Tent City (9 page)

“Interesting...I’ll have to remember that,” Bentley says, more amused than irritated.

Brody’s now impatient and tugging on my shirt as if to say, “Can I drink it?” I pop the top for him after I inspect it and he starts to gulp it down.

“So,” I say, “it’s just that I couldn’t help but notice you guys seem to have so many supplies even we didn’t have on the farm. Just curious where you get all the stuff.”

“We have our ways,” he teases with an impossible grin. I can see he probably doesn’t have to explain much. Just gives one of those smiles and all is forgotten.

Some other guys I recognize from earlier join us at the table and Bentley does introductions. I’ll leave that discussion for now, but I’m determined to get to the bottom of all of this.

I don’t know why he’s being so secretive anyway. What’s the big deal?

Kit seems to be having the time of her life. She’s telling stories about back home and she has every guy at the table hanging on to her every word. I find myself drifting off thinking about home. She has always been more comfortable being away from home. I imagine that right now there’s nowhere else she would rather be. She has a full supply of cute boys, who can’t seem to get enough of her, and she’s away from her bickering parents and what she calls the “misery hellhole” in her house.

Truth is, she is probably meant for this life. She’s always ready to roll with the punches, but I can’t help but wish I was back home. Brody would be cuddled in Mom’s lap. I might be reading
The Great Gatsby
by the fireplace while Dad snores in his chair, having fallen asleep after a hard day of chores. It’s still hard to imagine just a few days ago, I sat around daydreaming about getting out of that life, but now that I am, I can’t wait to get back in.

The next morning we are met with another mouth-watering breakfast, which I didn’t eat since I was planning on taking another run. It was tough to deny, but the idea of gut rot and side stitches steered me clear.

Brody seems to have picked up his appetite though and he’s eating enough for the both of us. It’s some sort of biscuits and gravy that could put any top chef to shame.

The more I look around, the more it seems as if everyone has jobs. The cooks are busy preparing the meal and others are doing the cleanup.

I see another couple of kids hauling supplies into the cabins, from where I’m not sure. There are even builders, trying to set up more cabins before winter hits.

I sit with Kit and Brody as they eat their breakfast, but really I’m anxious to get out on the trail again. I figure I have time to eat some of this amazing food when I get back. Kit can tell I’m in one of those moods and shoos me off, and promises to take good care of Brody.

Just as I step outside of my tent and prepare to find a good trail to get back into, I run into Bentley.

“Hey there! I was just looking for you,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” I ask, as I eye him suspiciously.

“Yes, I was wondering if there was anything you needed or if you had any more questions?” He falters a bit, which I find strange, because of the usual confident and almost cocky manner he’s had the entire time I’ve known him, which I guess isn’t all that long.

“Um, no, I’m good I think. Most of the other people around here have been very helpful. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d really like to get going. Maybe we could catch up later?”

He hesitates for a bit, seeming to search for something to say. “Maybe I could come with you?” he asks.

I’m not really sure what to tell him. This is something I do by myself. I don’t want to be rude to him. He’s the leader around here and I’m trying hard to make sure we fit in, if only for us not to get kicked out. I don’t have a plan B. I’m not sure where Kit, Brody and I would go if we weren’t able to stay here, especially with winter looming around the corner.

“Well, you’re not really dressed for it,” I say, motioning to his combat boots, cargo pants and jacket. He’d be sweltering in minutes. “Plus, I’m not sure you can keep up.” At this, he smiles.

“Keep up?” His grin gets even bigger.

“You heard me. Not to brag or anything, but where I come from, I am the fastest kid around. Girl or guy.”

With this, he seems even more interested than before. No chance of deterring him. I shouldn’t be surprised though. He’s seems like the type of guy who’s always up for competition.

“Well, how about this. Give me a shot. If I can’t keep up, you can just keep going on your way and forget I was even there.”

“Well, okay, but time’s a wasting. Do you need to change or anything?”

“No, I’m good like this. Let’s take this trail back here behind the cabins. It goes past the stream we use for water. You’ll need to know that anyway for when it’s your water day.”

I go to ask him what “water day” day is, but before I can get the words out he’s off. It doesn’t take long to see this is a well worn path. There are a few campers hauling buckets of water up as we first start our run.

After a few minutes, it’s just the two of us. I’m a bit surprised with how fast he is, but I tell myself he’ll wear out soon. He can’t keep that pace for more than a couple of miles.

As we keep moving, I actually find myself having trouble keeping up with him. I tell myself it’s because he knows the area more and if we were on flat ground I would have wasted him already. But I guess if he’s this wilderness boy that would explain why he’s in such great shape.

It seems as if we have detoured to another less used area because I’m having trouble with my footing and I find myself having to slow down in order to not twist my ankle. I’ve lost some ground, but I bear down and keep moving, determined not to let him get the best of me.

