2:17 A.M.
“I THINK THIS IS as good a spot as any.” Wyatt turned in a circle in the small clearing they had just reached. “It’s flat and relatively clear.”
People were already sitting, going through their packs or smoothing out a place to lie down. Wyatt had set down Trask, and now his parents were fussing over him. Natalia tilted her head back. It should have been a clear night, but the stars were obscured by a haze of smoke.
“Hey, guys,” Wyatt said. “Before we try to rest, I think we should take inventory. Does anyone besides me have a water filter, like a LifeStraw?” When people shook their heads, he said, “I only have one, but if everyone fills up their bottles at the creek, we can pass it around and take turns using it.” He knelt by his backpack, which Marco had set down, unzipped it, and found first the filter and then a tiny silver square that turned out to be an emergency blanket. He spread it out. “Why don’t we put whatever we’ve got on here.”
“I sure hope our cars are okay,” Marco said as he pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Mine’s a real classic. A 1966 Sunbeam Alpine. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
“Marco has a thing for cars old enough to have belonged to his grandparents,” Beatriz teased as she set down her towel and water bottle on the space blanket. “Cars so old that they spend more time up on lifts with him tinkering on them than they do on the road. Some days I think he loves that car more than he loves me.”
Wyatt said, “I guess we don’t need to add our phones or keys, not unless there’s something useful on your key chain.” Marco repocketed his keys.
“About all we have is a diaper,” Lisa said, “which I’m going to use right now. Oh, and some hand sanitizer.” She picked up Trask and carried him behind a tree.
With Trask fussing in the background, people took items from their packs and pockets and added them to the silver square. For his grandpa’s benefit, Zion narrated each addition. Marco added the leash he’d been wearing around his neck. In his pockets he had a pair of sunglasses, an inhaler, and a bandanna. A few people had food: an apple, a handful of baby carrots in a plastic bag, two Nature Valley granola bars, a small bag of almonds, a KIND bar. AJ’s pack had a book about easy day hikes, sunscreen, and an aerosol can that turned out to be bear spray. People looked at each other but didn’t comment.
From her pack, Natalia added a LUNA bar, her whistle, her first aid kit, and her beach towel. But she found herself reluctant to pull out one item: her phone charger. A bunch of people were going to want to use it. Her phone was still at 43 percent, but the idea of it going to zero, of not being able to communicate once they were back in range of a cell tower, made her feel itchy with panic. Finally she pulled it out and added it to the pile.
“Wait—is that a phone charger?” Marco leaned forward. He was cradling Blue like a big furry baby while on one side Beatriz rubbed his belly and on the other Susan scratched behind his ears.
“My grandpa’s phone is down to seven percent,” Zion said.
Jason held up his. “Mine’s at sixteen.”
“I know it has enough to recharge one phone from zero to a hundred,” Natalia said. “I don’t know if that means it can get like three phones to thirty-three percent.”
Wyatt said, “Let’s start by having Marco hook up to it first and at least get him up to twenty so he and Beatriz can have a light source. And then we can decide who gets it next.” As he spoke, he started pulling things out of his pack and pockets. He had the most of anyone. In addition to the space blanket, map, headlamp, first aid kit, parachute cord, and compass, he also had two Clif bars, two PowerBars, his and Marco’s sunscreen, a knife, rain pants, a fleece jacket, a T-shirt, something in a stuff sack he called a bivy bag, and an emergency waterproof poncho that folded down to a square.
“What’s that?” Beatriz pointed at a four-inch-long orange plastic tube Wyatt was adding to the pile.
“It’s a whistle, but it’s also got a compass, a signal mirror, and a flint fire starter. And the whole thing is a waterproof match holder.”
“You should go on that TV show Naked and Afraid,” Marco said. “That would be perfect for the one item you’re allowed to bring on.”
