“But it’s so far away. We couldn’t have drifted that far east,” Lamar insisted.
“In this soup, I believe it,” Ken replied. “But there’s only one way to be sure.”
He picked up a downed branch from the fallen ash tree and snapped off a foot-long twig before stripping the branch of its leaves.
“Uhmm, what are you doing?” Lamar asked.
“Putting the fruits of an Outback vacation to use,” Ken responded cryptically as he knelt down to sweep away loose pebbles and ash swirls from a four-foot patch of chalk-colored dirt. He then planted the stick in the center of this dirt patch, gently twisting it back and forth, drilling it deep enough into the dirt that it could stand on its own.
Once that was done, he started tracing the contours of the shadow cast by the stick, which was pointing to their left. His finger stopped about two feet away from the stick, where the shadow finally ended. He picked up a palm-sized rock nearby and placed it at the shadow’s tip.
“Time?” he asked.
“Uhhh, 8:42,” Lamar replied, glancing at his binary watch.
“Okay,” Ken said as he stood up and dusted himself off. “Now we wait.”
“For what?”
“For the shadow to move.”
“Solar navigation?” Lamar asked.
Ken nodded.
“My gift to the group,” Ken said.
Lamar titled his head and looked at Ken askance.
“Since when are you interested in helping us?” Lamar asked, suspicious.
“Since the others anointed you God-King,” Ken said derisively. “All I care about is getting out of here. And if that means teaching you my tricks, so be it.”
“That’s not what I mean. You don’t need me for this. Why are you going to all this trouble teaching me this stuff?”
Ken smiled ruefully.
“Because you and your pals don’t trust me. If I said ‘go right,’ you lot would go left out of pure spite. So, I’m teaching someone the group does trust: you.”
As Lamar mulled this over, Ken added a new wrinkle to the conversation.
“And for that same reason, I recommend you not tell the others where you learned this. They’re liable to have the same reaction.”
Lamar raised an eyebrow at this.
“I don’t like keeping secrets from the others.”
“Hey, it’s your funeral,” Ken said with a shrug. “Just remember that it’ll burn up any currency you have with them. They don’t trust me, and by extension, they don’t trust my ideas. Better to pass them off as your own so only one of us is a pariah.”
“They trust me because I’m honest with them,” Lamar insisted, but Ken could tell from his tone that Lamar was torn and had begun seriously considering Ken’s advice.
Five stories below, Gaby was watching the pair talk and gesticulate through the haze of steam while Coop stared off into the distance beside her. Lamar and Ken were too high up for Gaby to hear anything, but they appeared to be passionately discussing something on the ground in front of them.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Gaby asked.
“Mmm,” Coop mumbled in response, not paying attention.
“They sure seem chatty, dontcha think?” Gaby said, continuing to ply him.
“Hmm?” Coop replied, resting his hand on his chin and appearing lost in thought.
Gaby grinned mischievously and leaned in closer.
“I said, ‘I’m having your baby!’”
Coop’s serene detachment quickly turned to a look of confusion and then one of utter revulsion.
“WTF, Gaby?” Coop exclaimed, finally turning to face her.
“Sorry,” she said, though her impish expression suggested otherwise. “It’s just you seem so … preoccupied.”
Coop rolled his eyes.
“Want to talk about it?”
Coop hemmed and hawed for a second or two, running his fingers through his curly red hair before finally acquiescing.
“I’ve had something on my mind, a question, ever since we escaped those things last night: Why are we still alive?”
“That’s a funny question. The iku fear the light,” she replied, wrinkling her nose at the seeming obviousness of the answer.
“That’s not what I mean. Last night, all of us thought it was the end. I did a lot of soul searching, trying to make peace with that.”
“We all did,” Gaby said with a nod.
“And when the sun came out and those things retreated, it felt like we’d been given a gift — another chance at life,” Coop continued. “But why? Is it just to wander around the forest? What’s my purpose?”