By my calculations, we have gone at least four miles now, which is getting to me because of the terrain and maybe the altitude. He doesn’t seem to have turned it down even a little. If anything, he seems to be picking up speed.

Just as I’m about to announce he’s got me beat, he stops to listen for something.

“Do you hear that?” he asks, with one hand raised as if to silence me.

I strain to listen, but I hear nothing.

Amazingly, he starts to climb a tree with nothing but his feet and his bare hands, appearing almost feral. He gets pretty high up and then slowly comes back down.

“We need to clear out of this area,” he says in a whisper.

“Why, what did you see?” I ask, expecting him to say he has spotted someone from The Council.

He just shushes me, and then surprisingly takes me by the hand and leads me out of the wooded area we’re in and guides me to an area covered with huge boulders. Then we climb to an area so high we can easily see everything below us.

I take a seat as best I can and I am truly physically exhausted. I go to ask him again what he saw and then he puts his fingers to his mouth again to shush me and points to an area below us.

What I see takes my breath away. It’s this massive black bear with two cubs. She spends a second on her hind legs and sniffs the air and then comes back down, searching for danger. The cubs are swatting playfully at each other. Then the mother seems to decide she doesn’t like the area anymore. She clacks her teeth together and huffs air in and out of her nose as a signal for the cubs to get moving.

“That was amazing!” I say barely above a whisper.

“You don’t have to whisper anymore,” he says with a chuckle. He’s smiling and I can’t help but get lost in his easy way. He’s slouched so comfortably on these boulders that it appears as if he was built for sitting on rocks. I shift uncomfortably.

“Why are bears here?” I say still in astonishment. “I didn’t think we had bears here.”

“Why is anything the way it is? Everything is weird now,” he responds.

“True. So you really heard them while you were running? What did you hear?” I ask.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit for superhuman hearing. I knew she lived somewhere around here, so I was trying to be careful.”

“You didn’t seem careful. You were kicking my butt out there. No offense, but I thought I was going to make quick work of you. You’re pretty good.”

“You’re no slouch yourself. You’re right. No girl in the camp here could keep up with you. But I’ll tell ya, there are a few guys who could give you a run for your money. We try to stay pretty fit here. It’s part of living off the land. We feel it’s important to be prepared for anything… It is interesting though. You say you have
always
been that fast?”

“So are you saying keeping fit is mandatory?” I say avoiding his question. It seemed more rhetorical anyway.

“No, nothing around here is mandatory. Everyone has the ability to do whatever they want. It’s just that if someone doesn’t want to pull their own weight, or keep up with what we’re trying to do around here, they might not get to stick around.”

“You mean you kick people out?” I ask, wondering who died and made him king.

“We have. Don’t get me wrong, Dani. That’s the last thing we want to do, but we have been successful here, and it’s because we keep to certain rules and regulations, but everyone is free to choose what they wanna do.”

“Where do they go if they’ve been kicked out? How do you know they won’t just leave and turn you in?”

“I’m not sure where they go,” he says.

“And what about them turning you in? How do you know that they won’t go running to The Council?”

“I don’t know. Leap of faith I guess.”

“Can I ask you a question, Bentley?”

“Besides that one?” he teases.

“Yes, besides that one.”

“Shoot.”

“Where are all the supplies coming from? I couldn’t help but notice that they seem to be government supplies. Surely, they can’t know you are out here?”

“Hell no. They’d shut the whole thing down. Probably put us in that safety camp you were telling me about. It’s Tuesday, should be a lot more action now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started combing the woods now.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“No need to worry about all that, Dani. I can’t imagine you’ll be on supply duty. What did you have in mind anyway? You’ll get about a week to acclimate yourself, but then you’ll be expected to pull your weight around here, and your brother too.”

I must have hit a sore subject. His formerly charismatic and winning ways have now changed to cold and businesslike.

That tells me he really is hiding something. The feeling I had about being unsafe when we first got to camp is coming back.

“What do you mean my brother too?”

“Well, surely you can’t expect to free-load off the camp, can you?” he says with sudden ferocity, standing now in a defensive position.

I don’t know how I fell for his charm in the first place. He’s acting like a real jerk right now. It wouldn’t be so annoying if he hadn’t been so charming five minutes ago. Talk about split personality. All because of a stupid question.

“I don’t know what you expect a five-year-old to do, but what kinds of options are there anyway? Whatever he does, he has to be with Kit or me at all times,” I say, standing now too, eager to remove the sense of him towering over me.

“You don’t expect someone to hurt him do you?”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“You may change your mind about that someday. You’ll see we’re all good people around here. Hey, and sorry about the way I just came off. I do have to uphold the rules around here though. I can’t have people thinking things are different for you than anyone else.”