The Trip to Raptor Bluff (13 page)

Lucy had stuffed the tarp in her duffel bag and was slipping into her backpack within two minutes of reading Dakota’s note.  Kate, sensing Lucy’s desperation, was also prepared to retrace yesterday’s steps and begin the trek up the northern side of Hammer Mountain.  Sarah pointed at her bloody and blistered heels and claimed she couldn’t walk.

“Then you are staying here all by yourself,” retorted Lucy.  “Why didn’t you take care of those blisters when they started?  You know we have first aid supplies because I had you put them in your bag!”

“Because if the blisters got bad enough, we would have to stop for good and wait for help to find us,” shot Kate.  “She was counting on that.  She pulled the same stunt at St. Mary’s last year when we had track during PE.  She ran the first day without socks so she would get blisters.  It worked.  She was allowed to sit out of PE until the blisters were healed.  By that time, track was almost over.”  Kate threw Sarah a disgusted look when she said, “You took your socks off before we started down the mountain, didn’t you?” 

Kate was a tall and lanky sophomore with thin, wavy hair that she kept very short.  The unfortunate result of her chosen hair style was that it resembled an old-fashioned, copper colored bathing cap.  She had a long face that dissolved into her neck from a recessive chin.  Her eyes looked huge behind thick glasses and added to the perception that she was destined to become a scientist or librarian.

Lucy tore through Sarah’s bag and threw a pair of large bandages at her.  “We are leaving.  You are on your own.”

“Dakota will be in Port Fortand by tonight!  Her cell phone will have coverage down there!  She will tell people where we are and they can come and get us!”

“Dream on, Sarah.  My father told Rick that the earthquake knocked out cell coverage on the coast from Northern California all the way to British Columbia,” retorted Lucy.  “And even if help came, were you expecting someone to carry you out?”

Sarah’s expression was stricken when she bleated, “But how could cell coverage go out?  Don’t cell phone signals travel through the air?  How could the earthquake…”

“Cell phones need cell towers to send signals,” interrupted Lucy.  “If the towers are down, they can’t transmit.  Why do you think it was such a big deal when we lost the satellite phone in the fire?”

Sarah stared gape-mouthed as Lucy and Kate turned their backs and began to walk away. “Wait up!  You can’t leave me here!”  She was ripping the paper off the bandages as she wailed.

“Try to catch up,” Lucy yelled over her shoulder.  “Otherwise, we will meet you in Port Fortand.” 

Sarah’s panicked cries followed Lucy and Kate into the trees.  “Maybe we should wait for her,” Kate said nervously.  “It will only take her a few minutes to catch up.”

“You can wait for her if you want.  I’m not stopping,” said Lucy.  Even with her gear weighing her down, she was speed walking up the incline.  Kate stopped for a moment, unsure of what to do, and then quickened her pace and caught up with Lucy. 

“Sarah is a spoiled brat, in case you didn’t notice.  She thinks the world revolves around her feelings.  She is going to tell her parents that we abandoned her.  It won’t be pretty.” 

Lucy didn’t reply, partly because her winded state wouldn’t allow her to speak, but mostly because she was afraid of what would come out of her mouth if she said anything at all.

Lucy had found it hard not to stare at Sarah when she first saw her on the bus. Sarah had long black hair, almond-shaped green eyes heavily fringed by dark lashes, a brilliant smile, and a face full of freckles that did not detract at all from her unusual beauty.  Her only visible flaw was a strangely shaped body.  Sarah’s long torso was connected to incongruously short and very stumpy legs.  Her calves and ankles showing beneath her capris looked like putty-colored, round wooden pegs.  After spending almost two days in Sarah’s presence, Lucy no longer saw anything attractive about the girl.  Instead, she thought to herself that Sarah’s elephant legs weren’t nearly as unattractive as her conniving personality.  She ground her teeth and tried to block out the sounds of Sarah’s pathetic cries.

Lucy was physically incapable of keeping up the rapid pace and was nauseous with exertion thirty minutes later when she stopped to take a sip of water and catch her breath.  “We will give Sarah five minutes to catch up.  If she isn’t here by then, we go on without her.  I have to find Dakota before dark.”  She glanced at her watch.  “Now she has four minutes.”