“The same as every other living thing,” Gaby shrugged. “To keep on living.”
Coop shook his head forcefully from side to side.
“No! We were spared for a reason.”
Gaby drew closer and put her hand within a few inches of Coop’s, which was about as close as she could come to someone else without triggering her deep-seated fear of physical contact.
“Coop, it’s perfectly natural to look for deeper meaning in the chaos, but it just isn’t there. We’re alive because we are.”
Coop clenched his fists as they rested on his knees.
“I can’t accept that,” he insisted. “Won’t accept it. That’s … messy.”
“That’s life,” Gaby said with a sad smile.
High above, Ken was idly spinning a stone between his fingers, watching as his primitive sundial slowly moved.
“What time you got, big man?” he asked.
“8:56.”
“Okay, that’ll have to do,” Ken said, slapping his knee for emphasis as he rose.
Ken placed the stone in his hand at the tip of the shadow’s new location, roughly two inches to the right of the first marker. He then yanked the stick out of the ground and used its tip to draw a straight line between the two stone markers.
“This line shows us north and south,” Ken explained, taking a step back from his handiwork so Lamar could see it easier. “South must be back that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the floodplain. “Which means that this direction is north,” he finished, pointing toward the smaller and more manageable grouping of hills to their right, as opposed to the dangerous-looking ones straight ahead.
“Hang on, how can that be south?” Lamar asked. “That’s the floodplain. The floodplain has always been to our west.”
“We strayed east, remember?” Ken reminded him. “And land masses aren’t fixed points. The floodplain probably widens as it moves north. I’ll bet you if we walk straight toward it, we’d wind up right back in camp.”
“Maybe,” Lamar responded, clearly skeptical.
Ken steeled himself. This was it. One final push should do it. He tried to put out of his mind that all of his plans hinged on this one moment, and adopted the most earnest expression he could muster.
“I get it; you still don’t trust me,” Ken said as empathetically as he could manage. “You don’t have to. All I’m asking is for you to trust the stick. It doesn’t have an agenda; it doesn’t get lost or confused. It’s completely objective. Give it 15 minutes and it won’t steer you wrong.”
He held the twig out toward Lamar, inviting him to take it.
Lamar hesitated, trying to ascertain Ken’s candor from his expression. If he was being duplicitous, he was hiding it very well. After a few moments, Lamar decided he was being sincere.
“You better be right,” he said, taking the branch from Ken’s outstretched hand.
Ken nodded appreciatively, his expression registering how hard it must have been for Lamar to take that first step. But beneath the surface, he was dancing a merry jig and cackling like a maniac in celebration. Lamar’s expression told him everything he needed to know: the young man was wary enough not to fully trust him but still naïve enough not to consider that Ken might have taught him wrong on purpose.
He’d set the trap, and Lamar had taken the bait.
/>
* * * * * *
It was now after 11 a.m., and the sun overhead had burned away most of the steam, revealing the full breadth of the blight’s devastation. It was one thing to catch glimpses of it through the curtain of fog and mentally piece together the extent of the desolation but quite another to see it in all its terrible majesty, spread out across the landscape in every direction.
The ground had been steadily rising for the last 30 minutes, and in the distance they could see that the gentle rolling hills they’d spotted from the ridge fed into much larger, much more daunting slopes. Those to their left and right looked equally foreboding. They were surrounded on three sides by seemingly impassible obstacles, and everyone in the group steeled themselves for the challenge of scaling any one of those hills.
The air had warmed considerably to the point that they had shed their winter jackets, opting to either tie them around their waists or carry them draped over an arm.
Lamar called the group to a halt beside a grouping of tree stumps in the shade. The ragged gash marks on the trunks suggested they’d been cut with a chainsaw, but as there were no visible drag marks or tracks, it must have been long ago.
“Let’s break for lunch,” he said, sweeping ash from the top of the largest stump before plopping down on it. “It’ll give Ken time to catch up.”
