Surviving the Fog (5 page)

Yuie was not surprised that Desi took such an
interest in the meetings, and she no longer thought of Desi as a
bimbo. When she talked with Desi, she realized that the girl had a
clear idea about one thing, and that was the need for someone to
take charge. Desi realized that they were in a lot more danger than
anyone else understood, except for Mike.

Desi had her own ideas about how to survive
in this new world. One night, after the meeting had ended, Yuie was
about to leave and she called for Desi.

"I’ll come down later," said Desi, and she
gave Yuie a significant smile.

Yuie looked troubled, but she nodded and
left. As Yuie left, Mike, John and Desi were standing outside under
a cloudy sky. It was the twentieth of June, and the days were
warmer although the nights were still chilly.

Mike and John were used to spending a few
minutes each night chatting together, before John went to his bunk
and Mike retired to his cabin. The presence of Desi seemed unusual
but not terribly awkward. Each thought that she would soon head
down to the girls’ area.

"Can I see the Admin's cabin, Mike?" Desi
asked.

"Uh, all right," replied Mike, who had not
anticipated this request but saw no harm in it.

John looked at Desi. Then he looked at Mike.
He frowned. "I'm going to bed now, Mike," he said quietly. "See you
in the morning." He stole one last glance at Desi.

"Night," Mike replied.

John left, and together Mike and Desi walked
up to the A-frame. Mike unlocked the door, and they went
inside.

"Wow, this is nice," Desi exclaimed. "I guess
this is your place now, Mike. Yuie calls it, 'Chief’s
Headquarters’."

Mike laughed. "Yeah, I guess that's a good
name for it," he agreed.

Desi sat down on the bed.

"Mmmm..., this is soft."

She lay back on the bed, and then she clasped
her hands behind her head, and she smiled up at Mike with her
supple brown eyes. Mike thought that the room suddenly seemed much
warmer.

"Would it be okay if I stayed here tonight,
Mike?" Desi asked in a voice that was soft and sultry.

Mike gulped. "Yeah...sure...okay," he replied
with a squeak in his voice.

The next morning, Mike left the cabin while
Desi was still sleeping. He felt like he was older and much more
experienced, and he felt wonderful. He found John in the dining
hall.

"Morning," he said to John. John looked at
him, then he looked past Mike for a second as if he were looking
for someone, and then he looked back down at his cereal and
grunted.

"It's a really good morning. I feel very,
very good, if you know what I mean," said Mike happily and a little
slyly.

"Well, I'm so happy for you!" John snarled.
He got up and stalked out of the room. Mike stared after him,
mystified.

"You idiot!"

Mike turned to see Yuie staring angrily at
him.

"What's your problem?" he asked, annoyed at
her. First John and now Yuie was acting weird this morning.

"You dummy! He likes Desi. Didn't you know?"
Yuie demanded.

Mike was thunderstruck. "Oh, shit," he
said.

But now that Yuie had told him this, he
realized that he should have known. John was always mentioning Desi
to him. Mike realized that he was not the swiftest boy when it came
to girl-boy relationships. But he should have seen this.

John avoided Mike the rest of the day, and
Mike avoided Desi. Both John and Desi were at the meeting that
night. After the meeting, before John could leave, Mike asked John
to accompany him to his cabin for a private talk. Desi came with
them.

In the cabin, Mike showed John the radio
phone, and he told John that the battery was dead. He asked if John
knew any way to recharge it. John shook his head and grunted
impatiently. Mike tried a few other subjects. He didn't quite know
how to proceed. John was plainly not interested in conversation or
even being in the cabin.

Suddenly Mike blurted, "Why don't you sleep
here tonight, John? I miss my bunk. I think I'll sleep in my bunk.
Desi won't mind sharing the cabin, will you Desi?"

Mike looked hopefully at Desi. She and John
were clearly startled at Mike’s outburst. Desi gave Mike a
surprised frown, and then she looked at John. The boys held their
breath.

Then she sighed and said calmly with a small
rueful smile, "No, I won't mind sharing with John." Mike quickly
left the cabin and escaped to his old bunk bed.

Dumbfounded, John stared at the door for a
moment, and then he turned to look at Desi. Outwardly, she seemed
calm.
Oh, oh
, he thought.
She is royally pissed
.

