The Wild Lands Read online

  The rain comes harder, and I can feel it starting to soak through my shirt. If this had been the first year after the mass exodus, we would’ve invited these guys in and fed them. Maybe we even shared a meal with them a couple of years ago. Maybe I went to school with the two guys on the ends—back when there used to be school. But it seems like everyone is the enemy now.

  I hear the sneeze behind me, muffled through the basement walls. Damn it, Jess.

  The man smiles. “You’re hiding more than salmon.”

  “And I’ll kill for them,” Dad says. “Count on it.”

  “I don’t want your women,” the man says. “Just more food. Four more jars and we’ll leave and never come back.”

  Bullshit, I think. I know that the more we give, the more they’ll press us for.

  I also know that none of these guys want a hole in their chest or their head completely blown off. Dad has three slugs, and he really does want them for hunting in case we do see a moose or a bear, or some caribou up north.

  That first year after the government pulled out, everyone was hunting. Even before that, when the shipments of food became sporadic, more people turned to the land for moose and bear. And then the fires came through, which usually meant you’d eventually have more moose habitat, but these fires burned so hot that the plants were slow to come back. We haven’t seen a bear or a moose in over a year. Not even tracks.

  Lightning flashes from the hills on the other side of the valley, followed by thunder. The ash is turning to mud at our feet.

  “We’ll set our rocks down,” the man says. “Just have your boy get four more jars.”

  Dad keeps the gun at shoulder height and pans the group with it. The man with the fish takes a step back. Everyone else drops their rocks in the mud and does the same.

  “Trav,” Dad says. “Get the fish.”

  I want to grab the gun and fire it, show these people that they can’t do this. That they don’t have this kind of power, but if I struggle with Dad that’d just give them a chance to attack. And even though it’ll take less than a minute to get the fish, I don’t want to leave him alone. And four more jars—that’s a lot of our food for our trip. And if we give it to them, what will they ask for next?

  I run down the steps and grab four more jars out of the pack. As I turn around, the blast of a shotgun slams my ears.

  “Dad,” I yell as I take the stairs two at a time, cradling the jars against my chest.

  Out in the rain Dad stands with his head bowed, the gun at his side. From the edge of the hill, I see five figures running toward the valley through the ashy mud.

  The kid on the far right, the first one to pull out his rock, lies crumpled on the ground.

  We walk over to the body. I feel my heart pounding against the jars of salmon.

  “He left me no choice. He pulled a pistol on me.” Dad reaches down, picks up the pistol, clicks it open, and spins the cylinder.

  “Empty,” he says. Then he slams it on the ground.

  CHAPTER

  3

  “COME ON, JESS,” I SAY. “We’ve got to keep walking.” Truth is, I’m growing tired of coaxing her along, but Dad assigned me the task of keeping her moving.

  At least now we can feel the surface of the old road under the ash.

  We went cross-country to get to the road because we wanted to steer clear of everyone, especially the guys who threatened us with rocks. A neighbor from five years ago could be your worst enemy now.

  The crumpled, bloody body of the kid Dad shot, the rain soaking him, ash splattering on his face, keeps popping into my mind. Why would he point an empty pistol at someone holding a shotgun? Maybe he was calling Dad’s bluff. He thought if Dad hadn’t fired already, then he probably didn’t have any bullets. And maybe they could muscle more food from us with the pistol.

  The thing about Dad is he’ll only hurt someone as a last resort. These days, most people would’ve pulled that trigger when the rocks came out, or before.

  We aren’t the first people to walk north this summer; there’re some tracks on the road. The people who headed north on foot the second summer never came back, so that gives me hope that if we can get ourselves up to the Arctic Coast something good could happen. That the boats are still running or sailing across the Arctic Ocean, going wherever they go. I’m pretty sure it’s already July, but I’m not certain. I had a watch that showed the date, but it stopped working a couple of winters ago.

  “I just want to rest a little longer,” Jess says. “My feet hurt.” I look for that sparkle in her eyes, but it’s not there.