Three minutes later, Sarah crashed out of the trees behind them.  Her face was crimson, and slimy with snot and tears.  “I’m reporting you for endangering an injured child!” she shouted at Lucy.

“You endangered the whole team by forcing us to keep your turtle pace all day yesterday!  My daughter is missing because of you!”

Kate was thinking that Lucy was every bit as slow and complaining as Sarah during the previous day’s travel, but the thought died in her head when she noticed that Sarah was empty-handed.  She wasn’t wearing her backpack, either.  “Sarah, oh my god!  Where is your stuff?”

“I left it behind.  It was too heavy!”

Lucy stared at Sarah in disbelief before hurling her duffel bag at Sarah’s feet.  “Then you are carrying my duffel bag,
and
Kate’s.”

“I can’t!”

“We barely have enough water as it is and you deliberately left yours behind,” spat Lucy.  “You have three choices:  you carry the bags and we will share our supplies; you can walk with us to Port Fortand empty-handed and we
won’t
share our supplies; or you can go back to your bags and sit there until someone finds you.”  She was dead serious and Sarah knew it.  When Lucy began walking, Sarah picked up the two duffel bags and followed.

While the pace they kept was steady, the hike uphill was difficult and slow.  By the time they reached the summit of Hammer Mountain, the sun was hanging low in the western sky behind a curtain of heavy rain clouds.  “We are going to get soaked but at least we won’t die of thirst.  We can catch some rain water in the tarp,” said Lucy, dropping to the ground.  She silently cursed herself for not monitoring their water intake the day before.  When they had stopped at the summit of Hammer Mountain thirty-six hours earlier, each person on the team was carrying eight, twelve-ounce bottles of water.  Now they were down to four bottles between three people.  All of them were parched and weak from dehydration and exertion.

“Dakota might already be in Port Fortand,” said Kate, touching Lucy’s arm.  “She was twice as fast as us and she had a big head start.  She’ll be fine.”

Lucy buried her face in her hands and sobbed.  “She has to be fine.  She just has to be.  We can’t climb down the mountain in the dark.  Oh god!”

Sarah had not spoken a word since she caught up with them earlier that morning.  Now she looked at Lucy with hostility and said, “This is where we stopped yesterday morning.  I can’t
believe
we are right back where we started.”

“Do. Not. Say. One. More. Word,” Lucy growled. 

“I hope your blistered heels fall off, Sarah,” said Kate.

Lucy took a jumbo candy bar from her pack and threw it disdainfully at Sarah’s feet.  “Put your ponchos on, both of you.  It will be raining in a few minutes.”

“I don’t have a poncho,” mumbled Sarah sullenly.  “It’s in the bag I left behind.”

“Looks like you are going to have a long, wet night then,” retorted Lucy.  “Kate, uncap your empty water bottles.  You and I will each hold two ends of the tarp, like we are folding a sheet.  Sarah, your job is to make sure you catch the rain in the empty bottles when it pours from the bottom edge.”

It was almost dark by the time they filled their bottles.  When all twelve empties were full and the rain showed no signs of letting up, they shared their four remaining bottles of unopened water, and then refilled those with rain water.  Sarah was soaked from head to toe.  Kate’s and Lucy’s shoes and jeans were wet and muddy, and all three were shivering with cold when the task was finally complete.

Lucy and Kate shook out the tarp and spread it under a large fir tree.  The rain dripping from the branches was only slightly less than the rain falling from the sky until an aftershock shook the earth.  Water from the tree drenched them.  They wearily shook out the sopping tarp again and settled for the night.

“Let’s huddle together for warmth,” suggested Kate. 

Lucy scooted up beside her until their shoulders touched.  They leaned against the tree trunk and tried to get comfortable.

“Sarah, if you sit between us, we can drape our ponchos over your shoulders at least,” said Kate.

Sarah ignored them, choosing to sit by herself with the far edge of the tarp draped over her body. 

