Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller

by Deborah Rogers

  There are nighttime noises again. Coming close, then backing away. Hairs on my arms stiffen. Thoughts become a jumble. My foot itches. I can’t let myself fall asleep. Whatever is out there could get me. Stay awake. Remain upright. Count the stars.

  The night crawls by. With my hands tucked into the pleats of my armpits, I listen to the constant hiss of the wind, my chattering teeth, the wailing wolves. I think of my old life. It wasn’t so bad, was it? There were clean sheets, mattresses, pillows, hot baths, Starbucks double shots and Supreme King burritos. How nice the Manhattan skyline would look right now, that spectacular view from my partner’s office I took for granted, the smoked fish canapés and Australian red wine, and all that mingling with corporate clients. Matthew.

  Don’t go there, I tell myself. Don’t go to the Mexican restaurant we loved so much, and our hand-in-hand walks through Central Park past the guys on the bongo drums, and making love on a Sunday afternoon as the sun blessed us through the window. Don’t do it. Don’t look back.

  By daybreak my head feels like it could slip from my shoulders and I know I can’t not sleep forever. But for now I return to the ridge. Sky the color of seawater hangs over the vast land. The beauty is not lost on me. Heaven, or some part of it, will surely look like this.

  Tracking the frosted clouds as they drift east, I study the terrain. Four choices. North—mountains. East—flat land covered with thick trees. West—more mountains and fields of scree. South—the trees thin out, a small hill, possibly a clearing and grassland, the glint of a waterway and what looks like a gorge and maybe a bridge. This could mean farmland. From up here it’s too hard to tell, and I don’t know anything about distances, how many miles it would be to get there, just that it seems very far away.

  But I can’t stay here and south could mean people.

  Before I leave I use tiny pebbles to spell out my name and my mother’s phone number beneath a giant SOS, and the words—Alive. Gone south.

  All day long I weave my way through the assembly of trees, pausing frequently to scratch and inspect the underside of my troubling foot. I think about how cruel it was for him to take my shoes. Then I remember that it didn’t happen that way. I ran from him and he caught me and killed me and I came back to life. I tell myself that I mustn’t forget. The ten things, especially. Mint Capri. Kermit. Beaded seat cover. Boy on a bike. O, K, 1, and 7.

  As I walk I think of my life, my childhood, my worst and best mistakes. I think of my mother.

  “Talk to me, Amelia, I’m worried about you.” This was her refrain from my childhood. Her other favorite was “Sweets, it’s not good to bottle things up. You need to let them out.”

  My mother is a verbalizer, the type of person who feels the need to announce every single thing that pops into her mind. What’s worse, she has no filter. Announcing things I think best kept private.

  Like the times I’d hear her on the phone to her friends. Amelia got her first period today. Amelia had a bad case of diarrhea after camp and messed her pants. Amelia cries herself to sleep at night.

  I never felt the need to share everything I did or felt, so whenever my mother said, “What’s going on in that head of yours?” I would tell her that everything was fine. “There’s nothing to talk about, Mom. I just need to get on with my homework.”

  She didn’t even know I’d broken up with Matthew.

  I know what she’s going to think when I don’t come back. She’s going to think I ran off. She’ll tell everyone I needed space, that I was more fragile than anyone ever knew. I think of how broken-hearted she’s going to be. What’s worse, she will blame herself. My poor mother, the woman who desperately tried to hold her fracturing family together after my father left.

  Oh, how I wish she was here now. With a needle and a Band-Aid and some antiseptic cream for this irksome foot. My mother liked nothing more than to lance a boil. She once said she must have been a nurse in a former life.

  *

  Late morning and I breach the tree line and step into a field of astonishing yellow. Stretching out across the clearing, thousands of wild mustard plants convulse in the strong northerly wind. Bees levitate over the blossoms, their hind legs inked with gold. I bend to pluck a mustard flower, crushing it between my forefinger and thumb to rouse the spice. My nose itches and I toss the bud away and lift my chin to the sun.

