Wild (4 page)

What did she think of it? Had it scared Josh? So many new emotions spilled over in his skin. Cade's heart pounded. It washed the cold away again, sweeping him with a shock of heat and sweat.

Dara broke through the tree line, let out a little cry and froze. Clutching her hands to her chest, she stared at him. Her eyes were so wide. The dim light meant Cade still couldn't make out the color. He forgot all about that when she took one step toward him and spoke.

“Who are you?”

Cade's throat seized. It clamped down on his breath, his voice. She was too close, and it wasn't the full moon yet. This wasn't a glimpse, maybe one she could have forgotten about if he'd quit coming around. This was face-to-face.

When he didn't answer, she talked more. “What's your name? Where are you from?”

Raising the gig, he looked past her. There were a hundred ways to escape. He needed both hands for most of them. One of the fish in his shirt flopped helplessly and he shuddered. There had to be a way out. He wasn't ready to say hello. He wasn't ready to stand this close to someone from the outside.

Frowning, Dara approached again. She held out his pendant, the leather wrapped around her hand. “You left this for us.”

Somehow, it had led her straight to him. Shaking his head, Cade stepped into the river. Icy water burned around his ankles. The cold sank in bone-deep. When he found his voice, he waved the gig at her, and at his leftovers on shore.

“You're hungry,” he said, the words coming out in a growl. “Take those.”

Blinking at the fish for a moment, she shook her head. “I wouldn't know what to do with them.”

It was Cade's turn to be surprised. There was nothing more basic than cooking a fish. There were lots of ways to do it. He liked to steam them, scenting the whole camp. But there were easier ways. Pointing at them again, he said, “Push a stick in the mouth. Hold the fish over the fire.”

Vaguely green, Dara curled into herself a little. Dragging her attention back to him, she lit from the inside. Her face said she remembered why she came in the first place. Holding the pendant out again, she said, “I know you've been following me. I just want to know why.”

That question was too hard to answer. Because he was curious. Because she was beautiful. He was lonely; she was there. He thought the world was mostly dead. She proved it wasn't. But he could hear his mother's voice in his head, sharp. Furious.

We're the only ones who are safe. The rest are sick.

Planting the gig into the river bottom, Cade backed away. He wanted to talk to her, but he couldn't. It was too soon. She could be dangerous. This was all a bad idea. He needed to move camp. His head buzzed, too many thoughts at once. Too many feelings to settle on just one.

So he told her, “Eat the fish.”

Then he ran.

Six

“H
e reminds me of those people on the trail last year,” Dara said, slitting the sides of a black plastic trash bag.

Now she knew for sure that someone was nearby, watching, that meant no more trips just out of camp to relieve herself. Turning trash bags into makeshift curtains, she kept her fingers busy as she talked.

“Which ones?” Josh asked.

“The ones who basically lived there?” Looking over, she watched as he turned the fish on the fire. “They followed the weather and didn't have a home to go to?”

Skeptical, Josh craned around to look at her. “You mean the homeless guys.”

With a roll of her eyes, Dara tied the first two bags together into a single sheet. That was so very Josh. In record time, he could reduce anything to the most negative interpretation possible.

Admittedly, there had been some people out there who'd frightened her. The ones that talked too loud and too close. Or the ones who liked to show off their guns and knives. It seemed like their stories always had police in them, or jail. Usually both.

But there had been several people on the trail who lived there because they wanted to. One was a guy not much older than them. Soft-spoken, his blond hair twisted into braids, he liked to quote from
Walden.

Then there was a couple who'd met hiking there in college and spent every good weather day on it. They had a dog with a bandanna, and banana bread in their packs.

Those were the people Dara meant. The ones who had decided that city-job-tech kind of life wasn't for them. The boy at the river reminded her of them. He had to be a survivalist or something.

There wasn't a stitch on his body that came from a retail store, as far as she could tell. Seriously, the clothes were just bizarre. Like he walked out of an old movie about the frontier.

Then there was the bee pendant. She still didn't know what it was made of. When she rubbed it with her thumb, it felt buttery and warm—not plastic, not glass. And finally, who fished with a sharpened stick? Only somebody who wasn't planning on getting into town for new hooks and bobbers, was her guess.

Everything about him fascinated her, from the dark, wary tilt of his eyes, to the thick fall of his dreads. “He needs water like anybody else,” she mused aloud. “And he's probably going to avoid the river. Where are the maps?”

Now irritated, Josh frowned. “Just leave it alone, Dara. Some crazy guy in the woods is following you around, and you want to find him? Have a sense of self-preservation.”

