Backcountry

by D. E. McDonald

  Seizing the brief moment of distraction, she ran along the sides of the ravine toward the waterfall, trying to remember which side Brad and Alex had said was the safe descent. The far side seemed an easier climb, while the nearest seemed steeper, more treacherous, but she remembered how the men had squared off at the fire, talking about “fucking idiots” taking the wrong side down. The bear roared again, snapping her out of her reverie. She took a running leap across the stream and began to descend into the ravine. Water roared feet from her head, and the rocks were slick and treacherous. She lowered herself down, her feet finding a flat patch of rock. She made the mistake of leaning out over the edge and looking down, then staggered back as vertigo overwhelmed her. The whistle slipped from her grip and fell, bouncing from rock to rock until it was lost in the waterfall. She froze for a moment, then the bear roared above her, and she began to scramble down as fast as she could over the wet rocks, the terror of falling forgotten. It was steep enough that only something with hands and feet could make its way down. The bear roared in frustration far above her. Safe for the moment, she braced herself, her back pressed against the cliff face, and examined her options.

  Jenn was perched on an outcrop of rock that dropped away steeply to other side. She could make out handholds and footholds that looked like they might have been carved by climbers who had come before, but they were shallow and crumbling. Roots grew down the side, attached to the sheer rock, but when she gripped one and tugged, it fell away easily. She blanched, imagining what would have happened if she had trusted her weight to it without testing it first. Slowly, she lowered herself down until she was sitting on the edge of the rock, and then, very carefully, she turned around so that she was on her knees and able to lower herself backward. Her foot found a small protrusion and she descended further, gradually making her way from foot-hold to hand-hold. She almost slipped more than once; the slick rock provided little purchase. Each time, she hung there, heart hammering, trying not to look down. Her hands were cut and bleeding and she ripped a nail free during one close call that left her trembling and holding on for dear life. But despite her fear of the descent, she knew she had passed the point of no return. Even if the bear weren’t waiting up at the top for her, there was no way she would be able climb up again, her muscles aching and her head pounding as they were. So she persevered, slowly making her way down. As she closed in on the bottom, she felt a moment of relief—and then her left foot slipped.

  Jenn waved her arms, trying to regain her balance, but she fell the last few feet into the shallow water pooled at the bottom of the cliff. Her foot became wedged between two loose rocks, and as she slipped, her ankle twisted awkwardly. There was a sickening snap and she shrieked in agony as pain lanced though her. Sobbing, she pulled her foot free and collapsed to the rocky floor. She looked up, searching for any sign of the bear coming down toward her, but there was nothing. She wondered if there was another way of getting down to where she was, and if, even now, the beast was circling around to come at her from below the waterfall. Then the pain flared again, driving out any other thoughts and becoming the centre of her universe. There was no room for any other concerns, not even the bear—all she could focus on was the sickening pain. Grabbing hold of a rock above her, she attempted to stand, but the moment she tried putting weight on her injured ankle, she collapsed again, tears of pain running down her face. She tried a few times before it became too much and she gave up, crawling on all fours toward the trees gathered around the base of the water. Reaching one, she sat with her back propped against it, sobbing as she stretched her legs out in front of her. She could feel her consciousness receding; black spots were appearing in front of her eyes. But she simply could not allow herself to pass out, not now, not here. Gritting her teeth, she slapped herself across the face, hard. Her eyes watered and she bit her tongue, but the threat of blacking out was gone—for now.

  She leaned forward and slowly lowered her sock, letting out a hiss of breath as she saw what was underneath. The skin was already turning an unhealthy purple, but worse was the jagged bone pressing up under the skin. Jenn thought for a moment and then began to look around her, searching for something to use as a splint. Her eyes landed on a likely looking stick and she stretched out her arm, barely able to reach, scrabbling in the dirt until she was able to wrap her fingers around it. She unlaced her hiking boots and pulled them off, being very gentle with her injured foot, then did the same with her socks before replacing the boot on her uninjured side. Moaning with pain, she lifted the broken ankle and slid both socks underneath, laying them flat on the ground parallel to one another. She broke the stick into three pieces, putting one on either side of the ankle and laying one gently on top. She tied each of the socks loosely in place so they were holding the sticks around her ankle. The pressure, even though it was gentle, was almost more than she could bear. Then she took the ends of one of the socks and gritted her teeth. She counted to three and then, with a sudden jerk, pulled the knot as tight as she could. There was a crack as the bone set and she screamed in agony, nearly passing out. Once the shock of setting the break passed, however, it felt much more comfortable, as if some pressure had been taken off, jagged pain reduced to an excruciating ache. She repeated the process with the other sock and then pulled her boot back on, lacing it loosely to allow it to fit.

  Jenn leaned her head back against the tree and rested for a moment. The temptation to simply close her eyes and let oblivion claim her was almost overwhelming, but rest was not a luxury she could afford. She opened her eyes and straightened up, then leaned forward to examine her ankle. The three sticks were tightly bound by the socks and, along with the stiff leather of her boot, they were acting like a brace. She just hoped it would be enough to let her move. A few yards away, she could see a large stick. She slowly stood and gently put her weight on the ankle as she took a few shuffling steps in its direction. It hurt—in fact it was agonizing—but for now, at least, she had some much-needed mobility. She hobbled toward the large stick, wincing as she did so, and picked it up. It was the perfect size to use as a walking staff to help keep some of the weight off her injured leg. With that problem temporarily solved, she could afford to worry about what came next.

