopping and sticking its face into the rocks. Then it starts pawing at the rocks, like it’s trying to dig.
I glance down at Theo’s arm and knee. He’d be an attractive meal for a grizzly.
We talk quietly about what to do.
Brooke wants to yell and scream at the bear to try to scare it away before it comes any closer. “We should let it know we’re here.”
Shannon thinks that since the bear is still pretty far away we should just keep working on getting Theo out.
And I think we should do a little bit of both.
I say, “What if the bear is digging toward a person who is alive, like Theo? We can’t let that happen. I—”
Brooke cuts me off. “Didn’t you see all that blood on Theo? And now, with that bear so close, we’re risking our lives for a lost cause. You really think he has a chance?” She shakes her head.
“Yeah, I do. He’s alive,” I say softly, staring her down, when really I want to shout into her face. “What if it were you?”
“Look,” Shannon says, pointing toward the bear.
More rocks clatter as the bear digs. Now it has its whole head in the landslide, and all we can see are its massive shoulders and body straining as it pulls and tugs.
Some orange starts to show, and then the bear stumbles backward with a big orange dry bag in its jaws. At the bottom of the rock slide the bear drops the bag and starts pawing at it.
“The bear found our kitchen,” I say, “or, at least part of it.”
We had an electric fence around the kitchen area, powered by a couple of batteries hooked up to some small solar panels, but that system must be smashed up.
In no time the bear has shredded one side of the dry bag and is now pulling out smaller bags with its jaws.
Shannon says, “Let’s keep working on Theo while the bear is busy.”
I try to forget about the bear and what Brooke said about Theo and just focus on digging him out.
We all keep moving rocks, and we uncover Theo’s other elbow and then the rest of his arm. And under his bent arm, we get the first glimpse of the top of his head.
“Careful,” I say as we move small rocks and uncover the rest of Theo’s head. I put the back of my hand in front of his mouth and nose and feel a tiny stream of air run across my skin. “He’s breathing.”
“That’s great,” Shannon says, “but he’s still bleeding. It’s hard to tell how much, but there’s more blood since I stopped applying pressure and started moving rocks again.”
Shannon kneels and then sits beside Theo’s arm and applies pressure to the wound.
I glance at the bear. Luckily, it is still busy devouring our food.
Brooke starts moving more rocks, and I do the same. We work in silence. I’m still pissed that she thinks Theo is as good as dead. She was here when he squeezed my hand. Clearly he was alive then and still is now.
We uncover his torso. He’s got a pile jacket on, and we don’t see any blood seeping through it. It appears that he’s in a sitting position with one leg scrunched up. Shannon is supporting him with her body while keeping pressure on his arm wound.
“We need to free his other leg,” Brooke says, acting like it was her idea to dig him out.
I don’t argue with her because I agree. As I move more rocks, my mind pounds away.
Maybe she’s figured out that she was wrong.
Maybe I should drop the whole thing.
But how could she even question whether we should try to dig him out?
We’re going to need to deal with that.
If there’s one thing they drilled into us at this camp, it’s that you need to deal with the big things.
But right now, the biggest, most immediate thing is getting Theo out of the rocks.
Still, at some point, we’ve got to talk about what Brooke said. Her words—we’re risking our lives for a lost cause—replay in my brain.
We keep working in silence and now have most of Theo uncovered. Just one leg from the knee down remains trapped, but one of the rocks over it is a big one—too big for just the two of us.
Brooke is already reaching under the rock, trying to get a firm hold.
“Shannon,” I say. “We’re going to need your help with this one.”
She nods and eases Theo into a lying position, and then lets go of his arm where she’s been applying pressure.
As she starts to stand up, I hear a clattering sound from the bear’s direction.
We all turn and look. I can feel the wind directly on my face, blowing up from the valley.
And below the bear, about a quarter mile down the lakeshore, we see him. “That’s got to be Derrick,” I say.
“He must not know about the bear,” Brooke says.
The bear is now standing on two legs and facing Derrick’s direction. I think about the wind hitting my face and say, “It knows about him.”
Then the bear drops back down onto four legs, turns, and starts running away from Derrick and directly toward us.
CHAPTER 7
“BROOKE, SHANNON,” I SAY. “STAND with me in front of Theo. We have to appear big.”
We’ve all been taught what to do in case we encounter a bear. It was drilled into us the first couple of days of camp, but now that it’s happening, my mind is racing and my body is shaking.
We’re bunched up shoulder to shoulder. I’m guessing Shannon and Brooke are both wishing they hadn’t left their bear spray behind just like I am. We were taught to never go anywhere without it. Got to get out of your tent to take a leak, well, don’t forget your bear spray.
The bear is already agitated. Catching Derrick’s scent obviously spooked it, but because of the direction the wind is blowing, there’s no way it’d catch ours. Will it feel trapped between the three of us and Derrick? Will it fight or flee? Luckily, the rock slide is so jagged and slanted that even a bear can’t run full speed across it—but the bear is moving in our direction.
“If it doesn’t back off,” Brooke says, “we may have to.”
We were taught to back away slowly from a bear but to stand your ground if it was pursuing you—but that didn’t take into account protecting an injured person.
“We can’t back off,” I counter. “Only three of us can walk.”
“What would Theo wa
nt you to do?” Brooke asks. “Get mauled because of him?” She shakes her head.
“I don’t care what Theo would want me to do,” I say. “I know what he would do if the situation were flipped. He wouldn’t abandon us.”
Shannon doesn’t say anything, which I take to mean that she’s not planning on leaving Theo.
The bear has halved the distance to us—it’s only one hundred yards away—but has slowed down. Still, with Derrick continuing his forward push to get here, the bear isn’t going to be turning around.
“Would Theo want you to die defending him while he has almost no chance of survival himself?” Brooke says. “He’s lost a lot of blood. He can’t talk. He’s barely breathing, and he’s still stuck in the rocks. He’s—”
“Hello. Hello.” Derrick’s voice echoes off the steep mountain walls surrounding the lake and seems to come at us from all directions. But the bear can smell where he is and keeps moving away from the smell. I still don’t know if Derrick knows there’s a bear. I don’t know if he’s even spotted us yet.
“We need to make some noise,” Shannon says. “The bear might not know we’re in its path.”
“You two can yell and shout all you want,” Brooke says. “I’m moving out of the way.”
“And what if the bear comes at you?” Shannon asks.
Brooke scowls. “Why can’t we all move out of the way?” She takes a step sideways, like she’s going to abandon us, but doesn’t go any farther.
Maybe she’s mustered up an ounce of compassion for Theo. Maybe she’s realized that his life is worth just as much as hers. Or, maybe it’s the thought of being alone and confronting the bear that is just too freaking scary for her. Maybe she realizes she has more of a chance of saving herself if she stays put.
“Hey, bear,” Shannon yells, just like we were taught. I join in and so does Brooke, and now we’re all yelling the phrase in sync.
Maybe it’s the strong headwind that keeps the bear from noticing our voices.
Maybe it’s Derrick’s scent that keeps pushing it forward.