Manitoba Lost (Book 1): Run (Survivors #1)

by R. A. Rock

  “Nessa?” Matt’s voice came through the thin fabric of the tent. I swallowed a lump in my throat and searched for composure. I hadn’t cared about consequences last night but I was sure having to face them today. When I felt certain my voice would hold, I answered.

  “Just tidying up and I’ll be right out,” I said, straightening my clothes and grabbing the stuff sack with my sleeping bag in it. I crawled out of the tent and stood up.

  “Hey,” I said, and gave him a quick tight smile, brushing past him. Saying good morning to the other two, I went straight to where we had hung the backpacks in the tree for the night and saw that someone had let them down already.

  I dug through mine to find clothes, debating about whether to hang the bags again. Nah. We would be leaving within the hour probably. And I would be right back.

  “I’m going to the bathroom and to change,” I called out and heard Carlynne and Matt answer me. Carlynne was heading towards the stream with the basin, probably to wash the breakfast dishes and I could see Matt moving towards the road in my peripheral vision. James was crawling back in his tent, probably to pack up their stuff.

  After I took care of peeing and changing clothes, I went to a spot upstream of where Carlynne was washing the dishes to scrub up my face and hands.

  Allow me to clarify, she wasn’t washing the dishes in the stream. We knew better than that.

  The way we did it was we filled a basin and took it at least twenty feet away. Then we washed the dishes with biodegradable soap that Matt had brought. When we were done, we discarded the dirty dishwater, away from the water source, so as not to contaminate it.

  Without warning, a scream came from our campsite. It sounded like James. I was on my feet and running before I even realized that I had reacted. When I got near the camp, I spotted a black bear running away — it’s body strong, it’s gait fluid, and the sight entirely terrifying. I stopped dead, waiting until it had disappeared into the bush.

  What the hell was going on?

  Nessa

  I continued running once the bear disappeared from view arriving back at the same time as Matt. The clearing smelled of bacon, blood, and a strong scent that I guessed was bear. The combination turned my stomach. I took a quick look around and ran to James. He was sitting on the ground, holding his arm, which was bleeding.

  Carlynne was in hysterics. At least, I think that’s what she was in. I’ve never seen anyone have hysterics, only read about them in books. But the way she was freaking out, made me think that that was the right word.

  Matt was at my side in an instant.

  “The first aid kit, quick.” He knew that I had one in my bag because I had given it to him when Gideon had been hurt. I ran for it. Then froze, aghast, when I saw the bags, which were where I had left them.

  The bear had got them. It had torn them open and had dug through everything. Most of the food was gone or destroyed.

  It had cleaned us out.

  Oh, this was bad.

  I stared for a moment longer, then remembered that they were waiting for the first aid kit. I found my bag in the wreckage and dug through it. The kit wasn’t there. I stood up and searched through the detritus, finding it about ten feet away. I grabbed it and ran back, stopping next to Matt, who had been holding the wound closed while they waited for me.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, when he saw my face. “Other than the obvious, I mean.”

  “The bear found our packs.” I felt like crying. “What happened, James?”

  He looked white and shaken.

  “Matt was gone to the bathroom, you were changing, and Carlynne was washing the dishes. I went into the tent to put away the sleeping bags, so there was no one in the clearing.”

  “No one was in the clearing with the pan of bacon grease?”

  He nodded, looking sheepish, his eyes full of regret.

  “Oh boy,” I said, digging through the kit for the disinfectant. There was the bottle of alcohol. I held it up and dumped it all over the deep claw marks, where he’d been scratched. I might have poured more than was strictly necessary.

  James howled.

  Of course, I’m well aware that it really frickin’ hurts when you pour alcohol on a cut, so I cut him some slack for the girlie screaming. I was a woman and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have screamed like that. But whatever. When he had stopped yelling, he went on with the story.

  “I heard sounds and went out. The bear had the pan and was pretty much finished licking it out.”

  He stopped speaking, frowning with his eyes staring off into space as he remembered.

  “I was scared but I ran at him.”

  I glanced at Matt.

  Was he thinking what I was thinking?

  By the incredulous look on his face, he was.

  What the hell had been going through James’ head?

  “You ran at the bear?” I repeated, sure that my ears had mixed up the preposition. “You mean you ran away from the bear.”

  “No, at him,” James said, looking foolishly stubborn. “I wanted to scare him.”

  Matt lifted an eyebrow and looked like he was biting his tongue. Hard.

  “You were going to scare off the hungry, just-woke-from-hibernating, grumpy bear?”

  James huffed his breath out in frustration.

  “Apparently not the best move, I get it,” he said, holding up his arm and making a drop of blood roll down. Matt scowled.

  I decided to shut up. He obviously knew that he had been incredibly stupid. I reminded myself that not everybody knew what to do in the woods. We maybe should have given the other two a primer on animal etiquette, or something.

  “He got our food,” I said, my heart plummeting. “He pretty much ate or destroyed everything we had.”

  There was a crushing silence after I revealed this fact. James swore viciously at the bear, as if it was its fault it had been hungry and smelt bacon and had come to get some food.

