“Yeah, we’re okay,” Dunbar replied. “Scraped up, but alive.”
“The Dray must have carved this gully, then dried up here,” Heath told them. “We should be able to follow it to the river.”
“I can hear it again,” Emily said.
“I hear something, too,” Dunbar confirmed, but he was peering down the gully, facing away from the river. “Something’s coming.”
Dunbar was right, Heath thought; there was something in the gully with them, maybe fifty yards off. It was hard to see, the night sky was only slightly lighter than the gully’s beveled silhouette, but the shape moving toward them contrasted against it just enough to see there was definitely something there. He couldn’t tell if it was walking in a crouch or crawling, yet he was sure it was heading their way. It looked human-shaped one second, and then the next it seemed to break apart at the edges, morphing into an indefinable blob. With barely any light, Heath knew that could be a trick of the eye.
“It’s Will! It has to be!” Emma said.
“Stringer?” Heath whispered. “Is that you?”
The shape didn’t answer. It just kept coming. Heath strained his eyes to take in whatever scraps of light were available, but he could still barely make it out.
“Will!” Emma called out.
“Shush!” Heath ordered. “Maybe the deer are too afraid to climb down here, but the squirrels won’t be. They don’t know we’re here, but they will if you keep yelling.”
“Fine,” she said. “Why won’t he answer us?”
They watched the inky shape approach. Instead of becoming more humanoid it grew larger and erratic, crumbling then rebuilding, as if held together by weak magnets.
“That’s not Will.” Emily caged Emma loosely with her arms to restrain her sister from wandering toward whatever the thing was. It certainly wasn’t the blue-eyed object of Emma’s former crush.
In the darkness they’d misjudged the distance between them and the baffling figure. It was actually much farther away. Now, as it drew closer, they began to hear a cacophony of overlapping sounds. Heath saw that, although it was alive, it was a lot larger than a person and consisted of many disconnected parts. The pungent smell of a zoo on a hot day rolled in ahead of it.
“Those are animals!” Emily gasped.
The thing headed their way was a super-herd of mammals, a hundred maybe, all kinds: deer, foxes, rats, minks, raccoons, squirrels, and more. The gully was funneling the stampede directly at them. Heath knew they couldn’t outrun it, and the banks were too steep to climb in the dark. There was absolutely nothing to do but let the tidal wave of teeth, claws, and fur wash over them, carrying them away into oblivion. Still, he wouldn’t steal their hope.
“You three try to get to the river,” Heath ordered.
“But Cricket—” Dunbar started.
“If you carry Cricket, you won’t make it,” Heath said. “It’s harsh, but that’s the truth. Maybe the animals will focus on me. Get out of here.”
Heath laid Cricket on the ground. With his back to the herd he leaned over his friend, hoping that his own dead body would become a shell against the onslaught, but he knew that was foolish thinking. They were going to be mauled to shreds, meat in a blender. If that was the way he would go, then so be it.
The Ems and Dunbar disobeyed him. Instead of fleeing, they knelt across from Heath, wove their arms together, and huddled close, cocooning Cricket entirely.
Heath didn’t know what to say, so he gave them the first thing that popped into his head. “Thanks, guys.”
“We tried,” said Dunbar. “That’s all we could do.”
“Yeah,” said Emily. “We got pretty far. We did good. You did good, Heath.”
“Not bad,” Emma agreed.
The ground quaked under the thudding hooves and paws. The growling, grunting, squeaking, chattering, and snorting—all of the terrifying beastly calls—swelled to a thundering peal. Heath braced himself for the end.
The herd hit them hard. Heath felt himself ripped away from Cricket and the others and tossed through the air like a feather. He landed on his side in a bed of moss, was picked up again and slammed hard into the bank. A hoof stomped down on his leg. His whole limb went numb for a few seconds. Something fat and furry leapt on his chest, breathed hotly into his face. A blink later, it was gone.
The animals weren’t attacking them. They were barreling through them, fleeing in fear from whatever terrifying thing was hunting them. Something off in the distance.
When the last animal had passed by, Heath surveyed the damage. The group was worse for wear, but everyone seemed to be moving okay. Even Cricket, who was exactly where they’d placed him, was awake, struggling to sit up. Heath crawled over to him. “You okay, buddy?”
“My arm hurts,” he whimpered, twisting it slightly to get a good look at the needle mark. “Did I get bit by a bullet ant?”
Emma held up her hand and inspected her fingers. She winced when she tried to bend the little one. “Broken pinkie.”
“I’ll live,” said Emily.
“I think I got a little skunk on me, but I’m okay, too. What happened?” asked Dunbar.
The answer came roaring through the gully in hot pursuit of the herd.
