by Daniel Smith
“What is it?”
“Oh my God.”
“What is it?” I asked again. “Tell me, President.”
He sat back and shook his head. “Cable tied. Someone has tied the parachute shut. They were murdered.”
“What? By who?” Even as I said it, though, I remembered the man in the suit saying something about the others being not “so lucky.”
“The same people who are after me, I guess.”
“But you don’t know who they are? Are you sure you didn’t recognize any of them? They said they were hunting you.”
The president didn’t look at me. He turned away and bit his bottom lip as if there was something more than our situation on his mind.
“What about that man Hazar?” I asked. “You know him?”
He shook his head.
“The others, then? Did you —”
“I’m the President of the United States, Oskari; there are a lot of people who would like to kill me.”
A terrible shiver ran through me, like spiders crawling over my skin, but I told myself that standing around feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get anything done. “Crying never helped anyone” is what Dad would have said.
“Get up, President.”
“Hmm?”
“I said, ‘Get up.’ ”
The president shook his head. “They were murdered, Oskari, don’t you understand? I’ve been betrayed. Someone sabotaged Air Force One so that it could be shot down, then they sabotaged my bodyguards’ parachutes. They sabotaged the escape pod, too; that’s why I couldn’t open the door.”
“I know. I heard the man in the suit say that.”
The president looked up at me. “You know that help I told you about? I’m not so sure it’s going to come.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” I could hardly believe I was saying it, but I could see the president was losing heart. I had to try to keep him going. “Stand up and let’s go.”
“They have guns, Oskari. They have a helicopter. And they’ve got information, too. I mean, how the hell did they do all this?”
I looked down at Otis’s body. “Does he have a gun?”
“Hmm?”
“This bodyguard. He has a gun?”
The president seemed to realize what I was saying. “Yes. Yes, he does.” He shifted and took a deep breath before reaching inside the man’s jacket and pulling out a pistol.
“Now you have a gun,” I said. “And I have my bow.”
The president didn’t look too impressed by that, and after my performance with the rabbit, I could hardly blame him. He tried to smile, but it just looked desperate, as if he felt sorry for me and knew we were already dead. Then his face fell as something else occurred to him.
“Phones,” he said. “They’ll have phones.” He dropped into a crouch once more and, with some effort, rolled the body onto its back. He turned his head as he patted Otis’s clothes, not wanting to look at his bodyguard’s face. When he came to the hip pocket, he stopped and looked at me with an air of triumph. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, fumbling his hand into Otis’s pocket to retrieve the cell phone. He lifted it toward the moonlight and turned it around in his hands, pressing buttons, becoming more and more agitated. “Damn it. Broken.”
He threw it out onto the rocks and went to the next bodyguard, checking his pockets until he found another broken phone. “One more try,” he said to himself. “One more chance.” When the third phone lit up in his hands, he looked like a child. His whole face became one big smile and I felt so happy for him. He really seemed to think that the phone would save his life. He could phone for help, and we would be rescued.
But his happiness did not last long. He began to shake the phone. He turned around. He held it up to the sky. He lowered it. He held it at arm’s length, then began jumping from boulder to boulder. Eventually, the air went out of him and his whole body sagged.
“What is it, President?”
“No signal,” he said. “After all that, there’s no damn signal.”
“Well, we are in the wilderness. I thought maybe the president’s phones might work, but …” I shrugged.
He put the phone in his pocket and sat down, rubbing his face with his hands. “Being the president doesn’t count for much out here in the wilderness, I guess.”
“Not really.”
“Out here, I’m just like everyone else.”
“Maybe not even that,” I said.
“Thanks, kid.”
“Well, can you hunt?”
“No.” He seemed to shrink under the weight of our situation.
“Build a shelter?”
He shook his head.
“Can you even start a fire?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then you really are lucky I found you. I know how to do all those things. And tomorrow this forest will be full of hunters from my village, and the first place they will go to is my dad’s hunting ground. That’s where he’ll come looking for me if I don’t return by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow might be too late.” He looked back at the helicopter sweeping the forest. “Who the hell is doing this?”
“The helicopter won’t do them any good. They’re looking in the wrong place. Because you have me.”
The president sighed.
“If it wasn’t for me, Hazar would have you by now.” It was a good feeling to think that maybe I wasn’t such a bad woodsman after all. “Haven’t I already gotten you this far?” I asked.
He nodded. “I guess you have, kid.”
“I told you, my name is Oskari. I’m not a kid.”
“No. I guess you’re not.”
“Don’t worry, President. I am going to look after you, okay?” I spat in my hand and held it out to him.
The president looked at me, then at my hand.
“Spit and shake,” I said.
He hesitated, then spat in his palm and grasped my hand. When he did, I gripped it as hard as I could and pulled, making him get to his feet. “There,” I said. “It is a promise now.”
