It's not a summer escape. There's no tent here. This is a living space. Comfortable. Tidy. Laundry hangs on a line, and Brendan Walsh sits in the open, scraping a hide. He's brown from the sun; his skin is the same shade as his earth-worn jeans and buckskins.

Beside him, Cade, a toddler, plays in the dust. With his dark hair and brown eyes, he can fade into the forest completely. Hide-and-seek is the most terrifying game Cade can play. He's small enough to fit inside stumps or inside the belly of a bear.

His chubby fingers grip his clay animals. They're artlessly made, suggestions of a bear, a cat, a cow. Their owner doesn't care. He marches them up his mother's leg, then down it again. When he looks at her, he laughs. She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

Liza Walsh is ever aware. Ever watching. Ever listening. Even as she braids reeds into a basket, her eyes dart. They linger on shadows, on shapes. It's summer, when the shade beneath the canopy turns the forest to perpetual twilight.

Interrupting his wife's thoughts, Brendan says, “I thought we might hike to the falls tomorrow.”

“That'll be nice,” Liza says. “We'll check the hives on the way back.”

In high summer, the bee hollow flows with honey. The Walshes feast on rabbit and wild parsnips, cattail roots and dandelion greens, and for dessert, blackberries and mulberries, and honey. Honey raw on fingers. Honey thinned in ginger water, honey drizzled on the creamy, custardy insides of a ripe pawpaw.

Fall brings big game, but less honey. Winter is hunger season, and spring, near starvation. So the Walshes visit the bee hollow as often as they can in the summer. They have to be careful. If they damage the hives, the queens will fly away. They'll be left with nothing but sagging, empty honeycomb and the memory of sweet days lost.

When a crack rends the air, Liza jumps to her feet. She plucks Cade from the dust. As unfamiliar voices ring out, she stuffs Cade into a recess in the cliff. It's not quite a cave, just big enough to hide in.

A man says, “South by southwest.”

“Quadrant clear,” a woman replies.

Hands on Cade's shoulders, Liza leans over to whisper, “Stay here, baby.”

Then she rushes outside. Moving as a team, she and Brendan dismantle their camp. The laundry comes down. They haul blankets made of leaves and vines from the underbrush. A hollowed rock rolls over their fire pit. They can do nothing about the smoke. Its sweet scent hangs in the air, but there will be no more white, wispy fingers curling toward the sky.

They don't stop to admire their work. Once the camp is erased, Brendan and Liza duck into the hiding place with Cade. Picking him up, Liza smooths his head against her shoulder.

Outside, two rangers tramp by. Their olive-and-khaki uniforms don't blend into the forest. They're highlighted against it. A streak of light glitters on their badges.

Murmuring, rocking, Liza tells Cade, “Don't ever let them see you, baby. They'll hurt you. They'll infect you.”

Liza presses herself close to the mouth of the cave. The rangers hike on. She listens until she hears nothing but the forest. When the birds start to sing again, when the frogs join in, that's when it's safe to come outside again. Pushing aside the leafy camouflage that hides them, she turns back.

“We can't ever go back. They're all dying. We're the only ones who are safe. Remember that, Cade.”

Cade's eyes are wide and frightened. He's four years old, and he understands that their forest is the only world that's left. When outsiders come through, and they almost never do, they're dangerous. They'll make him sick. Sick means he'll die. Cade's not sure he understands dead, but he knows it's bad.

Past the park rangers, who only hiked in to check on the big-eared bats living among the caves, past hikers trying to orient themselves to find the next trailhead; out of the woods and onto a highway, past cars on the road, and down a long highwayâbeyond a sign that says Makwa Town Limits, down the main street, into the heart of a town green.

Hundreds of people mill the square. Laughing. Eating fair food. Going from booth to booth, ducking helium balloons and stuffed animals tied in plastic. A little boy Cade's age throws a Ping-Pong ball and wins a goldfish. His parents curse under their breath; their neighbors smile and turn toward the bandstand.

Older boys cruise the festival. Their gangly gaits take them past clutches of girls who either watch them or pretend to eat their funnel cakes. Everyone is happyâyoung and old, diverse and energetic. They bask in the sun and share treats, and walk arm in arm, around and around.

What they are not is sick. They're not dying.