  I open my eyes. I must move on. Across the other side of the field, more woods and the hill I hope means the gorge and waterway I saw from the ridge. I move forward, passing through the bony green stalks, leaving a laneway of buckled plants in my wake.

  I reenter the forested land and once again am besieged by gloom. I scan for water as I go. Sometimes I think I can hear raging rivers, only to step into total silence a few seconds later. The wilderness plays tricks on you like that, like an auditory mirage. Or maybe it’s just me.

  Occasionally, I encounter dribbling ditches and stop and take some into my mouth. But it never feels enough. I worry about disease, especially with the hovering mosquitoes, which most likely means waterborne larvae. And who knows what other organisms and bacteria may be lurking there?

  It’s maddening, also, that these little fingers of water never lead anywhere. Downhill or uphill, they just disappear into nothing. There are swimming holes and rivers out here for sure. But they remain hidden in the valleys, or blocked by the walls of green. There’s nothing I can do except play the numbers game and hope one of these creeks eventually leads me to a river, then people, then home.

  Early afternoon I round a corner of moss-covered rock and smell the fruit before I see it. Plums. Hundreds of the ruby-skinned orbs lie in the grass, bird-pecked and fermenting. I glance up at the tree. A few less-damaged ones cling to the upper branches but it’s too far up to climb. So I take my chances on the windblown spoils and crouch down to select the largest plum I can find, wiping away the bugs to take a bite. It’s good. Sweet. I eat more, snatching them up, not caring about the syrup seeping through my fingers and forking at my chin. When I’ve devoured as many as I can, I sit back on my heels and lick my sticky hands. I feel better, appeased, and wonder if I should try to eat more, but decide the important thing is to continue on because I need to make the most of what is left of the light. Loading as much fruit as I can carry in the skirt of my dress, I set off.

  I walk all through the afternoon. It’s slow going. A profound tiredness seems to have colonized every part of my body and I struggle not to stumble on my feet. I tell myself that I must keep going, that if I don’t find that waterway I will never get out of here.

  But less than an hour later, I stop. I look around. No sign of the valley and I’m in dense woods again. A wrong turn somewhere back. Not good.

  I blink heavily at my feet and make the decision to nap. Just a short one, I tell myself, then I’ll circle back and see if I can find a hill to get my bearings again.

  To my left there’s a cluster of shrubs and I kneel beneath them, rolling the plums from my skirt and corralling them into a pile. Reaching for drifts of pine needles, browned and brittle from the summer, I rake them toward me, and once buried insects disperse in a frenzy.

  When I have enough coverage, I smooth down the points until they all run the same way, and lie on my side, settling my head in the nook of my arm. My eyelids droop and I feel myself slip. Something skulks on the edge of my mind. A thought I can’t quite place. An image I can’t really see. Like a song heard only once and not fully remembered. Whatever it is retreats into the shadows, and I trip my way into a dark and dreamless sleep.

  20

  I wake up when something crawls over my shin. I leap to my feet. A spider the size of a man’s hand is stuck there, an inch below my knee. I give my leg three hard shakes and the thing somersaults and lands upside down on my foot then scutters away beneath a bunch of leaves. I know these things—they build tunnels underground with trapdoors. I think of them all there, lying in wait, beneath the place where I slept.

  I dash away before it co
mes back, glancing around at the failing light in despair. How could I have been so damn stupid to sleep so long? Valuable daylight hours have been lost.

  I hurry over the undulating terrain, following the rise and fall of the hills, hoping to find one substantial enough to give me a vantage point across the forest before nightfall. But disappointment waits over every knoll. There’s just more of the same laborious, rolling territory. I tell myself not to give up, that one more mound could mean the slope of a steep hill or at least a break in the trees.

  But by the time it’s dark I’m forced to admit I’m wrong, and have to take shelter in the concave of a thick-trunked tree. I sit shivering, watching the white eye of the moon blink at me, and wonder how much longer I can go on like this. The nights are getting colder and all I have is this rag of a dress. It’s a miracle I haven’t succumbed to hypothermia already. And the lack of food? How long can I walk without any real sustenance? Then I remember the precious plums I so carelessly abandoned back in the spiders’ lair, and feel even more useless than before.

