Forces of Nature

by Nate Ball

  “I think I see a bird!” Taylor shrieked and ran into the trees.

  “Honey, don’t run while looking through the binoculars,” Mom called out after him.

  “My binoculars won’t make it through the weekend,” Zack said to Olivia.

  Dad was yanking the tents off the top of the car. Smokey was visiting each tree surrounding campsite thirteen and peeing on it.

  Zack shook his head. They hadn’t seen Amp yet, but he was here somewhere. Zack looked over at Olivia. “He’ll probably get eaten by a badger.”

  “There aren’t badgers around here, Ranger Zack, but there are bears.” Olivia held up the sheet Ranger Davis had handed to Zack’s dad. It was a warning about bears invading your campsite and directions on how to properly store your food to avoid it. There was also a set of campsite rules and a small map of the campsites. It had the number 13 scrawled on the top in thick, black ink.

  “I have a bad feeling about this trip,” Zack said, staring at the cartoon of a bear with its snout stuck in a cookie jar. Drops began hitting the paper as he looked at it. A slow, steady, light rain began falling around them. Zack looked up and drops fell onto his face. “See, I told you. When it rains it pours.”

  “Your dad is setting up the tents in the wrong place.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Look, he’s picked the flattest area, but that’s the low point. It will fill up with rainwater and turn to mud during the night. He’s got to move uphill if it’s going to be raining.”

  Zack stared at his dad struggling to pull the tents out of their bags. “You better go tell him. He won’t listen to me if I say something. Last year both tents collapsed on the first night.”

  “It’s raining!” Taylor shrieked from the trees, as if he had never seen rain before.

  “Don’t shout, honey,” Mom called out to him from the back of the car. “You’ll scare the birds.”

  Zack groaned. He knew that Amp was hiding. He knew Zack would be mad, so he was making himself scarce. “Amp thinks there’s a ghost in these woods.”

  “You didn’t read the back of the park’s brochure to him, did you?”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I’ll say. You know how excited he gets about that stuff. All those old horror movies you guys watch are coming back to haunt you. Amp told me he wants to see a vampire, a mummy, and a zombie before he goes back to his planet.”

  Zack shook his head. “He knows there are no zombies and ghosts. He just hates to be left out, so he ignored a direct order. So frustrating.”

  Olivia grinned. “You’re starting to sound like your parents.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Zack’s mom shrieked from behind the car. She took several quick steps back. “It smells like dog poop back here all of sudden! Zack? Come here and smell this!”

  Zack looked at Olivia. “Looks like my mom found him, or almost found him. That trick is going to get old real quick if he keeps using it.”

  “I’ll go talk to your dad. You help your mom and get your hands on that Erdian.”

  Just then a strange, far-off animal noise filled the air. It wasn’t exactly a howl, but it wasn’t a grunt or a growl or a bark either. It wasn’t made by a person, that was clear. Everyone stopped and looked in the direction it had come from. Smokey sniffed the air.

  “What was that?!” Taylor squealed, dropping Zack’s binoculars into the dirt and running to his dad’s side.

  “Sounded like a werewolf to me,” Olivia said.

  Zack looked at Olivia in disbelief. “Now Amp will want to see a werewolf!”

  Olivia shrugged. “Hey, maybe he will.” She walked off to help Dad.

  Zack kept his eyes on the area of the forest where the sound had come from. Now he had to add the chance of being eaten by a werewolf to his list of concerns.

  First-Night Blues

  “Zack?”

  Zack woke with a start. He blinked and saw nothing. It was as black as space inside the tent. Without stars.

  But unlike space, it was not silent.

  His dad’s tent-shaking snore filled the air approximately every six seconds. His brother’s giggles, chuckles, and random fits of laughter were more irregular. They came out of nowhere, lasted longer, and were far more disturbing than Mr. Thundersnore.

  Adding to the concert of snoring and random sleep-laughing was the constant pitter-patter-pitter-patter of rain on the tent.

  It was like trying to sleep inside a drum.

  “Zack?”