  I cursed myself internally.

  Both Matt and I had known it was stupid to cook the bacon but we had let him do it because… well, basically to preserve his ego. But he could have been badly hurt. Or killed. All because we hadn’t wanted to make him feel stupid.

  We couldn’t do that anymore. If we knew better, then we needed to say so. Or more bad things would happen. The world was changing. One person’s bad decision could adversely affect the whole group.

  “Don’t blame the bear, James,” Carlynne said. “You were the one who cooked the bacon when Matt didn’t want you to.”

  “I wasn’t going to waste it,” he protested but it sounded feeble. When the alcohol dried, Matt put gauze across the wounds and taped it to his forearm.

  “You’re lucky you got away with just a scratch,” Matt said, holding his gaze.

  “I know,” James said, almost sullen but not quite.

  Matt sighed and got up.

  “Let’s break camp and get going,” he said, not meeting anyone’s eye.

  Carlynne went to her husband as soon as we were out of the way. I followed Matt to the backpacks. I didn’t want to see the mess. Didn’t want to know how little food we had left. Didn’t want to see what other damage had been done.

  But I had to.

  This was as much my fault as it was James’ because I hadn’t stopped him. This wasn’t a game. Life had changed. And hopefully it was going to change back when the electricity came on again. But if it didn’t, then this was how it was going to be.

  I needed to take all of it more seriously.

  Easy was over.

  And things were only going to get harder. But I didn’t have to make decisions that would make things even more difficult than they had to be. I needed to stand up and be strong when necessary.

  Otherwise, I would be trampled in this strange new world.

  Matt

  It took Nessa and I an hour to sort out the wreckage the bear had left behind. And the damned smell of bacon taunted me the whole time with our collective stupidi
ty. To add insult to injury, I hadn’t even got to eat any of the bacon.

  I had been kicking myself since I had heard him scream because I shouldn’t have let James cook the bacon in the first place. Then I should have made sure that the grease, which is the height of bear cuisine, had been properly taken care of.

  This was my fault.

  Well, not my fault exactly. But I needed to take a share of the blame because I had known better but hadn’t stopped him. The old social norms were not going to work with the way the world was now.

  Most of our food had been either eaten or destroyed but a lot of the nuts Nessa had brought had survived because they had been packed in a different spot in her bag, with her clothes and the bear hadn’t got to them. If we rationed them, they should make really good protein for the rest of the way.

  So that was good news.

  James and Carlynne still had some trail mix and a bunch of protein bars that the bear wasn’t able to get open.

  Also good.

  There were some damaged supplies that we left behind, but for the most part we were just a lot lighter on food.

  Not good.

  We walked slowly today, the loss dampening our spirits. We had hoped to have plenty of food to last all the way to Sipwesk lake. Now we had virtually nothing.

  James and Carlynne were walking ahead, talking but they were far enough away that I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Nessa and I were walking near each other but not beside.

  I held back a sigh.

  Nessa.

  What had I done?

  She had kissed me and everything had changed.

  It was what I had feared. It was awkward. We weren’t talking like we had been. And for some reason she was looking at me strangely. A couple times she had seemed like she wanted to say something, but she hadn’t. I wondered what was on her mind.

  All that was on my mind was that kiss.

  I had kissed quite a few women in my life but nothing had compared to kissing Nessa. She had been sweet and hot and I had lost myself in her.

  But now she was cold. Definitely cold.

  Maybe she had been disappointed in the way I kissed? Maybe she had decided kissing me had been a mistake? Maybe she had just got carried away and then regretted it later.

  I didn’t know.

  And it wasn’t the time to ask.

  Especially not with James and Carlynne waiting for us to catch up as if they had something they wanted to say to us. I cut my eyes across to Nessa and she obviously sensed that something was up, too.

  “Hey guys,” I said, trying to keep it light and friendly. “What’s up?”

  But neither of them looked light or friendly. They looked serious. And a bit hostile.

  “We want to go back,” Carlynne said, getting right to the point.

  Matt

  A cloud shifted across the sun, suddenly darkening the day as we processed Carlynne’s announcement. I caught a whiff of bacon from James and felt a surge of annoyance.

  My new friends weren’t exactly the best travelling companions. It had been different when we had been hanging out in the real world. But now the stress of this new situation was bringing out parts of them I had never seen and didn’t particularly like. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if they wanted to go home.

  No, I argued with myself. It didn’t matter what sort of travelling companions they were. The more people we had on this trip, the better.

  Nessa shifted her weight from one foot to the other and my eyes darted from Carlynne to James to Nessa, then returned to Carlynne.

  “Back?”

  “To Thompson. This is a suicide mission,” she said, a little melodramatically, I thought.

  I didn’t point out that it would be a lot less of one if her husband hadn’t got all our food eaten by a bear.

  “So…”

  “We want to go back. We can try again another time.”

  I looked at Nessa, she didn’t say anything.

  “But we’re halfway there. There’s no point in turning back now,” I said, anxiety filling my chest. My whole strength-in-numbers theory was gradually dwindling with the loss of Gideon and Oona. If James and Carlynne went home now, then I would definitely not have any shred of the theory left.

