Nowhere Wild (15 page)

Jake's eyes darted back to the shore after every stroke, searching for an end to the destruction. Around every rocky outcrop, he expected to see the return of the green forest, but upon rounding each corner, they discovered only a greater expanse of charred land.

Twice they pulled in to shore: once to cook and eat a small whitefish Izzy caught, and once for a bathroom break. Each time, Jake climbed to the top of the tallest object around—a rock or a half-destroyed tree—and scanned the distance. Each time he was rewarded with an unending panorama of blackened mud.

Twenty kilometers of rough shoreline and bobbing driftwood passed before Jake spotted the first signs of civilization. A concrete slab with a stone hearth and a few mangled pieces of tin roofing poked out of the dirt where a cabin had once been. On one edge of the slab were the burned and rusted remains of a mattress, box spring, and metal frame. A stainless-steel sink and melted copper pipes lay on another part of the slab. Jake didn't stop to investigate.

A little farther, beyond a group of charred stumps, the scene repeated. This cabin still had one rock wall standing, and behind it was an old cooking stove, the outside oxidized by fire and weather. Three more lots near that one were equally destroyed. A tricycle lay on its side near the water, the rubber burned off its wheels, its melted plastic seat draped over the seat post in a ghoulish form.

The shore turned east and formed the familiar man-made breakwall, over which Jake had flown so many times on his way to various hunting camps. A road ran along the shore, protected by a break wall of tar-covered wooden pilings and rocks. Another stack of scorched logs buried the outermost rocks. Jake worked the canoe around the spit. The docks for Laroque hid from the northerlies on the southern shore. Jake ground his teeth as they rounded the tip and the village came into view.

There were no planes tied up to the dock. There wasn't even so much as a rowboat there.

The burn stopped at the road that encircled the downtown—stopped, or had been fought off, he wasn't sure. Splintered stumps bracketed the small community. The buildings farthest from the village center were scorched, their paint blistered and peeling. Fire had destroyed the roof of one building, but the rest of the town center remained standing. A lone pine tree between two preserved buildings was all that remained of a once-thick forest.

Jake let their momentum take them alongside the dock. He fended off a direct hit with the blade of his paddle.

“Tie us off,” he instructed as Izzy jumped up from the bow onto the dock. She grabbed an old rope from a post, looped it around one of the canoe's struts, then secured it to a rusted cleat. Jake tossed Izzy his pack and hopped up after it.

He stood slowly and surveyed the area. The silence of the downtown crawled under Jake's skin. To his right was the gas station that serviced the boats, floatplanes, and vehicles that normally crowded the dock. Thick black shrouds covering the pumps crackled in the morning breeze. A white sign with blocky red lettering hung nearby:
GAS'N'FLY
. The lower portion of the
y
threatened to snap off in the next big gale.

“This can't be real,” he said.

A little more than a year ago, this small town had bustled with hunters and fishermen every summer day. Floatplanes pulled up to the docks at fifteen-minute intervals from dawn to dusk on the weekends. The counter at the small diner never stopped serving breakfast. The smell of frying bacon filled the air, creating a lineup that went out the door on busy weekends. Today, the only smell was of wet soot and churned lake water. The only sounds were their footsteps.

Jake drifted toward the general store. Izzy followed a short distance behind. Outside, the door of a large ice cooler hung open. Dirt, leaves, and a puddle of stagnant water filled the cooler instead of ice. The metal cage for propane tanks stood unlocked and empty. The window of the store's entrance door had been smashed, the glass left in a billion pieces that crunched underfoot. Jake swung the door open and peered inside.

The store stank of urine and scat. The few man-made items left had been flung about the floor. Shredded cardboard boxes had become nests for mice and rats and whatever else had called this place home the last few months. Anything edible or organic had already been eaten by the animals. Pressure built in Jake's chest. He backed out of the store and moved on down the road.

