Breakdown

by Joseph Monninger

  He was still thinking about liking people, and the various uses of time, when the first raindrops began to fall. They came quick and hard and exploded on the soft dirt of the road. At least it might cool things down, Simon thought.

  “Now we’re in for it,” Quincy said, standing and gathering his things.

  “We have a poncho,” Bess said. “We can make a rain shelter in the woods.”

  Simon did not think that was a particularly good use of their time, but he didn’t say anything. He picked up his pack. He also flipped up the hood on his jacket. A hood was an excellent use of his time, he reflected. A hood always followed you wherever you went, and when you needed it, it was right on your shoulders. Really, it was a pretty excellent article of clothing.

  The rain came harder. It felt cold whenever it struck his skin. He pulled his hood tighter around his face. Sometimes looking out of a hood made it feel as though he were looking out of a tunnel.

  “What’s that?” Bess asked, lifting her hand to point.

  “What’s what?” Quincy asked.

  “Those birds.”

  “What birds …” Quincy began to ask, but then it became clear.

  Simon thought the rain had stirred up the birds and made them move. He knew immediately what kind of birds they were.

  “Vultures,” he said, and noted how both Bess and Quincy turned to look at him.

  He nodded his head. He knew a vulture when he saw one.

  Well, water is no longer a problem, Preston reflected. Water is not a problem in the least.

  That was Preston’s first thought as they came around the cabin. The lake spread out just beyond the house, exactly as Olivia had predicted it would. Light rain flecked the surface.

  Preston also saw a canoe propped up on four cinder blocks. Someone had smashed a few holes through the hull, big bites that made the canoe look like a half-eaten ear of corn. The canoe’s painter remained attached to a small cedar tree. Moss or lichen coated some of the boat’s bottom. Its keel looked like a spine. From what Preston could see, it was an Old Town canoe, although the brand name on the side of the boat looked faded.

  “What did I say?” Olivia yelled happily. “Didn’t I say there would be water and a boat? There had to be! I knew it!”

  “You called it,” Preston said. “I admit it. But the canoe is history.”

  “This lake has to connect to our lake somehow. The camp lake. Don’t you think? Doesn’t that just make sense?”

  “Probably so, but it depends on the direction.”

  “It has to,” Olivia said, ignoring his reservation and hurrying down the last of the incline to the beach.

  She stopped at the canoe. Preston came up behind her. The rain, he realized, had come and gone.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here in a long time,” she said, using her toe to touch the side of the canoe.

  “At least we have water now.”

  “Skunky water, but I guess you’re right.”

  “If we follow water, it’s got to bring us someplace.”

  “Maybe we should stick to the road,” she said. “We can’t get lost if we stick to the road.”

  He nodded. “We need to go get Tock and vote on it,” he said. “Do you think he can walk out?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s hurt.”

  “You said you don’t think it’s broken, right?”

  “Broken or not, he can’t walk on it. Not very far, anyway.”

  Preston felt funny and nervous in his stomach. He wasn’t sure why.

  “Maybe we could all take a swim,” she said, her eyes level on the water. “Maybe that’s what we need right now.”

  Bess couldn’t look.

  She felt as though she might throw up. The vultures stood around like a group of teenagers hanging out in a parking lot. They huddled around something down at their feet, necks tucked into their shoulders, the rain bringing out a dull tocking sound from their feathers. It was beyond gross.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Quincy said.

  “You want to go past them?” Bess said, her voice wiggling at the end of the phrase enough to let her know she wasn’t quite in control. “Seriously, you want to walk past and see what they’ve been doing?”

  “I don’t like it any better than you do, Bess, but we’ve come this far. We’re stuck out in the rain, and in case you’ve forgotten, something is waiting for us back in the van.”

  “Oh, this is so, so, so not cool.”

  She glanced at Simon. He hadn’t said anything, but that didn’t mean he didn’t look. She knew from experience that he saw everything. He stood with his hands on his backpack straps, staring at the congregation of vultures. She imagined their garbled voices, their hopping up and down, and their squabbling intrigued him. He liked that sort of thing. She had no idea why he liked it, but he did.

  “We’re between a rock and a hard place, as they say,” Quincy said. “But we have to keep going. We can’t turn back now.”

  “We can if we want.”

  “You can just go by and not look, can’t you? If that was Flash, he’s not there anymore.”

  “It’s just so gross.”

  Before either of them could say anything, Simon walked calmly forward. He didn’t move his eyes away from the vultures, but he didn’t stare at them, either. He simply walked straight ahead, bellying out a little when he needed to. The birds squawked and fluttered away, jumping like poker players disturbed from their game, and Simon waved his hand as he would at a mosquito. It was a warning to stay away from him, not a threat at all, and he kept walking once he was safely past the birds.

  “We’ll go together,” Quincy said. “It’s okay, really. Just look at the woods on that side, and I’ll take the inside near the birds, all right? I’ll hold your hand, even, if you want.”

  “Thanks,” she said, but she didn’t take his hand.