One

W
atching two outsiders build a camp, Cade felt a particular hum run through him. It was a sting from the inside. It warmed him, conquering the cold that rose from the ground.

Below, an exotic, gold girl hammered stakes into the ground. Her hair bounced in a ponytail. Her clothes were green and blue and bright, and when she laughed, she threw her head back. Her front teeth were flat, and the canines jutted forward.

Cade wanted to touch her pink lips. Even though the cliff soared above the alien camp, he scented her. Sweetness, and flowers, but not the kind that grew near there. Mint, too, and something else he couldn't place. It was sharp. It burned his nose.

Quiet, Cade pressed his fingers into the cold, damp earth. Spring had come earlyâthe timid, budding part of it. Just warm enough that the trees had knobs on them. Soon, they'd become buds, then tendrils, then leaves. The queen bees were waking their hives. Bears stumbled into the sunlight to break their fast.

And now, these outsiders. With their glowing skin and quick smiles, their strange clothes and music, they were alien. No uniforms like the rangers. No sickness that Cade could see. They weren't starving or desperate.

A hollow ache throbbed behind Cade's temple. He was supposed to be the last. The rest were dead. Or dangerous.

It was too big a thought to wrestle with. So Cade kept watching, noting the things that did make sense. The boy had his own scent. Sweat and more of the sharpness. Juniper and meat; it was overpowering. Cade wondered if they realized that everything in the forest could smell them.

“No, put the cooler in the little one,” the boy said.

He pulled a box from his pocket, then tapped it until it chirped. It was too small to hold a bird, and that didn't make sense anyway. Why would he need a bird in a box? Why would he just stand there poking it?

The girl dragged a red-and-white cooler into a tent. Cade had a cooler hanging outside his cave. It was old, but the same color, the same shape. He kept fresh meat in it so he didn't have to eat pemmican and jerky and dried fish all the time.

Something cracked inside the tent, and Cade lifted his head.

When the girl came out again, she carried a silver can. Drinking from it, she wandered to the boy and leaned against his arm. Looking at the bird box in his hand, she frowned. “I was afraid of that.”

“It's the cliffs,” the boy said. “It'll be fine, we just have to climb or something.”

The girl turned to look. She raised her face to the sky, then pointed at Cade. “Maybe there?”

Exhaling, Cade melted against the ground. He made himself flat, he made himself still. He watched the boy sweep his gaze all along the ridge.

The boy's jaw was broad, his shoulders, too. Solid and confident, the boy saw nothing at all. Then he slipped his arm around the girl and leaned down to kiss her neck.

Cade's sting turned to fire. There weren't supposed to be people left. Rangers . . . a few survivors maybe. He hadn't seen many, but now there were two, a half day's walk from his camp. One of them was beautiful.

The other one touched her, and Cade fought the urge to throw a rock at him. Instead, he pushed onto his hands and started a careful slide down the hill. Distracted by too-big thoughts, and red-hot emotions, he carelessly broke a branch on the way down.

“Did you hear something?” the girl asked.

The boy was quiet, then hummed. “Probably just a squirrel, Dara. I wouldn't worry about it.”

Cade slipped into the trees, invisible on his light feet and in his warm, tanned furs. Cold seeped through his deerskin boots, though. Time to grease and cure them on the fire again.

A chore for later, when darkness fell. There was nothing in his cooler for dinner, so it would be jerky and roots if he didn't get back to hunting. Besides, he'd learned exactly enough about them.

The girl's name was Dara.

There were cornflakes everywhere. Dara let her hiking bag slip from her shoulder and stared at the chaos in camp.

The zippered doors on their food tent flapped. A river of half-melted ice and Diet Coke cans flowed out, mingling with empty cookie boxes. Rice dotted the ground, and a bottle of ketchup leaked from a mortal wound in its side.

“What happened?” Dara asked.

She answered her own question when she picked up the ketchup. A white haze of tooth marks surrounded the gaping hole. It wasn't broken openâit was bitten.

“I didn't know raccoons could work a zipper,” Josh said. He knelt down to save their eggs. Then he groaned when they collapsed in his hand. Something had gnawed the end from each shell and sucked out its contents. It was fine, meticulous work. More complicated than opening a nylon tent, for sure.