  I’d carry her partway, but I have a pack on that weighs ninety pounds, just like Dad’s. And Mom’s pack is at least sixty pounds. Jess has a smaller pack, but I bet it weighs thirty.

  Mom and Dad have stopped just up the road. Talking too quietly to hear. They turn and keep going up the road.

  “Let’s catch up to Mom and Dad,” I say, “and see if we can have a real rest, with some food.” The one nice thing about traveling the road north is that the farther from Fairbanks we get, anyone we do run into will most likely be searching for a better life like us, not just roaming around looking for someone to rob.

  Since the sun is up practically all the time, we’re just resting for a couple of hours here and there, not stopping to sleep a whole night. Even at home when we slept, someone was always up—keeping watch.

  I don’t know what we’ll find up at the coast. What if there are no boats? Four hundred miles is a long way to walk, not even counting the possibility of having to turn around and walk back.

  The farther north we go, the more we start seeing little stands of trees that escaped the fires. Most of them are in the middle of swamps, but it gives me hope that maybe there’ll be some game soon. A moose or a bear, or beaver, or caribou. Even if the boats don’t show up, it might be a lot easier to live off the land up north, since it probably isn’t a burnt-up wasteland like Fairbanks.

  Jess finally pushes herself up from the ground, her clothes covered in ash, her blond hair coated with gray. I’m just glad she stood up on her own without any more arguing.

  On top of the next hill, Mom and Dad stop and we catch up.

  Jess plops down in the ash next to them. “I’m hungry. And my feet hurt.” She puts an oversized frown on her face.

  Mom smiles. Her blond hair has turned completely white these past couple of years. “We’ll just rest here awhile.” She takes her pack off and squats next to Jess, then touches her beneath the chin. “Where’s that pretty smile?” Mom pulls a jar of salmon out of her pack. “We’ll have a little snack.”

  Jess makes her fish face but you can still see the frown in her eyes.

  Dad slips out of his pack. I copy him and just stand there. I hope this plan to head north is going to work.

  * * *

  “It looks deep,” I say. We’ve just crossed a boulder field and are standing on the bank of a river. A silty creek really, only fifty feet wide. If I had a map I’d know what its name was, not that it matters. And it’s tiny compared to what’s coming. But still, it’s cruising along, cutting a swift path through the ashy hills, running like it’s in a race.

  “I don’t want to cross another river,” Jess says.

  “Jess, honey,” Mom says. “Sometimes we do things we don’t want to do.” She glances at Dad, but he doesn’t say anything. “Sometimes we have to.”

  I hear Jess sigh.

  “Jess,” Dad says. “It’ll be fun. I’m going across first, and I’m gonna carry a rope and Trav is going to have the other end. Then when you cross, you get to hang on to the rope. The only rule is that you can’t let go.”

  “But I’m dry,” Jess says. “And I want to stay dry.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

  Jess has really come through. She’s already walked for five or six days, working her way across some slower-moving streams in water up to her armpits. And I can see it in her eyes: She isn’t scared of getting wet, she’s scared of tha
t fast-moving water.

  “Make a deal with you, sis,” I say. “You can cross right in front of me. One hand on the rope and one on my arm. And if you make it without putting your head under, I’ll give you a piece of my salmon next time we eat.”

  Jess rubs her feet in the ash. “Okay, but my head’s gotta go all the way under for me to lose.” She makes a quick fish face.

  I laugh. “You drive a hard bargain, but okay. Deal.” Mom mouths the words thank you to me and I nod in acknowledgment.

  Dad unstraps the waist buckle on his pack and hands me one end of the rope. “Keep it tight.” Then he steps into the current. When he’s in up to his knees, he turns and yells, “I might drift downstream a bit, but just keep giving me the line little by little.”

  I tell him okay and he keeps going. When he gets into the middle, the water is waist-high and pulling him downstream. I can tell he’s working hard to stay upright, driving into the current. Without the rope he’d be bouncing downstream. I keep paying the line out, straining against his weight, trying to give him just enough so he can move forward but not so much that he doesn’t have a pivot point. The outside of my forearms are starting to burn and my upper arms are shaking, but I keep it steady.

