The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

  For a day, they wandered in the night calling to the others. Eventually, in an open valley, they heard a response. In an abandoned coyote den, she found some of her companions huddled. The whites of their eyes shining from the starlight that could reach that far down into the earth. Jake and a boy they’d found who said his name was Egg. Val and Baby Egret. Debra and Pinecone. The Twins now had Joven and a stranger’s child they were caring for. There were others hidden not too far away. Everyone had a child now. The children had appeared to them over the course of their walk, wandering alone in the Wilderness, somehow surviving longer than those caretakers who had brought them here.

  Agnes was relieved to see them all but couldn’t help thinking they were living a terrible life. Compared to what their lives had been like not long ago, this seemed like an awful way to live. Then she thought of Fern’s mother and sister in the woods. At least they were alive. They were together.

  They wandered the Wilderness, pretending to look for the Place in Fern’s map, a place they came to imagine was the very last place they could go. But in reality, they were only trying to evade Rangers. They encountered more people. People who shared news, news of others, news of Administration changes, news of Ranger sightings, people who offered lifesaving food and water, shared their hiding places. People who were likely eventually captured or worse. There were so many people in the Wilderness.

  The Rangers were like bounding cougars who never seemed to tire. In the old days, before the Roundup, Agnes had thought the Rangers had seemed official, in charge, but also a little hapless. They split their time between the Wilderness State and behind a desk at Post. But now it was as though they rode their horses on the tailwinds of the runners. Spurred on like apex predators would be. Bounding after them, never seeming to tire. The Originalists, the Newcomers, these Trespassers, people who now formed this entirely new Community, Wilderness refugees, were just deer in a herd with no option but to push on. They would run out of a will to live before they ran out of land to live off of. The Rangers had governed them with rules. The tedium of paperwork and bureaucracy had hidden what relentless hunters they were.

  Eventually the new Community could no longer stay together, even spreading out through the forest, calling to one another, only coming together in brief moments. They had to split up in a real way. They decided it had to be groups of two. An adult would travel with a child. Everyone needed a buddy, they told the children. They tried to make it seem fun.

  “It’s like hide-and-seek,” Agnes explained to the children who were each standing next to their buddy, while their buddies were anxiously snapping their heads toward every errant sound. “We’re all hiding now, and then we will find each other,” said Agnes.

  Pinecone looked skeptical. He’d aged into a stickler of a boy who cherished rules. “But only one person does the finding in hide-and-seek, and they try to find everyone,” he said in a scolding voice.

  “Well,” Agnes said, “in this game we find each other.”

  “Or we could just stay together,” said Fern.

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not part of the game.”

  “But staying together sounds more fun.”

  Agnes felt her throat clench. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.

  Fern leaned toward Agnes and whispered loudly, “I thought you said we were playing a game.”

  “I lied,” Agnes said, touching Fern’s cheek. “I promise I’ll never do it again.”

  Each of the adults got some kind of provision, pelt, water, something to help them out on their own, but no one had everything they would need. They secured what they had to their bodies to make it easy to run.

  Agnes looked at Jake, standing there with his hand on the shoulder of Egg. Agnes thought about how once she had believed children could live on their own in the Wilderness at this age with the right exposure. She thought about how Egg still cried every night. But then she looked at Fern, who had spent most of her life here. Could she? If she had to? It doesn’t matter, Agnes thought, because I would never leave her. That is what Jake had understood in that conversation, but she hadn’t. She smiled at Jake.

  “I’ll find you,” said Agnes.

  The other adults were sprinting away with the children.

  Jake nodded, pulled her to him. They were life mates. They had chosen each other. Jake kissed the top of her head. They heard a snap from the direction they had come. Big. Maybe it was a bear. Maybe it was a cougar. If only. She felt them both startle as though they had been lost in a reverie there, holding each other. As though days might have passed. But once they heard the noise, they each grabbed their child’s hand and ran apart without saying another word.

  • • •

  When the leaves had turned yellow in the small craggy mountains of what they’d discovered was a coastal range, Agnes and Fern crossed paths with two women claiming to be Mavericks who gave them food and water and entertained them through a fireless, starless evening. They were gossips and had news about many of the Rangers Agnes had known long ago, about this new strange place near the Wilderness State border where buildings were one or two stories tall and were surrounded by green grass and flowers. They gossiped about new people in the Administration, people Agnes had never heard about. People who may not even have existed. But it didn’t matter what they said. Agnes hadn’t seen anyone besides Fern since the snows last ended. It was fun to hear new stories again.

  “How on earth do you know all this?” Agnes asked.

  “We talk to everyone,” the woman with green eyes said.

  “But there’s no one here!” Agnes said, chuckling carefully. Fern’s head was in her lap, the sleeping girl’s breathing sounding like wind in the trees.

  The women gaped at each other. “No one here? My dear, everyone who is anyone is here. But they will never tell you who they are.”

  “We’ve run across two former presidents here!”

  “And that famous actor. What’s his name? The one in the action films. But he was a mess. I can’t imagine he survived.” They clicked their tongues.

