Hostile Territory Read online

  After Brooke’s camp is all packed up, Brooke and Shannon head for Shannon’s camp up to the next ridge, and Derrick and I head for mine.

  We walk fast side by side on the tundra, deciding not to go down to the lake and back up, but to stay up high to circle around to my camp. The sun is breaking through the clouds, and I’m squinting to keep it out of my eyes.

  “We’ve got some big rocks to move down there.” I point to the buried camp as we walk.

  “I get what you’re saying,” Derrick says. “I mean, I want to find anyone who is alive, too. But think about it.” Derrick stumbles on a rock but regains his balance. “Theo had the flag wand in his hand. He was on the high point of land in the camp.” Derrick pauses. “Remember how that little spot was like ten feet higher than the rest of the camp?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I remember.”

  “Dude, that means everyone else was probably ten feet lower than him when the mountainside cut loose.”

  “I know all that,” I say. “But how do you explain the food bag that the bear found pretty close to the surface?”

  “I don’t know.” Derrick shrugs. “Maybe some stuff got pushed along by the slide before more rocks fell on top of it?”

  “So,” I say, “maybe a tent with a person in it got pushed like that food bag did. Maybe that happened to more than one tent. We owe it to everyone to search. The fact that we survived is just dumb luck.”

  “Hey, man,” Derrick says. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t search. I’m just not that optimistic about what we’ll find.”

  CHAPTER 12

  SIX DAYS LATER AND WE’VE got four more shallow graves all in a row next to where we buried Theo. We’ve built rock cairns at the head of each grave.

  “Why hasn’t anybody come?” Derrick asks. “My dad would be on this in a heartbeat if I didn’t show up on time. If we all didn’t show up.”

  “We don’t know what it’s like anywhere but here,” Shannon says. “Maybe there was widespread damage. And mass casualties.”

  I point at the shallow graves and say, “There’s no reason to stay anymore. I mean, if I thought there was still a chance that someone was alive, I’d keep digging.” I feel my eyes getting hot. “We need to leave this place.”

  “But if we leave,” Brooke argues, “and they come after we’ve gone, they’ll just give us up for dead, too. They won’t even look for us.”

  “We’ll write them a note,” I respond. “We can put it in one of the empty bear-proof food containers and we can plant all of our flags around it so there’s no way they can miss it.”

  “What are we going to do after that?” Brooke says. “Walk out?” She shakes her head.

  “There was a plan,” Derrick says. “Remember? We were all briefed on the routes to follow if there was an emergency and we had to evacuate on foot. West to Talkeetna or east to Lake Louise.”

  “They were about the same distance,” I say, remembering Theo describing part of the plan.

  “Yeah,” Derrick agrees. “Both long as hell.”

  Brooke huffs. “They spent five minutes showing us on a map, and then they were on to where to dig the latrine. Does anyone even remember which way to go? Everything looks the same. We’ll get lost if we leave.”

  “So,” I say, “we stay here when obviously no one is coming?” I raise my voice. “That makes no sense.”

  Before Brooke can respond, Shannon says, “One of us has hiked up the ridge every day to try to send a message with your cell phone. None of them have gone through. We should try to send one more message, saying that we’re walking out and which way we’re going, and even if it doesn’t go through now, it could go through as we get closer to civilization. It might save our lives.”

  No one says anything. I’m just waiting for Brooke to come to her senses. She’s grudgingly helped dig for survivors and rebury the dead bodies we’ve found, but out of the four of us she, by far, complains the most. Even though Derrick made it pretty clear that this felt more like a recovery than a rescue effort from the start, he’s worked as hard as Shannon and me and never complained about the work—just about being hungry, like the rest of us have.

  I point at our four tents in a row in the sunshine on the lakeshore. “At least we’ll have some shelter for the journey. Whichever way we go, it’ll take seven to ten days. That’s what I remember. But for us, it might take longer. I mean, we know generally where we’re going but not exactly. I wish we had the maps.”