  Then Dad slips, and I’m yanked in up to my shins. Dad disappears underwater and my heart jumps to my throat. I keep pulling on the rope, my shoulders and wrists screaming for relief. Mom and Jess are shouting. Dad’s head pops up once but then he’s back down.

  I haul harder, my whole body straining against the weight and the current, and Dad pops up again closer to our shore but downstream about thirty feet. Then he’s on his hands and knees, his pack halfway on top of his head, and he’s crawling out of the water.

  He makes it to the shore. I let out a breath that I don’t even know I’m holding. I don’t agree with Dad about how he does things a lot of the time, but I don’t know what I’d do without him.

  Dad takes his pack off, sets it in the ash, and stands up.

  “Clipped my knees on a big rock and lost my footing,” Dad says. “Would’ve made it otherwise.” I see him starting to shake from the cold.

  Jess has her arms wrapped around Mom’s waist. She’s tough but she’s only ten. Mom’s stroking her hair.

  “You ready for round two?” Dad asks. Before I can answer, he grabs his pack.

  We start downstream from the last spot, and this time he makes it across.

  I hand the rope to Mom and she pulls it tight with Dad on the other end.

  I lift Jess’s pack and sling it over my shoulder until it bumps into my pack. I wink at her. “You’re next, kiddo.” And she gives me this tiny smile that makes me smile.

  Then I grab the rope and step into the water. The cold starts working on me right away, chilling my feet. About halfway across, I suck in a breath when I dip in over my waist but just keep going. I drop the packs on the bank and then recross. I grab the shotgun, carry that across, and go back again.

  “Time for a swim.” I smile at Jess, but this time she doesn’t smile back. “Forget the bet. How about you just ride piggyback while I hang on to the rope?”

  Jess jumps on my back and off we go. The thing about the cold water is once I’m in, I’m in, and as long as I keep moving I’m okay, especially since I know that the quicker I get everything across, the sooner I can get out of the water and warm up. Jess has her legs scrunched up, trying to keep her feet out of the water. If it wasn’t such a fast-moving stream, I would’ve put her on my shoulders. I used to carry her around like that for fun. I’d ask her, “How’s the view from up there?” And she’d tell me what she saw.

  I drop Jess on the bank, tickle her ribs until she squeals, then go back across before Mom can argue. I don’t want her coming across on the loose rope.

  The wind chills me some as I hold the rope for Mom. She’s moving slow since she has a pack on, but she makes it across no problem.

  I step into the water, staring at the silty swirls, and start going hand over hand on the loose rope. I’ve got to work harder to keep my footing because the current is dragging me downstream.

  Jess screams my name and I jerk my head up. Dad drops the rope just as Mom grabs it, and I stumble back a step. Then Dad has the shotgun pointed right at me, and I know there has to be someone behind me, so I drop the rope and dive headfirst into the water and hear the muffled report of the gun.

  The current carries me downstream. I know I should be going down feetfirst and try shifting my body. My lungs are screaming for air. Now I’m sideways with the current. I feel my fingers touch the air. Then my side slams into something. My ribs are on fire and I’m stuck, the water piling up and flowing around me. I push away from the huge rock that presses against my ribs, get my head above the surface, and suck air.

  “Trav,” I hear Jess call. “Trav, Trav, Trav!”

  I turn toward the bank and catch a glimpse of her and Mom. Then something slaps my cheek.

  “Grab it,” Dad yells. “Now. Christ.” He must be behind me because I can’t see him. I grip the rope with both hands, and my legs are swept downstream and I feel my arms being pulled from my shoulder sockets as Dad reels me in like a snagged fish.

  Onshore, kneeling, I cough up some water, then lie down and grab my throbbing side. My mind is a jumble of thoughts. The gun pointed at me, the blast, bashing my ribs into the rock.