Rain. A torrential sheet of rain. The downpour washed over everything, turning dirt to mud in a flash, drenching the kids and filling the gully with one long, ankle-deep puddle. The rain had arrived earlier than Heath predicted on the bridge and intensified quickly, pelting their skin in wonderful, blossoming splatters. They giggled. Then laughed. Then they whooped and hollered and hopped about in the mud like nuts, dancing their hearts out in the rain until finally Dunbar sneezed, a signal it was time to get to shelter.
“C’mon.” Heath grinned. “We should get back inside. We didn’t survive all this just to die of pneumonia.”
Not far off in the distance the mournful singing of wolves ended before the last verse was sung.
(Typically sung at the last bonfire)
Every good thing eventually ends.
We leave Camp Harmony richer, my friends.
If I have wronged you at all, if my words did offend,
Let’s bury the hatchet, let’s make amends.
I promise this, I’ll remember you all.
Each one I will miss, as we head into fall.
I’ll never forget the memories we’ve made.
I’m so glad that you came, and so glad that I stayed.
Out here in nature, where the deer raise their young,
Beneath the Cascades where the clouds are all hung,
Let’s not be sad, though the last of us parts.
I’ll see you all soon, when next summer starts.
The time will fly by, it won’t be too long,
But for now, my dear friends, I leave you this song.
Remember good times, God bless you and me.
Remember this place, God bless Camp Harmony.
IT RAINED NONSTOP through the night. For once Heath was thrilled that he lived in the Pacific Northwest, where rain was unpredictable and could blindside a picnic faster than Cricket’s precious ants. In an area that could receive as much as fifty inches of rain a year, it was nice that fate saw fit to deliver two or three before dawn.
When the group left the facility early in the morning, a slip of light fog and the clean fragrance of pine met them at the door. They stepped out into the parking lot; the soles of their shoes crunched broken glass.
“The map I found says we’re still three miles from Granite Falls,” Heath said, then he folded it up and tucked it into his bathing suit pocket. “But at least the trip will be easier today. This service road connects to the Mountain Loop Highway not far from here. That’ll take us straight into town.”
Heath agreed to pass Cricket off to Dunbar when he needed a break fr
om carrying him, but now that Cricket had the strength to wrap his arms around Heath’s neck he could ride piggyback, and that made it a lot easier. Cricket was still very sick but improving by the hour. “Giddyup,” he murmured, his voice weak, but returning.
“It’s so quiet,” Emily said, adjusting the new shoes she’d fashioned from several layers of paper laboratory slippers. Once she’d removed her leather riding boots she couldn’t get them back on again.
Emma disagreed. “It’s not quiet. It’s so normal.”
The group exchanged smiles.
They headed toward town, stepping over a dead animal every few yards or so. The ground was littered with them. The only one they stopped for was Quilt Face, who was lying in the parking lot, curled inward so that her front and back paws were touching. She looked smaller. Pitiable. Not at all the big, bad wolf that Heath had come to know her as. He wanted to stroke her soft coat, but she was still a dead and diseased animal, and he decided against it.
The walk was uneventful. Even pleasurable once the fog lifted and the sun came out and warmed their skin. As they neared Granite Falls and heard the assuaging sound of small-town traffic, they spotted a group of six or seven rufous hummingbirds stealing nectar from a roadside patch of wildflowers. The tiny birds’ orange heads caught the sun like shiny new pennies.
Heath and his friends stopped for a moment to watch them flit between petals and hover as if on wires in the air. When he saw the four relaxed, happy faces surrounding him he knew their ordeal was finally over. They were survivors. The lucky ones.
“They’re called a charm,” Heath said with a thoughtful smile. “A group of hummingbirds is called a charm.”
Just like all kids do at the end of summer camp, they promised to keep in touch once they got home, except, after what they’d been through, they actually would. Heath lost interest in Emily. There’d be no pining for her love or stalking her on Facebook. He didn’t know her well enough to have lasting feelings, so he left his crush behind in the river. She ended up breaking things off with Josh because of the distance. After her ordeal in the Dray she was diagnosed with severe sciurophobia, a phobia of squirrels. Her parents decided she should live with her father in Hawaii, as it’s the only state in the country where there are no squirrels outside captivity. Heath suspected her fear wasn’t as bad as she’d let people think.
Heath visited Cricket in the hospital during his long recovery from the virus, and occasionally Skyped with Dunbar, who was true to his word and started a diet the minute they’d uncorked him from the window. He’d lost five pounds in quarantine and kept at it until he was looking pretty fit.
Heath was relieved to hear that Theo and Molly were alive, although they were taken to Seattle soon after they paddled into town and placed into quarantine for a few days (Heath’s group was sent to Spokane). Theo made good on his promise and convinced the sheriff to organize a rescue party to search the Dray River, but Heath’s group had gone the wrong way at the fork and the few locals who knew about the lab never thought to look for them there.