  This time there was no mistaking it. Amp was calling his name.

  But that didn’t mean that Amp was in the tent.

  Amp could speak directly into Zack’s brain, sort of like a mind-to-mind cell phone call. Zack hated when Amp communicated this way. It gave him the willies, sort of like putting on wet socks . . . if your brain had feet. Zack could never describe the feeling accurately in words.

  Now he sat up and looked around like a blind man. He could talk back to Amp without speaking out loud. He just had to think the words very hard. “Where have you been hiding, Amp?” he thought. “I told you to stay home! You never listen!”

  Taylor laughed in the darkness. His dad snored. Zack shook his head in frustration.

  “What are you doing?” Amp said casually inside his head.

  “What do you think I’m doing? It’s the middle of the night! I’m trying to sleep. What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay home!”

  “Which tent are you in?” Amp’s voice echoed in Zack’s head.

  “I’m in the one making all the weird noises! Why?”

  “Can I come in?”

  Zack shook his head in the darkness. “We’re not really entertaining guests at the moment. We’re wedged in here like cats in a bag.”

  “But I’m soaked and hungry and cold and covered in mud.”

  “It serves you right. I told you camping was no place for an alien the size of a pear.”

  Amp was quiet for a full thirty seconds before he responded. “Do you think of me as pear-shaped? That’s not exactly a compliment.”

  Zack grabbed his head. All this talking in his brain was giving him a headache. “It’s just the first thing that came into my mind.”

  “A mango would at least be less insulting. Or a short banana,” Amp said inside Zack’s head. “When I stand up tall I could be almost banana-shaped, don’t you think?”

  Zack groaned. “Get outta my skull! It’s closed for the night. I’m not discussing fruit anymore. But, frankly, you’re pretty much a grapefruit.”

  “Okay, now that was just hurtful.”

  Zack made fists and stared up into the blackness. He clenched his teeth. Taylor snickered suddenly. His dad snored right on schedule. Zack was waiting. He knew Amp wouldn’t stop. He wondered for a moment if a fourth grader could get gray hair. He just might be the first.

  “Now what are you doing?” Amp asked.

  Zack sat up and punched his sleeping back with both fists. “This is a disaster!” he mind-bombed Amp. “These two could wake up at any second.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” Amp commented quietly inside Zack’s head.

  “Oh, so now you’re a sleep expert? You don’t even need to sleep.”

  “This isn’t what I pictured camping would be like,” Amp said.

  Zack simmered in the darkness. This situation was impossible. The rain seemed to have slowed down to a trickle. His sleeping bag was between his dad’s and brother’s, so he had to lean far over his brother’s body to reach the zipper on the tent’s door. He pulled it up quietly as a rush of cool, moist air entered the tent.

  “Finally,” Amp said out loud.

  “Shhhh!” Zack said. He could barely see Amp’s tiny, muddy figure enter the tent and move to the side. Zack pulled the tent’s zipper back down as quietly as he could, shutting off the flow of cool air.

  “Whew! It’s much warmer in here,” Amp whispered cheerfully.

  “Glad you like it,” Zack said quietly.<
br />
  “Say, anything to eat? Ritz Crackers? SweeTarts?”

  “No,” Zack said, falling back onto his small camping pillow. “Now stay out of sight, or things will really get really uncomfortable for you.”

  Amp whispered in the dark.

  “Note to Erdian Council . . .”

  “Now? Are you kidding me?”

  Amp often recorded his observations about Earth into a tiny device on his wrist. He had explained to Zack it was one of his duties as an Erdian scout. It drove Zack crazy every single time.

  Amp made no effort to talk quietly.

  “When camping, humans rest their brains while inside a thin, flimsy cloth structure.”

  “It’s called a tent,” Zack hissed.

  Amp continued.

  “Still cannot determine why they go camping as the humans seem uncomfortable and miserable without the comforts of their more sturdy, wooden structures.”

  “Those are called houses,” Zack moaned.

  “More observations of this strange human ritual to come later. This is Scout Amp signing off.”