“Oh, yes, let’s do a favor for our ‘good friend’ Ken,” Gaby said, making air quotes to drive home the sarcasm.
“What? You’re faulting him for needing to plant a brown tree?”
Gaby winced at Lamar’s euphemism and the accompanying mental image.
“She can’t understand why you’re defending him,” Coop spoke up, taking a seat next to Lamar. “And frankly, neither can I. You act like he’s your consigliore now.”
“Look, I know he can be crass and overbearing, but …”
“No! No buts about it,” Gaby interrupted him as she sat down, taking care to examine the stump for any jagged edges before trusting her posterior to it. “He’s crass and overbearing, period.”
“I’d only add that he’s also a four-alarm asshole,” Coop chimed in.
“Granted, Ken is all of those things,” Lamar conceded. “But in case you haven’t noticed, he’s contributing now. The man has more wilderness experience than all of us combined, so we should at least listen to him.”
“I’d say there’s no chance of that,” Gaby intoned.
“Is that what he was doing on the ridge?” Coop asked pointedly. “Teaching you survival stuff?”
“Yeah,” Gaby added. “You two were up there a long time. What were you talking about?”
Lamar flashed back to Ken’s warning. Judging by their distrustful tones, he reluctantly concluded that Ken’s assumption was right on the money.
“Nothing, really. Just the best route to go and things like that,” he lied, looking away in shame.
“I don’t trust him,” Coop said. “He’s working an angle.”
Lamar rolled his eyes as he unstrapped his pack from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground.
“You guys are too suspicious,” he said. “Ken wants to get out of here as badly as any of us. What could he possibly gain from deceiving us?”
“Revenge,” Coop answered without a moment’s hesitation.
Gaby nodded in agreement.
Lamar threw up his hands.
“I’m not getting drawn into this,” he insisted. “Whether you believe it or not, he’s working to get us home. Get on board with that.”
Their stony gazes and silent judgment suggested that Lamar’s argument was less than persuasive.
Beverly, who had been lagging 20 yards behind the others, finally reached the grove of stumps and promptly collapsed on one just a few feet from the others. She had managed to keep pace with the group for most of the trip, even while dragging her overstuffed tote bag, but the exertion had clearly taken its toll on her.
She sat with her shoulders slumped, taking in heaving lungfuls of air with each ragged breath. Beverly looked up and her face was haunting; her eyes glazed over and her complexion sallow as she shivered, despite the rising temperatures. She suddenly flinched and wheeled her head sharply to the right as though she’d been struck by some invisible assailant.
“What’s wrong with her?” Coop asked quietly.
“Beverly, are you OK?” Lamar inquired.
No response. She stared off into the distance, her eyes still glazed over.
“Beverly? Beverly?”
Gaby leaned in and clapped as loudly as possible. Beverly sat bolt upright and angrily rounded on Gaby.
“Don’t do that!” she demanded.
“The guys were asking after you,” Gaby explained. “They’re worried.”
“I told you all not to fuss over me,” Beverly grumbled. “I’m fine.”
“Maybe you should have some water …” Coop tried suggesting before being sharply cut off.
“Maybe you should listen to your elders!” she snapped.
Lamar and Coop looked at one another but said nothing.
Gaby noticed a black smudge the size of a shot glass on Beverly’s left hand, covering part of her palm and the side of her hand. It looked like soot, only it was pitch black. She must have tripped and put her hand in one of the ash swirls decorating the landscape, Gaby mused.
A disquieting silence descended on the group for several long moments before they heard a familiar call in the distance.
“Ohhh, Lucy, I’m hooome!”
It was Ken, waving from afar as he jogged toward them. He seemed weirdly upbeat, considering their circumstances.
“Well, now that you’re here, let’s eat,” Lamar said, opening his bag.
“Maybe you should also do a food count,” Gaby gently reminded him.
“Good idea, I haven’t done one in a while.”
Lamar pointed to each can while silently counting. He paused after a moment, got a perplexed look on his face and recounted.