“Don't start with your mom and dad's actualization stuff,” she retorted.

It was a low blow. Josh couldn't help his weird parents any more than she could. The new agey, attachment-parenty stuff was totally out of Josh's control. Already, Dara felt bad for saying it. Flushed, she stopped knotting her bath curtain. “I'm sorry.”

Lips flattened, Josh turned his back on her and poked at the fish. “How am I supposed to know when these are done?”

Swallowing down her guilt, Dara shook her head. “I don't know. Let me find the guidebook. It had a chapter about cooking in the wild.”

With a quick tug, she unzipped the tent and ducked inside. Sinking to her knees, she felt the cold in the sleeping bags, and the cold outside pressing in.

Their unseasonably warm spring had turned into just plain spring. Damp, chilly, grey. This wasn't the trip she'd hoped for. No doubt, Josh felt the same way. Their mismatched edges didn't line up any better in the forest than they did back in Makwa.

A surge of emotion tightened her chest. Josh was a good guy. He was generous and friendly. He was thoughtful and steady and true. He was exactly the guy she'd fallen in love with freshman year. What had happened to the rush of infatuation she used to get when she looked at him?

Smoothing her hands over his sleeping bag, she pressed her face against his pillow. It smelled like him, and once, that would have given her such a thrill.

She had a whole drawer at home, filled with pilfered sweatshirts. She tucked them into her bed, to breathe and dream against. Even when they lost his scent, she couldn't bear to give them back.

But lying there with her face on his pillow, she realized something. She couldn't remember the last time she'd taken one of his sweatshirts home.

There was a time when lying on his sleeping bag would have driven her nuts. She would have had to flail around just to handle it all. At that moment, she felt nothing but a wistful pang.

Probably just the weather
, she told herself. The fact that raccoons had eaten all the really good stuff. That the guy out in the woods was making him act like an overprotective jackass. No, that wasn't right. Josh didn't seem overprotective at all. He just seemed annoyed. As if the boy by the river was a neighbor playing his radio too loud.

Josh's voice interrupted her thoughts. “Did you find that guidebook?”

Sitting up, Dara scrambled through the bags until she produced it. “Got it,” she called back. Then she made herself climb back out of the tent to sit beside him. Even shoulder to shoulder with him, the cold crept in. He didn't put his arm around her. He just kept turning the fish, slowly blackening them in the flames.

This wasn't the trip she'd hoped for at all.

 

His fire flickering, Cade lashed sturdy branches together. Shoulders knotted with concentration, he tied off two long ones, crossed at one end, to make a V-shape.

Then he twisted vines around smaller branches, connecting the V in several places. It looked like a crooked ladder, but it wasn't for climbing.

Grabbing each branch, he shook them hard. One by one, tightening the vines where he needed to. When everything stayed in place in spite of him, he dropped the frame on the cave floor.

Spreading out his largest fur, he centered his cooler on it. Then, he dropped his animal figurines into a leather pouch. That went onto the cooler, too, followed by his kit of herbs and the last scraping bits of salt he owned.

He planned to roll up his bed in the morning. Not the frame; he'd make a new one. But the down mattress and the furs, the leather pillow stuffed with dried grass. Everything he owned would fit in this bundle.

And that bundle, he could tie to the travois he'd just made. The long ends of the V would rest on his shoulder. Dragging his gear was easier than carrying it all.

And he had to drag it a long way tomorrow. Outside the circle around the bee hollow. Past the old mill town, probably even past the old Indian village. He'd follow the river south, as far as he could.

Though he'd never been there, he knew the hills gave way to mountains. His family had always stayed inside the ring of cliffs. The valley was safer, darker, or so Mom said.

Once, studying their worn map, Dad had called him over. The paper was streaked with red lines, crossing and tangling with each other. But he skimmed his fingers over little triangles scattered across the page.

“That's the Cumberland Mountains,” Dad told him.

Pursing his lips, Cade considered the page. “What do they look like?”

“Green and rolling.” With a faint smile, Dad sank back. His gaze trailed away, settling on Cade's mother plucking stems from a basket of berries. “There are oceans out there, too. So much water you can't see the other side. And it's salty. It tastes like the water out by the lick.”

Wrapping his arms around his knees, Cade pulled them to his chest. “Have you been to the ocean?”

“Once. A long time ago.”

“Can I see it?”

Dad hesitated, just long enough for Mom to interrupt. She didn't sound upset. Still, something in her voice sounded final. “I need someone to spread these berries with me. Which one of my handsome boys wants to help?”

