by Joe Beernink
He strapped one set of snowshoes to the outside of his pack, atop the carcass of the deer, then tied the other set to her pack. Rick was standing and clipped into his skis before she finished with her final buckle.
Izzy glanced at the house she had grown up in one last time. Wherever they were going had to be safer than this place. Of course, they had thought that last house was safe. And now . . .
“Come on, honey. We need to get out of town before dark.” He nudged her shoulder and led her down the street: down the street, into the woods, and away from the dead city.
CHAPTER 3
Jake
(Spring)
Jake Clarke put down the battered frying pan and stopped digging. The hole didn’t even reach his knees. From the pile of gravel he had already excavated, he grabbed the ax, hefted it one more time, and wearily banged it against the permafrost. A few bits of ice and rock flew off in odd directions, but not enough to even bother picking up the pan again to scrape them up.
Behind him, to the southeast, the sun began its arc through the northern sky. He had been standing in this shallow trench for what seemed like hours. His calloused hands, equipped with only the crudest of tools, had torn away the leaves and the grass, and burrowed into the gravel shore of the lake. Jake tossed the ax aside and stepped out of the hole. Dirt covered his face. His black hair had worked its way free from the rawhide tie securing his ponytail. It fell against his sweat-and-tear-marked cheeks. He pushed the loose strands back from his face. His grandfather had told him not to cry. That was like telling the rivers not to run, or the wind not to blow.
Jake stumbled back to the cabin. He hesitated at the door, staring out at the dock and the lake beyond. In a perfect world, now would be the moment the plane would finally arrive and save him from this next horrible step, but the sky remained silent and empty, as it had been for the past eleven months. And his father, who had left the cabin all those months ago with a promise to return in three weeks, was still nowhere to be seen.
Inside, on the cot to Jake’s right, sat his backpack, fully loaded and ready to go. On the cot to the left, beside the now-cold stove, lay the body of his grandfather. Jake bent close to the old man’s face, paused, and kissed him on the forehead. Jake smoothed strands of Amos’s gray hair back into place, then zipped the sleeping bag closed, till only his grandfather’s face remained exposed to the light.
Jake slid his arms under Amos’s shoulders and legs. A year ago, Jake wouldn’t even have tried to lift Amos. But after months of wasting away, giving whatever extra food there was to Jake to keep him strong, Amos had been reduced to a shell of the proud Cree warrior he had once been.
Jake maneuvered through the narrow door, then across the ground back to the grave. He didn’t look at the discolored ground a few paces to the south. His mother, Emily, lay buried under that mound.
Jake stepped down into the shallow hole and, as carefully as he could, set his grandfather into place. Despite his labors, the grave was too short. Jake struggled to bend Amos’s knees, but they were as frozen by rigor mortis as the ground was by the winter not so long past. Jake picked up the pan and extended the trench until his grandfather’s feet finally slid below the surface. Before exiting the hole for the last time, Jake bent low and straightened the cowl of the mummy bag around Amos’s head.
Amos deserved more than this, Jake knew. He deserved to be buried like a warrior: with a celebration of his life, his trials and his victories. He had overcome so much. Certainly, dying out here was better than dying in some hospital bed and being buried in some city cemetery. He had told Jake as much a dozen times. Jake was to bury him here—to return him to the ground so he could meet his ancestors who had roamed this frozen land for centuries before the white man had even dreamed such a place existed. Amos’s memories and lessons would live on through Jake. And that, Amos had said, would make his people happy to welcome him into the spirit-world.
But no matter how hard he tried, Jake could not pick up the pan and drop that first scoop of dirt onto Amos’s body. Though the spirit was gone—and no doubt in a better place—Jake could not mar the flesh like that. He set the pan down and ran back to the cabin, returning a moment later. In his arms was the fur of a black bear—one he and Amos had killed the previous fall. The bear meat had kept them alive for months, and the fur had kept Jake warm through the bitterest of nights. Jake couldn’t take it with him—it was far too heavy for him to carry—but it could protect Amos and make the next task possible. Jake gently laid the skin over his grandfather, covering him from head to toe, then picked up the pan and began pushing the dirt back into the grave.