“Make a note for the record, Kate,” said Lucy.  “We offered to share our ponchos and body heat with Sarah but she refused.  She thinks her story will sound better if she gets to tell everyone that she sat all alone, wet and cold, while we stayed warm and dry.”

Kate drifted off within minutes of settling beneath the tree beside Lucy.  Sarah cried noisily for a long time before rolling herself in her side of the tarp and falling asleep.  Lucy was wide awake with her nerves humming with anxiety for Dakota.  

Between Andrea’s moaning and Tara’s agitation, Reba was awake most of the night.  When daylight finally broke, she sat up on the miserably uneven ground and surveyed the area in the dawn light.  Wisps of mist swirled within the clearing, moving among the ferns and highlighting their emerald green color.  The undergrowth and trees glistened with the previous night’s rain but the sky was clear.  It was cold and Reba shivered beneath her coat and rain poncho.  She needed to pee and slipped on Andrea’s flip flops to cross the clearing.  Andrea was already up, and Reba wondered if she had stayed in that position throughout the long night, hugging her knees to her body and rocking while she stared morosely at nothing.  If she was even aware that Reba was awake and moving, she didn’t show it.

Tara was sitting up when Reba returned from her bathroom trip.  “You must be feeling better, Tara.”

“I feel like I am getting over the worst sickness of my life but at least my arms and legs aren’t screaming with pain.  Now they just ache.  I’m still nauseous, but my stomach cramps and diarrhea seem to be over, too.  I don’t feel like I’m dying anymore.”

“You need to keep drinking water.”

Tara nodded absently.  She drank a bottle of water and lay back down with a sigh.  Within minutes, her breathing became slow and regular as her exhausted body slipped into its first restful sleep in days.

Reba watched the mist burn off and wished that she could abandon her growing anxiety and find oblivion like Tara and Andrea.  The stark reality of their situation had finally settled in her conscious mind and she understood with sickening clarity that out of the three of them, she was the only person who wasn’t crippled by a physical or mental ailment. She was scared.  She was so scared in fact, that she had no appetite at all.  There was nothing they could do to help themselves except further ration their food and wait.  At least she had found a way to protect her bare feet without borrowing Andrea’s shoes; she fashioned some makeshift sandals by using elastic hair ties to bind her broken flip flop bottoms to her feet.  They were flimsy but at least they allowed her to walk without adding to the cuts and bruises she already had.  She cried quietly for her family.

**********

“Let me have Mom’s shoes, Reba.  I need to pee.”

The sound of Tara’s voice startled Reba out of her brooding thoughts. 

“Can you get to the stump by yourself?”

“Yeah.  I think so.”

Reba tossed the sandals and watched as Tara slid them on her feet.  Her spirits lifted a little when Tara pulled a clean shirt from her duffle bag and picked up her pants and underwear to take with her; at least she was feeling good enough to consider putting her clothes back on. 

When Tara finished relieving herself, she shuffled to the spring and stripped off her dirtied t-shirt.  She was shivering in a thin shaft of sunlight as she bent to retrieve Andrea’s soaked and diarrhea-soiled sweatshirt.  It was still sitting in a twisted mound where they had left it two days earlier.  She wrung out the rain water and used it to scrub the crusted feces from her emaciated looking body. 

“She looks like an old lady from here,” Reba thought to herself.  “She’s not young anymore.”

When Tara was clean and dressed, she rinsed the sweatshirt in the spring and hung it on a branch to dry.  She was buttoning her jeans as she shambled towards Reba, “I still feel like shit, but at least I have rejoined the human race.”

Reba nodded absently.  “Every single one of your bones sticks out.  You are still dehydrated.  You need to drink at least a gallon of water.”

Tara picked up a water bottle and began to drink.  When the bottle was empty, she turned her gaze to her mother and whispered, “Has she even moved today?”

“She got up to pee while you were sleeping but otherwise, no.  I’m not sure she even knows where she is.  It’s weird, Tara.  She was fine when you were so sick but the minute you started feeling the tiniest bit better – when you wanted to walk to the stump instead of shitting all over yourself - she fell apart.”

