The New Wild

by Holly Brasher

  “Jesus,” May says under her breath. “What a tool.”

  I shake my head in disgust. Sarah just sighs.

  Across the way, Xander and the rest of the boys walk the shaded path leading to the Kanselon River. Before they round the bend, Xander turns his head our way. He looks straight at me, and I glare right back. He stares for a few seconds and then turns and heads on his way.

  “What the eff was that about? Is that what he calls flirting?” Sarah asks.

  “No idea,” I say. “That guy’s such a freak.”

  “Seriously,” May sighs, “the cute ones are always the worst.”

  * * *

  Brittany leads us several miles along spindly ash trees, past a stump of an aspen with a young version growing out of it—a nurse log, she tells me—toward Lake Astor. I can’t help but notice how clear the air is. It’s crisp, like in the hours after a rainstorm. Not a cloud in the sky.

  After a while, the air becomes a little unsavory. Something is emitting some funky fumes. I look around for droppings or anything that could be the culprit. Suddenly nervous, I perform a stealthy pit sniff, and to my relief, they’re still baby-powder fresh. It’s probably some poor prey decaying along the trail, so I try to forget about it. But still, I can’t seem to escape the noxious stench, and the more I walk, the worse it gets.

  May hustles to catch up to where I’m walking, waving a daisy chain over her head. We’re not really supposed to pick the flowers, but May can never resist, and it’s hard to be mad. As she approaches me, her face melts from a grin to a disgusted cringe. “Girl,” she says, cautiously, “what is with that stank?” My fears are confirmed. It’s coming from me. Could I have left a hunk of blue cheese in my backpack from lunch? “Hold up!” I shout and kneel to open my bag with May peering over my shoulder.

  May shrieks. I gag and recoil. Draped on top of all my equipment is the carcass of a freaking chipmunk. It looks like it’s been dead for weeks. The sight and stench combined hit me like a wall. A dead animal is touching my stuff. A dead animal is touching my stuff. Sarah comes over, drawn by the commotion, furrows her brow, and in a stately voice, says what we’re all thinking.

  “That dick.”

  Using big leaves and sticks, we clumsily manage to get the corpse off my bag and fling the thing into a patch of tall grass. Gone, but definitely not forgotten. I don’t even want to think about the creeper-particles it left behind on my clothes. We finally reach the lake six-odd miles later. Forest surrounds it on all sides, edging a pebble-and-gravel beach. The water is pretty clear, and I can see slippery moss on all the stones below the surface. Despite the gorgeous surroundings, I can’t get my mind off the sickening prank. I immediately take my bag down to the water and start washing out my belongings.

  “I can’t believe what those assholes did to me.”

  “Oh, come on,” Sarah says. “You know that wasn’t the group of them, Jackie. Be real. That was all Xander. ‘Good luck, girls’ he says. Effing jerk.”

  May outright laughs. “Hey, he likes you! This is like fourth grade all over again. Remember when guys used to prank you on the playground?”

  “He doesn’t like me, May. This isn’t fourth grade. My clothes still stink. I probably have to throw them out. Who knows what kind of nasty-ass germs that thing was carrying? It’s not cute, it’s just mean,” I say, my eyes pooling with tears.

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah murmurs with a smirk, “we’ll set that string bean straight so quick he won’t know what hit him in his big, dumb peanut head.”

  “Yeah!” May pipes up. “You don’t mess with Astor’s finest.”

  I manage a smile. I don’t know what I’d do without these girls.

  * * *

  The sunset is beautiful tonight—a radiant watercolor painting of coral and crimson spread across the horizon and reflected in the lake. We eat a dinner of instant soup around the campfire and watch the dusk fade to black. After a few s’mores, Sarah and May join the girls in singing, but I’m so exhausted from the day’s hellacious hike that I turn in for the night.

  For a few minutes, I lay there in my tent, thinking about Xander. What kind of sicko is he? I notice I can see a few stars twinkling through the plastic windows above me. It makes me kind of homesick. At home in Oregon, I have skylights over my bed. Mom put them in after Dad died. She wanted him to watch over me as I slept. I take out my cellphone and look at a few photos of our family from years ago, before the cancer killed Dad and a part of me, too. I feel like I’ve been drugged, but I’m sure it’s just all the exercise. I fall asleep before I get too weepy.