  I pick at the crust on my throbbing left foot and think of the Uruguay soccer team and their 1972 plane crash into the side of an Andes mountain. I think about how they were completely alone, how everyone thought they were dead, how no one was looking for them, what they did to survive. They made it out, didn’t they? After how many failed attempts? I must be my own plane wreck in the Andes survival story. I will get out. I will make it back. I will live to tell.

  *

  I wake in the half-light with leaves rattling above my head. Rain. Some of it reaches me down here and I lick my arms. The moisture feels good. Fresh. I sit up and cup my hands to catch the drips but that does nothing except make my palms wet.

  I need a container. There’s moss growing in bushels at the base of the trees so I reach over and slide my thumb under a thick piece and separate it from the bark then place it out in the open rain. Minutes later, I retrieve the sponge and suck. Not much, but something.

  Crouching, I collect six more moss chunks and begin laying them out. I’m going to be in wet clothes with wet hair but at least I’ll be hydrated. I wonder if this is the way it’s going to be from now on, lurching from one survival crisis to the next, if it’s always going to be a double-edged sword. You can have water but it means getting hypothermia. You can have food but it means eating deadwood and insects.

  There’s a sudden noise. Movement to my left. A pair of eyes flash. My heart leaps. He’s back. Rex is back. I open my mouth to scream then stop when I see the rabbit.

  Its pelt is dripping and soiled. The pathetic creature blinks at me in disinterest. I realize I’m drooling. I’m disgusted because I want nothing more than to kill the rabbit and suck the flesh from its tiny bones. Could I really do it? Kill a living thing? Eat it raw?

  My stomach moans. I lean forward, lift my hand over the rabbit’s head, bring it down hard. Miss. The rabbit flees. It’s fast, but so am I. In fact, I can hardly believe how fast I can run, that I had this energy in me at all. But I know it won’t last, that my legs will soon buckle, that the adrenaline will soon go.

  I close in. Ahead the rabbit leaps over roots and rocks. Less than a stride now and I will be able to bring my foot down on top of its head. But the rabbit veers left and I lose sight of it.

  I round the corner and see a small cave.

  My heart does a little leap. The rabbit is trapped. Soon I will eat.

  Moving forward, I stop dead in my tracks. Out of the mouth of the cave steps a dirty gray wolf. The wilting rabbit jolts between the wolf’s jaws.

  I duck behind a boulder and pray the wolf hasn’t seen me. The animal is large, the barrel of its chest broad. A thick black stripe runs the length of its spine to the tip of its tail. He lifts his nose to the wind then drops the rabbit to the ground like a sack. Another wolf emerges to stand beside the alpha, then four more of various sizes, wide-circling the meal in the dirt.

  Then the alpha begins. The others join him. There’s the sound of cracking bones.

  21

  A strange thing happens. I feel alive. Acutely alive. My mind is on one thing only. Food and the fact it’s highly likely there will be some back there in the den. I forget the pain and the soreness, the discomfort and the cold. I think only of the possible food and how I can get it. The wolves might be more physically powerful than me, especially in a pack, but I can outthink them. I am the one with the human brain.

  For an entire day I watch them, careful to keep myself downwind. I arm myself with rocks should they come after me. But they never notice I’m there.

  They have no set routine and stick close to the cave. The alpha takes prime spot on top of a flat rock to bask in the weak autumn sun. The others rest under trees or occasionally roughhouse in the dirt. In total, I count seven wolves, including a mother with two rubber-limbed teenagers, whom she is forever kicking away from her drooping teats. There’s also an outcast of sorts, a male with a withered hind leg, who skips around the fringes of the pack in a curious lopsided gait.

  Twice the pack goes out to hunt. Twice they return with nothing. Then late in the afternoon on the second day, one of the smaller wolves drags a mauled carcass of a bighorn sheep back into camp. The others gather, and I watch from a distance, salivating, as they tear into the meat.