A few months after their ordeal, Sylvester’s dad invited Heath and the others to speak at a big fund-raiser/memorial service for his son. Their testimonies helped to raise a lot of money for rabies research, so it was worth the public tears. Heath was glad to see his friends again, with the exception of Theo, who declined the offer to attend. No surprise there. When Heath got home from quarantine, he e-mailed Theo to let him know that Miles had regretted the way he’d treated him and had hoped to apologize before he died. Theo’s reply was brief, clear, and written in the subject line of a blank e-mail: Leave me alone! Whoever said “Time heals all wounds” never met Theo Seung.
At the reunion Heath especially enjoyed spending time with Emma, who turned out to be pretty cool on dry land. In fact, he liked her a lot. And she liked him back. She admitted it wasn’t just Will she’d had a crush on in the river, but she had rightly sensed that Heath had a thing for Emily. As a twin she’d learned to pick up on stuff like that.
“Don’t you prefer bad boys?” he reminded her, expecting her to change her mind.
Instead she replied, “I have a thing for brave boys, and you’re the bravest boy I know.” She turned out to be a good match for Heath. He would come to draw strength from both her tough, scrappy spirit and the sweet, nurturing side she’d hid so well in the river. Heath leaned on Emma for support as he did literally when he first entered the Dray.
Heath decided to accept treatment for his cancer. This was based on a combination of two things (although the promise of a first real date with Emma outside a hospital room was pretty sweet, too): first, he felt he owed it to Miles, Sylvester, Marshall, and the rest of the hundred and fourteen kids and twelve adults who died during the attack at Camp Harmony. Heath was one of only thirteen people to have survived the event that the national news dubbed the Skagit County Massacre, even though technically the camp was just over county lines. He learned that six kids had snuck away from camp to spend the day at Lake Tupso and survived by staying crouched down in the water for fifteen hours straight. Both the laboratory and the murder of the microbiologist Carl Schroeder were eventually “looked into.” The man in the Jeep showed up on the news a few months later, but all they would say about him was that he was a part of some extreme anarchist group. And that he was still at large.
It took two days to find the body of Will Stringer. A search party discovered him half submerged in an offshoot stream, a quarter mile from Granite Falls. He was bloated and covered with bat bites on his face, hands, and neck. The water had been too shallow to hide in. The sheriff of Granite Falls determined that Will had gone off on his own to try to find help for their group and had died a hero’s death. Heath decided to let this rose-colored version of the story stand, but he knew Will was probably just trying to save his own neck again. Because Will didn’t owe anyone. He didn’t need anyone but himself to survive. He sure showed them.
Although he never discussed it with anyone, Heath often thought about the last conversation he’d shared with Will. For weeks after, he replayed it in his mind, unable to commit to the idea that Will was a bad person. That he’d know that the animals would be attracted to the noisemakers. After all, Will had never outright admitted it. He’d asked Heath to make up his own mind about that. And then one day it hit Heath like a kick in the gut: during that last conversation in the river, Will mentioned Heath’s broken noisemaker. But Heath realized he’d never told Will that his noisemaker was broken. There was no way he could have known that, unless…
It didn’t matter. The boy was dead, and that was that. Heath would be a hypocrite if he didn’t take his own advice, the advice he gave Theo about Miles. He forgave Will, because it was the right thing to do.
There was something else that Will Stringer had said during their last conversation—the second reason Heath decided to accept treatment. To be precise, it was the last few words Will ever spoke that ultimately swayed his decision.
Watch out for squirrels, okay? Try to stay alive, Heath.
At the river, Heath had taken this advice and applied it to the moment, but he came to understand that Will hadn’t meant it that way. Will, the master chess player who won books and compasses. Will, who sacrificed pawns when necessary. Will, who predicted checkmates and bats. Will, who fought to survive, no matter what it took.
Try to stay alive, he’d said.
That’s exactly what Heath would do.
THIS BOOK would not exist without the support of:
My friend Chris L. Cannon, whose kindness and generosity continue to inspire all who know him; Funmi Oke, the world’s greatest teacher, a shining example of integrity, and beloved friend; my agent Lauren MacLeod for her guidance and for the Tweet that sparked a Frenzy; my editor Ricardo Mejías, whose keen insight was a laser pointer trained on the deeper emotional core of the story.
I’d also like to thank: Christian
Trimmer for seeing the potential in this book; all of the fine people at Disney-Hyperion who had a hand in the production process; Mara Purnhagen for teaching by example that persistence and hard work pay off in the publishing world; my ambitious siblings who pursued their dream careers, too. I’m proud of you; my agency sisters, a boundless source of support and camaraderie; my family and friends for keeping my head above water and the wolves at bay; and I can’t overlook the contribution of the brazen squirrel that stared me down through the kitchen window, putting ideas into my head. I blinked; you won.
ROBERT LETTRICK has worked as a freelance artist for Marvel Comics, Marvel Films, and Harris Publications. He earned his BA in fine art at Atlantic Union College and was one of the first students enrolled in the Sequential Art MA program at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he learned from many writers and artists. Frenzy is his first middle-grade novel. Visit Robert online at www.robertlettrick.com.
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