“Hey, that’s an idea.  If I act like I’m dying again, she might snap out of her funk.”

“Very funny.  She is not going to go psycho on us, is she?” 

“Not in the sense that she will hurt herself or anyone else.  She just wants to feel bad for a while.  We are actually better off with her in this state.  If she cycles into her manic mode, she will drive us crazy.  Let’s hope nothing happens to kick her into high gear.”

“You have been living with this for your whole life?”

“She is normal most of the time, but she can be a real pain when she stops taking her meds.”

“Well, it kind of sucks to be in a life-or-death situation when the only adult among us is having a psychic break because her boss might be mad at her.”  The disdain in Reba’s voice was palpable. “We need help, Tara. This is serious.”

“I’m more worried about what will happen to me after we get out of here. My dealer is going to come after me and make me pay for those OxyContin.  I think I can work it out if Mom will cooperate.  If she will give me the money to pay him off, he will go away and we can keep the police out of it.”

“Yeah, and you are going to stay off drugs and live a happy, productive life,” said Reba in a voice laced with sarcasm. 

“Don’t you think that’s a good idea? I mean, we have plenty of time to make Mom see the sense in my plan.  She just has to give me the $450.00 to pay off my dealer instead of going to the cops, and that will solve everything.  She doesn’t even have to tell my dad…”

“Are you even fucking
listening
to yourself, Tara?”  Reba shouted. “You are thinking like a drug addict!  You
are
a drug addict!  You are seriously worried about your dad finding out about the drugs when you don’t even know if he is still
alive
?  My whole family could be dead! 
We
could die out here!  And you are worried about your drug dealer?” 

Andrea gazed at Reba with tragic eyes and said, “You are right.  We could die out here.”

“Well, thank you for coming out of zombie la-la land!” snapped Reba as she stood up.  “We need to find some wood for a fire and put it in the sun to dry.  I don’t want to freeze through another night.  Is either one of you capable of helping me?”  When no one moved, Reba muttered, “Great!” and stomped into the forest. 

“That should be enough for tonight,” said Tara as she dumped her stack of wood on top of Reba’s.  She was attempting to help, but was still too weak to collect more than one armload.  Andrea hadn’t moved.  Reba laid the wood and some kindling on top of the largest boulders she could find and hoped they would be dry enough before nightfall. 

**********

Andrea and Tara slept through the afternoon. As the sun slipped behind the trees, Reba stacked small branches on top of a pile of kindling and went to get the matches.  They weren’t in Andrea’s duffel bag so she woke her with a rough shake. “Where did you put the matches?”

Andrea sat up and began patting her pockets.  “I don’t know,” she said dully. 

Reba sighed in annoyance and began searching through the other packs and duffel bags.

“Wait, I found them.  Here they are,” said Andrea, holding up the soaked and disintegrating cardboard packet.  “They were on the ground underneath my poncho.”

Reba’s composure shattered.  Snatching the matches, she laid them on a dry boulder and began pulling the tarp from the tree branches.  Her shoulders shook with silent sobs as she cleared a patch of level ground and laid the tarp.  She collected her bags and sat down in the dimming light.  Tara soon joined her.  When darkness fell and Reba finally dozed off, Andrea had moved to the tarp as well.  They hadn’t spoken a word to each other in hours.

**********

“Did you hear that?”  Andrea jolted upright from her prone position and began to shake Tara and Reba from their sleep.  She jumped to her feet in the cold dawn air and began to shout, “There’s a helicopter out there!  Can you hear it?”

Tara and Reba sat up to listen.  The unmistakable noise of helicopter rotors sounded in the distance. 

“It is coming from that direction,” said Reba, pointing to the north.  “It must be going to Port Fortand.”

“Lucy and her team are in Port Fortand,” Tara said.  “She will tell them we are here.”

“We need to do something!  We need to light a fire and wave the tarp so they know we are here!” cried Andrea as she flapped her hands and ran in circles.  Her paralyzing depression had evaporated and in its place was a sparking intensity.

“It will be a while, Mom.  Port Fortand was wiped out, remember?  We aren’t going to be their number one priority.”