  She turned back and looked up at the waterfall, but there was nothing to see, no sign of the bear. The jumble of rocks at the top was too small to hide its bulk if it had been there looking down at her, and the trees ended far enough away from the banks that they could not be providing cover, either. For now, the bear was gone, or at least out of sight. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad thing. Had she lost it or not? There was something about not knowing where it was that made her very uncomfortable. It was outside her control, though, and she deliberately tried to push it out of her mind. Jenn looked down the stream and decided that she might as well stick with her plan of following it and hoping it joined the lake. She began to limp slowly and painfully alongside the water, leaning heavily on the stick as she went. The ground was not too soft to lean on, and the stick found firm ground each time she put it down, allowing her to transfer her weight to her good leg without putting too much strain on the injured one. Still, after a few hundred yards, her ankle felt as if it were filled with broken glass grinding together in the joints. As if in self-defence, her mind seemed to be shutting down her ability to feel pain, though, and the sensation subsided into a dull ache, ever-present but bearable. She walked on.

  Jenn tried to think what she should do next. In the movies, the heroic adventurer would have gathered herbs to kill the pain or to quell any infection, but Jenn was realistic enough to know that she was more likely to poison herself than to heal herself. She didn’t kn
ow what was safe to eat or how to go about building a snare. For a moment, she entertained the idea of trying to catch some fish, but the idea of wading out into the stream and trying to tickle trout or some such nonsense was absurd. The idea of fish made her think of Brad. Was he out here somewhere? If he were, surely he would have revealed himself by now. As much as fish, or someone to lead her out of here, would have been welcome, Jenn shuddered as she remembered his odd giggle and intense eyes. It hadn’t been the bear throwing things at the tent, either—that mystery had not disappeared. Suddenly, the forest seemed even more threatening than it had before. She had to laugh at the black comedy of it: having more things to worry about than just a killer bear seemed so unfair as to be ridiculous. She knew that the bear was the bigger threat, because Brad could be reasoned with, but there was no reasoning with an animal. But if Jenn had her choice, neither of them would find her, and she would get out of the park without seeing either of them.

  Gritting her teeth, she continued following the stream, her eyes flicking around nervously as she watched the shadows beneath the trees, alert for any sign of movement. She didn’t know what she would do if she did catch sight of something, but she didn’t want any more surprises. An idea came to her and she stopped. Placing the thinner end of the stick between two rocks, she grunted with effort as she snapped the end off. She held it up and touched the broken end with the ball of her thumb. It wasn’t razor sharp, but it was a definite point. She smiled with satisfaction. She couldn’t imagine this makeshift spear being too effective against the ball of rage and teeth she had encountered at the campsite, but it was better than nothing—she might get lucky and poke out its eye. And even if the bear might shrug it aside, the stick would be far more effective against a predator on two legs not expecting her to be able to protect herself. Something about having a weapon, even one as shoddy as this, made Jenn feel much better, and she set out with renewed purpose.

  She knew that if she was going to get out of this, it would be by her own efforts. She needed to find her way out of the park, or at least to get to the more populated areas. She would keep walking and walking until she found someone, or they found her. She had never been a passive person—she had never just waited for what she wanted to come and find her—and she wasn’t going to start now. She had always seen herself as tough, a survivor, and now was the time to prove it. The stream still seemed like her best bet, as any water flowing downhill must surely run back to the main lake. So it stood to reason that she could follow it back to where they had come from and maybe even find their canoe. Even if she couldn’t, once she got there, she would be able to work out the next step of her plan. Just having a goal, an objective, instead of running, made her feel more in control of the situation.

  Wednesday Night

  Jenn had lost any sense of the passage of time. All that mattered was following the stream; nothing else registered. Occasionally she would stop to rest or to drink from the stream, but it wouldn’t be long before she roused herself and set off again. Time passed and shadows lengthened, day turning into dusk turning into night. The forest was filled with its nocturnal chorus and still Jenn walked on. She had entered a fugue state, beyond pain or fatigue, her body’s punishment no longer registering even as she ran it into the ground. The moon hung full in the sky and its light was more than enough to illuminate her way. She could see the shapes of trees around her and the water glimmered silver in the moonlight. Under any other circumstance, it might have struck her as beautiful, but now it was terrible and full of dangers.

  Suddenly, Jenn stopped dead in her tracks.

  “No,” she whispered, her voice little more than a croak. “Please, no.”

  To her right, less than ten yards away, stood the bear, its bulky silhouette ink black in the moonlight. Jenn didn’t move despite every ounce of her screaming at her to turn and run. Adrenaline flooded though her in preparation for flight. She forced that impulse down and simply stood and stared and waited for the bear to attack. She knew that there was no escape this time; even if she had been able to run, even if her ankle hadn’t been broken, she wouldn’t have been able to outrun it. Injured as she was, death was seconds away, and she would rather see it coming than feel its jaws close on her from behind.