  “Oh, and just the other day we met a remarkable woman. She had lived here for many, many years. She had raised her family here. She had been a great leader of one of the original communities,” she said. “She told us such stories about her exploits, and we realized we had heard her story before. The story was the Ballad of Beatrice. The woman was Beatrice herself.”

  Agnes managed to choke, “No, it wasn’t.”

  “It was her,” the woman cried. “She knew all the things Beatrice would know.” The women rattled off facts about her mother that anyone could have known, but Agnes still felt her heart galloping.

  “Where did you see her?” Agnes snapped, and the women startled at the tone. They looked at each other and had a silent but lengthy conversation.

  “It’s late, dear,” the green-eyed woman said.

  “We are going to sleep now,” the other woman said, eyeing Agnes warily.

  “No, please, where did you see her?” Agnes insisted.

  “Well, it wasn’t that long ago,” she said through a fake yawn. “So perhaps she’s still very near.”

  And even though Agnes knew it was impossible, she pictured her mother crouching in a tree above her, ready to pounce and carry her away. Agnes felt her cheeks become wet and knew she would go with her mother this time.

  * * *

  In the bottom of her bag she found the small notebook like the one her mother had always carried with her, the small pencil stuck in the wires. She wrote a note, half in pictographs and half in alphabet letters, because although her mother had taught her how to write, she never had had a reason to learn it well. She rolled the note and left it in the knot of the tree they camped near. She wanted her mother to be able to find her. Just in case she was looking. Agnes left notes in trees all through the mellow mountains she and Fern wandered. She sharpened her miniature pencil on rocks. She wrote notes to her
mother until the paper in the small notebook ran out. And then she left things she thought her mother would know were put there by her. Leaves, acorns, pine needles tied in a bow.

  She wanted her mother to find her.

  But she was found by Ranger Bob instead.

  One bright morning in the headlands, after a foggy wind-filled night, Agnes awoke under a shadow where no shadow should be.

  “Rise and shine, Agnes.”

  She squinted open an eye and saw Ranger Bob looming over her. His mustachioed frown was sympathetic.

  She heard horse hooves prancing in the grass, announcing the presence of more Rangers. She felt next to her for Fern, but she was not there. Agnes sprang to her feet.

  “Don’t run,” Ranger Bob warned. He wore a new uniform. This one was scarlet, with badges down the arms. A thick vest covering his chest shone under the sun in an unnatural way like plastic. He had two guns, one on each hip, and his hand was ready on one. It glinted in the sun, along with his wedding band. He had a different hat and different badges from the other Rangers, who held back, alert, waiting for his instructions. “I’m afraid playtime is over,” he said.

  “Are you in charge now?”

  “I’ve been in charge for some time,” he said. Ranger Bob straightened almost imperceptibly. But Agnes noticed his pride. “I’d like this to go smoothly,” he said. “I was always fond of you.”

  Agnes heard a rustle in the bushes behind her.

  Fern came bounding out from the bushes, yelling, “Agnes, Agnes, it’s the Place! I think it’s the Place!”

  The Rangers drew their guns.

  “No,” Agnes yelled, throwing her hands up.

  Fern halted, her eyes large and wet like ponds. She had a rabbit by the ears, and it kicked its scrappy legs at the air. Ranger Bob whistled through his teeth and waved his arm down. The Rangers lowered their guns.

  “Who’s this?” Ranger Bob asked, softening his voice so as not to startle her.

  Agnes waved Fern toward her and put her arm around her.

  “This is my daughter.”

  Ranger Bob smiled. “Well, that’s nice.”

  Agnes hugged Fern tighter.

  Ranger Bob took his hand off his gun and brought out plastic circles that had hung on his belt. He put them around Agnes’s wrists and closed them. “I think you’re the last of the Community.”

  “I doubt that,” said Agnes.

  “No, I’m pretty sure we got everyone. They were easy once you split up.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. You probably should have stayed together.”

  “Why?”

  “Because without you leading them, they were easy pickings.” He took Agnes gently by the elbow. “I’m not going to cuff your daughter. I don’t want to scare her. But I trust you’ll make sure she behaves.” He smiled at her just like Ranger Bob had always smiled at her. Then he yanked them forward.

  Ranger Bob walked a pace ahead, pulling them along like wild horses by a new hard bridle. Agnes’s grip on Fern’s hand was desperate and white-hot. Had she failed? Was there more that she could have done? What if she had told everyone to go with her mother? To the Private Lands? Would they be safe? Would they be together?

  She stopped. “Where is my mother?”

  “I don’t know where your mother is.”

  “The last time I saw her, she said she was meeting you. She said you promised to take her to the Private Lands. Did you?”

  Ranger Bob’s mustache twitched and his face darkened. “Sweetheart, there are no Private Lands.”

  “But the deal you made. And she said you two had a plan. She said you said you’d take us,” Agnes said. “Didn’t you say you’d take us?”

  He slowed and his shoulders tensed. “People say a lot of things. It doesn’t mean they will happen. Your mother and I . . .” He paused. “We said a lot of things to each other.” He looked as though he might say more, but he didn’t.