The president gave me a look that made me feel proud and strong like never before. A sparkle came back into his eyes and I could see it was the look of a man who had chosen not to give up. Maybe he thought that if I could be brave, then he should be brave, too.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Good.” I let go of his hand and shifted the pack on my back, then started up the mountain once more. As I walked, I looked over my shoulder. “Oh, and you know why else you’re lucky?”
“Why’s that?”
I nodded at Otis. “Right size, remember? At least his other shoe will fit you.”
Higher up the mountain, about twenty minutes after finding the bodies, the constant helicopter sound changed and we turned to see its lights descending into the trees below. For a moment the noise lulled, then it stopped completely. The president and I stood together, watching the quiet forest, wondering what Hazar and his men were up to.
“Conserving fuel,” the president said. “They can’t keep that thing in the air all night.”
“They’ll start again when it’s light. Or maybe they’ve decided just to track us on foot.”
The president turned to look at me. “Could they do that? D’you think they’ve found a trail? Is that why they’ve landed the chopper?” There was fear in his voice. “They know where we are?”
“Impossible.” I thought back to everything we had done to cover our tracks. Not even Dad would have been able to follow us. “We didn’t leave a trail.”
“Fuel, then,” the president said.
“Fuel,” I agreed.
We stayed as we were, looking out at the wilderness, a sea of black stretching as far as the horizon, where it met the dark-blue sky. Stars glittered in and out of the passing clouds. From this high up we could see two scars, some distance apart, glowing like ugly wounds in the forest’s body. The flames were still burning, illuminating the destruction that cu
t through the trees for at least a half mile, ending with large fires like periods at the end of sentences.
“Those must be the escort fighters,” the president said. “They’re both too small to be Air Force One.”
“I wonder where that is, then?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, he just shook his head, and we stared at the fires for a while longer before setting off again.
The president checked his phone from time to time, but always with the same disappointing result.
The air was colder the higher we went, and he was shivering. His clothes were damp from the rain, and his breathing was becoming labored again. He needed warmth and rest, and we were both tired, but we pushed on. We scrambled over loose rocks, trekked through thinning patches of pines, climbed ledges and boulders. And all the time, we tried to leave no trace that we had ever been there.
When we finally reached an open, rocky plateau on the side of Mount Akka, close to the secret hunting ground marked on Dad’s map, I stopped and went to the sheer edge at the side of the mountain, to look out across the wilderness. The chilly wind whistled about me, plucking at my camouflage and snaking under my rain jacket. I watched the flickering scars in the forest far below, then looked back at the way we had climbed before I turned to inspect the rest of the plateau.
The ground here was mostly bare and hard, but there were areas of grass, and the occasional spindly tree trying to live in patches of thin soil. On one side — the side opposite the way we had climbed up — the plateau sloped gently around the side of Mount Akka toward Dad’s secret hunting ground. On the other side, opposite the sheer drop off into the forest, the crags of Mount Akka rose steeply toward the summit, but there was a large overhang in the rocks that would provide a good shelter.
Dad had told me to wait until dawn and stay under the wind, and even though I wasn’t going to be doing much hunting right now, I glanced up to check the sky.
The president came to stand beside me and looked up. The sky was more or less clear above us now, and the moon was a large silver disc, with just a few clouds passing across it. From time to time, they dulled the silvery light.
“See the way the clouds are moving?” I said. “The wind is blowing across the mountain. It means we’re under the wind from above and below.”
“And that means … ?”
“It means we can have a small fire and the smoke won’t blow down the mountain to …” I glanced back at the trees below us. “To them.” The helicopter was gone now, but we knew the men might be down there, maybe searching the forest on foot.
I told the president to sit under the overhang and shelter out of the wind while I prepared a fire. There weren’t many trees around the plateau, but there were enough for me to gather wood to last for a few hours. In just a couple of runs, I managed to build a good pile of sticks close to our shelter, then I went back and forth collecting suitable stones and piling them beside the sticks.
“Can’t I help with something?” the president asked. “I feel like a spare part.”
“No, President. You stay where you are.”
He kept offering to help, but I wouldn’t let him do anything. He was so useless at being in the wilderness that he made me feel like an expert. For once, I was the best at something, and so I told him to rest while I worked. He sat forward with his forearms on his knees, the pistol beside him, watching my every move.
“You speak good English, Oskari,” he said when I brought the final armful of stones. “Does everyone in your village speak English?”
“Yes. Some of the older people maybe aren’t so good.”
“They teach it at school, I guess.”
“Mm-hm. And we watch American TV.”
“Of course. The power of TV.” He shivered as the wind picked up. “So, tell me what you’re doing with those rocks.”
“This will stop anyone seeing the fire,” I said, building the stones up into a low wall. “And it will absorb and reflect the heat. Soon it will be nice and warm under here.”
“You really know what you’re doing, don’t you?” He sounded impressed.
