Breakdown Read online

“What will that prove?” Maggie said.

  “It will prove that I don’t have to spend more time with you,” Tock said.

  Then he turned to Maggie and made a sick face. When he turned his face back to the fire, Simon made sure not to catch his eye.

  Preston had a hard time believing how dark it was inside the van. He had no idea how late it might be, but it didn’t feel close to morning. It felt like the fat middle of the night. Now and then he heard people turn and breathe heavily, and once someone muttered something that he couldn’t make out. The wind hit the van a few times, but for the most part the sky blinked clear and bright and hot. Part of him wished they hadn’t put out the fire. He wanted to sit beside it some more, to watch the woods grow darker and darker, but he understood they needed to bury a fire at the end of a night. That was good woodcraft. His uncle Adam talked a lot about good woodcraft.

  He tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. His mind felt too active, and it was too hot inside the van. It was kind of fun, actually, being stranded like this. At least it was out of the ordinary. Back home, things were not great. His mom and dad were headed for divorce, so he didn’t mind the delay in getting back to his everyday world. Even sleeping in a van in the middle of the woods was better than the situation at home, where every word was freighted and packed with double meanings, and the tension crackled around the house like static electricity.

  After a while, he gave up trying to sleep. He carefully climbed into the center aisle of the van and worked his way toward the door. It wasn’t easy. People had piled their bags and trunks everywhere. With the lights on, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but in the darkness, everything was harder.

  “Where are you going?” Tock asked him.

  Tock slept at the front of the van, right behind the driver’s seat. Preston noticed that Tock didn’t lower his voice. He didn’t care who he woke with his loudness.

  “Just to the bathroom.”

  “Freaking mosquitoes are killing me.”

  “That’s because you’re near the door.”

  “Oh, thanks, genius boy.”

  Preston didn’t reply. He swung past the last mound of bags and nearly stumbled going out the door. Immediately, a warm breeze hit him. The air tasted good, though. It tasted of pine and mist. A small rib of moon hung just above the tree line.

  Before he could decide what he was doing outside, he saw something move near the front of the van. He stopped breathing for a moment and tried to make his eyes penetrate the darkness. Whatever it was looked big. Bear-big, maybe, or deer-sized. Small hairs on the back of his neck went up. He took half a step back toward the van door.

  “What are you doing out here?” Olivia asked.

  She had been the bear. He felt himself relax. He nearly laughed. Big, brave man out in the Minnesota woods.

  “Bathroom,” he said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “It feels claustrophobic inside. It’s too stuffy or something.”

  “Want to make the fire again?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’m also starving.”

  “We don’t have anything to eat right now.”

  “I know. That’s a problem, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s not a big problem. It’s just a bother. We can last.”

  “I don’t think Flash is coming back anytime soon,” she said. “I think we’re on our own.”

  It felt nice to talk quietly in the darkness, Preston reflected. It felt natural. Frankly, he didn’t care if Flash came back. Not that he wanted Flash to be hurt at all, but he kind of liked being on his own. He liked being responsible for his own choices. He had a sense that maybe Olivia felt the same way.

  “I don’t mind it,” Preston said. “I kind of like it, actually. Is that weird?”

  “No, I get what you mean. No adults. It’s kind of cool.”

  “I wouldn’t even mind walking out,” Preston said. “Just doing it because. Just because. As an adventure.”

  “We could do it.”

  “Trouble is, we don’t know what comes after the thirty miles. That might just be the end of One Hundred Mile Road.”

  “We’d run into something sooner or later. It’s not forest forever. There are probably camps along the way.”

  “Walking without eating wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Sooner we start, the better our chances. If we hang out here for a couple days, it’s not going to make us stronger.”

  “You’ve got a point. But someone’s going to come along eventually.”

  She didn’t say anything. When she did speak again, it was about something else. “If Tock starts to work on one of us, let’s make a deal that the other will jump in,” she said. “You okay with that?”

  “You mean like an alliance?”

  “Sure. Whatever. He’ll be less of a threat if he sees us as united.”

  “He might be listening,” Preston whispered, suddenly realizing the door to the van remained open.

  “I don’t care. I’d like him to know what’s what. I’m sick of him bullying everyone.”

  “Especially Simon.”

  She stayed quiet. Then she moved off, and he didn’t know if she had gone into the bushes herself, or if she had gone off to work on the fire. A moment later, he heard her snapping branches.

  “Get some pinecones,” she said.

  Maggie moved closer to the fire. The fire was the best thing around.

  Meanwhile, she tried not to listen to the argument. The argument went on and on and on. It started at first light and kept going. It revolved around what to do next. Go or stay? Leave or hunker down? She was sick of hearing about it. Personally, she thought it made no sense whatsoever to walk out. It was thirty miles, maybe more, and once they left the shelter of the van, they were committed. The van provided a center. Once they left it, they would be exposed. Everything she knew about survival tactics said stay with the boat, stay with the vehicle, don’t leave. Don’t let go of the boat and swim for shore, because shore appeared closer than it was in reality and you could drown in the attempt. Cling to the boat.