  She tucked the jacket hood around her face and walked. She walked fast. She hated hearing the birds. And she could hear them, even though she did her best to ignore them. She kept walking. At one point Quincy drew in his breath sharply, and she told him not to look. She said he would remember it all his life if he looked. He said he didn’t look. He said he was just walking.

  One of the birds flew up close above their heads. Bess shivered and tilted her head down and nearly broke into a run. She hated the thought of them, their circling in the sky, their smug finality. She hated them all. She hurried forward and kept going even when she caught up with Simon.

  “Let’s just keep walking,” she said to him.

  “We’re past it,” Quincy said.

  “Was it Flash?” she asked.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  She nodded.

  “It was Flash,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it was.”

  She went to the edge of the road and put her hands on her knees. She thought she might be sick. She smelled the damp pines and the dirt. Usually it was a good smell, but at the moment she simply felt overwhelmed. She had not signed on for this. None of them had. But all of them had been forced to march past a group of vultures.

  “Are buzzards and vultures the same thing?” Quincy asked when she rejoined them.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I never want to talk about it again, do you understand me? Both of you. Do you understand me?”

  Quincy nodded. So did Simon. She pushed the hood off her head. It wasn’t raining as hard now, and she needed to breathe.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We can get a couple more hours in before sunset. At least the rain brought water into the streams.”

  “The worst is behind us,” Quincy said. “Think of it that way.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’m so hungry right now I could chew off my hand.”

  “We’re going to make it,” Quincy said. “We’ve been through the worst.”

  Bess shrugged. He was probably right. She jerked the backpack higher on her shoulders and started walking again toward Camp
Summertime.

  Tock lowered himself into the water and tried to flex his leg.

  It didn’t work very well, and it throbbed like nothing he had ever felt before. He had always told himself he could refuse to feel pain if he needed to, but apparently that wasn’t true. He couldn’t avoid the pain of his leg. It burned and it ached and felt like it had been twisted like the top of a Tootsie Roll wrapper.

  The water, at least, offered some relief. The rain had stopped, more or less, and now the air felt a little cooler. He leaned forward and put his face into the lake. Preston and Olivia had already gone in wearing their clothes. They paddled around a little ways offshore. He sat back up and then splashed more water on his clothes and shoulders. It was strange to be the weak link. He never would have guessed he’d be the one to slow down the team. When the moose had charged, he had done the only logical thing while all the others ran stupidly in every direction. Being smart about the moose, however, didn’t help with the missing step and killer raccoon. Now he had to depend on Preston and Olivia and he hated that.

  “How are you doing?” Olivia asked him when she came back from her swim. “You feel okay?”

  He hated that most of all. He hated being babied.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Looks like more rain coming from that direction,” Preston said, wading toward shore. “I don’t like the look of those clouds. It’s really getting gray off in that direction. We should get away from the water in case of lightning.”

  Usually Tock would have said something to mock Preston’s worry, but he didn’t feel up to it. In fact, he had to wait for Olivia to help him stand up. She gave him her arm and supported him while he balanced on one leg.

  “That hurts,” he said, hopping on his good leg. “That really wicked hurts.”

  “You can’t walk, Tock,” Olivia said. “We should just camp by the road and let you recover.”

  “If I keep moving, it will be okay,” Tock said. “It’s when I stop that it stiffens.”

  “You can’t walk ten or twenty miles on that leg,” Preston said. “Maybe we should go back toward the van.”

  “As long as we stay on the road, it doesn’t matter which way we go,” Tock said. “There’s no food back there. We might as well keep going.”

  It started to rain. Really rain at last. Before they could come up with a plan, the rain sliced into them. It made everything more confusing. The rain came straight down. It was a hard rain, Tock felt, a dangerous rain. Clouds covered the entire sky. The sun wasn’t going to pop through the cloud cover and save the day. Everything they had was soaked. For at least a minute, they stood dumbly on the shoreline, tucked back a little among the trees to be out of the rain. Finally, Olivia spoke.

  “We need a fire,” she said, touching the breast pocket in her jacket. “We need a fire just to get organized.”

  “I’ll get some dry pinecones. That kind of stuff,” Preston said, and went off along the shoreline.

  “Tock, you okay?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m cold.”

  “Help us get a fire going. We’ll be okay if we can get a fire going.”

  “I can’t walk very well.”

  “Well, do what you can. I’ll build the fire right here. We have a little beach to work with.

  “You think the matches are still dry?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” Olivia said. Then she squatted close to the ground and began making a nest of sticks. It was not going to be easy, Tock knew. He hobbled around awhile, picking up dry twigs and bits of lichen-covered wood. He broke the ends off tree branches, the dead parts, because he knew they could catch no matter what.

  “How do the matches look?” he asked when he carried the dry stuff back to where Olivia knelt.

  “I can’t really tell. I think they’re okay.”

  “I wish this rain would stop,” Preston said, coming up to join them. He had an entire dead limb of a pine. He withdrew a bunch of twigs and pinecones from his pockets and handed them to Olivia.

  “Listen,” she said, her face down to arrange the firewood, “if either of you guys feel you can do a better job with the fire, have at it. I’m no pro at this.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Preston said. “The main thing is whether the matches ignite. If they got wet, we’re not going to have a fire.”