Next, Wyatt added a flattened roll of TP and a small trowel. Seeing them reminded Natalia about how many hours she had been ignoring her need to go. Intuiting people’s thoughts, Wyatt said, “After this, I’ll dig a trench behind a tree and we can take turns using it. Start at one end, cover your poop, and try not to use too much TP.”
From his pants pocket, Darryl pulled out a yellow box and reluctantly added it to the pile.
“EpiPens?” Wyatt asked. “For you?”
“Zion. He’s allergic to bees.”
Susan’s pack, which had a sleeping bag strapped to the bottom, had some duplicates of Wyatt’s items. She also had a small stove, coffee-making supplies, a bandanna, a bungie cord, and something that looked like a red stick of dynamite.
“A road flare?” AJ asked. “Why do you have that?”
Susan frowned in frustration as she sought the right words. “It begins the fire camp.”
Wyatt helped her out. “Some people use it as a campfire starter. It burns itself up so the only thing you need to pack out is the plastic cap.”
“Why not just use matches?” Zion asked.
“Matches take up less space, but flares don’t require kindling, and they’ll even work on damp wood.”
“I guess the one thing we don’t need to worry about is how to start a fire,” Natalia said. Still, something about the flare nagged her. Maybe she’d seen one recently, marking the site of an accident?
The last thing out of Susan’s pack was a quart-sized plastic bag. Natalia’s mouth watered when she saw what it was filled with: a mix of raisins, M&M’s, and peanuts.
Wyatt added it to the other food. The pile looked large until Natalia thought about how it had to be split a dozen ways.
“What about you, Jason?” Ryan asked. “Don’t you have anything to add to the pile?” He exchanged a meaningful glance with Lisa, who had returned with Trask. The toddler was crying, the sound rhythmic and exhausted.
Jason was wearing cargo shorts with what seemed like dozens of pockets. He shook his head. “Nope. I don’t have anything.”
Getting to his feet, Marco moved closer to him. “That’s not true. I’ve seen you patting your pockets all night. What have you got in there?”
Jason stood up, too, as did AJ. Slowly, reluctantly, Jason pushed his hands into his front pockets. But when they emerged a second later, they were empty. He held them out. “Like I said, I’ve got nothing, dude.”
As Jason spoke Blue hunched his shoulders and bared his teeth. The faintest of growls buzzed around him.
“Let me help you look.” Marco crowded closer and then grabbed one of his arms, while AJ grabbed the other. Jason shouted and twisted in protest.
“I got this,” Marco said. His free hand pushed into one of Jason’s pockets. When he pulled it out, something glinted on his palm. People gasped in surprise. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t food.
Wyatt got to his feet and stepped closer so that his headlamp illuminated it. The object was a little smaller than Marco’s palm. Shaped something like a snowflake, it was made of dozens of twinkling white gems. Set inside the snowflake shape was a cross made of red shimmering stones. The place where the arms of the cross met was marked with a sparkling jewel the size of a dime.
“Oh my God,” Beatriz breathed. “Are those real diamonds?”
Jason opened his mouth but nothing came out. Natalia felt like she could almost hear his thoughts as they scrambled around, looking for an explanation.
Into the silence came a crashing sound behind them. It got louder by the second. The darkness seemed to amplify it. Snapping, cracking, splintering. A bolt of adrenaline shot down Natalia’s spine. What could make that kind of noise?
The jewelry forgotten, they tossed glances at one another, eyes wide. Lisa hugged Trask so tight he let out a startled hiccup and abruptly stopped crying.
Staring in the direction of the racket, Blue began to bark frantically. Marco grabbed his collar as he strained forward.
A deer burst into the clearing. A buck with a huge rack of antlers. Majestic and as improbable as a dream. It leapt right over the silver space blanket, clearing it easily, and then galloped back into the trees.
They were all still mesmerized, when Jason darted to the pile. He leaned down and grabbed up the can of bear spray and the plastic bag of trail mix. Then he turned and ran.