  “It’s getting hotter,” she said when the conversation paused. “I can smell it.”

  “You’re nuts,” Tock said.

  “When the cicadas make that noise,” she said, “it means it’s going to be really hot.”

  “It’s August,” Bess said. “It’s the hottest August on record.”

  “I know, I know,” Maggie said. “This kind of heat is dangerous. We should be careful about forest fires, too.”

  “We could use some rain,” Olivia said. “We could use it bad.”

  “Do you think it could reach a hundred?” Preston asked no one in particular. “I think it could. I think it could reach a hundred today.”

  “It would make walking out pretty hard,” Olivia said.

  “If we walk ten miles a day, we’re out in three days,” Tock said. “Ten miles isn’t much to walk if you have all day to do it. Even in this heat.”

  “Humans can walk four miles an hour,” Preston said. “I read that once.”

  “So ten hours of walking will get us out of here. That isn’t that bad,” Olivia said.

  “Could we just go? We’re wasting time here,” Tock said.

  “We’re also nearly out of water,” Preston said. “We should have a conversation about the water.”

  “It’s a bad idea to leave the van,” Maggie said. “This is the only shelter for a long way.”

  “If we head back to camp,” Preston said, “we can at least be sure we’ll come to something.”

  People didn’t listen to one another, Maggie realized. They talked at one another, but they didn’t listen. Everyone had a position, and they defended it as if to relinquish any ground was to lose something. It was called zero-sum thinking, she remembered from a class she had taken with Mr. Gossling, her sixth-grade math teacher. Some people went through their lives believing if they lost, the other person won. Or vice versa.

  “We could spli
t up,” Maggie said, trying to articulate a position Mr. Gossling might have endorsed. “Some of us could stay, and some could go. Some could go back to camp, and the others could follow the road out. It doesn’t have to be only one thing or another.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one thing or another.” Tock mocked her with his voice.

  “It doesn’t,” she said. “You’re mistaken if you think it can be only one thing or another. It’s not binary.”

  “It’s not binary,” Tock repeated, making his voice sound idiotic.

  Maggie hated when Tock mocked her. She hated it especially because she feared she sounded like his version of her. She realized other people found her annoying, but she wasn’t quite sure why they did. Tock was simply the worst example.

  “We need to go out for water, anyway,” Olivia reasoned. “Why don’t we walk a mile or two toward the end of the road and see what it’s like? We’ll probably cross some water, and we can fill up whatever drinking containers we have. We can make a decision from that point.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Stan,” Tock said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Are we going to pack up everything?” Bess asked. “Should we bring everything?”

  No one answered for a time. Then Olivia took charge.

  “We’re going to walk. Bring what you need. Bring extra clothes — something to shade you from the sun. We’ll make a decision when we reach water whether to go forward or back. How’s that sound?”

  “Ring-a-ding-ding,” Tock said.

  That didn’t sound like something a kid would say, Maggie thought. That was something Tock’s dad probably said. Just thinking of Tock’s father and both of them acting like crazy, gung ho Marines with crew cuts and camo pants made Maggie smile. Then she thought of Tock as a little baby, already dressed in camo pants and with a mushroom haircut, and her smile turned into a laugh.

  “What, are you going nutso on us?” Tock asked her.

  “Let’s go!” Olivia said. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

  “It’s getting hotter,” Maggie said again, but she understood no one listened.

  SURVIVAL TIP #2

  * * *

  Signaling is often the most overlooked of the basic survival skills. Three fires aligned in a row is an internationally understood distress signal. Use mirrors if you have them to alert passing aircraft to your circumstances. Use rocks or lines of sand to write out “HELP” in large letters. Effective signaling is every bit as important as food or water when it comes to survival, and it often makes the difference between life and death, rescue or continued peril.

  Olivia liked being in charge. She liked walking at the head of the group. Each time she turned around to see her ragtag followers, she felt stoked. Not that she was some big deal, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like that. But someone needed to make decisions, and for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, people listened when she made them. It was like a universal law of some sort: Whoever made a decision with the sharpest focus, with the most authority, inherited the right to make them. Weird, she reflected, but true.

  But the big decision, she knew, hadn’t yet arrived. That would arrive as soon as they hit water. Then they would have to commit to moving forward or going back. Good water anyway. They had already crossed a few muddy trickles, but they hadn’t yet encountered an honest-to-goodness stream. It wouldn’t be long, she figured. It was the land of ten thousand lakes, after all.

  The next time she turned around, she saw Tock walking at the edge of the road. He refused to join the group, exactly. He was with them but apart. While everyone else had hurried to get clothes from their luggage and dug around in the van for any water bottles, Tock had concentrated on devising a weapon. Now he wore the van’s tire iron through a loop in his belt. It was a heavy, ridiculous-looking thing, but it was formidable, too. Whenever he came to a decent-sized rock, he pulled it out and whacked the metal against the stone. The clang was really starting to grate on Olivia.

  She was still thinking about Tock when something remarkable happened.

