Backcountry

by D. E. McDonald

  As she twisted to avoid a low-hanging branch, Jenn’s foot came down on some small animal’s burrow and her ankle twisted. She was going too fast to correct her course. She landed on her shoulder, the momentum sending her tumbling down the slope. Through some miracle, she avoided hitting several tree trunks on her way down to a flat stretch of ground where the slope levelled out. She tried to get to her feet, but she was still moving too fast and she pitched forward, bashing her head on a rotting stump. Light exploded behind her eyes and she got up, taking two steps before collapsing to her knees and falling forward, face first, in the dirt.

  Jenn moaned as she awoke, her head aching. The afternoon sunlight was far too bright. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, and started to panic as she realized she couldn’t see out of her left eye. Gingerly, she touched her face, then gasped with relief as she wiped away the blood that was blocking her sight so she could see out of both eyes once more. She winced as her fingers found the gash in her eyebrow, but it had clotted already. She looked around, trying to work out where she was and what had happened to her. For a brief, blessed moment, her mind was totally blank, but then her memory brutally flooded back, gruesome images flashing before her with the clarity of a home movie. Teeth and claws and roaring, Alex’s screams as he was dragged from the tent, the ruin of his face beneath the terrible weight of the beast, and its eyes tracking her, marking her as its prey. Jenn began to sob great, wracking sobs, but just as quickly, she fell silent as another thought consumed her. Her eyes darted around the trees, searching for any sign of the animal. How long had she been out? She looked at the sun, trying to gauge what time it was, but she really had no idea how to even begin working that out. She started walking, but stopped after a few steps, trying to get her bearings. She didn’t know where she was or which way to go—all she knew was that she was tired and scared and alone, and all she wanted was to wake up and discover this had been a terrible nightmare and that Alex was lying next to her.

  “Help!” she yelled. As if a floodgate were opening, she kept on screaming. “Help! Help! Anybody!”

  She might have continued until the bear found her or until she passed out, but her screaming turned into a fit of coughing that left her doubled over. When she had finished, her throat was too raw too even consider yelling again. And, deep down, she knew that there was no one to hear her. She was on her own. Her left hand was cramping. She looked down and realized she was still holding the box Alex had been hiding in his bag. Even in her wild flight from the campfire, despite her panic, she had held onto it. In fact, Jenn was gripping it so tightly that her hand resisted opening; the muscles were tight and spasming. Finally she managed to work her fingers open and spent a few moments wriggling them, trying to get the blood flowing. Once she could move them, she returned her attention to the box and hesitantly opened it. Her eyes filled with tears again, this time from a different kind of pain.

  “Oh, Alex,” she breathed.

  The ring was everything she could have wished for, everything she had dreamed about: an elegant circle of gold surmounted by a small, flawless diamond. It was only a modest ring, but she knew that Alex must have saved and saved for it, and he had chosen a style that she loved. The thought and care that had gone into it made it exactly she wanted. And then it hit her. He would never see her wear it and he would never know how much she loved it. With sudden resolve, she slid it onto her finger, noting that it fit perfectly—he must have checked the size of one of her other rings. Even if he couldn’t see it, she would wear it, and maybe somewhere or somehow, he would know. It was only a faint thread of comfort to cling on to, but she would take whatever she could. She knew that she was still in terrible danger and she had to be strong. The ring was like a talisman, something good to hold on to in this horrible situation.

  No matter where she looked, every way looked the same, with trees and undergrowth running in every direction. The only thing that made any difference was the slope; she decided that going downhill was her best option. They had walked uphill on the way there, so it stood to reason that they would have to walk downhill to get home. Not they. Her. Singular. Trying to distract herself, Jenn took stock of her situation, running a rapid mental inventory. All she had were the clothes she was wearing and the ring on her finger. She thanked whatever higher power might be out there that she hadn’t gotten undressed the night before; they’d been too shaken by the encounter in the firelight to take off anything before going to bed, just in case they had to get up in a hurry. Fleeing was bad enough; having had to do so in pajamas and UGG boots would have been the final straw. She had her hiking boots and cargo pants . She patted her pockets, hoping she might have forgotten a protein bar or something in them, but instead her fingers found a narrow cylinder. Puzzled, she pulled it out. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized the road flare. She started crying all over again as she remembered showing it to Alex. He’d been right—she couldn’t imagine many situations in which it might come in handy, but she had so little now that she was going to hang on to everything she had.

  She took a few more steps, still wobbly, but each one firmer than the last, until she was walking purposefully in the direction she had chosen. She knew from her research that this was only a provincial park; the real wilderness should be in the other direction, uphill, so if she walked far enough, she would find something, someone. She had had to keep walking, stay strong . . . and stay alive. It wasn’t going to be easy, though. The blow to her head had left her weak and unsteady on her feet. She nearly tripped, only saving herself by reaching up and grabbing a branch. She bit back a scream as pain flared up her arm. She had again forgotten all about her injury. It was angry and inflamed, and blood was leaking through her shirt. She tried to focus on her options: should she patch it up now, or get out of here?