An hour later, with the job completed, Jake carved his grandfather’s name into a crude wooden cross, and pounded the cross into the earth. He stepped back, wiping his eyes. There would be no more tears, he vowed then and there.
Back in the cabin, Jake surveyed the single room. The contents of his pack had been planned and re-planned a hundred times. Only the essentials, Amos had said. Amos had vetoed every extra ounce: the ax that was bigger than the little hatchet strapped to his pack; the camp stove with its empty tank that could be refilled if he could just find another cabin with a supply of propane; the spare blankets that would keep him warm if he could keep them dry. He couldn’t carry all of that.
The pack was ideally suited for his lanky frame. Inside were a few extra clothes, cooking supplies, a first-aid kit, a sleeping bag, and his tent. Buckled to the right side was his prized possession: a .308 Remington 700 rifle in its padded case. On the other side were a dismantled fishing pole and a long bush machete. Stuffed into side pockets were coils of wire for traps, and extra ammunition. To the top of his pack frame, he had strapped a large food canister containing smoked venison and fish—enough for three weeks if he rationed them. A compass dangled from the webbing of his harness, next to a can of bear spray. Both would remain close at hand while hiking.
On the wall, hanging from a hook, was Amos’s old Colt pistol, a remnant of his time as a young man in the Canadian Army. Five of the .45 caliber rounds remained for it. The gun weighed a ton, and with over a hundred and fifty kilometers to go to reach Laroque, that weight would be felt with every step. Jake knew he should leave it, but it was the only tangible memory he would have of his grandfather. He couldn’t leave it behind. Jake wrapped the gun in an old dishcloth, shoved it deep into his pack, and rolled the bag closed. It bulged with the extra item. He hefted the pack and headed for the dock, pulling the cabin door shut behind him.
Eleven months before, when Jake was fifteen and before everything had gone to hell, he had sat on the end of that same wooden dock, looping his toes through the cold water of the northern Manitoba lake, waiting for a fish to take the bait on the end of his line. A mosquito buzzed about his ears. He absently shooed it away, as he had done a thousand times on that trip. In early summer, the bugs were always horrible up here.
To Jake’s right, on the strip of gravel that edged the water in front of their cabin, his father, Leland, and his mother, Emily, had stood together. They swayed, as if dancing a slow dance, and spoke in hushed voices. Sound, however, carried well over the short stretch of calm water.
“Bridger should have been here by now,” his father said. Even from a few dozen yards away, the concern in his voice had been obvious.
They had been at the cabin nine days—two days longer than planned. The calendar had rolled from June to July. Overhead, a large flock of geese raced north against a broken sky. Jake’s hunter eyes followed the flock and calculated the odds of reaching one of the birds with a shot from the 12-gauge in the cabin. Too far.
“He must have had problems with the plane, Leland. Every time we see him, he complains about how that engine is always costing him money. Might be waiting on a part. Or maybe he’s socked in.”
Emily wound her arms around Leland’s waist. Leland’s right arm clung to her shoulder. He brushed a strand of blond hair away from her pale cheek. Jim Bridger piloted the bush
plane that had dropped them off at the start of their trip. He was normally reliable, but always at the mercy of the weather. A day or two’s delay due to a storm wasn’t unheard of.
“And the radio?” Leland’s head dipped toward the water as a small wave rolled up onto the shore. The radio had been strangely silent. That was possible up at this latitude—for a while at least—but not likely for three straight days, and not at the beginning of the summer busy season. That had not happened before.
“Sunspots?” Emily asked with a touch of hope in her voice.
“Maybe . . . but it’d have to be one hell of a storm, and the lights don’t seem much bigger this year than normal. Barely anything last night,” Leland said. Jake looked toward the horizon. Some days, when the solar storms were big, you could see the northern lights from dusk to dawn. Last night’s glow had barely been bright enough to see.
