Stranded

by Melinda Braun

  We all agreed to take a shift, starting with Isaac.

  It was a good plan, a fine idea, but every single one of us stayed awake until dawn.

  Day 7

  Afternoon

  The plan was this:

  Boil enough water to fill the canteens.

  Climb a tree.

  “Climb a tree?” Oscar furrowed his eyebrows at Isaac. “What for?”

  “So we can see where the next lake might be. And if there is any smoke from the fire.”

  “It would have to be a really tall tree,” Oscar said.

  “I know.”

  “How tall?”

  “Tall,” Isaac said.

  “I’m not climbing a tree.”

  “You afraid of heights, Wiener?”

  “No. Not abnormally.”

  “What does that mean, abnormally?”

  “It means that I don’t have an abnormal fear of heights,” Oscar explained. “I have a normal fear. All people are born with a normal fear of heights.”

  “Why do you always have to sound like such a smart-ass?” Isaac sneered.

  “Better than being a dumbass.”

  “Touché, Wiener. Touché.”

  “All right.” Chloe was getting sick of their conversation. “So let’s say we do climb a tree and see a lake. So what? How do we know that’s the direction we should go?”

  “Well.” Isaac raised his eyebrows. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? If we go east, eventually we’ll hit Lake Superior.”

  “That’s probably at least fifty miles away,” Chloe said.

  “More than that, I bet.”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Well, we’d probably find people or something before that.”

  “Says you.”

  “I wish we had a compass that worked,” Oscar muttered. “Or a watch. Then we could find south.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Why would that work?”

  “I was talking to Chris about it the first night,” Oscar explained. “I asked him how many times he’d been out here. Said he used to go camping all the time by himself, and I asked him if he’d ever gotten lost.”

  “Well, did he?”

  “No,” Oscar admitted. “Said he always had a compass and a map, but then he pointed at his wristwatch and told me that if something happened and he lost those things, that he could still make a compass out of his watch.”

  “Are you sure?” Chloe narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  Something turned over in my head. Chris. A watch. A fuzzy whir started at the front of my forehead. Something. Something. What was it? I was still tired, still lethargic, but something turned me around. I headed over to my backpack. The bottom inside pocket. Where is it?

  “He showed me,” Oscar said, squeezing his eyes shut to remember the instructions. “It didn’t really work because the sun was already setting, but he showed me how you did it. He said you just needed a sunny day.”

  “Well, we got that,” Isaac replied. “You remember how to do it?”

  Oscar nodded. “I just need a watch.”

  “Here.” I grabbed Oscar’s hand and put the watch in it. I curled his fingers over it. “So let’s see it.”

  “Oh my God!” Chloe said. “You had it all along?”

  The way she said it made it seem like a bad thing. “I found it, yeah, but I had no idea about the compass thing.” I swallowed, nervous. “I thought maybe his wife or family would want it back. If he did have a wife or family,” I added quickly. I turned to Oscar, who still looked a bit stunned. “You didn’t tell me about the compass thing.”

  “I know,” he said slowly, and slipped the watch on his wrist. He looked up at the sky.

  “All right, Wiener.” Isaac crossed his arms. “Let’s see it. Find us south.”

  “Why south?” I wanted to know.

  “That was the other thing he told me,” Oscar said softly. “That you should always try to head south, at least up here anyway. He said that if you did that, eventually you’d find a road or a trail. On the map the road ran east-west, so if you kept south you’d eventually hit it.”

  Chloe nodded. “I’m so glad you talked to Chris.”

  “Me too.”

  “Chris never told me that,” Isaac protested, sounding more than a bit defensive. “And we spent a whole afternoon fishing together.”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “No, why would I do that?” Isaac crossed his eyes at him.

  Oscar sighed. “Okay, if I remember correctly, he said you had to find the sun, line it up with the hour hand like this.” He stretched his arm out and turned, and I saw that it was a few minutes after one.

  “Then what?”

  “Then I bisect the angle between the hour hand and the twelve to get the direction.”

  “What do you mean, bisect the angle?”

  “It means cut in half.”

  “I know what bisect means,” Isaac huffed. “But why?”

  “That becomes the north-south line.” Oscar turned again. “So the line is here, between the twelve and the one.”

  “Okay,” I said, not really getting it. I looked at Chloe—her face was open, curious, something forming behind her eyes.

  “So then,” she said, somewhat excitedly as she did a slight turn with Oscar. “This would be south.” She pointed into the trees, and I wondered if that was the original direction we had come from. It seemed right.

  “Are you sure?” Isaac looked disgruntled. “How do you know it’s not north?”

  “Because when Chris drew a picture in the sand, the S was at the top of the line, and the N was at the bottom,” Oscar explained. “I think you do it differently if you’re in the southern hemisphere.”

  For one second I understood, and then it was gone. “Well, it sounds like a good plan to me.”

  Isaac crossed his arms, unmoved. “I still say we should find a tree. We should head east to Lake Superior.”

  “Okay,” Oscar said. “Go find one and climb it. But I just found south.”

  “You’re forgetting one important thing,” Isaac sneered.

  “What?”

