“I never could get the arrows to go where I wanted them to,” I confess. “And the rifles make my ears ring.”
“You’re quite the soldier.” He gets up and brushes the dirt off his jeans. He has a rifle and a crossbow slung over his back, a quiver of arrows, rounds for the rifle, and a hunting knife strapped to his thigh. Quite the soldier. “I’ll leave you alone, if you want.”
“No, it’s okay. I wanted to say good-bye. You can stay. I want you to stay.”
He clasps his hands in front and looks down.
I stare at the grave. The pine and birch wreath still looks fresh and green. Our waxy handprints are undisturbed. I wonder how long the grave will look like this. With no permanent headstone, soon it will be lost among the fall leaves, the snow. Eventually, no one but us will know he’s here. I try to memorize the more enduring landmarks, the birch tree, the angle of the lake behind it. Will I be able to find this place again in years to come?
Am I going to have years to come?
Once I imagined a future with Tucker. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, the two of us being who we were. I knew there would be dark moods and mistakes made. I knew it would be hard. But nothing could be harder than leaving him here in his grave. I never imagined that.
“Good-bye, Tuck,” I whisper, glad that Topher is here to witness it. “I love you, always.” I’ve said this to Tucker a million times, but it feels important for Topher to hear it. He never understood our love. He was like all the adults around us who called it “a rebellious infatuation.” Maybe now he sees it differently.
“That’s it, then,” Topher says, nodding. As we walk away, he squeezes my hand. Just for a second, but it means the world to me. I’m not even sure why.
We don’t know what we’ll find outside the security of our little hidden valley. Tucker was nearly five miles away, over the ridge and deep into the foothills, when Topher found him. So there are some Nahx that way. We’re going the other way, around the lake and following the river that feeds it, to the mountain at the other end. There are so many nooks and crannies in the Rocky Mountains; people could be hiding anywhere. If we find them, we’ll join them, or they’ll join us. There is strength in numbers, or so they say.
We make a motley group. We’re all dressed in dark clothes, with generous amounts of camouflage and army green making up our attire. We’re also armed to the eyebrows—rifles, crossbows, knives. Only Emily has a traditional bow and arrow—she’s the only one who is fast enough to make it practical. We all have bear spray too. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in this post-invasion world, at the mercy of a hostile superhuman foe, we were set upon by bears? Or wolves? I wonder whether bear spray deters the Nahx. Do they even breathe?
We each have a heavy pack. The boys are carrying the last of the food, which is heavier. The girls have clothes and blankets. We have sleeping bags tied to our packs, wet-weather gear, and a few cooking supplies. None of this is new to us. We spent the summer with nothing to do but train for the end of the world. And we all already had some game. Tucker and I could fight. Lochie and Xander are practically mountain trolls. Topher just knows everything. Emily grew up in a yurt or something, and Mandy spent last summer living up in the far north working with Inuit nurses. Sawyer and Felix were in the British armed forces. They both joined up at seventeen and served eight years.
We are well prepared to survive anything, excluding an invasion by a hostile alien race. Even nuclear holocaust would be easier to survive than this. We have iodine pills, for God’s sake, for the radiation. Sawyer has a Geiger counter. He was going to teach a workshop on how to use it. It’s all so funny I could cry.
We hike for three hours, stopping for a break where the lake narrows into the riverbed. Some of the trees are just starting to turn, which is not a good sign. It’s been getting colder. Perhaps we haven’t noticed, what with the end of the world and all, but the nights are going to be cold. And no more are we all cozied up together in an insulated cabin. Xander better be right about the resort being a two-day hike. Our sleeping bags are not all-season. We weren’t exactly planning on spending the winter, or even the fall, out here.
Add freeze to the list of possible deaths. Starve, get shot with a toxic dart, blown up, or die of melancholy. I understand freezing is peaceful, at least. The pain stops and you fall asleep in the snow, maybe not even knowing you’re going to die. That might be quite nice.
We barely speak while we rest, drinking a little water and nibbling on dry noodles and chocolate. We had an obscene amount of chocolate in the camp pantry. Apparently, they had planned for s’mores every night. That’s a lot of chocolate and marshmallows. Diabetes might be another way to die.
I need to break out of this morbid state of mind. Obsessing about the manner of my death is going to suck all of the fun out of actually dying.
Late that afternoon, we come across a narrow swath of burnt forest. Charred black trunks spike upward like medieval torture devices. The forest floor is scorched and featureless.
“This looks recent,” Sawyer says. “This summer recent. There’s no regrowth.”
It’s bleak, but to me it looks pure, and clean. Cleansed. This is a natural part of forest life. I remember this from bio classes. The forest will regrow. Fireweed first, then other things. If it had been last season, the forest floor would be bursting with purple and white and green. As it is, it’s black and dead. I find it sort of beautiful though. Like turned earth, or a . . .
Well, I was going to say a fresh grave, but what’s beautiful about that?
Walking through the harsh landscape, I drag my hands on the blackened tree trunks until my palms and fingernails are stained with soot. The fine particles make my hands satiny and soft, as though dusted with expensive powder. But the smell is earthy and ancient, the smell of fire and wood and time, like a campfire from long ago. It makes my heart ache.
“The Nahx did this,” I say. My voice surprises me. I didn’t mean to speak, but words came out anyway, unbidden.
“It was probably lightning,” Felix says, his appraising eyes drifting over the black charred spindles.
“Has there been a thunderstorm since that day?” I ask. One of the many ironies of this whole nightmare has been the perfection of the summer weather. We’ve had sunny days, with enough drizzles of rain to keep the dust down and the trees green. It’s been warm and moist, but not humid. Like the climate is teasing us, reminding us of this perfect world we’ve lost.
We walk on, coating our boots with soot. Sawyer, at the lead, stops us with a raised fist.
“Fee?” he says, staring at something on the ground. Felix moves forward to the front of the group.
Sawyer points to the forest floor with the barrel of his rifle. “Seen treads like this before?”
Topher, Xander, and the rest freeze. We are lined up in the scorched trees, like pins in a pincushion. I push forward.