Cade did. He always did. He loved the things she whispered when they worked. Strange stories and fairy tales, secrets to keep until the end of time. She always said that,
keep that secret until the end of time.

Dragging himself back to the present, Cade sprawled in his bed. The firelight made the handprints dance. They reached up and up above him. They floated into the dark, just like the smoke. They took his heart with them. This was the last night he'd sleep under them. Maybe the last time he'd ever see them.

Emotion welled, knotting in his chest and his throat. His parents slept beneath the stars not far from here. Side by side, always together, always near. Now he had to go, and it was his own fault. He'd been too curious, and for what?

For thirty seconds of conversation about nothing. Dara got close enough to infect him. If she was a carrier, it was probably too late. He wondered what might be growing inside him now. If his immune system was already starting its change. If it would make the slightest bit of difference.

Despite it all, he still wanted to touch her. Just skate his fingers down her cheek. Find out if she was warm. Soft. Throwing a forearm over his eyes, he tried to blank everything out. The past and the future, Dara's gold hair, everything. All of it.

In the morning, he would lose everything. He only had one night to let go.

 

Josh let Dara sleep alone.

He wasn't trying to punish her or anything. There was somebody out there. Somebody who came into their camp while they were sleeping. All those times Dara swore she heard somebody in the woods? Josh believed her now. And now he felt like he had to sit awake by the fire with his hunting knife close by.

Throwing more wood onto the fire, Josh recoiled from the smell. Wet wood, with mold or something on it, it stank. The smoke burned the inside of his nose. One thing was for sure, nobody else would want to get close with that kind of smell hanging in the air. To make it bearable, Josh threw on another log, this one drier and smoother.

It cut the acrid stink, but not by much. Josh had a feeling that it would linger like burned toast, or microwave popcorn. Settling in his canvas chair again, Josh went back to work. He'd cut down a thick branch and started carving the end of it. He wasn't sure what he needed a stake for. But it felt like he was doing something to protect both of them, so he kept going.

Arguing with himself, he blustered inwardly. What he ought to do is pack up all their gear, get everything all ready. That way when Dara woke up, she had no choice but to hike out with him. Without the tools and the food and toilet paper, she wouldn't last on her own. She wouldn't even try.

A more reasonable part of him pointed out that she was just stubborn enough that she might. And what kind of jerk would he be to abandon his girlfriend in the middle of nowhere. With some weird homeless guy already on her scent, at that. Where was all her careful-at-night, parking-under-the-lights, asking-security-to-walk-her-out defensiveness now?

It was like she took one look at this guy and forgot who she was. And Josh didn't know if that pissed him off or made him jealous. She hadn't been real specific about what he looked like. Maybe he was an old man in weird clothes, climbing in trees. No, that
would
have left her wary and ready to get right out.

He had to be young. He had to be something to look at, because she kept pointing her camera into the trees. She'd be standing there, and a noise would crack in the underbrush. Whipping around, she shot off a bunch of pictures. Then she studied the camera's screen like it was a crystal ball.

Glancing at his watch, Josh pushed to his feet again. Knife in one hand, stake in the other, he circled their camp. The fire kept his eyes from adjusting too much to the dark. But he stared into it anyway. He waved the stake slowly, careful with each step. Surging with bravado, he talked to the night—to whoever was listening.

“I know you're out there.”

Nothing answered. Josh continued this patrol around the camp. When birds suddenly flew up, he turned and stabbed into the dark. “I'm not afraid of you,” he said. And it wasn't a lie. He wasn't afraid. In fact, he was pumped up. Excited in a way. He hoped the guy would show his face. Then Josh would have an excuse to knock him down in the dirt and explain how it was.

Dara was his girlfriend. This was his camp. And he didn't care that his stomach was full of this guy's fish. He could catch fish, too. They didn't need his help. They didn't
want
it. Sweeping his stake into the dark again, Josh turned slowly with each step. He saw shadows, shapes, but nothing he could identify.

Maybe he
would
pack everything up tonight. Dara didn't know it but he had an emergency credit card in the truck. It would pay for a hotel room for a couple of days. A couple trips through a drive-through. Probably a real restaurant if that's what she wanted. As he backed toward his place by the sour fire, he wondered why they hadn't gone to Orlando with everybody else. This had been a good idea, once. Something private and special.

Anger licked through Josh. It built until he felt full of fire and acid. Drawing his arm back, he heaved the spear into the forest. Nothing cried out. It didn't crash into anything. It just fell into the soft brush. No more impact than throwing a pebble in a lake.

Squaring his shoulders, Josh glared into the fire and waited for morning.