The rest of the businesses—a hair salon, the diner called the Fisherman's Grill, and a hardware/bait-and-tackle store—were in similar states of disrepair. Thick black dust covered the tables and the counter in the restaurant. A few of the chairs had been tipped over or pushed aside. The pantry was empty. Not even a sugar packet remained behind the counter where Geri, the ever-present waitress, had worn the linoleum thin with her constant back-and-forth shuffle. Whenever Jake had passed through town, Geri had always given him a fresh-baked oatmeal cookie. Jake looked at the empty counter, salivated at the thought of a cookie, then slid back through the door.

The hulk of an old bulldozer squatted a hundred meters from the docks. The fire had destroyed a tree just a few meters away, but not even the rubber hydraulic hoses were burned on the yellow machine. Just beyond the dozer, scorched remnants of the forest continued as far as Jake could see to the west, north, and south. A few more concrete slabs lifted out of the mud like tipped gravestones. Chimneys, hearths, and rusted stoves formed silhouettes against the gray sky.

But it wasn't the bulldozer that drew his attention. To the south, a cluster of wooden crosses stood guard over a depression in the soil. Dread rose through his spine as he approached. He slowly counted them. Thirty-five. The sight of the crosses pulled the visions of the graves he had dug for his mother and grandfather to the forefront of his mind. He checked the names scrawled onto the crosses in black marker. Chuck Red Eagle, the owner of the Fisherman's Grill, and his wife, Linda. Tom Hudson, and two of his kids. Years before, Jake had played hide-and-seek with those kids, while waiting for his dad at the store. At the end of the line was Geri Denny. Jake closed his eyes. The pressure in his chest flared and burned. He remembered Geri's always-smiling face, her blond bouffant hairdo, and her raspy smoker's voice. His stomach twisted and his fingers tingled. Thirty-five graves. None had been here when he had flown out to the cabin. He turned back to look at the town, covering his mouth with his hand.

This was not how his journey was supposed to end, standing before a row of grave markers. His father was nowhere to be seen. The village of Laroque was abandoned, scraped clean of human life. Fifty people had lived here once. Now there were only thirty-five crosses, with the names of the dead already faded by the weather.

A cramp tore across his stomach. Jake doubled over in pain as bile flowed from some deep reservoir. He coughed and spat onto the ground.

This was not how it was supposed to end.

This was how it had started.

Jake sank to his knees, and for the first time since Amos had died, the tears fell.

“Jake—” Izzy began talking, but Jake heard none of it.

Until that moment, his trek had a beginning and an end. As tough as the intervening days and weeks had been, he had thought it would be over once he reached this village. Everything—months of planning, months of watching Amos fade away—had had a purpose. Weeks of freezing days and colder nights had been warmed by his determination that he would make it this far. He had never considered the possibility that this wouldn't be far enough.

Jake abruptly jumped to his feet and ran from marker to marker. His father, he confirmed, was not buried there.

The houses. Maybe he was in a house? They hadn't
all
burned.

He spat more bile out of his mouth, away from the graves, and ran for the first house.

“Jake!” Izzy protested.

He ignored her. The door stood open, the hinge busted. A broken two-by-four from the railing of the small porch rested across the entrance. He hurdled over the wood and entered the cottage.

“Dad?”

The smell hit him. Scat and urine again, but tinged with something else he could not quite recognize—something sweeter, not overwhelming, but powerful enough to make him cough on the first whiff. The smell grew stronger. A chill kneaded his spine as he worked his way through a living room full of torn furniture and into a kitchen that had been professionally ransacked. His eyes watered. Mice scurried ahead of his footfalls, their squeaks of alarm warning others that a stranger approached. He pulled his hands closer to his sides and stepped around the piles of mouse dung littering the floor.

A closed door on his right opened into a small bedroom. Faded wallpaper drooped from water-stained wallboard. A bed stood against the south wall, raised up on red milk crates to provide more storage underneath. A small white desk took up part of the west wall. The smell was even more pungent here. Jake covered his mouth and nose with his dirty sleeve. It took a moment for him to recognize the child-sized lump curled into a fetal position atop the stained bedsheets. Trickles of black hair ran across a pillow crusted with remnants of the slowly decomposing body. The hair danced as the breeze from opening the door moved through what had been still air. A shudder crawled through Jake's body.