  I dream Bernard’s standing in front of me, laughing his big, deep laugh about something. I know we’re at school, but it’s not the same building. It’s one of those prettier-than-life high schools they use for movies. There are dozens of other kids around us, all laughing, and I don’t know why. Wearing a tux, Bernard hops in the driver’s side of a little, purple sports car. I’ve never seen him in anything half as nice. I climb in, too, but the car won’t start. It doesn’t even make a sound when he jiggles the key.

  All of a sudden, I see my mom. Her face is all red, and I can tell she’s been crying. She’s standing in the liquor aisle of a twenty-four-hour discount store, wearing a robe and slippers. Of course, she would never leave the house dressed like that, but there she is, bawling her eyes out. She has a huge belly, like she’s nine months pregnant. She’s bawling hot tears of rage, lifting bottles from the shelves and throwing them on the linoleum—vodka (crash!), brandy (ka-boom!), tequila (bam!). The alcohol pools in a reservoir at her feet, which grows wider and wider.

  The current of alcohol swells and bursts forth in a roaring wall. It rushes through a forest surrounding the store, splashing against tree trunks and drowning weeds. The trees and the store burst into flames, but Mom just stands there, untouchable. I can feel the heat on my skin. I can smell the smoke. I yell at Mom to run, but my voice barely registers against the roaring fire. The heat is making little pinpricks across my skin, licking up the sweat. I want to wake up, but I can’t. I’m stuck in this fiery hell, with the heat and smoke and ash falling around me like charred confetti.

  Mom is singing. I can’t make out the song, but it sounds so pretty. The flames are coming toward me. My eyes burn with orange and red and white. Then I hear an unmistakable noise, booming in my ears. A heartbeat. My heartbeat. Ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud. That’s when I realize my eyes are open—wide open.

  This is no dream.

  I thrash around, desperate to move, but an unseen force is holding me at bay, locking me in place. It’s as if I’m being held in an invisible coffin.

  Pinpricks of heat lap at my back and force me into a state of panic. Everything is hot, so hot, like I’m standing right next to a bonfire. I’m not lying on the ground anymore. Pockets of air have lifted me up, like buoys, from underneath. I’m being held about forty feet off the ground, hovering horizontally in the dark night. My body feels as completely weightless as the air itself. My whole face is pulled back in horror. How is this happening? The sound of my heartbeat has been replaced by screams, and I look back down at the earth to see all the girls enveloped in smoke and flames. May and Sarah are wailing—an animal sound, nothing I’ve ever heard. They’re burning up. I scream out to them as loud as I can, desperate to help, but my voice comes out in a tiny squeak, hardly noticeable over the cries from below.

  Smoke is everywhere. I can see it in the black air, wafting over the trees and clouding the flames below.

  Then the air goes quiet. The only sound I can hear is the crackling of the fire. My whole body is twisting and shaking in the heat of the air. I try to scream again, but it’s as if I’ve been gagged. I see the moon rising in the black sky. Soon, it is directly above me, bright white and beaming. I can’t take my eyes off it. The stars around it have morphed from tiny, twinkling orbs to spinning spheres of combusting, flame-spitting fire. It’s terrifying.

  I feel my body being gradually lowered back
to the ground, right back onto the dirt where my tent had been. The fireballs fade back into stars, and the camp is bathed again in moonlight. I want to get up and run to May and Sarah and the other girls, see if they’re okay. But my whole body is paralyzed. Only my eyes will move.

  I can feel my eyelids drooping against my will, and despite my fear, I fall asleep again.

  Chapter 3

  When I wake up, the air is a thick, sooty gray, and I can’t see more than a foot in front of me. It catches in my throat. I start coughing, hard—thankfully, I can move again. My tent has been reduced to blackened flakes, steaming in the sunlight that’s breaking through the smoke. My cotton clothes and leather boots are in good shape, but all the rest of my stuff—my plastic-coated rain jacket and backpack, my sunglasses—is completely destroyed. The ground is hot, like beach sand on a sweltering summer day.