  I feel a hand on my back. “I had to do it,” Dad says. “He was coming at you. Would’ve grabbed you if I hadn’t shot him.”

  I turn and stare up at my dad. He looks me in the eye and says, “I don’t think I could live with myself if something happened to you.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  ABOUT FIVE DAYS LATER WE’RE standing on a hill overlooking the half-mile-wide yellow-brown highway of water called the Yukon River, our first major obstacle. Rumors flew about what had happened to the bridge, the most popular one being that the government blew it up after the last bus going north crossed it. Another was that some of the people who stayed behind destroyed it to keep the government from coming back.

  I don’t know what to believe. And it doesn’t really matter. What matters is right now. How are we gonna cross the river?

  The people who headed north on foot the second summer never came back, so somehow they’d made it across. And even after we cross we have to walk another two hundred freaking miles, so we need to start working on this problem now.

  On the far side of the river, trees stretch out in deep green like they used to on this side. “We’ve got to be extra careful by the river,” Dad says.

  “Anyone who makes it this far has to want the same thing we want,” I say.

  “Any people we see,” Dad says, “I’ll make the call.”

  “What Travis says makes sense,” Mom responds. “Whatever we do, we’ll have to talk things over.” Before Dad can respond, Jess starts to whine about her feet hurting and my mom turns toward her. Jess throws her arms around my mom’s waist and buries her head in my mom’s chest, and they walk a few paces away from me and Dad.

  We haven’t seen anyone since that guy tried to grab me at the creek crossing, and that was still close to Fairbanks. Just some desperate person trying to take whatever he could. We watched two guys dressed in light blue jackets dragging him away from the bank while two more stood and watched, their guns at their sides.

  I’m just glad it was me and not Mom who swam that creek last and that those guys didn’t shoot back. My ribs have mostly settled down. I still feel a sharp jab every time I lift a heavy pack off the ground, but the bruise is fading.

  The last three years, the tougher things got, the more of a dictator Dad became. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s probably what’s gotten us up the road this far. And I know he feels bad about not leaving when Mom wanted to, when it would’ve been easy.

  But still, people aren’t made to live so isolated. We have to meet up with someone at some point whether we get across the river or not. What would be t
he point of the four of us living in isolation until we died? I guess it’d be better than nothing, but I want more out of life than that. Put me on a freaking boat and take me to a safe place. To a place where there’ll be people my age. Girls my age. And Jess, she needs kids her age to play with. To be a kid before she grows up.

  Maybe there’s a better world across the sea. I want to find out. I’ll do whatever I can to get out of this burnt-out land. Before it burned there’d been a chance at a good life. But so many people died in the burn, and of the ones who were left, we hadn’t met many we could trust.

  “Dad,” I say, pointing to the Yukon, “it’s a big river. How are we going to cross the damn thing?”

  “We’re gonna study the situation and then make a plan. Build something. A raft, probably, unless we find an abandoned boat on the shore.”

  One of the good things about Dad is that when he focuses on a problem, he doesn’t let it go until he solves it. After Mom agreed to stay, he threw himself into surviving in the new conditions when suddenly, the only thing your money was good for was starting fires. The new playing field demanded you bring your brain, your heart, and your physical strength, and luckily for us Dad scored big in all three.

  I always tried to keep up with him, especially after the buses had left and he’d taken me aside and said, I want a good life for your mother, your sister, and you. But you, Trav, you’re gonna be key in helping me make it happen.

  “Just what are we going to build a raft with?” I ask. All the trees we’ve seen so far have been on the other side of the river, or in the middle of swamps on this side and miles away from the riverbank.

  “Downriver.” Dad points. “See that bend?”

  I nod. About two miles away, I guess, the river makes a sweeping bend to the north.

  “There’s a clump of trees,” Dad says. “I think they’re actually on this side of the river. Either that or they’re on a gravel bar close to this side.”

  I squint and tilt my head side to side. I can’t see what he’s seeing, but I hope he’s right.