  And who knew? Maybe Nessa wanted to go back with them. If she did that, I would have to travel alone. Not impossible. But also not something I wanted to do if I had other choices.

  “You’re halfway there,” Carlynne pointed out. “We’re only about a third of the way, remember? We’re travelling to Clark Lake, which is considerably farther than Sipwesk.”

  “But still. You’ve come all this way, don’t you want to see it through?” Nessa said, making a half-hearted attempt to change their minds.

  “I want to see my husband alive at the end of the day,” Carlynne said, tearing up. “That’s all that matters.”

  “But if you go back,” I said, trying one more time. “Then there’ll only be the two of you. Don’t you remember why we decided to travel together in the first place? So that we would have be stronger together? It’s too dangerous to split up. We have to stay together.”

  “We remember Matt and we don’t want to leave you high and dry but… well, we don’t want to die either.”

  I thought that their chances of dying were much higher without me but I didn’t say that either.

  “So, you’re decided then? You’re going home?” I felt like my neat plan was completely unravelling at this point.

  “Yes,” James joined in. “But we want you two to come with us. Like you’ve pointed out, we’ll be safer together. The government will get this sorted. Probably send in emergency supplies and all that. You heard what the mayor told us. They promised help.”

  I squinted at him.

  That wasn’t true.

  “The mayor told us that we couldn’t expect help,” I said but Carlynne spoke over me and no one heard.

  “And we won’t be getting any of that help unless we’re there,” Carlynne said, her voice getting wobbly. “It seemed like a good idea to go to the cabin when we were still safe in town but now that we see what it’s really like out here. We just want to go home. We’ll be safe there.”

  Nessa gave me an indecipherable look and I stared at the ground. Not sure what to do, what to say.

  “What do you want to do, Nessa?” Carlynne said. “Will you come back with us?”

  I lifted my gaze. She frowned, her eyes darting to me and then to James and Carlynne.

  “This is a lot to process,” she said. “Are you leaving right now? Can I think for a minute?”

  “Sure, sure,” Carlynne said. “Think all you want. We’re resting and eating some protein bars. Then we’ll head out. We want to get past last night’s camp before we stop.”

  Uh yeah. Good plan not to sleep where your husband was attacked by a bear.

  I wasn’t sure they could do it. But it seemed as though I wasn’t responsible for helping them make good decisions anymore. They were striking out on their own.

  I followed Nessa where she had sat down farther up the road. There wasn’t anything good to sit on and she just plopped down on the uncomfortable gravel on the shoulder.

  She eased her pack off, rubbing her shoulders as if the straps were hurting her. And I wished I could help her with that but I pushed the thought from my mind. The only thing that mattered right now was finding out what she really wanted to do. If she wanted to go back I wouldn’t stand in her way.

  A stab of pain went through my chest at the thought of her leaving, but I took no notice of it. It didn’t matter what I wanted.

  “I wanted to think, Matt,” she said, scowling up at me. “Not talk.”

  “So think.” I sat down near her and got out my water. I took a drink and offered it to her. She shook her head. We sat in silence for about ten minutes before she finally spoke. My mind was going round and round, trying to think of a way to salvage this situation.

  This was bad. Thi
s was really bad.

  “Maybe they’re right. Maybe the government will send help,” she said, staring at the bare poplar trees on the other side of the road.

  “Maybe,” I conceded. “But I’m pretty sure the mayor told us that we couldn’t expect any help. And even if they do send some, when will that be? And where will it come from? The people down south will need help, too. And they’ll be a lot more insistent. There’s no social media now to put pressure on the government about our situation like there would be if we had hydro and could actually get on the internet.”

  “True,” she said, lapsing into silence once more. “What are you going to do?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t really have a choice. I have to make sure my mom is okay. Bring her the medicine.” I patted my chest where the water-proof money belt was strapped to my torso.

  She nodded, thinking about that.

  “So you’re continuing on.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t ask her what she was doing. Obviously she was thinking about going back.

  She blew out a breath in exasperation and turned her head to look directly at me.

  “If you were me, what would you do?”

  Hm. What did I think she should do?

  “On the one hand, a woman by herself at a cabin isn’t probably the best idea.”

  She frowned, not liking my answer. But I would tell her the truth, whether she liked it or not. She had asked my opinion and I would give her an honest one.

  “On the other hand, a woman by herself in town seems a lot more dangerous to me… if things go badly… which they might.”

  I paused to think a little more.

  “James and Carlynne are different because they have each other,” I added.

  My guts twisted a little when I realized what my words implied and her eyes avoided mine. I continued on, ignoring the tension between us.

  “I think that if everything returns to normal in a few weeks or months, then town will be the place to be because then there probably will be government aid.”

  I stopped.

  “But…” She prompted.

  “But if things don’t go back to normal right away or…” I didn’t want to finish that sentence. “Well, if things don’t go back to normal then town will be the most dangerous place around. People will be hungry and desperate. Never mind the people in town that have alcohol or drug addictions.”