When the wall was almost waist height, I made a small circle of stones on our side of it and took out my fire kit. A little ball of lint and a few scrapes from my fire steel was all I needed to get a flame going, and once that was done, I fed the fire with small sticks until it was strong enough for larger ones.
“Pretty good, Oskari.” The president put out his hands to feel the warmth. “I can tell you’ve done that before.”
I sat back and leaned against a rock, putting my arms around my knees. “One of the things I’m best at. Dad always gets me to build the fire.”
“I wouldn’t have any idea how.”
“It’s easy really; all you need is a good fire kit. Every hunter needs a good fire kit.” I took the plastic tub out of my pocket to show him. “It has everything I need — fire steel, lint, storm matches — all inside this tight, waterproof tub.”
“Storm matches?”
“For emergencies only,” I said. “They will light anywhere and they don’t go out. You can light them, put them underwater, in the soil, wherever you like — and when you take them out, they’re still lit.”
“Amazing.” The president shook his head.
“Look.” I unscrewed the lid and took out the tube of storm matches. “I’ll show you.”
“Don’t waste them.”
“It’s okay.” I took out one of the matches. It was longer than an ordinary match, and almost the entire length of the stem was covered in a red coating. I scraped it against the side of the tube to light it and it flared up right away. I held it up for him to see before sticking it into the soil at my feet. I covered it over, stamped on it, then dug it up. When I took it out, the flame popped into life again.
“Impressive.”
I took my cup of water and put the match into it, dousing the flame. When I removed it from the water, the match flared again so I blew it out, only for it to relight.
“See? With this kit and my knife, I can survive anywhere,” I said.
I threw the match on the fire.
“I guess the bow comes in handy, too.”
I glanced at the bow leaning against the rock beside me, and thought about how I had felt when I was standing on the platform in the Place of Skulls, trying to draw it all the way. “With my knife I could easily make a bow,” I said.
“So why don’t you? The one you have is obviously too big.”
“No, it isn’t,” I argued. “It’s not too big.”
“Oh. Okay.” The president backed off, sensing that he had touched a nerve.
For a while, neither of us said anything, and I kept feeding the fire until it was just right. When it was ready, I gave the president a thin blanket from my pack so he could take off his clothes and spread them on the rocks by the fire to dry. While he did that, I rummaged through what I had saved from the crashed ATV, asking if he was hungry.
He nodded. “I guess I am. Haven’t had much time to think about it, really, but now that you mention it …”
He looked wretched, holding the blanket around him, probably wondering how his whole world had fallen apart. One moment he had been flying in his plane, and the next he was here, sitting on the mountain trying to keep warm. It was still so strange to think that he was Alan William Moore, the President of the United States.
“I have dried reindeer meat,” I said, taking a fold of cloth and holding it up.
“Really?” He screwed up his face. “Reindeer?”
“You don’t like it?”
“Never tried it.” His expression said he didn’t really want to, either.
I shrugged. “I have sausages.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“Blood sausage it is, then.”
“Wait … what did you say?” He leaned closer as if he hadn’t heard me properly. “Blood sausage?”
“Sure. We make them from pig’s blood.”
; He detected my hint of a smile and pointed at me. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
I laughed. “My dad loves them, but I never liked them much. Don’t worry, I have normal sausages.”
The president smiled and shook his finger at me, making me laugh again as I took out a couple of sausages and chose some good sticks to skewer them. I handed one to the president and we held them over the flames until they were black on the outside but heated right through. The smell that came off them was delicious, and my mouth watered as they cooked, then we sat beneath the overhang, close to the warmth of the fire, and settled down to eat.
“They’re good,” the president said, waving a hand across his mouth because it was too hot for him.
“The rabbit would have been better.”
“Well, you’re doing a great job of looking after me, Oskari, so thank you for that.”
His words made me feel good and I looked over at him, huddled beneath his blanket. “What is it like to be powerful?”
He almost choked on his food, coughing and spluttering, so I passed him a bottle of water and waited.
The president took a long drink, tipping his head back, then wiped his mouth with a hand, and cleared his throat. “Powerful?” he said with a distant smile. “That took me by surprise, Oskari. I don’t exactly feel powerful sitting here in my boxers.”
“No, but … usually you are.”
He became serious. “Well. I guess I’d say power is … ephemeral. Which means you can’t touch it, and it’s easy to lose. For example, a few hours ago, I could send armies around the globe, and invade foreign soil if I wanted to. Now I can’t even order a pizza.” He sighed and took another bite of his sausage.
“I like pizza.”
“Yeah?” He looked up at me. “Do you have a favorite topping?”
“Pepperoni.”
“Good choice. Tastier than blood sausage, I’d bet. And where do you stand on cookies?”
“Cookies are good.”
“And ice cream?”
“That’s good, too.” Mom used to make the best vanilla ice cream. I could almost taste it just thinking about it.
“In that case, when all this is over, I’ll invite you to my place. We’ll have a blast. Pizza, ice cream, and video games. You like video games, right?”