Hostile Territory Read online

  I think of how she walked all the way down to the berry bushes searching for Shannon, and then back. And then beyond the tents and back. I think she’ll be able to walk tomorrow. It’ll hurt, but she’ll be able to do it.

  I hear another wolf howling somewhere in the distance. I roll over and lie on my back. My toes still feel clammy, but in general I’m warming up.

  And then I think, Yeah, we’ve got what it takes to stay warm even when we get our clothes sopping wet. But will we all have enough energy to make the hike? I glance over at Brooke, who is also on her back but has her eyes closed. And when I think of her trying to cover mile after mile through trail-less wilderness with those blisters, I sure hope we see some more helicopters soon and that we can flag one of them down—because right now the deck is stacked against us.

  CHAPTER 26

  MY RAIN GEAR IS STICKING to me like a second skin, but at least I’m not freezing. We’re just getting into the first spruce trees in the valley. I patched up Brooke’s toes when we woke up and made sure her laces weren’t too tight, and true to her word, she let the three of us carry most of her gear. She’s still wearing her pack with her phone and some food inside it.

  I’m sure every step hurts, but she hasn’t complained since we started walking this morning.

  My mantra for walking is step, step, step. The more I can keep that one word in my head the less I’ll remember that I’m a starving wreck with maybe ten times as many miles to cover as I’ve covered so far. The only way to win with this journey is to take it one step at a time. My calf started tightening up about halfway down to the valley. Hopefully it won’t explode.

  “I’m beat,” Derrick says. “Starving, too.”

  We’ve all eaten our ration of granola and our sticks of jerky, but both just made me feel hungrier. Just a tease to my stomach.

  “The sooner we get where we’re going, the less we’ll have to deal with the hunger.” I point ahead. “Once we get into the trees we’ve got to make sure we keep going in the right direction.”

  “That pointy mountain on the other side of the valley,” Shannon says, “we should try to keep it front and center. Even if we have to detour around lakes or swamps, we should always come back to it. Use it as a reference point.”

  The thought of climbing out of the valley on the other side and finding a pass through the mountains is too much to consider right now.

  Step. Step. Step.

  Brooke is hobbling along. She hasn’t said much all morning. Maybe she’s using her energy just to put one foot in front of the other given the state of her feet.

  When we enter the trees, a mosquito buzzes in my ear so I slap the side of my head. One thing we have is mosquito dope. And being in full rain gear, if I can just rub some on my face, hands, and neck, I should be okay.

  Did I mention that I freaking hate mosquitoes and that I almost never have to deal with them, because when I’m outside in the summer I’m usually running? But not now. I’m slated to cross a swampy and, so far, windless valley. And I can only go as fast as the slowest person so we can all stay together.

  We all stop to put some bug dope on and drink some water. “It’d be good to make it all the way through the valley and up into the mountains on the other side,” I say, “so we don’t have to stop in the thick of the mosquitoes.”

  Brooke stares at me. “I’ll be lucky if I make it halfway across this swamp.” She points at her feet. “Besides, we can just set up the tents to keep the mosquitoes away.”

  Derrick and Shannon don’t say anything. Why is it always me against Brooke when the four of us are together? In the tent the two of us got along fine—we were even laughing and telling jokes and sharing a little bit of personal stuff—but while we’re walking we’re always on opposite sides.

  I consider trying to drag Derrick or Shannon into this—ask them what they think about where we should shoot for today—but decide that the sooner I can get us moving the more likely we’ll end up resting somewhere out of the trees instead of in the middle of a mosquito-infested swamp.

  The whop whop whop of helicopters turns our attention skyward. I pull my binoculars out of my pack and start scanning the sky.

  “Anybody see them?” I ask.

  “Don’t bother,” Derrick says, pointing. “They’re specks. Way back from where we came from.”

  I turn and scan up the slope we just came down. And sure enough, there they are. But, like Derrick says, they are way high in the sky. “I think they’re Canadian,” I say, barely making out the red emblem on the tail of one of the choppers.

  “If we were still up high,” Brooke says, “maybe they would have seen us.”

  I almost respond, but then decide that I don’t want to have the same broken-record conversation again.

  “At least forty birds,” I say. “The road system must be screwed for them to be using all this air support.”

  “Nah,” Derrick says. “Pilots like to fly. They’ll use any excuse to get up in the air. Trust me. That’s the way my dad is.”

  We keep heading down, and now we’re in the thick of the forest. Mosquitoes are buzzing all around. Clouds of them. I want to take off running, but I grit my teeth and keep walking, sweating like a pig in my rain gear. My clothes are tied onto the outside of my pack. I hope they’ll be dry enough to wear soon. Another great thing about running is that you can wear less clothes and you create your own breeze when you run. For me, running keeps me cooler than walking, especially since I don’t have to wear long clothing to keep the mosquitoes away.

  The ground starts to get soggy, so we decide to alter our course. We turn to the right and try to edge our way along the swamp. We can still see the mountaintop Shannon said to keep in sight.

  Now I’m happy to have my rain gear on because we’ve just hit a patch of wild rose.