  “Shoot,” Derrick says. “I wish we had the satellite phone, a GPS, the camp first aid kit, a cook stove, and a water filter so we don’t all get diarrhea.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “They always at least drop you a note, and maybe some supplies, from the sky. Or they’ll fly low and buzz you so you’ll know you’ve been seen. But every helicopter and jet we’ve seen has been flying high. It’s obvious we’re not on their radar. What puzzles me is why.”

  I nod in agreement. “This camp system seemed pretty organized. What about the people in Fairbanks who work for the camp? They should be on this. They’re four days late. I know it’s a long shot to make the walk, but to stay here now is an even longer shot.”

  Brooke takes a step toward me. “Here’s what I remember from that walk talk. Mountains, rivers, and swampy valleys to cross. We won’t make it. I—”

  “Brooke,” Shannon cuts in, “I don’t know why nobody came for us. Did all our parents die in the quake?” She makes a sweeping motion to take in the whole landslide. “There were twenty of us. Plus four adults. Are things so bad that we’re a super-low priority?” Shannon shakes her head. “I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But I do know one thing. They’re not coming for us anytime soon. We’re on our own.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Dear Rescuers,

  On June 25th, an earthquake caused a massive landslide that buried the Simon Lake Leadership Camp. We recovered five bodies and buried them in shallow graves to keep animals from scavenging them. The graves are marked by rock cairns. An additional fifteen bodies are under the landslide. The four of us, who were away from the main camp during the earthquake, survived. It is now July 1st and no one has come to our assistance. We’ve decided to hike west to Talkeetna. We are in good health, but have limited supplies and no map.

  The Survivors,

  Josh Baker (Fairbanks, Alaska), Shannon White (Fairbanks, Alaska), Derrick Anderson (Fairbanks, Alaska), Brooke Simpson (Fairbanks, Alaska)

  In the end, after we secure the note in the empty food canister and put the flags up, we decide to take almost everything else with us.

  Not that it’s that much stuff.

  The camp was pretty strict about what we could take on our solo experience, and almost everything else is buried under the landslide.

  We each have a backpack, a tiny one-person tent, a blue foam sleeping pad, a sleeping bag, a raincoat and rain pants, a canister of bear spray, a pair of binoculars, a one-liter water bottle, and one set of clothing.

  Brooke has a cell phone and a solar charger.

  We also each started our solo experience with small blue stuff sacks. And inside the blue sacks we had the following items:

  One lighter

  One small bottle of insect repellent

  One writing journal

  One pen

  One package of Band-Aids

  One small bottle of water purification tablets

  At camp there were three large water filters in the kitchen. And one of the jobs was to haul water from the lake and pour it into the holding tanks, which then released the water so it’d flow through the filters and be purified for drinking. On our solo trips we used the tablets, which make the water taste like liquid rust. You basically use one tablet per liter of water. And we’ve been using the tablets since the earthquake, so we don’t have that many left.

  “We’re supposed to each drink about a gallon of water a day if we’re hiking,” I say. “I’ve got ten tablets left. Enough for about two and a half days.
”

  “Some water sources are a lot more likely to be clean than others,” Derrick says. “Creeks from snowmelt, or any fast-moving water, are going to be better than drinking from a lake or pond where bacteria can build up.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t use the tablets when we’ve got water that we think is clean,” Shannon suggests. “We could save them for when we’ve got to get water from lakes or ponds or puddles.”

  “I’m not drinking from a puddle.” Brooke huffs.

  “You might,” I respond, “if it’s the only place to get some water.”

  No one else says anything but I’m pretty sure Shannon, Derrick, and Brooke are all thinking about the same thing I am, and how little of it we have.

  Food.

  CHAPTER 14

  “IT DIDN’T GO THROUGH,” BROOKE says, staring at her phone. “Big surprise.”