  Slowly, trying not to make any sudden moves, Jenn reached down and eased the flare from her pocket. She pulled the cap off and there was an incandescent flicker as it ignited. Red light washed over the forest around her, bathing the shape before her in light. Jen half laughed, half sobbed as she realized that she had been staring at a rotten tree stump that had decayed into a vaguely bearlike shape. Something snapped inside her and she stumbled toward it, raising her stick and bringing it down on the stump.

  “Fuck you,” she screamed, hitting the stump over and over, bark and wood flying in all directions as she unleashed all of the hurt and rage and grief within her. “Fuck you!”

  The last echoes of her scream faded away as she dropped to her knees and sobbed, adrenalin flooding her system. Her outburst had been like lancing a boil, and now she felt empty, emotionless, and tired beyond reason. She wondered how she was going to find the strength to get up. It just seemed easier to just stay here and rest for a while. Maybe if she did, she would dream of Alex and a happier time. No! She straightened up. Dreams could wait. After a few minutes, she wiped away her tears and used the stick to pull herself to her feet. She began to follow the stream once more. The flare cast its light all around her, creating strange, flickering shadows, but she ignored them, not looking from side to side, but only straight ahead.

  Thursday Morning

  Jenn walked through most of the night, clinging onto the flare long after it had sputtered out, barely noticing the change. She was plodding by now, exhaustion wrapping its arms around her and slowly dragging her toward sleep. As she walked, her eyes would grow heavier and heavier, until she straightened up with a jerk, blinking away the fatigue. Then the cycle would begin again, her eyes closing, until she was stumbling along like a sleepwalker. Whole stretches of her journey passed without her noticing. One moment she was among a cluster of ash, then she would open her eyes and recognize none of the trees surrounding her. Only the stream kept her from wandering in circles. Her unconscious mind seemed to hold on to the importance of staying on its course, and she never veered away from the water.

  Toward dawn, she finally surrendered to the sweet siren call of sleep, curling up in a ball and sleeping for a few hours. But despite her exhaustion, she was plagued with nightmares that finally brought her awake, screaming in terror. It took her a few minutes to calm down enough to remember where she was, but that merely traded her terror for grief and despair. She knew that staying there wouldn’t help, though, so she splashed her face with water and started walking once more, leaning heavily on her stick, barely able to put any weight on her broken ankle. It had swollen further, but she barely noticed. All feeling had long since gone from the limb. The only thing left was a disturbing numbness. She had no idea what damage she might be doing to it, but stopping and elevating it was not an option, just a luxury some other Jenn in some other place might have had. Not this Jenn, though—all she had was the need to keep moving.

  The stream carried on for what felt like never-ending kilometres in an almost-straight line, winding only slightly back and forth. The trees didn’t grow all the way up to the bank, allowing Jenn to follow the stream closely. Only occasionally did she have to push branches out of her face, and she did so in an absent fashion, barely noticing them. Her face was patterned with shallow scratches where the twigs had scraped her soft skin, and blood still trickled down her cheek from the wound on her temple where a branch had knocked it,
breaking open the scab. The sun had risen and, despite the mild time of year, it was beating down on her throbbing head. Her cracked and peeling lips mumbled odd snatches of conversation, sometimes as if she were still with Alex, other times as if she were dealing with problems at work. When the conversations stopped, she softly sang to herself, all the time retreating further and further from the world around her. She had long since passed the limits of normal endurance, and her body was beginning to turn on itself, calling on reserves that were not meant to be tapped. Her mind was playing odd tricks on her, often leaving her with a terrible feeling of being watched and an impending sense of doom. She was reaching breaking point, both mentally and physically, and when she crashed, she would crash hard.

  As her brain began to misfire, she started to hallucinate. At first they were merely auditory, voices calling from the trees around her. Some were familiar—her mother and father, friends and colleagues—others were strangers, voices she had never heard before. She tried to pick out snatches of conversation from the babble all around her, coherency seeming to hover right at the edge of hearing, promising an important revelation if she could only focus enough. The voices telling her to keep walking, not to give up, that she wasn’t far from safety, argued with others that told her that there was no hope, that she should get it over with now and lie down and die, that if her body didn’t fail her, something was coming for her and would find her soon to finish the job it started with Alex. As if summoned by the name, she heard her mom telling her again how that Alex was a nice boy, but was he really the right one for her? Before she could answer with the same rejoinder she had three years ago, her mother’s voice faded away, only to be replaced with that of colleagues demanding paperwork now—didn’t she know that the trial was tomorrow and why hadn’t she already finished? Ignoring her frantic reassurances that it was on its way, a senior partner told her that he had made a mistake putting his faith in her. She flinched as Brad’s Irish burr cut through the sound, offering to be her guide, and her voice cracked as she angrily refused. She listened as Alex told her about his childhood trips, his voice full of enthusiasm that turned to fear as he tried to warn her that something was coming. She sobbed as the inevitability of doom washed across her. Tears streamed down her face as she heard Alex telling her to run before his screams became echoes of his pain and fear at the end.