“The quake must’ve been pretty widespread,” Derrick says, “for the military to be getting involved.”
“See,” Brooke says, “we’re going to be rescued. They’re already out looking for people.”
“Maybe my dad is flying one of those choppers,” Derrick says. “But if he is, that means they’re already coming back from somewhere, because they’re flying west to east.” Derrick takes his pack off, wrestles out his binoculars, and scans the horizon. “They’re too far away for me to tell what kind they are, but they don’t look like the kind my dad flies.”
CHAPTER 10
WE REACH THE EDGE OF the landslide and walk single file on the narrow trail along the lakeshore in the spitting rain. After a mile or so, we start heading up the ridge toward Brooke’s campsite.
The pain in my calf is knotted, and stings with every step. If I were home, I’d need to rest it for a few days to let it heal so I could be at my best for cross-country races, but now I’m probably doing more and more damage, not that I have a choice. Even with the pain, I could go for miles and miles. I’m starting to outdistance everyone on the climb, so I stop on a flat spot and wait. With one canister of bear spray among the four of us, we need to stay close to each other.
When we’re all together, Shannon says, “When we get back down to the landslide, we should try to find the satellite phone. Then we could just call for help.”
“How are we going to know where to dig?” Derrick asks.
“We know where the flag was. And, thanks to the bear, we know where the kitchen was,” I say. “So, we should be able to map it all out. Plus, they put our cell phones in with the satellite phone. Maybe they would work, too. You know, from a high spot.”
“I doubt it,” Shannon says. “We are way out here. Hundreds of miles from nowhere.”
“Then why would they collect the phones from us?” I ask. “If they didn’t work, then they wouldn’t have bothered collecting them.”
Derrick responds, “They didn’t want us listening to music, looking at pictures, playing video games. All the crap my parents said it’d be good for me to get away from.”
Brooke hasn’t said anything for a while. The rain has washed most of the blood off her face, exposing the scratches that were bleeding. They look like they sting. Maybe because she can tell I’m looking at her, she turns toward me.
Then she says, “Cell phones.” She brushes her hair out of her eyes. “I’ve still got mine.”
“You snuck it back?” I ask. “Gutsy.”
“I never turned it in,” she responds. “Well, I turned in a phone, it just wasn’t my phone. And they only work up high, and even up there”—she nods toward where we are going—“just barely.”
“Bringing two phones,” Derrick says. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
“My dad,” Brooke says. “He made me do it. Told me to use it just for emergencies. He gave me a solar charger, too.” She shakes her head and says softly, “My dad. The gadget guy—that’s what he calls himself—comes through.”
The rain lightens up as we pick our way toward Brooke’s camp. A pale outline of the sun shows through the thinning clouds, but the wind is still blowing.
We top the first ridge above the lake and stop again.
“Too bad they didn’t let us use this ridge,” I say, staring up to the next one, where Brooke’s camp is.
“Self-reliance,” Derrick says. “They didn’t want us so close that we could just run back to camp if we got scared or whatever.”
Shannon turns to Brooke. “Did you use your phone? Did it really work?”
“One bar. I sent my dad a text last night,” Brooke says. “It was delivered, but I never heard back from him.”
Another squadron of jets screams over us, just specks in the sky. “Can you call a jet on a cell phone?” I ask.
Derrick laughs. “Only if you know someone on the jet and their number.”
“What about the satellite phone? Can you call a jet with that?” Shannon asks, looking at Derrick.
“I don’t know.” Derrick shrugs. “Just because my dad’s in the military, it doesn’t mean I know everything.” He looks away. “He barely talks to me.”
“Who cares,” Brooke says. “When we get to my tent, I’ll just text my dad again. He’ll know what to do.”
“I just hope all of our parents are okay,” I say.
Everyone nods and we keep walking.
I picture our house in Fairbanks. If the quake could crumble the rocky slope above Simon Lake, it could easily collapse a house.
I just hope it wasn’t as strong in Fairbanks as it was here.
When we get to the ridge with Brooke’s tent on it, there’s a series of cracks in the ground. I turn to Brooke. “The exact same thing happened on my ridge.” I point across the lake to land approximately on the same level as where we’re standing.
“At least your tent didn’t get swallowed,” Brooke says.
In the distance we can all see her green flag, but there’s no sign of her tent. I try to imagine what it would’ve been like to be inside my tent and have the ground open up and swallow me. Maybe that’s why she was so much more freaked out than Shannon and me. Maybe that’s why she was acting so selfish, like she didn’t care if Theo lived or died and didn’t even want to try to save him.
Maybe.
Or, maybe that’s the way she is.
“The ground split right below me,” I say. “After I was tackled by the first tremor, I rolled onto my back to get away from the split. But being in a tent, that must’ve been scary.”
“I was like a cat in a bag that had been tossed into a lake.” Brooke pauses. “I was drowning. At least that’s how it felt.”
No one says anything for a few seconds, but then Shannon says, “It’s hard to believe the quake just happened this morning. It already feels like a long time ago. I mean, so much has gone on since then.” A tear spills down her cheek and she wipes it away.
We all nod in silence. With digging Theo out and then facing the bear, we haven’t really dealt with the reality that there are probably a lot of dead people down there. People we were living closely with until this morning. It just as easily could have been one of us, or all of us, buried down there. Everyone had a couple of days for a solo experience, and ours just happened to fall when the quake struck.
“After we get our supplies, so we can, you know, not die,” I say, “we need to keep searching for survivors. Just because Theo died”—I can feel my voice starting to crack—“doesn’t mean everyone else did.”
CHAPTER 11
“YOU WERE IN THAT THING when the ground opened up?” Derrick points to Brooke’s tent, which is sitting on its side at the bottom of a crack that opened up during the quake. “Unbelievable. What are the chances?”
Brooke nods. “Climbing out wasn’t easy.” She touches the bruise on her forehead.
“Let’s haul it out of the hole,” I say, wanting to keep us moving since we have my camp and Shannon’s to dismantle after this one.