“But I hear more helicopters!” cried Andrea, whipping her head around to scan the sky.

“It could be days until they get to us,” said Reba, watching Andrea with worry.  Andrea’s whole body was vibrating with nerves.  “Settle down. We need to be patient.”

“Patient my ass!” Andrea screeched over her shoulder as she ran towards the cliffs. “We need to let those pilots know we are here!”

When Reba started after her, Tara grabbed her arm.  “Give her time to figure it out.  She will come around when she is ready to.”

“Aren’t you worried about her getting too close to the edge of the cliff?  What if there is an aftershock?”

“Just leave her alone. She won’t listen to us and there is nothing we can do to stop her.  Trust me.  She can’t hear anything but her own thoughts.  The only people she will listen to when she is like this are her alpha dogs.  We aren’t alpha dogs so she won’t hear a word we say.”

“Say what?  Alpha dogs?  Tara, what are you
talking
about?”

“My dad and anyone in the Zeem family qualify as Mom’s alpha dogs.  She is submissive to them and does whatever they say.  No one else matters.”

Reba tried to comprehend the bizarre statement and couldn’t.  “Whatever,” she mumbled as a fresh wave of anxiety rolled over her. 

Andrea ran into the clearing ten minutes later and practically dove for the tarp. “The helicopters are flying over the ocean!  I can see two of them!  They will see the tarp if I wave it at them from the cliffs!  They will know we are here!”

“Mom, you can’t stand on the edge of the cliffs…”

“I’m not stupid!” shrieked Andrea, bundling the tarp in her arms.  She dashed into the woods as Tara and Reba stared at each other. 

“Just ignore her,” sighed Tara.  “Like I said, she won’t hear a word we say.”

Andrea’s shouts soon rang through the forest, “Over here!  Over here!  Help!  We are over here!”

“I should probably go check on her,” mumbled Tara a few minutes later.  She slipped on the pair of improvised flip flops Reba had made for her and rose stiffly to her feet.  “Hand me a bottle of water and one of her candy bars, will you?  I haven’t seen her eat anything in days.”

Twenty minutes later, Tara emerged from the woods.  “She is staying away from the edge and she accepted the food and water.  I guess that is something.”   

“How far away are the choppers?”

“Too far.  At least a mile, I think.  They aren’t going to see a forest green tarp flapping in the wind from a mile away.”  Tara slumped to the ground.  “Even if they do see it, which they won’t, they aren’t going to stop what they are doing to come and get us.”

“Well, maybe you should tell your mom that they can’t hear her, either,” snickered Reba.  “She’s going to cough up her throat if she keeps screaming like that.”

Andrea was stiff-legged with agitation when she marched back into the clearing an hour later.  She tossed the tarp at Reba and rasped, “Your turn.”

“My turn to what?”

“Mom, they can’t hear you screaming and they can’t see the tarp because it is the same color as the trees.”  Tara was lying down again, looking drained and pale.

Andrea ignored her and kicked the tarp towards Reba.  “Your turn.”

Tara kept her tone patient, as though she were talking to a small child, when she said, “Mom, listen to me. Lucy Zeem is going to tell someone where we are.  We have to wait our turn for rescue. It won’t do us any good to kill ourselves screaming for help that isn’t going to come today.”

“Doing something is better than doing nothing!  I checked the matches and they feel dry to me.  I can at least light a fire where the helicopter pilots can see it!” 

“Fine,” groaned Tara as she stood up. “We will help you find some wood.”  She ignored the incredulous look that Reba gave her and waited until Andrea was out of earshot before she whispered, “Let her stand out there and flap the tarp and scream.  It will keep her occupied.  She is buzzing right now and I don’t feel like listening to her id-dump all day.”

“Id-dump?”

“Yeah, as in
id
and
ego
.  The id doesn’t understand logic; it wants what it wants.  If Mom wants a helicopter pilot to see her, then he will absolutely, without a doubt, see her.  Let her start a fire and try to wave him over this way.  It’s better than having her sit here with us, spewing every disconnected thought that races through her head.”