  Zack shook his head in the dark and finally drifted off into a deep and uneasy sleep filled with troubling dreams about fruit salad and snakes.

  Washed Out

  “Pssst!”

  Zack’s eyes popped open. The tent was filled with a dim light that told Zack it was early in the morning. Everything felt damp. The cold air was moist and misty. He remembered Amp was in the tent and he hoped that nobody had rolled over on him and crushed him into a flat, blue pancake.

  “Pssst!”

  He sat up. That wasn’t Amp. That was Olivia. He had forgotten she was even on this trip.

  “Zack?” he heard Olivia ask from outside the tent.

  Taylor turned over and sat up, still looking mid-dream. “What happened?” he croaked. His hair shot up into the air, making him look like a rooster that had missed the sunrise.

  “Don’t wake Dad,” Zack whispered.

  “What is it, Olivia?” Dad said, stirring in the sleeping bag next to Zack. “Everything okay out there?”

  “Which one of you made this fire?”

  The three tentmates exchanged puzzled glances. They all had clearly just woken up, so it wasn’t them.

  “I thought it was a forest fire,” Zack’s mom said from somewhere outside.

  Taylor unzipped the tent, letting in a blast of chilly air. He stepped outside in his bare feet. “It wasn’t us!” he exclaimed. “WOW!”

  Zack looked at his dad and the two crawled to the tent’s opening and poked their heads out.

  Between the tents a giant campfire roared. They stared in stunned silence, blinking from the heat.

  It looked like a campfire, but it was way larger than it needed to be. Zack could feel the heat on his face from twelve feet away.

  “If we didn’t build it,” Zack’s dad said quietly, “and you didn’t build it . . . who built it?”

  Zack looked over at Olivia and they shared a troubled look.

  “It must have been built by the ghost,” Taylor squealed with excitement. “Nasty Ned must have built it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Zack said. “It was probably Ranger Davis.”

  “I don’t think rangers make fires for you,” Olivia said. “It’s not like a hotel. And I don’t think a ranger would make a fire this big and dangerous.”

  “Quick, Mom, get the marshmallows!” Taylor shrieked, his feet squishing in the mud as he stepped closer to the fire and held up his hands. “This is the best day ever!”

  “Be quiet, Taylor, you’ll wake up the owls,” Zack said.

  “Not too close, honey,” Mom said, stepping closer to Taylor nervously.

  “Let’s go get the ranger,” Dad suggested, clearly shaken by the sudden, strange campfire. “It’s not safe here.”

  Of course, Zack and Olivia couldn’t say anything for fear of giving away the fact that their alien friend was surely behind this fire. In a matter of minutes, Olivia and the McGee family were in the car, their hiking boots, coats, and wool caps thrown on in a hurry.

  Soon the car was slipping and sliding down the muddy road. Zack watched as the flames died down, so he didn’t see that the narrow bridge that ran over the small creek near the campsite was gone.

  But Olivia did—and just in time.

  “NO BRIDGE!” she screamed. “STOP!”

  Dad stomped on the brake pedal. The tires skidded over the mud like a sled, and the car’s rear end swung out to one side, then back in the other direction. Zack’s mom screeched in fear.

  The car stopped with just feet to spare.

  They all sat in eerie silence for a few seconds, then quickly exited the car to check on the bridge’s destruction. They walked to the edge of the now-roaring stream in silence, staring down at the bubbling water. The muddy liquid was violently pushing over the splintered posts that once held up the little wooden bridge.

  “We’re stuck here?” Taylor shouted. “Awesome!”

  “Incredible,” Dad said, staring down at the remains of the bridge and the foaming, churning water.

  “Maybe the ghost wrecked the bridge after he built us a fire,” Taylor said.

  “This is all getting too dangerous,” Mom said, putting her hand on Taylor’s shoulder to keep him from wandering too close to the water’s edge.

  Dad pulled out his cell phone and stared at it. “No service out here,” he said.

  “And I thought last year’s trip was a disaster,” Zack said.