  We’re on top of the ridge above Simon Lake that I was camping on when the quake struck. My calf muscle seems to be healing up because it barely hurts from the steep climb to get up here.

  Brooke sent the message to all her contacts. Maybe at some point on our journey we’ll get to a spot with a little bit of reception and the message will go through, and someone will do something about us.

  I take one last look down at what used to be the Leadership Camp and then turn away and face the rest of the group. I worked up a sweat from the climb, but now I’m cooling off in the breeze. Clouds are stacking up in the distance to the west, the direction we need to go, and where the wind is coming from.

  Brooke turns her phone off to save power. “Now, where to?” she says to the three of us.

  “That way.” I point toward the clouds.

  Derrick says, “We should stay up high if we can. I mean, I know we’ll have to go up and down a lot, but the walking is going to be easier on these ridges.”

  “And,” Shannon adds, “we’ll have a better chance of being spotted.”

  “The best chance we have of being spotted is to stay right here,” Brooke says.

  I wish she would let this die. We already decided we’d leave if the message didn’t go through, and we’ve taken everything with us because we didn’t want to waste time and energy going back down to the lake if the message failed, but Brooke just can’t drop this.

  But a small part of me believes that she might be right. I mean, this is where someone would come to look for us—if someone were to come.

  And, if we had more food, I’d want to stay. But we don’t.

  We’ve got three days’ worth of food for a hike that’s supposed to take seven to ten days. We’ve already figured out how to ration it so it’ll last about five or six days, but all that means is that we’ll be eating significantly smaller portions than we have since the earthquake.

  Like today. We each had about a quarter cup of granola for breakfast—that’s half of what we’ve been eating. For lunch, we each get a stick of beef jerky. And for dinner, our last meal of the day, a package of dry ramen noodles. You can choose to soak them in cold water or not, but that’s what you get. A pretty simple recipe for starvation when you add in that we’ll be hiking through the trail-less wilderness. I wish we had some fishing gear, or a gun for hunting, but we don’t.

  The only weapon we have is defensive. Bear spray. And hopefully we won’t have to use it.

  I look Brooke in the eye and say, “There’s no choice here, Brooke. If we stay, we starve.” Then I start walking toward the cloud bank, already hungry.

  CHAPTER 15

  “WHAT TIME DO YOU THINK it is?” I ask. We’ve come to the end of this high ridge we started walking on after our last attempt to send a message with Brooke’s phone, and now we need to make a decision about which way to go. Simon Lake is a speck in the distance. We had to leave our watches behind for our solo experiences, so they’re buried under the landslide.

  “My guess?” Derrick says. “Sometime after three.”

  Shannon points toward the towering clouds. “Whatever time it is, we’re in for some weather soon.”

  “I could turn my phone on and check the time,” Brooke says, “but I’d rather save the power.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t even know why I want to know. I mean, I wanted to know how long it took us to walk this far, but it doesn’t matter. I’m just so used to timing myself for running. Forget it. We just need to figure out what to do from here.”

  Shannon takes her pack off, pulls out her raincoat, and puts it on. “That wind is cold.”

  We all copy her, and then I say, “We have to go down before we can go up again.” I point to the route right in front of us. “We could go down into that saddle and then up to the next ridge. Or, we could turn to the north a little and go down to that saddle and then up.”

  “Let’s do the first one,” Derrick says. “It’ll keep us heading west. At least, I think it will.”

  Shannon and Brooke agree, so we all start picking our way down the slope. Little white and purple flowers carpet the hillside, interspersed with lichen-covered rocks poking out of the mountain.

  Theo and I ran up slopes like this on the opposite side of the lake. I took it all for granted. Do a hard workout. Come back to camp sweaty as hell and then jump in the lake to cool off. And then eat a ton of food.

  By the time we reach the saddle, the first drops of rain are falling.

  Brooke takes off her pack. “We should set up camp.”

  “I say we keep walking.” I take off my pack, pull my rain pants out, and put them on. Then I fish out my backpack cover. “We can keep all our stuff dry by using our pack covers.” I fit mine over my pack.