  Crack! She whirled at the sound, panicking, trying to work out where it had come from. She hoped it was simply a dead branch breaking under its own weight, but her imagination populated every shadowed part of the forest, filling it with danger. She turned and began move downhill in the opposite direction of the noise as fast as she could.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Jenn had completely lost track of time and distance. All she could think of was getting away, getting home. For the moment, even the bear had become a distant threat and her grief had become something outside of herself, still there and waiting, but a promise of pain rather than a reality. The real pain was the burning in her arm, a sick throbbing that flared with each jostle and bounce. But she would have taken the pain over the thirst any day. It had been almost twelve hours since her last real drink, and her lips were dry and cracked. The pounding in her head from the fall had given way to the deep ache of incipient dehydration. Jenn was a child of the city; she now knew that, in the past, when she had been hot or tired or hungover and wanted a drink, she had only thought she knew thirst. This, now, was an aching need that consumed her. The forest was damp, moist, but she may as well have been in a desert for all the good it did her. She had no way to extract that water for herself. She wondered if Alex might know—and then she realized he might have known, past tense. The waiting grief enveloped her and she cried more tears, tears that wasted her precious water.

  Later that day, she came across a narrow flow of water that tricked over jumbled rocks and through fallen logs. It was silty and brackish, and there was not even enough to scoop up in her hands. Crying in frustration, she moved on, following its course in the hopes of finding something drinkable. The sky darkened as hour after hour passed. Her only measure of time was her slow steps. Over and over, she began to count them, but each time, she would skip a number or repeat one and have to start over again. It was a
way of trying not to think about what had happened, what might still happen—but dark thoughts pushed through. The trees around her seemed to brood, unfriendly and unwelcoming to this trespasser in their midst, closing in around her as her mind began to play tricks. Odd sounds filtered through the branches, and birdsong that had once delighted her now sounded like mocking laughter. She shook her head, trying to clear her muzzy thoughts. She knew that she couldn’t afford to lose it now; somehow she needed to hold it together, or her slim chances would become non-existent.

  There was a sudden flash of motion and an explosion of sound as some small creature bolted in alarm at her approach. Leaves flew as it raced for cover. Jenn bent over and clutched her knees, her heart beating so fast that she feared it might stop. Gradually, she mastered her breathing, taking deep, slow breaths until her heart followed suit. The shock had knocked her out of her trance and she began to think clearly once more. Night was coming, and she knew that the darkness was no shelter. She couldn’t face the idea of a night on the forest floor with no way to light a fire, no tent—not that their tent had made any difference. She looked around for inspiration and her eyes lighted on a tall tree that reminded her of one she used to climb at school, long ago. Its evenly spaced branches seemed designed for climbing, and they narrowed as they ascended. She could probably find one that would bear her weight, but not allow anything heavier to come after her.

  She walked over to the tree and jumped to reach one of the low-hanging branches. She gasped as pain flared in her wounded arm, but somehow she managed to hang on and she clambered up, shaking with effort as she dragged her exhausted body higher. Every time she thought she could not manage another branch, she remembered Alex’s screams and somehow found the strength to keep climbing. Finally, she judged herself high enough and wedged herself gratefully into a fork of the tree, enjoying the rest. Her arms were shaking with fatigue and strain, and she trembled as she wrapped them about her. By now, dusk had enveloped the forest, and an eerie silence had descended. The shadows slowly grew, stretching dark fingers across the ground beneath Jenn. For the first time that day, she was not moving and running. She now had time to think, and it was a double-edged sword. Lost in her own thoughts, she replayed Alex’s last moments over and over, and when she felt she would scream if she had to watch him die one more time, her thoughts went back to their fight on the hill. She began to sob softly. She forced herself to remember that last night beside the fire and the ring’s promise. As she fidgeted with the metal band, turning it around and around her finger, night fell and the forest came alive with the sounds of the night. Jenn’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. Despite her best efforts, sleep claimed her.

  Wednesday Morning

  Jenn’s eyes twitched as she dreamed. Images of claws and teeth, the sounds of roaring and screaming cascaded through her mind, mixing with an insistent thumping noise that eventually overwhelmed all other sound. Her eyes shot open and she awoke with a scream, for a moment completely unaware of where she was or how she had gotten there. She tilted over and nearly fell—only her desperate scrabbling for a nearby branch saved her. The pain in her arm brought tears to her eyes; they blurred the sight of the forest floor forty feet below. She held on to the trunk of the tree, the rough bark a welcome piece of reality that dispelled her dream. Slowly, her breathing calmed and her mind pieced together all the stimuli she was receiving. The thumping noise had not faded away with the rest of the dream. Jenn could now recognize it as the sound of a helicopter, one that was very close. Hope filled her heart. Were they looking for her? Had someone noticed they had been gone too long? Maybe it was the ranger, maybe someone else—she didn’t care. The sound of the helicopter was the sound of rescue.