  “South is the direction we came from, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back into that hellhole.”

  Day 7

  Sunset

  “Are you ready?”

  “I guess,” I said to Oscar, folding my swimsuit into a small wad. We’d spent most of the afternoon sitting around while Isaac fished but caught nothing. “Not like there’s much to pack.”

  “Yeah.”

  I slowly carved another slash on the tree trunk with my knife. Day seven was over, which meant the storm was another day closer. When I glanced at Oscar, he was watching the sky, no doubt thinking the same thing. We knew we couldn’t stay here, and we’d waited long enough. “Isaac said we’ll leave as soon as the sun comes up.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Yeah.” I flipped the blade down and put it away. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about the watch.”

  Oscar shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “Well, I should have brought it up. We could’ve have been home now if I had.” I didn’t really think that was true, but it seemed like something I should say. I had thought it, anyway.

  “No.” Oscar was adamant. “We did the right thing, coming here. We did everything we were supposed to. And if they were going to find us, they already would have.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I have to,” he said. “Otherwise I would make myself crazy, second-guessing everything all the time.”

  I gave him a wry smile. “Welcome to my world.” I turned my eyes back to the lake, taking it all in. “I wonder what this lake is called. It seemed like every one had a name.”

  “Yeah.” Oscar scratched his chin, now shaded with stubble. “Loon Lake, Mud Lake, Star Lake, Snowflake Lake.”

  “Snowflake?”

  “I think there was one called Christmas Lake, to
o.”

  I tried to visualize the map—the multitude of blue splotches scattered across the green. Names and names of water. It seemed as though everything had a name, everything was known and marked. “Well, this one’s really small.”

  “Tiny Lake?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “How about Lost Lake?”

  “Good one.”

  We watched the sun disappear over the trees, leaving a golden glow in the sky.

  A long cry shot up over us, so close and high and lonesome it made every pore on my skin contract, like a shock wave starting from the deepest part of my gut.

  “What was that?”

  As if to answer the question, another cry echoed some distance away, but the effect of the sound was the same. I felt the tingle all the way to my butt. “Wolves.” I exhaled. “It’s wolves.”

  I’d heard the sound before, of course, in movies and nature shows, but out here it was different. This wasn’t a movie, and it wasn’t a zoo. It was the wild. This was their home; we just happened to be here.

  They appeared on the far bank, between a clearing in the trees, moving as smoothly as ghosts, their long-legged strides so even and fast they appeared to drift and hover over the ground, not touch it. I counted three. They were slim and lithe, brushed in various shades of gray and white, moving quickly down the shoreline, their eyes and noses missing nothing. The last one in the line stopped and turned its head to us, examining the strange creatures on the opposite shore. Had it ever seen a person? I hoped not. And I hoped that after tonight it would never see another one of us again. It tilted its head up, another moaning cry rising like the beginning of a warning siren, and a few seconds later a fourth wolf burst from the south end of the lake, running in a steady lope to catch up. They nuzzled at each other for a second, turned, flicked their tails, and were gone, disappearing back into the trees.

  I grabbed Oscar’s hand. “They were right there. So close.”

  “I know.” He squeezed my hand and, with one quick tug, pulled me against his chest, wrapping both arms around me. I couldn’t say what shocked me more, the wolves or his embrace, and I almost forgot where I was. All I could concentrate on was the feel of his body against mine. Another howl echoed through the sky, making me shiver. “It sounds closer now.”

  He watched the trees. “Do you think they’ll—”

  “Yes.” I exhaled, not letting him finish, and we turned (somewhat reluctantly) and ran for the campsite.

  * * *

  When we burst back into the clearing a minute later, my heart was pounding so loud in my ears I barely heard what Chloe was telling me, or rather yelling, her mouth compressed into a frightened O.

  “Wolves!”

  “I know! We saw them!”

  Isaac was already growing the fire, the biggest I’d ever seen it, but he added several large logs around the base, cursing frantically when his hands got too close. “Wiener!” he yelled. “We need more! They’re coming!”

  I stared into the trees. The light was gone, the view growing dimmer by the second. I half expected them to leap out of the bushes any minute. How long would it take for them to come around to this side? Immediately, came the answer. Not long. Not long at all.

  I jumped when Chloe grabbed my arm. “C’mon, help me.” She tugged me to the shelter, and I saw she had already covered the top, making a solid roof of crisscrossed branches of pine and poplar, woven together with geometric precision. My face flamed. I’d been talking with Oscar while Chloe had been fortifying our shelter.

  “These!” She pointed to several large limbs stacked next to the hut. “Help me move them in front of the entrance.”

  A minute later there was only a hole big enough to squeeze through. I took off the top limb and tossed it inside. “Do we have any sticks?” I yelled, but Oscar was already next to me with a handful.

  “We can make spears with these if we have to.” He pushed me to the entrance. “Get in now!”

  “What’s Isaac doing?”

  “Trying to get the fire higher. It needs to last all night.”

  Chloe had already climbed in, pulling all the packs inside. She pressed them against the walls as fortifications, and now it resembled a crude bunker.

  “They’re coming,” I said, praying I was wrong, but at the same time strangely excited. “He needs to get in here now.”