He recoiled and bumped into the door frame. Dust dropped from the ceiling as the force of his impact shook the thin walls.

Part of him wanted to run out of this place of death. Part of him needed to know how someone could leave a child to die alone in her bed. His feet moved him to an open door further down the hall. A queen-sized bed held another body, this one also curled up, but larger and partially consumed by some kind of animal. The rank odor matched the gruesome scene, and Jake could no longer hold in the meager contents of his stomach. What he hadn't lost at the grave, he vomited on the floor by the door. He ran from the house, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and nearly tripped over the two-by-four as he vaulted off the porch.

“Jake—Jake, we need supplies,” Izzy said as he sped past her.

He sprinted back to the canoe as fast as he could. He had no desire to inspect the remaining houses. Laroque was a ghost town, empty of everything but trouble. He could feel the spirits he had disturbed chasing him, and he wanted only to be far away from this place.

Jake was back in the canoe and ready to release the mooring before Izzy reached the dock.

“Jake—”

“We have to go. Now.” Jake reached for the cleat securing the canoe to the dock.

“We can't, Jake. We need supplies.”

“Get in the canoe.” He didn't have time to argue with her. If she wasn't going to leave with him, he would leave on his own. He couldn't spend another moment in this place. Jake's shaking fingers struggled to release the knot.

“No,” Izzy said. Then she did something Jake absolutely did not see coming.

She stole his paddle.

“Give that back. We need to get out of here.”

Jake reached for the paddle, but Izzy stepped back from the edge of the dock and held the paddle away from him.

“No! There are things here we can use—things we need. Clothes. Another paddle. Another sleeping bag. Blankets.”

“We'll just go. We can't stay here.”

Jake's hair had broken free from its ponytail during his run. It fell forward, partially obscuring his face, but it could not hide his desperation.

“Go where? Where are we going, Jake? What's the plan?”

From the moment she had stepped onto the dock, Izzy had known what they would find in the village. It had been the same when she and Angie and Rick had returned to Thompson. But this place, she knew, was truly deserted. No one could have stayed here. Not with the forest gone. Without the trees, the winter wind would have been unstoppable. Only the dead would have wintered over here.

“I don't know. Away from here. Away from this.” Jake's face fell to his hands. He moaned and pounded a fist on the canoe.

“You can't run from this, Jake. Not from this.” She waved an arm toward the main street. “This is what things are like now. You have to learn to survive in this. Out there, once we're out of this damn forest, this is what you're going to have to deal with.”

“My dad—”

“Isn't here—”

Izzy stopped. In a perfect world, Jake's dad was somewhere just ahead, but Izzy knew the odds were far better that he was dead. If Jake hadn't realized that already, it would soon dawn on him. And when it did, he'd be useless. She needed him to stay coherent until they got somewhere else. They couldn't stay here. That wasn't an option. They weren't nearly far enough away from Rick yet. She glanced back at the lake. He'd be coming. The black hole in her soul knew that to be true.

“He's gotta be up ahead, then . . . somewhere.” Jake scanned the lake to the south, then looked to Izzy as if she would know the answer to that question.

“We need supplies. It'll only take a few minutes.” Izzy set the paddle on the dock, but not close enough for Jake to grab it without getting out of the canoe.

Jake's eyes drifted to the village core. “I can't go back in there.”

Izzy nodded. “Fine. Just help me carry stuff and figure out what we need. I'll do the searching. Can you do that?”

Jake remained motionless for a moment, then pulled himself out of the canoe and joined her on the dock.

“Let's make it fast, okay?”

Walking into the town the second time raised the hackles on her neck more than the first time. The dead had been disturbed here now. Jake's run through town seemed to have awoken more of the ghosts. In Thompson, every house had felt that way upon their return. Back then, Angie had been there to help Izzy fight them. Jake wasn't ready for that fight.