  Agnes finally formed a clear idea of what they’d said to each other and why. Her mother had said what she had needed to say so that he would help her, help her daughter, help her family. And Ranger Bob had said anything he felt like saying because he could.

  Her hackles rose.

  Epilogue

  Officially, the Roundup lasted three months, but a small group of the Wilderness refugees evaded capture and lived on in hiding for three more years. The Rangers did not publicize this. They kept searching and were not kind when all were found. But that’s another story.

  During the Roundup nearly two thousand unauthorized people were found and extracted from the Wilderness State. There were only ever supposed to be twenty.

  This history was called the Great Wilderness Roundup. During an unexpectedly progressive and brief moment in time, it was referred to as the Ranger Rampage. And someday, when those of us who lived there—who ran from the Roundup so we could remain there—are dead and gone, I’m sure it will cease to be known at all.

  They told me I lasted thirteen years, the last three on the run. When they finally found me, I had Fern in my care. A little girl who had only ever known the starry sky I grew up with. Who only knew the warmth of elk hide and the joy of the rare wild plum, the jolt from walking through a field where wild chive secretly grew, the green and bitter scent in her nostrils. I’d tear a bit and put it in her mouth, and she’d smirk with distaste and also with knowing. All natural things are known and understood somewhere inside a natural being. Those were good years, being on the run with Fern. I thought of her as my daughter even though she called me Agnes.

  When I had first arrived in the Wilderness, the uncommon bustle of twenty humans had brought prairie dogs out of their holes to watch. Deer snapped their heads up from the grasses. Hawks made tight circles above our heads. Nothing made a sound. Though I’d been young, it was something I never forgot.

  When we left the Wilderness, it wasn’t really a wilderness anymore. From the back of a Ranger truck, we watched the Valley we had spent our early years in come into view. The one with my family’s cave. The one nearest to Middle Post. The one with the Caldera overlooking it. The one that had been the first place that felt like a home. Madeline’s Valley. Yellow tape fluttered in the wind, marking off squares of land as far as I could see. Some squares were dug up. Many contained buildings in some state of construction.

  “What are those?” asked Fern.

  “Those are houses.”

  “What are houses?”

  “They’re buildings that people live in.”

  “Like in the City?” Fern had only heard of the City with its skyscrapers. Who knows what she pictured in her mind.

  “No, you wouldn’t find these in the City. Only a few people will live in these. Maybe even just one.”

  “Did you live in a house?”

  “No, I lived in the City.”

  “Well, then, how do you know about them?”

  “I’ve seen them in magazines.”

  “Who is going to live in them?”

  “Important people.”

  Fern’s eyes got big. “Are we going to live in them?”

  “No, cariño, those houses are not for us.”

  We drove by a squat large stone building. A perfect rectangle with large windows flanking a grand doorway, Hidden Valley Elementary School carved above it. There was no one out. Perhaps no one lived here yet. Or maybe it was one of those holidays when families hopped into the car to drive the Boundary Road. We drove by a town center, a main street with a small grocer and other shops, past a park and a playground, and the Hidden Valley Library too, just before we turned onto a road that stretched away from town and out of the Wilderness. Everything was laid out according to some fabled map of how things used to be a long time ago. So this was the Wilderness State’s new mandate. It turned out there were Private Lands after all.

  The road out was clean and paved black. A fresh yellow line painted down the middle. At the end of that road was a gate and a barbed fence like we’
d seen across the Poisoned River. When we looked back at the gate sliding shut, we could see the Caldera standing sharp and white over the rooftops of the town.

  * * *

  In the Resettlement complex on the outskirts of the City, where Fern and I are housed, I don’t recognize anyone, though supposedly we have all been picked up in the Wilderness. There was one boy I thought might be Baby Egret, but the boy was a toddler now and the years in between had been full of changes. I thought he looked like Carl and Val, but he barely spoke and his hands shook as he picked up the wooden blocks he seemed determined to stack. He did not appear to remember me when I knelt in front of him. An older woman was caring for him. I asked her about Val, but she just shook her head. No. The woman answered no to all of my questions, even when they were contradictory. Is she here? No. Was she captured? No. Is she dead? No. I couldn’t be sure if the woman even knew Val, or if the boy was even Baby Egret. So I left the woman and the boy alone after that.

  “Is there another complex?” I asked a guard after I’d explored and asked around after Jake, Val, Celeste, and the others we had met on the run, in hiding. The guard glumly shook her head. Everyone that got picked up was here.

  It’s not that I believed the guard, but I didn’t know what to make of their absence. I felt somewhere in me that my companions had to be somewhere, alive. At least a few. At least Jake. I felt it. Felt him. Though what good is that feeling if he isn’t here with me?

  Other Wilderness refugees in the complex swear they are missing people too. And they swear those people are alive. People swear they’ve heard of other Resettlement complexes elsewhere in the City, flung far from one another along the City’s border. Which means we’re all here; we just aren’t together. Some find this enraging. Some find hope in it. But who can say if it’s even true?

  I looked for my mother but never found her. She would have heard of our capture because we were reported on for a while, but she never came to claim me. I don’t know if she made it out. I like to imagine my mother, as much a friend as the Rangers ever had, might have been shown some mercy.