  “I know.” Oscar looked back at Isaac, who was hurriedly dumping dry leaves and twigs into the fire in the hope the big logs would catch. “Isaac! Leave it! C’mon!”

  The warning in Oscar’s voice made Isaac jerk up. He glanced around quickly, then jogged over to us, apparently as nervous as we were. He had never obeyed a command so fast without an argument.

  We climbed in through the hole, and when Isaac was in, he stuffed the opening shut with the last log.

  Chloe hunched in the corner and clicked on her flashlight. She pushed her back against her pack and held the sticks for dear life.

  I pulled out my knife and crawled over to her. “Here,” I said. “We need to sharpen them to spears.”

  The shelter was even more cramped with all our gear inside. Oscar took his pack and leaned it against the opening. Each one of us took a side. Through the cracks in the wall I watched the woods behind us, hard to see anything over the height of the fire. If the wolves were coming, they’d be coming from that direction.

  “Now what?” Chloe handed Isaac a sharpened stick.

  Isaac took it eagerly, then turned his attention to the darkness beyond the glow of the fire. “Now all we do is wait.”

  We didn’t wait long.

  They arrived like a fog, so silent and smooth that for a moment I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Eyes. Golden eyes appearing, then blinking off, like a short in a light circuit. There then gone. The eyes moved but didn’t get closer. I held my breath and stared, hoping I wasn’t hallucinating. Then I hoped I was.

  “I see them,” Chloe whispered. “Back there.”

  “Me too.” I gripped my stick tighter. “But they’re just sitting there.”

  “They’re waiting,” Isaac said grimly.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For the fire to die.”

  Oscar exhaled hard and leaned heavily against my back. I pressed my shoulders against his. “I thought wolves didn’t attack people,” he said.

  “A pack will,” Isaac told him. “Especially if they’re hungry.”

  Especially if they’re hungry. Yes, I could see that. To wolves we would be easy, much easier to catch than a rabbit or deer. Much easier to bring down than a moose. Despite being called the most dangerous predator on earth, humans were a pretty pathetic specimen, physically speaking.

  “How many do you think there are?” Chloe wanted to know.

  “Four,” I said. “We saw four.”

  “That’s enough,” Isaac said, “to cause serious damage.”

  “Will the fire keep them away?”

  “For now.”

  We gripped our sticks tighter, and I kept my eyes on the dark behind the fire, waiting for the eyes to move closer. It will be okay, I thought. As long as they can’t get in. They’ll have to leave eventually.

  * * *

  Snuffling. Loud in my ears. A whuffing, then a growl. I jerked up, almost poking my spear into the underside of my chin.

  How long have I been asleep? Minutes? Or hours?

  I reached my hand out behind me; Oscar was still leaning against my back, his posture and breathing told me he was asleep. “Oscar?”

  The snuffling inches away stopped. Silence. I leaned forward, my cheek against the branches. There was a two-inch gap in front of my eyes, and the wolf blinked back at me, gold eyes surrounded by pale fur. Its gaze deepened from surprise to sharp curiosity, and I held my breath, unable to move. Another snort, on the far side of the shelter. A low growl. But the wolf never took its eyes off me.

  We were surrounded.

  “Oscar?” My voice creaked, my throat constricting to
a whisper.

  “Hmm?”

  “They’re here.”

  “Umm . . .”

  I shoved back against him, hard, my eyes never leaving the wolf. He looked big, much bigger this close up, and for some reason I had thought it would be no different from seeing a large dog. But it wasn’t like that, not at all. This was no dog. “They’re here!” I hissed.

  Isaac stirred. “What the . . .”

  I leaned forward and shook Chloe’s shoulder. I could tell she was awake when I heard her suck her breath in. “Holy—”

  “Shhh!” said Oscar. “They’re right outside.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Isaac shifted himself around in the dark. “But they won’t get in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they’re wolves, not bears.”

  “So?”

  “Wolves are shy and afraid of people.”

  “They don’t look shy right now,” I whispered. “And they certainly don’t look afraid.” The wolf still had its eyes on me; I wondered what it was thinking.

  As I watched, another one (smaller) padded over into my line of sight. I held up my stick, ready to drive it through like a bayonet. What would happen if I did? Would that make it worse? Or would they run? Despite their thick fur, I could see a rangy thinness about them. Were they hungry? As hungry as I was? Maybe all they saw when they looked at us was what we were. Meat.

  The wolves growled softly to each other. The smaller one lowered its head and nipped the big one under the chin.

  Now we’re the meat.

  A sharp yelp pierced the silence. “Got ya!” Isaac blurted.

  “What are you doing?” Chloe whispered. “Don’t make them mad!”

  “We need to scare them off!” He huffed. “What do you think? That we’re going to just sit in this hut and wait forever.”

  “Look,” Oscar said quietly. “It’s almost dawn. They’ll probably just leave.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I looked out at the fire, which was low but still burning. If no one did anything soon, it would go out in an hour.

  “So what should we do?” I asked. “You wanna go out there, Isaac?”

  “Actually, I think it’s your turn, Dodd.”