  I sit up. I can barely breathe. It’s like I’ve been in a coma and have to relearn how to move. The smoke is stinging my eyes, so I squint. I’m coughing uncontrollably.

  “Hello?” I croak through the haze. There’s no answer and no one in sight. Everything around me—the tents, our gear—is charred and smoldering.

  “HELLO?” I shout.

  No sound. Just birds chirping. I’ve never heard so many.

  Instinctively, I reach for my cellphone on the ground beside me. It’s a charred clump of molten metal and plastic, and hot as a poker.

  “Shit!” I scream, dropping it instantly. I scramble to my feet and stumble to the lake, then thrust my singed hand into the lake water. Thankfully, it’s cool, an instant salve for my palm.

  I hear nothing, nobody’s responded. My stomach flips. What if they’re dead? Their bodies really burnt under all this smoke and soot? The air is so thick with smoke that if they are alive, I doubt they could have gone far.

  “Hello! Sarah? May? Guys?” I shout, but don’t hear a sound. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” I mutter under my breath like a mantra.

  I hold my shirt over my mouth and nose, squinting against the smoke. I’m not sure how much longer I can survive breathing this shit in. Will I die here, at Lake Astor? Three thousand miles from Mom? Bernard?

  The air is so thick and gray I can’t see four feet in front of me, but it’s better if I crouch down. That’s when I notice—none of the grass is burnt. Even the grass under my tent—which is now a flat, blackened rectangle—is growing green and lush. It looks completely normal, actually thicker than it was yesterday. There are tiny, white, bell-shaped flowers scattered here and there, and I even spy a butterfly, shimmery and blue with black spots along its wings, resting on a leaf. My jaw drops open. I can’t believe my eyes. How did all this survive the fire?

  “Hello?” I shout, again to no answer.

  A breeze is picking up, and the haze of smoke is slowly lifting. I see clumps of black steaming in the grass. Bodies. I vomit, my back heaving up and down in giant sobs.

  I walk over to take a closer look, to see if, by some miracle, any of the girls are alive. May’s is the first tent I reach; it’s charred just like mine, smoldering in the sun. “Please, please, please, please, please, please, please,” I say over and over, in a whisper. I dry heave over a nearby patch of grass until I can’t stand it any longer. I have to get through this.

  I hold my shirt over my face and pick up a long stick with my free hand. Tears blur my vision. It’s hard to tell if they’re from the smoke or from the ache tearing through my heart. I use the stick to flick the little bits of ash around. Some of it’s still smoking. The blanket of soot makes it so I can’t see very well, but I feel the end of my stick hit something mushy. Something gritty. I crouch to get under the thickest of the smoke and my worst fear is realized. It’s a rib cage, bloody skin peeled back and charred black like something off a barbecue. I start to sob and vomit at the same time, every so often managing a sidesplitting scream.

  The air starts to clear. Next to May’s tent, Sarah’s is in the exact same shape. Scorched into black-and-gray powder, with a bloodied, black skeleton in the middle. So many tears are running down my cheeks that the ash floating in the air is sticking to my skin. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters.

  The smoke is gone now, and I can see fourteen black circles over the ground where the girls’ tents were, the campers’ bones splayed out in varying stages of disintegration. Nothing natural is burnt. The trees are just as leafy, the sky even more blue than it was before the fire. I can’t stop crying. I’m so confused. I keep sucking in air and blowing it out, like there’s not enough oxygen in the world.

  I stare at the bodies, trying to make sense of this, but my brain is clogged. This is so far outside the realm of my experience, I’m paralyzed. All I can do is gape and stare.

  Some of their clothes are left unburned, untouched, like mine. I find a platinum ring hidden in the ash, which reminds me of my compass. I reach for it around my neck. It’s unburned and feels solid and heavy in my palm. I’m going to need it now.

  I fall to the ground and wail. What’s happening? All I know is I’m alone here and everything is toast. Why are all my friends dead? And how am I still walking and breathing? My heart beats so loudly I can hear it thudding in my chest. I can’t even begin to consider what to do.