Leland glanced over at Jake, who swirled his toes in the water, careful not to create any noise that might interfere with his hearing.
“We’ll keep trying,” Emily offered in a worried voice.
Jake knew that voice. In the middle of every winter, when the money from the guiding trips of the previous summer began to run out, that same voice crept into every conversation between his parents. Emily’s meager salary as a part-time teacher’s assistant at one of Thompson’s elementary schools barely covered the rent and the heat.
“We should have bought that satellite phone last winter when it was on sale.” Jake’s father bent over and picked up a rock, then skimmed it across the water. It skipped twice before it sank into the depths.
“We’ll get one as soon as we get back. The credit cards can take it. Or maybe we can borrow one from Bill?” Bill Six Rivers operated another local outfitter and had helped Leland launch his own business years earlier. He had lent a hand before. He’d do it again, and not ask for anything in return.
They tried the radio until the batteries ran dead, broadcasting an SOS every few hours during daylight. They tried again in the evenings, when the radio waves traveled farther. The planes had always come. This time, no one replied and no one came.
They rationed the gasoline for their generator all the way into August. Theirs wasn’t a permanent camp meant for months of occupation without resupply. By the time they realized no one was coming to rescue them, it was too late.
A simple mistake with a fillet knife turned their situation desperate at the end of August. Emily’s knife slipped while she was cleaning a fish. The gash in her left palm didn’t seem bad at first. They stemmed the bleeding, wrapping her hand in gauze from their first-aid kit. Leland even tried to stitch the wound closed with fishing line. Emily gutted out the pain of the surgery and said everything was fine, hiding her true state until it was too late—not that they could have done anything for her. The infection started in the wound, and spread through her bloodstream. The fever that followed had her shaking and nauseated a few days later.
“Sepsis,” Leland whispered to Amos and Jake while Emily lay curled up in her cot. “She needs a doctor . . . antibiotics.” The nearest doctor was hundreds of kilometers away.
The next day Jake’s father left to go for help. A cool breeze blew out of a gray September sky, ruffling the water next to the dock as Amos and Jake helped Leland load one of their two canoes with supplies. Leland traveled light. It didn’t take long to transfer his gear.
“Three weeks, tops. I’ll be back in three weeks.” He had never done the hundred-and-fifty-kilometer trip from their camp all the way back to Laroque by canoe. They had always flown in. Three weeks was an estimate, but his father had been venturing around this part of Manitoba going on twenty years.
“You sure I shouldn’t come with you?” Jake asked.
“You need to stay and take care of your mother.”
Leland looked Jake straight in the eye, his weathered face framed by a military-surplus jungle hat, then he glanced at Amos, and his grip on Jake’s shoulders tightened. Amos was eighty years old. This was to have been his last trip to the cabin. Years of hard living had taken a toll on the old man’s body. Jake knew his grandfather could not care for Emily alone, not with her fever raging. Some days he could barely care for himself.
“Dad—” Jake’s voice cracked.
“Do me proud, Jake. Listen to your grandfather. Do what needs to be done. Okay? I’ll be back in three weeks.”
Jake nodded, gave him a hug, and stepped aside to let Amos have his chance for good-byes.
Leland leaned down slightly to wrap his arms around his frail father. “Take care of him, Pop,” he whispered into his ear. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.” Amos’s eyes glistened as they separated. “Be careful.”
“I will.” Leland stepped down into the canoe and took the paddle in his large hands. “I’ll be back in three weeks,” he said one last time.
With a single sweep of the blade, he turned the canoe and straightened its path.
Now, Jake stood at the end of that same weathered dock and gazed out over the lake he had called home for the past eleven months. He shuffled his feet on the gray wood and kicked a splinter into the water.
Common sense told him that his father would have done everything possible to return to the cabin. But Leland had been gone nearly nine months, and Jake knew what that could mean. Jake’s only choice was to find his own way back to civilization—to leave this cabin and all its memories—before he, too, succumbed.
No one remained to dig his grave.