  I put my hands in my pockets to keep them from getting torn up by the thorns, and keep moving. There’s a continual scratching noise as the four of us wade through the brush.

  “I hope this ends soon,” Derrick says.

  Brooke has fallen behind by about a hundred yards, so I stop and wait for her.

  When she catches up, she says, “Yeah, I know. We need to keep moving.”

  “I just don’t want us to get too spread out.” I slap a mosquito off my face. “For bear safety.”

  I turn and keep walking. We need to at least stay in pairs. I can see Shannon and Derrick up ahead. They’ve stopped and are standing quietly. Shannon motions for us to keep coming, but she also puts a finger to her lips.

  I turn to Brooke and whisper, “Shannon’s signaling for us to approach quietly. They must’ve seen something.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “TWO MOOSE COWS WITH TWO calves each,” Shannon whispers as Brooke and I catch up.

  One of the mother moose is humongous, and the other is your normal-sized giant. Adult moose are monsters close up. There’s no getting around that. The calves are dark brown toys in comparison.

  The big mother has a thick scar running down one side of her, like she tangled with a bear or a pack of wolves and is still standing. The moose are spread out before us. A narrow ribbon of dry land passes between the two moose families. On either side, the swamp prevails. The moose with the scar works her way deeper into the water until her belly is partially underwater. Then she sticks her head entirely under for like fifteen seconds and comes back up.

  “Is that how a moose drinks?” Derrick whispers. “Weird.”

  “She’s eating,” Shannon whispers back. “Aquatic plants. Some type of algae.”

  Her calves keep to the shallows, sticking their noses underwater. On the other side of the dry land, the other mother and her calves are in the shallows doing the same thing.

  It’s cool to see this many moose all together. I mean, if I were in Fairbanks or out on a training run, I’d be pulling my phone out and taking a video, but right now these moose are a barrier to where we need to go. We’ve got to get by them without disturb
ing them so much that the mothers decide they want to stomp us. More people are injured by moose than bears in Alaska in most years. We’ve had cross-country races delayed because of moose on the trail. One time we even had a race canceled. There’s never been a delay or cancellation because of a bear during all the time I’ve been running.

  “Can we thread the needle?” Derrick whispers, pointing at the narrow strip of dry land running between the two families of moose.

  As if the monster moose with the scar can understand English, she lifts her head out of the water and turns toward us. Slimy green strands of algae hang from her mouth.

  “It just depends,” Shannon whispers. “On what the moose let us do.”

  We’re all waving mosquitoes away from our faces. “We’ve got to do something,” I say softly. “We could try to go around them.”

  Brooke frowns. “If we do that, we’ll get soaked.”

  “We were soaked yesterday and we survived,” I whisper. “Derrick, Shannon. What do you think?”

  “Right now, we’re outside of their threat zone,” Shannon says. “That’s why they’re just eating and not staring us down. Whatever we decide to do, we’ve got to be able to adjust to how the moose respond.”

  Derrick holds up his bear spray. “We’ve got this, too.”

  Would bear spray work on a moose? I’m not sure, but if I were being charged by one, I’d give it a try.

  “We could take a few steps down the middle of the dry area,” Shannon says, “and see what the moose do.” She points at Derrick’s bear spray. “I’d use that as a last resort.”

  “Can you scare a moose away by yelling at it?” Brooke asks. “Like you can sometimes with a bear?”

  “They have babies,” Shannon says. “They aren’t going to run away from them. They’re going to protect them. The question is, will they see us as a threat?”

  “And the other question is…” I hold up my bear spray. “If they’re protecting the calves, will anything stop them if they see us as a threat?”

  “We’ll have to watch their body language,” Shannon says. “If they flatten their ears and step toward us, we need to back away. And never turn your back on them. In my Alaska wildlife class, we saw photos of people who’d been attacked by moose. We’ll be in serious trouble if any of us get attacked.”

  We’re already in serious trouble. The longer we stand here, the longer it’ll take us to hike to Talkeetna. Whether we walk between the two moose families or wade through the swamp to get around them, I just want to keep moving in the right direction. The starvation factor doesn’t slow down, unless we can find another food source. All the blueberries we’ve seen are still green. And these moose in front of us—if we had a gun, we could maybe kill one for food. But we don’t have a gun.

  We whisper a little more and, in the end, decide to take a few steps forward to thread the needle. We go single file with me in front, followed by Shannon, Derrick, and Brooke.

  CHAPTER 28

  SPINDLY SPRUCE TREES NO WIDER than my forearms dot the narrow strip of land bordered by swamp on both sides. We’ve all got our canisters of bear spray in our hands with the safety clips off. Under any other circumstance we would’ve just turned around, but any step backward at this point is a step toward the starvation that’s been chasing us since the earthquake.

  “Okay,” I say softly. “Here goes.” I take a step forward, and then another. I can almost feel Shannon’s toes on my heels.

  The mother moose with the big scar running down her side stops feeding and takes a couple of steps, positioning herself so she’s directly between the four of us and her calves.

  I can live with that, I think, as long as she can. “Just passing through, old girl,” I whisper to myself, and keep going.