  “Uh, guys, we have a visitor,” Olivia announced in an odd, pinched voice.

  Zack noticed that Olivia was looking back at the car.

  Everyone slowly turned around and watched as a massive brown bear squeezed itself into the front seat of the car.

  New Friends

  Despite the bear that was growling at them from his family car, Zack still heard the splash loud and clear.

  It sounded like a giant boulder had been thrown into the water.

  But it was no boulder.

  Zack’s mom had fallen into the water, probably when she had turned to run away from the bear.

  Mom had a tendency to panic.

  Mrs. McGee also wasn’t much of a swimmer. She bobbed and gasped before getting hold of a log that was floating down the river along with her. She held on to it as she was swept along in water that could be no deeper than four or five feet.

  Zack’s dad now ran along the stream shouting at her as she was carried downstream. “Just stand up! Just stand up!”

  He had forgotten about the bear.

  And his car.

  And Zack, Taylor, and Olivia.

  Apparently, Zack’s dad wasn’t great in emergencies either.

  Really the McGees simply were not the outdoorsy type.

  Zack was about to mention this to Olivia, but before he could utter a word, another even larger bear stepped out from behind the passenger side.

  This bear looked surprised when it saw the three bug-eyed kids standing at the edge of the creek.

  It stopped and sniffed the air with interest. Its head swung back and forth. Then it pushed off its massive front paws, stood up, and made a growly, groaning noise.

  Zack was pretty sure this was the sound they had heard coming from the forest last night.

  No bear ever looked this big in the zoo, but that was probably because there was always a nice, sturdy wall between you and those finger-size front fangs.

  “Should we run?” he whispered to Olivia without taking his eyes off the bear.

  “Don’t run,” Olivia said sharply. “Are you crazy? It’ll make you look like a snack in sneakers.”

  “Should we jump into the creek?”

  “That will make you look like a delicious trout.”

  “Okay, how about if we just lie down and play dead?” Zack said, barely moving his lips.

  “Well, you may end up not playing dead, and actually become dead.”

  “Okay, Ranger Olivia, what do you th
ink we should do?”

  Without answering, Olivia started to wave her arms and whistle as loud as she could. Zack watched her out of the corner of his eye.

  “What the—?”

  “Don’t you ever read, Zack?” she shouted at the bear, her arms continuing to flap. “The ranger’s sheet said to look big, make noise, and retreat only when it’s safe.”

  Zack started to wave his arms and jump up and down. “HEY, YOU BIG, FAT, UGLY BEAR! YOU STINK LIKE BEAR FARTS!”

  “Don’t insult the animal!” Olivia snapped.

  “I don’t think it speaks English,” Zack replied, his arms waving crazily above his head.

  Taylor hadn’t moved an inch since the appearance of the bear. “This is the best trip ever,” Zack heard him mumble.

  The bear seemed to lose interest in the kids. It dropped down heavily onto its front paws, turned around, and entered the front passenger door. The car rocked from the weight of the second bear.

  Zack could hear the bing-bong chiming of the alarm inside the car that signaled to the driver that the door was open and the key still in the ignition. The car engine was still on.

  “Okay, now run!” Olivia said and shot down the side of the creek in the opposite direction from where Zack’s parents had gone.

  “What if they steal our car?” Zack asked, instantly realizing it was a dumb question.

  Zack was stunned to see Taylor already a good seventy-five yards away from them, running along the stream in the same direction Zack’s dad had run. “WAIT!” Zack shouted. But Taylor was gone.

  The bears were now ripping off the top of a blue plastic cooler they had found in the car. The lid of the cooler and a few dozen ice cubes tumbled out of the driver’s-side door and fell into the mud. Zack knew it was the one filled with foil-wrapped steaks. Tomorrow night’s dinner was being served early. And uncooked.

  That’s when Zack saw another bear emerge from some trees and gallop toward the car.

  He ran after Olivia and didn’t look back again.

  He didn’t know exactly how, but he knew for certain that somehow Amp was responsible for this mess.