  As quickly as she could, she began to climb back down to the forest floor, scraping her knees and hands in her haste. She slipped and almost fell again, but caught herself and continued descending. Finally, she dropped to the soft ground and ran to a clearing in the trees. She scanned the sky, searching, until her eyes picked out the copter—it was growing smaller and smaller as it moved away from her.

  “No! Come back! Please!”

  She waved and yelled herself hoarse until the tiny speck was no longer visible and she could no longer deny that they hadn’t seen her. Despair nearly broke her then, and she fell to her knees, sobbing. But something had changed: all the weakness had been burnt away from her, and all that was left was the tough inner core that had seen her face down every challenge life had thrown at her thus far. She was not going to let this one defeat her, not without a fight. Jenn took a deep breath and stood, looking around. The direction the helicopter had come from seemed as good as any. The logic her fuzzy thoughts were capable of at the moment assumed that the helicopter must have been coming, not going, as she wouldn’t have missed it coming over on the way into the park. Maybe if she was lucky, it would return on the same route, and all she had to do was wait, but she knew that staying in one spot might lead to more than just the helicopter finding her. She would do her best to stay on the same course and hope the helicopter would come back overhead. With that thought, she squared her shoulders and set out.

  Her night’s sleep had given her body some time to recover, but the lack of food and water and her wounds were starting to tell. Her lips were dry and cracked and every step was a struggle. She kept moving, knowing that if she stopped, she probably wouldn’t be able to get moving again. Somehow she found the strength to keep placing one foot in front of the other, over and over again. When she did stop, it wasn’t from fatigue. She cocked her head, trying to make out a sound in the distance. She strained to hear it until the wind shifted and it became clearer. It sounded familiar, and she grinned, her lips cracking as they moved. The melodious sound of running water filled her ears like the sweetest music. She broke into a stumbling, shuffling run toward its source. She broke out from the trees, weeping with sheer relief at the sight of a stream winding its way through the forest. It was only a yard wide, but it was all she needed.

  Crouching on the bank, she ducked her head down and scooped water into her mouth as fast as she could. Her stomach rebelled at the sudden influx and she vomited the first few mouthfuls back up, retching again at the foul taste. Her thirst was relentless, though, and she tried again. This time she was content to start with carefully sipping, allowing her body to adjust. When her stomach was full of what seemed like liquid gold, so desperate had she been for it, she rinsed her face and, very carefully, the wound on her brow. Steeling herself, she peeled back her sleeve from the wound on her forearm and gasped as it was revealed. Three deep gashes scored her flesh, two of them deeper than she wanted to think about. Wincing, she used her other hand to bathe the wounds in water and then she ripped strips off her shirt and bound her arm as tightly as she could. The pain made her dizzy, and for a moment she thought she might faint, but she didn’t. The water had worked wonders and some of her strength had returned—enough to keep her going for now. Much of the vacancy in her mind had gone and there was determination in it that had not been there before.

  Jenn was taking one last drink when she caught a flicker of movement between the trunks and bushes. The bear emerged into view, slowly shuffling through the trees. It seemed to be just wandering aimlessly. Jenn froze, fighting down the urge to scream or bolt or both, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t see her. It stopped and sniffed the air, its snuffling clearly audible a hundred yards away. Its head swung and then it stopped—its eyes locked on her and it began lumbering toward her. Despite the apparent clumsiness of its gait, it covered the ground with terrifying speed. Shaking off the spell of terror the bear had cast, Jenn broke into a run, her fear letting her call on reser
ves of strength that she had thought long exhausted. She could hear the bear crashing through the undergrowth behind her, making no attempt at stealth; it was all pursuit. Mentally, she knew that no human could outrun a bear, but her body didn’t care. She ran faster and faster, leaping branches and rocks in her desperate attempt to escape. The sound of the bear grew closer and closer as it closed the gap, but soon the roaring of blood in her ears intensified, drowning everything else out.

  Sobbing, she stumbled out of the trees into a clearing and staggered to halt as the ground in front of her disappeared. The roaring had not been in her ears after all. Before her, the forest floor dropped off into a ravine. Water tumbled over the cliff into a pool of water below and spray misted the walls that created a sheer drop of at least thirty feet onto jagged rocks below. She turned, and her eyes widened. The bear was barrelling toward her through the trees. At the sight of her standing still, it slowed down as if it were confused and began to lumber toward her, growling deeply. Jenn braced herself, caught between the fear of the drop behind her and the terribly certain and agonizing death approaching. Reaching down the front of her shirt, she brought out the whistle that had hung there, forgotten, for days. She ripped it free of its string and lifted it to her mouth, blowing as hard as she could. The shrill note of the whistle was far louder than she had expected and she cried out in pain as her ears rang. The effect on the bear was even more dramatic; it let out an anguished roar, shaking its head in pain.