“Uh, sorry about this, Desi,” he said
sheepishly. “You know, Mike’s still just a kid. He…I guess…”

“So you guys didn’t plan this?” she asked
stonily.

“No!” John exclaimed. “I swear I didn’t know
that he was going to do this.”

Desi was silent for a moment, and then she
said, “Some of the guys say stuff about me.”

“I don’t,” responded John. “At least, I don’t
say that kind of stuff.”

“So you don’t have a line you would like to
tell me? Like, maybe, what’s your sign?” she asked
sarcastically.

It was John’s turn to be silent for a moment,
and then he said thoughtfully, “Yeah, I do have a line.”

“So let’s hear it,” she replied
indifferently.

John smiled at her. “I like you, Desi. I
really like you, and I would like to spend some time with you. But
not like this. If you want, I’ll walk you to your cabin, or I’ll
just leave.”

Desi stared at him for a while, and then she
looked down. She pondered his words.

“Well,” she began slowly. “I really like this
mattress. It’s a lot more comfortable than mine. I guess we could
share it.” She looked up at John. “But just to sleep on,” she
warned.

“Okay,” he answered quickly.

The next day, John was much friendlier to
Mike. He and Desi shared Mike's cabin for four days. By that time
they were publicly holding hands and stealing an occasional public
kiss. The fifth night, Mike kicked them out of his cabin. He
thought that he had sacrificed enough.

"You guy's take the counselors’ cabin," he
said. So John and Desi moved into the vacant counselors’ cabin.

Sometime later, Yuie cautiously asked Desi
about the incident.

“I thought that Mike needed someone to talk
to,” Desi explained. “And I thought he that he needed a girlfriend
to help him relax at night. I thought that it would be good for all
of us. I didn’t know that his best friend liked me. At first, I was
kind of pissed that Mike wanted me to be with John. But Mike is too
immature for me, right now. And I like John.”

While John and Desi were sharing Mike's
cabin, Jackie finally made an appearance. Mike found her, one
morning, having breakfast in the dining hall. Mike was very glad to
see Jackie. Even though she was not much of an adult, she was,
officially at least, still in charge. But as he looked around, he
realized that the other kids, especially the girls, did not seem so
happy to see Jackie up and about. Cautiously, he sat down across
from the young woman.

"Hey, Jackie," he greeted her. She looked up
at him from her breakfast.

"Hey, yourself," she replied, looking back
down at her breakfast. "I hear you've taken over the Admin's
cabin."

"Uh, well..," Mike sputtered.

Jackie shrugged. "It's okay. It’s just
another reason why we have been dumped."

"What do you mean?" Mike asked.

"Don't you see? We've been abandoned. We
caused our parents grief, and so they abandoned us."

"Huh?" asked Mike, very confused by her
words.

A girl standing nearby asked timidly, "What
about the fog?"

Jackie shrugged again. "That's just their way
of making sure that we can't get out of the mountains and bother
them again."

"My parents wouldn't abandon me," the girl
protested. "They love me!"

Jackie looked at her with pity. "Sure they
do. Then why did they abandon you? Probably, they blame you for
their divorce. And now they're gone."

The girl was clearly shocked. "My parents
aren't divorced!" she said angrily. Mike looked at her, and he gave
a shake of his head, unnoticed by Jackie.

"Where do you think our parents have gone?"
he asked the counselor.

Jackie scrunched up her face and thought for
a moment. "Probably to heaven," she replied.

Other kids had gathered around. They looked
at one another. Some were shocked, some were bemused, and some were
just sad. Clearly, Jackie had become mentally disturbed. Seeing no
point in staying, Mike left. He felt more alone and more scared
than ever. Secretly, he had always hoped that Jackie would collect
herself and reestablish order. Now he realized that Jackie was
barely able to take care of herself.

Still, Mike was determined to survive. He
started requiring the kids who wanted to join the Spears to run
several laps around the track before practice. He explained the
danger of the winter situation to the kids at a night meeting, and
he got them to agree to gather rocks to build the wall in front of
the cave so that they could move the cabins. He asked Jacob to try
to make snares to capture birds. Mike thought that they could eat
the birds, and possibly get them to lay eggs. He did a dozen other
things to try to prepare for the winter. And he made the Spears
practice, and practice, and practice.