  Now I’m shifting my body sideways to squeeze between two trees and my pack catches on a branch. I stumble from the abrupt stop—but don’t fall.

  “I got it,” Shannon says, and I feel the branch being lifted. “Okay, you’re free.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and keep going.

  I don’t know if it was my stumble or the noise of my pack rubbing against the branches, but now the smaller of the two mother moose—the one off to our right—takes several quick steps in our direction. Her ears are laid back and the hairs on the top side of her neck, right where it merges with her back, are raised.

  Like we are one organism, we all move to the left, attempting to put a little more distance between us and the agitated moose. But doing so causes the monstrous moose with the scar to flatten her ears and move toward us.

  My heart is beating a hole through my raincoat, and my throat constricts, making it hard to breathe.

  “Just keep moving,” Derrick says.

  I take another few steps forward, and now I’m shifting to the right to get around another tree. The smaller moose off to our right walks toward us. Now, besides her ears being flat and the hair raised on the topside of her neck, she licks her lips.

  Maybe twenty feet separates us. The canister of bear spray in my hand feels incredibly small compared to the monster staring me down.

  I hear splashes off to my left. I turn my head and see the giant moose closing the distance.

  I hope we can just make it beyond the angle where, instead of appearing to move toward their moose calves, we’ll be moving away from them. But the two defenders of their young seem intent on stopping our progress. They’re like the ends of a giant pair of vise grips intent on squeezing us. Only in this case, squeezing means stomping.

  The way we’re lined up now, I’ll definitely get stomped first if either moose decides to attack.

  I can feel my leg tremble as I take another step forward, trying to move straight so I don’t favor one side or the other.

  “It’s okay, ladies,” Shannon says softly. “We don’t want to hurt your babies.”

  I take another step, and then another, and another. I don’t glance back but I can feel everyone right behind me, like there is almost no space between where one of us ends and the next starts.

  The two moose stand like sentinels, staying right where they are, not coming forward but not backing off. I take in a breath, noticing that my throat has loosened up, and I’m breathing almost normally.

  I carefully duck down to work my way under a chest-high branch, not wanting my pack to snag and cause a bunch of noise that might enrage the moose.

  I’m clear of the branch and stand up straight. And that’s when both mother moose charge me at the same time.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE MONSTER WITH THE SCAR splashes through the swamp that is separating us. I stumble away from her but hear splashes behind me and know that the other angry moose is closing the distance, too.

  Everyone is shouting on top of one another so I can’t understand a single word.

  I’m down on one knee and swing my arm toward the monster moose, who looks even bigger now that I’m not standing up. On dry land she rises up on her hind legs just as I press the trigger on my bear spray. A whooshing noise invades my ears as a wall of dark red fog envelops the moose’s head. She comes down with her front hooves on either side of me.

  I duck and roll away from her, knowing that another angry moose is behind me. And then a red fog takes over and I feel my throat constricting. My nose burns on the inside, like someone just lit it on fire. I jam my eyes closed just as they begin to get fried. The last image I see is Shannon standing, her arm outstretched with her bear spray pointed in my direction.

  CHAPTER 30

  I’M COUGHING BUT I’M NOT coughing. I mean, I’m trying to cough. Or my lungs are trying to cough and I’m not in control of them at all.

  “Just breathe,” Shannon says.

  “We gotta wash that stuff off his face,” Derrick adds.

  “He’s going to die,” Brooke says softly.

  “Brooke,” Derrick says.

  “Sorry,” Brooke says.

  I try to talk, but can’t. My throat is too constricted. If it
closes any more, I probably will die. Anything to keep from feeling the burn engulfing my head. My eyes are jammed shut, but the image of the red fog is etched into my brain.

  “Josh,” Shannon says. “We’re going to dump some water onto your face.”

  Hands unbuckle my waist strap on my pack and more hands work the pack off my back, and I just curl up in the fetal position like I’m a baby, wishing right now that I’d never been born. I’d trade my life to be free of this inferno.

  Water splashes onto my cheek and the top of my head.

  “Brooke, you keep refilling the bottles and I’ll keep pouring,” Derrick says.

  The cold water dulls the burn on contact, but as soon as it runs off, the burn comes back.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Shannon says.

  But I can hear the hesitancy in her voice. The fear. She’s trying to convince herself that what she’s saying is true.

  And then I realize, If I can think this thought, I must be getting enough oxygen to my brain. So even though my lungs are on fire and I can’t talk, I’m still sucking in enough oxygen to keep myself going.

  “We’ll need to stay here,” Shannon says, “until Josh can see again.”

  In response, I try to open my eyes, but can’t. Some part of me is blocking that from happening. Maybe some part of my brain knows better than the part where I make conscious decisions and it’s stopping me from opening them.

  Water keeps running down my cheek.

  “I’m going to roll you over to your other side so we can wash your other cheek,” Shannon says.

  I let them roll me over, and then there’s more water washing down on me.

  “Can he drink any yet?” Brooke asks. “He’s probably got clean water in his pack.”

  “We’re all going to be drinking the swamp water soon enough,” Derrick says.

  “Yeah,” Brooke answers, “but we’ll purify it with the pills.”