  “You’re not in charge,” Brooke says, “so quit acting like you are.”

  “I was just responding to what you were saying,” I counter. “Whether we all decide to camp or not, it’s better to stay dry.”

  Derrick and Shannon already have their rain pants on and their packs covered. I wish one of them would step in and say something to Brooke. It seems like it’s always me having to confront her.

  I think about that line I wrote in my journal about wanting to get to know Brooke more, about liking her, about wanting to hang out with her when the camp ended. I wanted to know what was behind that quiet aloofness. I wanted to know what she was thinking as she stared off at the mountains. Of course, I put my own thoughts into her head. She must love wild places just like I do.

  Now I just want her to quit putting up roadblocks to our survival. Basically, I want her, as Theo would have said, to suck it up.

  “Wet is wet.” Derrick throws his arms up in the air. “Both options basically suck. But I guess I’d rather walk than sit in a tent with nothing to do.”

  Shannon says, “We should use our energy while we have it.”

  Big fat drops of cold rain pelt us as we work our way across the saddle. With my hood on I can see forward but have to turn my head to see anything else.

  When we start up the ridge on the far side of the saddle we hear the first crack of thunder.

  Shannon stops and says, “We shouldn’t go up higher when it’s thundering. My mom treated a lightning victim last summer.” She pauses. “If we get struck by lightning out here, we’re basically dead.”

  “What’s the chance lightning will strike one of us?” Derrick asks. “We should keep going.”

  “The chance of it hitting you is the greatest,” I say, “because you’re the tallest.”

  “I told you guys we should’ve made camp back there.” Brooke points behind her. “Now we’ve all got wet feet and when we set our tents up, they’ll get soaked too.”

  “I didn’t say anything about setting up tents,” Shannon responds. “I think we should wait it out and then keep going.”

  Another clap of thunder shakes the ground. I start counting and get to four before the lightning flashes.

  “I’ll set up my tent,” I say. “And we can all squish inside until the storm passes. Then we keep going. Deal?”

  “Let’s do it,” Derr
ick says.

  Shannon nods.

  Brooke says, “Okay.”

  I take my pack off, remove the cover, and pull out my tent. Then I put the cover back on my pack and lay it down with the cover side up. Derrick and Shannon do the same with their packs and help me set up the tent. Brooke takes off her pack and watches as Derrick, Shannon, and I stretch the rainfly over the tent and stake it down.

  I unzip the door and say, “Pile in.”

  Then another crack of thunder fills the air, followed instantly by the brightest lightning I’ve ever seen.

  CHAPTER 16

  I’VE GOT THIS NARROW WOODEN box that my grandfather made me before he died of a heart attack a few years ago. In the box, I keep some trophies I won for running in elementary and junior high school. There isn’t enough room in the box for each trophy to sit upright, so I have to tilt the ones up on either end of the box to make them all fit. That’s exactly how it is trying to cram four of us into a tent designed for one person. Derrick’s on the far end of the tent, and I’m on the end with the door. Brooke and Shannon are squished between us. I’m riding up one wall, and Derrick is riding up the other.

  The side of Shannon’s thigh presses against mine, and our shoulders are smashed together. We’ve all kept our rain gear and hiking boots on. My boots are really just high-top running shoes made for trail running. We were required to have something with ankle support at Simon Lake.

  The thunderclaps and lightning strikes seem to be right on top of one another, which basically means they’re right on top of us.

  The rain picks up, and now it’s pounding the tent like it’s under a high-pressure hose in a car wash. But the sound it’s making has changed, too.

  “Hail?” Shannon guesses.

  “Right,” Derrick says. “It would suck to be out there right now.”

  “This whole situation sucks,” Brooke says. “It was almost over. I was so looking forward to going home. To having a hot shower. To collapsing on the couch.” She sighs. “Why didn’t anyone come for us? I hate this.”