  My sobs are the only sound besides the birds and the wind rustling through the trees. The shock knocks the wind out of me, and my heart shatters. I lay on the ground, for what could be eternity, trying to remember to breathe. Memories of Sarah and May flash before my eyes like a home movie, its colors richer and deeper than reality. I see Sarah and May that first day at Astor, when their wide smiles and easygoing personas were the only things that kept my nerves at bay. I watch them jumping into the lake to tip over the guys’ canoe, cracking up onstage during our skits, hugging their parents at summer’s end. My heart hurts so much I can almost feel it turning cold and black inside me. I could lie there all day, but I’m still scared for myself. That fire seemed to come out of nowhere and might be back at any second.

  The air is completely clear now, the sky as blue as I’ve seen. Birds keep on chirping, swooping past me. A falcon. A meadowlark. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. The water looks clearer, too, with jumping trout and salmon arching over the surface and skittering away. Lake Astor was always pretty, but now it’s beyond beautiful. But I can’t enjoy it.

  All I want to do is collapse here and never get up. Sarah and May are dead; all the girls I knew here are skeletons. Nothing will ever be right in the world, ever again.

  It dawns on me that I need to get help. If I retrace our steps from yesterday, I’m sure I’ll reach camp. I have to alert the authorities. Their—gulp—families. How am I going to explain this?

  I start running back toward Camp Astor along the same well-worn path we took yesterday. Overnight, so much brush grew up along the trail that I begin to doubt I’m even going the right way. Until after about an hour, when I see the nurse log, but I swear the aspen coming out of its trunk is twice as big as it was last time. I keep running, my desperation propelling me forward.

  When I round the bend to camp, my heart stops in my chest. The buildings are torched.

  “Holy! Fuck!” I scream, putting my hand up to my mouth and falling to my knees. I want to crawl into a ball and vanish, but I’m worried the fire could come back. I can’t do anything without help.

  I timidly walk through the camp to see what remains. Each cabin is still standing but so charred they look like they could collapse with a strong wind. The roof of the office is bowed a few feet from the ground. It takes me a second to notice that everything but the buildings looks fine, even the grass edging the walls and the ivy crawling up over the office chimney. They seem to be even greener and prettier than they were yesterday. The air smells smoky, but also oddly fresh, like the pine-filled Oregon rainforest in the morning dew.

  Slowly, I make my way over to the camp office building and peer through a broken window. Everything inside is melted into a black blob—
the computers, the office phone, all surfaces except a few key things: a canvas bag lying on the ground, a glass jar on its side nearby and a ball of twine Brit used to string our nametags. That’s it.

  The roof looks like it’s about to cave in. I’m scared to go inside, but I might be able to use that stuff. Everything I brought—my plastic flip-flops, my purple suitcase filled with coordinated outfits—is burnt to a crisp. I grab a sturdy stick from the forest behind me and use it like a forklift, pulling things out one at a time. Memories of last night flash in my mind. I keep seeing wisps of fire and hearing the cries of Sarah and May and the other girls in my head, louder than ever. Did I actually hover over the ground while they melted away? It’s enough to make me think I’m going insane. I need to call my mom, but every phone is melted into a blob. I know I have to find help, the police, someone, but all I really want to do is crumple onto the ground in a heap of tears and wait for someone to stumble upon me and make everything okay again.

  When the boys left yesterday morning, they headed east, to the Kanselon River, so I decide to start walking that way. I hold out hope that they’ll still be there, laughing it up like idiots, totally oblivious to the utter destruction nearby.

  I’m just a mile or so from Camp Astor when I realize that won’t be the case. I see a house—an over-the-top estate hidden away in the woods—torched black just like everything else I’ve seen. The roof is caved in, the windows are blown out. The car sitting on the long gravel driveway looks black, the paint bubbled.

  A few miles farther, as the sun starts to drop below the tree line, I see the boys’ camp. It looks just like ours did this morning—sixteen smoldering black circles slung along the river. The sight sends a surge of adrenaline across my chest, and I raise my palms to my face. It’s too much. My head hurts, and I start to feel dizzy like I could faint at any second. I realize I haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day. I haven’t even thought about it. How could I?