  A moose suddenly appeared on the road. They had seen plenty of moose all summer, but this one simply stepped out of the woods and stopped to look around. It had enormous antlers, but it didn’t look full-grown in its body. It looked young, Olivia thought. She watched it tilt its head like a kid shaking water out of his ear. For a long moment, the image of the moose with the green pines behind it made a perfect postcard shot. Then Olivia felt as though someone had taken a long, screechy draw across a violin string, because the moose that had been tranquil a moment before suddenly curled back into itself and slowly became alert. If it had been possible, Olivia could have believed that the moose had gathered its own molecules into a different configuration. It became more intense somehow. She couldn’t believe that a moose could do such a thing, but it slowly, slowly arched its back and blew air out of its nostrils.

  Then, like a train beginning to move inch by inch, then foot by foot, it charged.

  Preston ran for the trees. The last thing he observed on the road, the very last thing, was the moose closing in like a missile on Simon. The kid stood staring at the moose, too astonished to move at all. The moose had him lined up directly between its antlers. Simon, Preston realized, was dead meat.

  But Preston didn’t have time to do a thing except run. He saw Tock running almost beside him, but then he lost track of Tock and of everything except the ground below him and the panting, heaving rush of the moose plowing down the road.

  Preston stumbled jumping off the edge of the road and scrambled up as fast as he could. He didn’t want to see the moose coming at him, though the truth was he had no idea where the moose might be. He heard the moose, however. It rattled everything, every particle of dust or rock, and he heard people screaming. If he had ever thought of anything like this before — a zombie attack, for example, or a werewolf chasing him — he had always imagined himself calm and calculating and shrewd.

  But he had never imagined a moose attack. Not in a million years. And he sure wasn’t calm.

  He scrambled behind a stand of birch trees and quartered around away from the road, hoping if the moose had followed that he could use the trees to shield himself. When he glanced back, he saw the moose, but it was still up on the road, looking around, dazed. Preston tried not to meet the animal’s eye. It reminded him of the game he had played as a kid with his cousin Jed.

  Big bad wolf, what time is it?

  Two o’clock, the wolf — cousin Jed — would answer.

  Preston would take a step toward the wolf, then repeat the question.

  Big bad wolf, what time is it?

  Seven o’clock, the wolf answered.

  When the wolf answered midnight, everyone had to run back to base. If the wolf got you, you became the wolf.

  Now a moose stood in front of him, angled sideways, and Preston watched the long draw of air flare the animal’s nostrils. Watching it, Preston realized the temperature had risen. The animal looked coated in sweat, and its nostril blows made it appear shiny and mythical. A ghost moose, Preston thought. A phantom silver moose.

  He was glad to have the birch trees between him and the moose. When he glanced to his right, he saw Tock had climbed the first skirt of branches in a spruce tree. Smart, he thought. Tock had done a smart thing.

  For a long moment or two, nothing happened. The moose remained quiet. Preston deliberately breathed through his mouth. He did not want to do anything that would alert the moose to his location. He didn’t even bother squatting down for fear the slightest motion would trigger a charge. He remained still and watched the moose, astonished that this had happened.

  It was only after his heart had slowed that he saw the shirt dangling from the moose’s left antler.

  A shirt, he wondered, not comprehending. It took a moment to make the image real in his mind. It wasn’t a shirt anyway. It was a piece of cloth, maybe a piece of backpack, but it dangled from the moose’s antler like an absurd earring. Whenever
the moose moved its head — something it barely did — the cloth swung like a dull counterweight to its movement. Preston had seen pictures of bullfights in Spain when the picadors had punched their lances into the bull’s skin, and the bull had appeared rocky and uncertain. That’s what the moose looked like to him.

  But what was the cloth dangling from its antler?

  Preston squinted and tried to see. The moose pawed at the ground, then bent to eat something. Finally, the moose lifted its head, almost, Preston reflected, like someone emerging from a dream.

  The moose took a step forward, seemed to reconsider, then turned directly toward Preston and began walking forward. Preston shrunk down behind the birch trees, thinking it was too late. He looked rapidly around him, wondering what tree he could climb. He saw that Tock had made his way up onto a higher branch and almost ran to join him, but then he thought about the moose trampling him and felt the strength go out of his legs. When Preston looked back, he saw the moose veer off from his line, paralleling the road and heading toward Camp Summertime, finally breaking into a trot that took it away.

  Preston did not move.

  Not even when the moose was out of sight.

  Not even when he heard the screams begin up on the road.

  Bess screamed.

  She screamed because her nervous system felt overloaded, and she felt if she didn’t scream, she would have exploded.

  She screamed because Simon stood in the center of the road, entirely unhurt, the moose having missed him by a fraction of an inch.

  She screamed because Maggie lay in the middle of the road, her body twisted in an unnatural way.

  She screamed because she could close her eyes and see again the moose charging at them, its head lowered, its eyes red and crazed and unholy.

  She screamed because she feared the moose would return to finish its job, only something about the moose’s posture had changed just before it walked off. Something had settled, like a person shrugging, and the moose had wandered off aimlessly, almost seeming guilty for what it had done.