I lie down on my stomach at the edge of the hole. I can feel moisture being absorbed by my shirt and pants from the wet ground, but I’ve got a set of rain gear at my camp so I don’t care. I reach into the hole but can’t quite make contact with the tent.
Derrick takes his pack off and lies next to me, which is good, because out of the four of us, he’s got the longest arms. He reaches down and grabs a corner of the tent and starts pulling. “Josh, as soon as you can, grab part of it,” he says.
“I got it,” I say. And together the two of us keep pulling.
Shannon and Brooke, who’ve each knelt on either side of Derrick and me, grab the sides of the tent as it gets higher, and before you know it, we’ve got Brooke’s tent on the ground next to us.
We roll it over so it’s sitting the way it’s supposed to, and Brooke sticks her head in the unzipped door. After a few seconds she comes out with her cell phone.
She peers at the screen. “My dad never wrote back. Or if he did, the message didn’t get to me.” She types something with her thumbs, then frowns. “It didn’t go through.”
“Maybe the system is overloaded,” Shannon says. “You know, because of the earthquake, people are probably calling and texting their families all over the state to see who is okay and who needs help.”
“I guess.” Brooke types something else and hits send. “It still won’t go through.”
“People will come for us anyway,” Derrick says. “This whole leadership-camp thing was supposed to be over in like two more days. Even if we have to wait that long, they’ll come.”
Brooke takes all her stuff out of her tent. While she starts loading her pack, Shannon and I take the tent apart and Derrick goes to get Brooke’s food, which is stashed nearby.
“I know you and Theo were close,” Shannon says. “Maybe if I had kept the pressure on his wound instead of standing up and helping keep the bear away, he would’ve made it.”
“Shannon, we all did what we had to do. He wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did if it weren’t for you.” I keep stuffing the tent into its bag. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I think he was with us.” Shannon stops breaking down the tent poles and looks me in the eye. “The way he would squeeze your hand when you talked to him. I think he could hear you. And that probably brought him some peace. He didn’t die alone. You gave him that.”
A tear runs down my cheek and I wipe it away. “Thanks,” I say. “His parents are going to be devastated.” I think about all the others down there, and my stomach clenches up. They all have parents. “Let’s finish this so we can get back and search for more survivors.”
After Brooke’s camp is all packed up, Brooke and Shannon head for Shannon’s camp up to the next ridge, and Derrick and I head for mine.
We walk fast side by side on the tundra, deciding not to go down to the lake and back up, but to stay up high to circle around to my camp. The sun is breaking through the clouds, and I’m squinting to keep it out of my eyes.
“We’ve got some big rocks to move down there.” I point to the buried camp as we walk.
“I get what you’re saying,” Derrick says. “I mean, I want to find anyone who is alive, too. But think about it.” Derrick stumbles on a rock but regains his balance. “Theo had the flag wand in his hand. He was on the high point of land in the camp.” Derrick pauses. “Remember how that little spot was like ten feet higher than the rest of the camp?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I remember.”
“Dude, that means everyone else was probably ten feet lower than him when the mountainside cut loose.”
“I know all that,” I say. “But how do you explain the food bag that the bear found pretty close to the surface?”
“I don’t know.” Derrick shrugs. “Maybe some stuff got pushed along by the slide before more rocks fell on top of it?”
“So,” I say, “maybe a tent with a person in it got pushed like that food bag did. Maybe that happened to more than one tent. We owe it to everyone to search. The fact that we survived is just dumb luck.”
“Hey, man,” Derrick says. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t search. I’m just not that optimistic about what we’ll find.”
CHAPTER 12
SIX DAYS LATER AND WE’VE got four more shallow graves all in a row next to where we buried Theo. We’ve built rock cairns at the head of each grave.
“Why hasn’t anybody come?” Derrick asks. “My dad would be on this in a heartbeat if I didn’t show up on time. If we all didn’t show up.”
“We don’t know what it’s like anywhere but here,” Shannon says. “Maybe there was widespread damage. And mass casualties.”
I point at the shallow graves and say, “There’s no reason to stay anymore. I mean, if I thought there was still a chance that someone was alive, I’d keep digging.” I feel my eyes getting hot. “We need to leave this place.”
“But if we leave,” Brooke argues, “and they come after we’ve gone, they’ll just give us up for dead, too. They won’t even look for us.”
“We’ll write them a note,” I respond. “We can put it in one of the empty bear-proof food containers and we can plant all of our flags around it so there’s no way they can miss it.”
“What are we going to do after that?” Brooke says. “Walk out?” She shakes her head.
“There was a plan,” Derrick says. “Remember? We were all briefed on the routes to follow if there was an emergency and we had to evacuate on foot. West to Talkeetna or east to Lake Louise.”
“They were about the same distance,” I say, remembering Theo describing part of the plan.
“Yeah,” Derrick agrees. “Both long as hell.”
Brooke huffs. “They spent five minutes showing us on a map, and then they were on to where to dig the latrine. Does anyone even remember which way to go? Everything looks the same. We’ll get lost if we leave.”
“So,” I say, “we stay here when obviously no one is coming?” I raise my voice. “That makes no sense.”
Before Brooke can respond, Shannon says, “One of us has hiked up the ridge every day to try to send a message with your cell phone. None of them have gone through. We should try to send one more message, saying that we’re walking out and which way we’re going, and even if it doesn’t go through now, it could go through as we get closer to civilization. It might save our lives.”
No one says anything. I’m just waiting for Brooke to come to her senses. She’s grudgingly helped dig for survivors and rebury the dead bodies we’ve found, but out of the four of us she, by far, complains the most. Even though Derrick made it pretty clear that this felt more like a recovery than a rescue effort from the start, he’s worked as hard as Shannon and me and never complained about the work—just about being hungry, like the rest of us have.
I point at our four tents in a row in the sunshine on the lakeshore. “At least we’ll have some shelter for the journey. Whichever way we go, it’ll take seven to ten days. That’s what I remember. But for us, it might take longer. I mean, we know generally where we’re going but not exactly. I wish we had the maps.”