  When I come back the next day, the sheep remains are gone, most probably dragged into the den for safekeeping. I sit there in the bushes wondering what to do. I lift my hand. It’s as bony as a bat’s wing. This is my third day without food. The plums are a distant memory, and the little water I’ve managed to harvest will not keep me going much longer. I need to carry on south as I had planned. That sheep meat would give me the strength I need to make the journey. I just have to work out how to get it.

  The next day my luck turns. Just before sunrise I hear howls. I rush from my shelter to the den. When I get there, the wolves are all gone. I’m not sure why—whether some prey has been spotted or another pack is threatening their territory. Whatever the reason, I need to hurry because there’s no telling when they’ll be back.

  In the dim light, I cross the camp and reach the entrance of the den, pausing there to check over my shoulder. I crouch down and go inside. The first thing to hit me is the odor. Pungent, fatty, like meat left too long, mixed with a ripe canine scent. I wait for my watering eyes to adjust to the dark. But with the sun yet to rise, it’s difficult to see anything. From what I can tell, the den is more dugout than cave, with the wolves burrowing further back into the side of the hill.

  Unable to stand, I duck-walk a few steps and find myself in total blackness and am forced to poke blindly at things with my fingers. I touch a pile of something, grab two handfuls and pull them out into the emerging daylight. Sticks and bones, old, all shapes and sizes, with the odd patch of fur that could belong to a rabbit, rat, or raccoon. But no meat.

  On my knees, I venture in further than before, patting the cool dirt ground as I go. The space gets tight and my shoulders brush against the curved, hard earth. Reaching, I feel out the little wall coves the wolves have excavated.

  The smell of meat becomes overwhelming. I’m close. But abruptly I come up against the end of the den and can’t go any further. I pause. It has to be here somewhere—the odor is just too strong. My hand hovers across the ground, fully expecting to knock into the carcass, but I can’t find anything. I feel out the back wall, thinking maybe I missed a cove. That’s when I lose my arm in a hole. A tunnel really.

  I look over my shoulder. By now a bulb of light glows at the entrance. If they find me in here I’m as good as dead.

  I face the tunnel. It’s pitch black and tiny and I won’t be able to turn around but what choice do I have? I need food.

  I lie down on my front and snake through the opening on my belly. My arms extended out front, I reach into the darkness. Something runs over my spine and I bang my head on the ceiling. I should turn back. Get the hell out of here. Find some berries. Take my chances in the woods.


  But I’m close, I know it, so I shimmy in further. The burrow gets tight and I have to squeeze through, angling my shoulders just right, my hips scraping against the hard dirt walls.

  I hear something. Oh God, a bark. Distant, but a bark nonetheless. I have to hurry.

  I reach out one final time and my hand lands on something sticky. I stretch for it. My little finger hooks around an arch of bone. I sniff my fingertips. Put some to my lips. Grease. Blood. Meat.

  More barks. Closer this time. I’ve got to get out of here. Grabbing the rack of meat, I flatten myself against the ground and move backward. But I’m stuck. I turn my shoulders. It makes no difference, I’m wedged in tight.

  Outside the barking gets louder. My heart races. Hurry. For God’s sake, hurry. I twist my body but the tunnel seems to shrink and it’s so black and I’m getting dizzy and I think of the dirt grave and the wolves and the sound of breaking bones. They are going to find me. They will tear my flesh like cloth.

  I tell myself I’ve got to calm down or I’m going to pass out. I tug and tug and finally my shoulders come free. Snaking backward, dragging the meat across the ground, I emerge from the burrow and continue the rest of the way on my knees. Finally I’m close to the entrance, and there’s enough room to move up to a crouch.

  I turn around.

  There’s the alpha, hackles raised, looking at me. Close behind, the teenagers nod and squeal. They look at the meat in my hands. I edge forward. The alpha snarls, his gums as pink as a radish. To my left there’s a barren leg bone I pulled from the den earlier. I grab it and hold it out.

  “Easy.”