Jake glanced back at the cabin as he stepped carefully into his canoe and inspected his gear, making sure he hadn’t left anything behind. Then he released the line holding the canoe to the dock. He picked up the worn paddle and tested its weight. With the paddle in his hands, he had a goal and a sense of purpose. There was comfort in that.
He pushed away from the dock, swung the bow toward the center of the lake, made a quick steering stroke, and adjusted his posture. With a lean in one direction, then back to the other, he checked the balance of the craft. Satisfied that all was well, he gripped the top of the paddle with his left hand and the shaft with his right. He stuck the blade deep into the cold water and pulled.
It was time to go.
CHAPTER 4
Izzy
(Winter)
Izzy trudged through knee-deep snow, struggling to keep up with the hooded figure ahead of her. Her legs balked with exhaustion. Her feet, frozen inside her boots, felt like blocks of wood tied to the end of rubber-band legs. They were nine days out of Thompson now, headed straight north according to Rick. At yesterday’s breakfast they had finished the last of the venison. Twenty-four hours had lapsed since anything but hot water or pine-needle tea had passed her lips. The snow here was too deep to ski through, and walking with snowshoes required a level of concentration she could no longer muster. The skis, strapped to her back like a giant cross, snagged every low-hanging branch. Rick set the pace. He wasn’t going to slow down. They couldn’t afford to be caught outside if the weather really turned bad.
Angie had been caught in a different type of storm, and now Angie was dead.
Fuzzy images of her parents flitted across her memory, their faces torqued as if the light bent to the gravity of the situation. Angie was—had been—her only sister, and as hard as her parents’ deaths had been, losing her sister hurt more. She was alone now, except for Rick. She stumbled in the snow, distracted by her thoughts.
“Damn it—” Rick yelled. Izzy glanced up.
The deer, thirty meters ahead of them, jumped and disappeared before Rick could raise the gun to his shoulder. Thick pine trees prevented any attempt at a trailing shot. The deep snow halted Rick’s chase after a few short strides. His snowshoe-clad feet were no match for the leaping, prancing deer. It vanished so quickly that Izzy thought it might have been a hallucination.
Izzy struggled to her feet. The brief thought of food—for that’s what the deer represented—set her stomach growling. Her mouth felt as i
f it were stuffed with dried leaves and sharp twigs. She pulled her water bottle from the inside of her coat, where it wouldn’t freeze, and took small sips, just like Rick had taught her.
“Should we follow it?” She coughed as she asked.
“No use. Not with the racket you’re making back there,” Rick snapped.
Izzy resisted the urge to respond in kind. Angie had been able to stand up to him when he got like this. Izzy wasn’t Angie.
“I could carry the rifle,” Izzy offered. “Then we could both try to—”
“Hell no,” Rick said.
“I can shoot,” she said defiantly. “I’m a good shot. I got that buck—”
That buck, huge compared to the doe Rick had killed on the day Angie died, had kept the three of them alive through September and the beginning of October. Only when the meat had run out had they come back to town. If they had been able to kill one more, they might have been able to stay out a little longer . . . and Angie might still be alive.
“We lucked out there,” Rick replied. He turned from her and surveyed the forest ahead.
But it hadn’t been luck. Sure, the buck had wandered into their camp while Angie and Rick were down by the river. Izzy, despite being starved and then suddenly faced with a feast, had sat perfectly still for over five minutes. When it started to move off, she grabbed the rifle from the tent, carefully stalked the deer, waited until she had the perfect shot, and took it. It hadn’t died right away. Later, Rick explained that a .22 wasn’t a big enough caliber to bring down an adult buck in a single shot, but it didn’t stumble far before he found it and finished it off with the pistol.
“It wasn’t luck,” she muttered.
“That deer was just plain stupid, wandering into the camp like that. There’s a big difference between hunting and being served dinner on a plate.” He shook his head. “We’ve only got the one rifle. We lose it, or wreck it, and we’re dead.” He motioned with his hand. “Come on, Isabelle. We need to make some more distance before dark.”