One day it came to him that of all the boys,
the girls seemed to trust Ralph the most. He did not understand
this until he realized that it was because Ralph was always trying
to help Jackie to recover. Ralph liked Jackie, the way that John
liked Desi. He would talk to Jackie calmly and gently. He did not
badger her for advice like some of the other kids.

Mike thought about that, and then he acted.
One morning, as Ralph was leaving the dining hall, he was
surrounded by the Spears.

"What's up, Chief?" Ralph grunted. He didn't
like Mike, and Mike didn't like him, but they had reached a sort of
truce at least.

"Come with us, Ralph," Mike commanded.

"Why should I?" Ralph demanded
truculently.

"Because if you don't, I'll hurt you,"
answered Mike coldly.

"You mean that you'll have your gang hurt me,
don't you," Ralph replied angrily. "You're too chicken to do it
yourself."

"Let's go," Mike said, ignoring his
taunt.

Ralph was furious, but he knew that he had no
choice except to obey Mike. Most of the kids now accepted Mike as
their boss, and even the ones that didn't follow the younger boy
knew that the Spears would back him. Seething and surrounded by the
Spears, he followed Mike down to the practice field. There, Mike
handed him a spear and then pointed at a target on a hay bale.

"Throw," Mike said.

Ralph gave the spear a half hearted toss that
barely reached the bottom of the bale. Mike handed him another
spear.

"Listen to me, Ralph," he said very
seriously. "You're going to practice with us an hour a day, every
day, until you can beat me in ten throws."

Ralph was astounded. "You can't make me do
that!" he exclaimed.

"I can't make you get better," Mike answered
grimly. "But I can make you come down here with us. Better get used
to it. And if you want to stop practicing with us, you better be
able to beat me. Now throw."

At first, Ralph tried to sabotage the
practice. Then he tried to avoid the Spears. But he found that if
he wanted to eat, he had to come to the dining hall, and when he
did they would find him. Finally, he started practicing for real,
determined to best Mike and be left in peace. He started practicing
more than the others, spending long hours throwing the spears. Mike
also practiced more than the others, and sometimes in the afternoon
it would be just the two of them, grimly throwing the spears again
and again, trying to outdo one another.

One afternoon, two weeks after he began
practicing for real, he and Mike were throwing the spears. The boys
were matching each other target for target when Mike missed on the
seventh throw. Ralph could barely contain his elation. He took aim,
and when he threw, his spear hit the bull's eye. Then Mike hit the
eighth target. Carefully Ralph threw and hit the target. Then they
each hit the ninth target. Ralph knew that if he hit the last
target he would win regardless of what Mike did. Mike drew back,
and then he threw at the tenth target. It missed. Ralph could
barely contain himself. He had won. Confidently, he tossed his last
spear. It was another bull's eye.

"Good enough for you, Chief?" he asked,
smirking at Mike.

"Good throw, Ralph," Mike responded.

"So, can I go now and not come back?" Ralph
asked sarcastically.

"Yes, but one thing, Ralph," Mike
replied.

"What's that?" Ralph asked, eying Mike
suspiciously.

"Keep your spear. Keep it with you always,
especially when you're down in the girl’s camp."

Ralph gave a noncommittal shrug and walked
away. Ralph was annoyed that he had to keep the spear with him. But
he obeyed Mike's command. He kept the spear, and sometimes when the
other boys were not around, he snuck down to the practice field by
himself. All of the boys became good at throwing spears. In early
July, the teenagers discovered that this skill would save their
lives.

It happened one morning. Later, someone said
that it was about half past ten. The air was crisp, and the sky was
slightly overcast. The faces of the blue bell flowers were wilting
in the meadow. The Spears were down by the practice field. Some of
the girls were in the meadow, some were hanging around their
cabins, and some were over on the boys’ side of the river.

The sound of a motorcycle was heard and then
the sound of more than one. There were four of them, all large
black bikes, and they came roaring over the rise on the gravel road
leading to the camp. The men on the bikes seemed huge after all of
the time that the kids had spent together without adults around.
The man on the lead bike was bearded, but he was not wearing a
helmet, so they could see his face which they would remember,
later.