  Olivia cupped her hand and struck the first match. It flared for a second and went out at once. She set the match carefully on the pile. Tock saw Preston put his hand out to protect the small mound of dry wood that she wanted to light. Tock had a bad feeling in his stomach. He wasn’t trying to be a pessimist, but the world was too wet right now for a fire.

  The two matches Olivia tried next did not even smoke. They simply crumbled away.

  “They’re wet,” she said.

  “All of them?” Preston asked.

  “We only have two left,” she said, not looking up. “I wouldn’t say all of them. That makes it sound like we have a lot.”

  “Should you strike them both together?” Tock asked. “You know, make one bigger flash?”

  “That’s an idea,” Olivia said. “How about one of you trying it? I don’t want to be the person who couldn’t get any of the matches to catch.”

  Preston bent over to help, and when he did, water from his baseball cap spilled forward and hit the matches. Hit the ends of the matches, Tock observed. Bingo, bango, just like that. No one spoke. For what felt like a long time, Tock listened to the rain falling on the lake beside them.

  “I cannot believe that just happened,” Olivia said. “I can’t.”

  “Sorry,” Preston said. “I didn’t …”

  “Try them, anyway,” Tock said.

  Olivia did. They crumbled.

  “That’s that,” Olivia said.

  “What now?” Preston asked.

  “Tock, you said you knew how to build some sort of shelter?”

  “A debris shelter,” Tock said. “We could do that.”

  “We have to get out of the rain,” Olivia said. “I’m not going back in that house.”

  “Okay,” Tock said. “Here’s how we start.”

  Quincy saw the road.

  The other road. The road that was not One Hundred Mile Road.

  The road that led to camp.

  “Is that …” he started to ask.

  It was still raining. He was wet and famished. He almost didn’t want to put a name to what he thought he saw, because he suspected he wouldn’t be able to stand it if he were wrong. Still, it looked like the road that went to camp. He squinted and tried to see more clearly.

  “That’s the intersection,” Bess said, her voice becoming happy. “That’s the road to camp.”

  “Are you sure?” Quincy asked.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Can’t be anything else, can it?”

  “And what does it mean?” Quincy asked, finding himself walking faster. Walking as though to put a foot on the road to camp meant something important.

  “It means we’re not that far from getting to camp.”

  “How many miles?”

  “Maybe ten.”

  “That’s not too bad,” Quincy said. “That’s not bad at all.”

  “There’s a chance of some traffic out here at least. Once we get through the gate, there’s a chance someone could come along.”

  “Sweet.”

  “How are you doing, Simon?” Bess asked her brother.

  Simon didn’t say anything.

  It took a few minutes to reach the intersection. When they did, Quincy ducked under the gate. The connecting road wasn’t markedly different from the road they had been on, but it headed in a different direction at least. That was something, Quincy thought. That was really quite something.

  For the first time in a long while, he felt like they might survive after all.

  “Ten miles isn’t that far to walk,” he said when they were all on the other side of the gate. “We can do ten miles no matter what.”

  “I said
I think it’s ten miles,” Bess said. “Don’t hold me to it.”

  “Which means it could be shorter.”

  “Or longer.”

  “But it could be shorter,” Quincy said.

  “Yes, it could be shorter. The problem right now, though, is this rain. It won’t let up.”

  “I’m not that cold. I’m hungry, but I’m not that cold. It’s a nice break from the heat.”

  “Trouble is,” she said, “you may not know how cold you are. It can sneak up on you. On all of us. Being drenched isn’t a good thing.”

  “Do you want to make a fire?”

  “Maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe we should stop and make a fire. Just for a while. It could be hard to get it started, but there’s always dry wood and twigs. Even if we spent the rest of the day here, we could probably walk out tomorrow.”

  “I’m down with it,” Quincy said. “How about you, Simon? You like your fires, bro.”

  Simon didn’t say anything. Quincy laughed and slipped out of his backpack.

  And that was when they heard it. He heard it. It was a bright humming sound that you nearly couldn’t detect unless you concentrated. He looked at Bess. She looked back at him. She held up her finger to say wait a minute, and then the sound grew stronger.

  But the sound didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t a car sound, or a truck sound, but something higher and thinner. It sounded like a hair dryer, Quincy thought, or like a robot. Maybe an attack robot. He swiveled his head in the direction of Camp Summertime, and just as he did, a golf cart came skidding around the corner.

  “Hey,” Quincy said. “Hey, now.”

  “Yo, yo, yo,” Bess shouted and began jumping up and down. She waved and then jumped on Simon and made him move around, even though he obviously hated it. But she didn’t care, Quincy saw, and neither did he.

  The golf cart came to a skidding stop a few feet away. The side of the cart said CAMP SUMMERTIME with the camp’s logo of a sun setting on a lake while a few geese flew across the ball of light. Quincy didn’t recognize the guy behind the wheel. The guy had earbuds in and a baseball cap pulled down far enough so that it bent the tops of his ears out. He looked about thirty, give or take, with a kind of dirty appearance. Quincy wasn’t sure what to make of him.