“What’s the problem?” Coop asked, reading trouble in the young man’s expression.
“We should have 12 cans, half a bag of trail mix and a handful of dried apricots. I count 10.”
“Maybe you miscounted,” Coop said blithely.
“Maybe,” Lamar replied doubtfully.
“Well, don’t sit there all day brooding over it!” Ken declared. “I’m starving.”
“Fine,” Lamar said as he passed around the food. “But we need to think seriously about hunting or scavenging. Even with rationing, this will only last us another day.”
Lamar handed out five cans. Ken put his back in the bag and grabbed the trail mix instead, while the others made do with cold soup and lima beans. All except for Beverly, whose can sat unopened in front of her as the others heartily chowed down.
“I’m not hungry,” she protested.
“Eat up. You’ll feel better,” Lamar assured her as he ripped the lid off his and eagerly upended the contents into his mouth.
Gaby made a face at the sight.
“You could at least use a spoon.”
“There are no spoons,” Lamar replied between mouthfuls of canned clam chowder. “Didn’t pack them.”
“That seems a little … arbitrary,” she replied, more confused than annoyed.
“I told you we were only packing the essentials.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like spoons take up a lot of room,” Gaby argued.
“Or weigh all that much,” Coop chimed in.
“Pipe down, you two,” Ken said, coming to Lamar’s defense. “Using our fingers for a day or two won’t kill us.”
“It’s not that, it’s just …” Gaby started to explain before Beverly exploded out of nowhere.
“Oh, God, will you shut up? Can everyone please shut up?”
Beverly slammed her food down on a rock beside her. The group instantly fell silent, dumbstruck by her explosive outburst. She was shaking with fury.
“Can’t you people go five minutes without
chattering?” she vented as she scanned the others’ faces, glowering. “I can’t take all the voices! Yackety-yak-yakking constantly! I want to have one meal in peace. One meal where I can close my eyes and pretend I’m not stranded in the middle of nowhere, under attack and stuck with the likes of you people! Is that too much to ask?”
Instead of waiting for a reply, Beverly threw her soup at a nearby tree, spraying beef barley stew everywhere. She then stood up with a huff and stormed off.
“And stop with all the threats!” she screeched as she stomped off, beating her fist against her head as if to drive out the voices. “I’m not killing anyone!”
The others sat in silence for several seconds, stupefied by Beverly’s behavior.
“Did she say something about killing people?” Coop asked in a hushed whisper.
“Someone finally flipped her bitch switch,” Ken said.
“There’s definitely something wrong with her,” Lamar confided in the others as he wiped his hands on the front of his shirt. “Did you see that weird black mark on her hand? It may be an infection.”
Gaby nodded.
“Maybe it has something to do with the iku touching her last night,” Gaby opined. “It was the same hand, and she’s been acting squirrelly ever since.”
“What if it’s the change?” Cooped asked. “That thing John was talking about, the one that came over Wade and drove him insane? He said we’d all change out here.”
“You certainly haven’t changed,” Ken said between mouthfuls of trail mix. “You’re just as gullible as ever.”
“I think John was talking about spiritual development, not some physical transformation,” Lamar said, trying not to laugh at Coop.
Just then, Beverly stopped some 30 yards away and dropped to her knees, retching uncontrollably. A blackish liquid came spurting out as she doubled over in pain.
“She may need a hand,” Ken said indifferently.
Lamar stood up to help her when Beverly suddenly keeled over and started convulsing.
“Oh, shit!” Coop exclaimed, dropping his food in alarm. “She’s seizing!”
Lamar, Coop and Gaby all raced over to check on her.
This was it, Ken decided. While Beverly wasn’t exactly following the script — she was supposed to fake a simple ankle injury — this was the agreed-upon time, and her sudden collapse had certainly drawn the others’ attention. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity, Ken concluded, as he reached for the nearest bag.
The Truth Circle Page 27