Dara grabbed the latrine shovel. They didn't have a rake, so she scraped the grocery garbage toward their fire pit. “See how much is left. You're cute, but I'm not going to starve for you.”

They could have been in Orlando. That's where the rest of the senior class was for spring break. Hanging out with their friends, riding rides, and eating food on sticks . . .

It wasn't hard for Dara to imagine her best friend, Sofia, wearing souvenir ears and soaking up the sun. She'd probably come back with one of those photo key chains. Everybody smiling in it, wearing shorts and sandals instead of coats and boots.

But Josh had offered Dara an adventure. A place she'd never seen and probably never would again. Time alone, together, before senior year ended and they headed to different colleges.

The plan was simple. A real forest, untamed and unmonitored. Past the paths, into places found only on survey maps. She could take her beloved camera. Get pictures of mysterious, wondrous places.

When Dara was little, she camped with her parents. Though her memories were faint, they were fond. Wood smoke and hot dogs roasted on a fire. It didn't matter that her parents' tent stood twenty feet from the next one, pitched on grass. Or that she swam in an over-chlorinated pool instead of a lake. It was the wilderness to her.

So when Josh busted out the plan, she pulled his arm around her and said yes. They'd fought a lot lately. But the arguments were safe. About things and places, instead of feelings. The actual words flew over college plans that didn't match up. Dara wasn't interested in following Josh, and Josh didn't understand why his top pick wasn't good enough for her. Neither of them wanted to admit they'd changed since freshman year.

Back then, photography was a hobby for Dara, and Josh was still planning on saving the world. Now, she wanted to shoot the world and make great art. He wanted to get a business degree and specialize in finance.

Dara said yes to the trip because she wanted things to be okay. She said yes because thinking about the future was just too hard. It was hard to be happy on an expiration date. Running away was exactly what she wanted. What they needed. Their parents thought they'd be in Orlando, their friends would cover for them.

The weather agreed with them: go, be on the land. Be free, be outside. They left Makwa at dawn, stripping their jackets off first thing. It was unseasonably warm, and they didn't feel like sweating for the whole two-hour drive to the protected wilderness area.

They left Josh's truck in a parking lot near the easiest trailhead. Hefting bags and duffels, they stepped off the pavement and into an otherworldly paradise. Waterfalls cast mist and rainbows into the air. A few early flowers teased with color.

The trails grew steeper, and they had to strip their top layers to cool off.

According to the maps they'd downloaded, there was a good place to leave the trail just ahead. Dara hesitated, looking back at the dirt worn smooth, the way it wound through the forest. It wasn't an easy path, but it was visible.

“Come on,” Josh said, tugging her pack straps. “Almost there.”

With one last look at the known world, Dara followed him into the woods. There was less room to marvel as they struggled through underbrush and downed trees, unexpected sinkholes and cliffs that came out of nowhere. They pressed on, though, and around noon, they found their perfect campsite.

A high, mossy wall of sandstone shielded them to the north. A sloping expanse of forest surrounded them on the other three sides. They even had a foundation for their tents, smooth plats of rock revealed by eroded earth.

Though spring had only started, they had green-filtered shade during the day. Thin leaves and buds stretched for the sky above them. The river was a close walk, the clearing big enough to settle in.

But it was colder than they expected. They'd shivered through the last two nights. And the wildlife was more cunning. Dara plucked a pudding cup out of the mess. Some clever creature had peeled the lid from it. There wasn't a scrap of foil left on the edges.

Tossing that into a bag, Dara called to Josh, “How do they even know what's in a pudding cup?”

“They can smell it?”

“Through the plastic?”

Emerging from the tent, Josh presented her with a leaking honey bear. “Yep.”

Dara rolled her eyes. “Put it in a bag and save it. Next time we go camping, we're getting a lock for the cooler.”

“Next time?”

They both laughed. With a long step over the pile of trash Dara had collected, Josh slipped behind her. Binding her in his arms, he rubbed his face against her hair. Taller, a little possessive, he curled around her. His warm breath skated along skin, and she softened, leaning into him.

With a shrug, she let the shovel go. Tangling arms in his, she tipped her head against his shoulder and smiled. “I think we're really bad at this.”

All their friends were in Orlando, but Dara decided she and Josh were having a much better time.

BOOK: Wild

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