Izzy covered her mouth and nose as she stepped into the general store. Jake stood in the center of the road, nervously glancing up and down the street like an Old West gunfighter, scared of his own
shadow. Izzy ignored him and carefully picked her way between piles of scat and shredded cardboard.

Her list ran through her head. Food, of course, though she expected to find none of that. This place had been ransacked long before they arrived. Perhaps a sleeping bag had been left behind—or blankets at the very least. Another paddle. A second tent. A compass. A knife. Clothes that fit her. New shoes. Something she could use as a sling.

She paused at the second aisle. A small glass showcase had been shattered there. The display of fillet knives and multi-tools had been cleaned out. Around the corner from there, the mice had done a nice job of chewing into a plastic-wrapped rain poncho. Izzy grabbed it, peeled off the remains of the outer wrapper, and draped the green poncho over her arm. It would be nice to be somewhat dry during the next rainstorm.

Her scavenging complete in the store, Izzy left and presented her find to Jake.

“That's it?” he said after inspecting the damaged garment.

“It's better than nothing.”

“Sure,” Jake said. He turned back to the docks.

“We're not done yet.” Izzy grabbed his arm. “We need to check everything.”

She tugged him back toward the bait-and-tackle shop. “I need your help.” She didn't—not really. She could search every building on her own. In his current state of mind though, if he headed for the docks without her, it would take only a minute for him to
leave
without her. That was a chance she couldn't afford to take.

In the bait shop, she found the paddle she needed. She also salvaged a loop of nylon twine—perfect for making a new sling—and a piece of plastic that would, in a pinch, do as a pouch. It wasn't quite as flexible or as durable as the rawhide she had used at the cabin,
but until she had something better, it would work. She presented her finds to Jake, who admired the paddle but looked at the other scraps with disdain.

“What are those for?”

“You'll see.”

She dashed across the road to the diner. In the kitchen there, she searched until she found a collection of knives. The big ones had already been taken, but there were plenty of paring knives and steak knives. She'd lived for months with just a kitchen knife. These, all professionally sharpened, would do just fine. She also grabbed a good pair of scissors, almost dancing as she rounded up the supplies. This kitchen was a gold mine. She wrapped two knives and the scissors in a towel and dumped the collection into a plastic garbage bag. She grabbed a few extra bags as well. They could keep her dry while paddling. She added another item to her mental shopping list: a backpack to carry her stuff.

Jake was still standing in the street right where she had left him when she emerged from the diner. She waved him forward to the houses that remained on the southern side of the street. Jake shook his head. “I'm not going back there.”

“Then stay. Right there.” She pointed at the ground as if instructing a disobedient puppy and raced forward to the second house, skipping whatever it was Jake had seen in the first one. He hadn't said what he had seen, but she could guess.

A pit of burned mud surrounded the second house. Scorched siding peeled off on one corner, but the structure itself seemed intact. She hopped from dry area to dry area, trying to keep the borrowed shoes on her feet somewhat clean. She tripped as her foot slid forward in the loose-fitting sneaker and fell to one knee.

“You okay?” Jake called out from his place of safety down the street.

“I'm fine.” She pushed her way back to her feet, then stopped. Near where she'd slipped in the mud was a fresh boot print, leading into the house. She glanced back at Jake. He hadn't come anywhere close to this house. And the print was large—much larger than his boot. A chill worked its way down her spine.

She stood and took a step back.

“What's wrong?” Jake asked. Izzy held up her hand and took another step away from the house. A second later, she turned and sprinted back the way she'd come, grabbing him by the sleeve.

“We gotta—we gotta go,” she stammered.

“Why?” he asked, jogging with her.

“Footprints.”

“There are people here?” Jake slowed and turned back to the house. Izzy slid to a stop, reached behind him, and grabbed his arm again.

“They're Rick's.”

“You sure?”

Izzy nodded.

She didn't hold him back this time when Jake bolted for the canoe. She followed, right on his heels.