The Distance from Me to You (26 page)

McKenna took several steps back. “Hank,” she whispered. “Hank, come.”

Hank dragged his belly backward, along the ground, toward her. And the raccoon fell forward, onto all four paws, took a step toward them, and roared again—this time even louder than she'd expect a bear to roar. McKenna didn't wait to see if it would lunge, she just turned, banging through the trees, running.

But it was only that first surge of adrenaline that allowed her to run with the pack, maybe a yard or two, after which she had no choice but to dump it. The sound of her footsteps drowned out whatever was going on behind her, she threw the pack down not knowing if Hank and the raccoon were battling, and ran until the dog caught up with her, zigzagging in front of her and turning off in the opposite direction.

She followed him. She wouldn't allow herself to think about how far she was traveling from the life force of her pack. She just ran, following Hank until night fell again.

McKenna stumbled forward onto the ground, her eyes facing the dirt. She covered her head with her hands. “I give up,” McKenna said into the ground. “I give up.”

Hank snuffled back to her. He peered into her face, licked her. She refused to pick up her head. The dog barked.

She couldn't give up. She was Sam's only chance. She had to get to her feet.

Standing, she looked over her shoulder, as if she could measure the distance back to all her belongings, refusing to remember how happy she'd been to find them. And now she was facing her third night alone, this time with no jacket, no sleeping bag, no food, no water.

Hank barked again. He turned around and started trotting. There wasn't any point in stopping. If she was going to die of exposure or dehydration or starvation, she would do it on her feet. Hank bounded through the trees and McKenna walked forward into one of the strangest sensations of her life.

All these days, these past awful days, walking from one piece of forest into the next. But this time, as the dusk settled in around her, she saw stars gathering not through trees, but in a wide and insistent sky.

I've been here all along,
the sky told McKenna,
and so has the world.

Here it was, a small piece of the world. Through the dusk, with her one open eye, she could see a clearing. A little log cabin with a chimney and smoke. Sitting out front, in an Adirondack chair, was a man she'd met just once before, though
she'd heard about him many times. A man with a long beard and a hat, and she knew that somewhere on his shoulder was a tiny parrot.

McKenna walked forward, waving her arms over her head, as if she needed that gesture for him to see her.

“Walden!” she called, as if she'd been looking for him this whole time.

For a moment he sat staring at her, so placidly that McKenna worried this tableau was a mirage. Maybe it was only a product of her delusional state, a hallucination, this perfect cozy cabin and a man she sort of knew, but felt absolutely certain that she could trust.

Walden stood up and walked forward and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Good God, girl. I told you not to go off the trail.”

His voice was gruff, so harsh and scolding, it jolted her into reality. She was here. Walden was real. A stream of words came babbling out of her, about the past few days, but mostly about Sam.

“He's hurt, I had to leave him, I didn't want to but I had no choice, he can't walk, I left him at this place, this petrified wooden shelter with grass on the roof, he doesn't have any water, we have to go back and get him . . .”

Walden draped his arm over her shoulder and started walking toward his cabin, propelling her along with him. “Night's falling,” he said, “and you're a mess. You're not going back into the woods now.”

McKenna broke away from him. She looked around at the unreal surroundings. This scene that would have looked rustic to her a few months ago now looked like the most welcoming piece of civilization, bright as a shopping mall. She had to get Sam here, too.

“We have to go back,” she said. As her eyes roamed the clearing she realized that Hank had bolted. “We have to get Sam.”

“And we will,” Walden promised. “We'll get him. I know just the place you're describing and I'm going to radio the park ranger. But right now it's dark. Even I'd get lost if I tried to go looking.”

McKenna paused, part of her was desperate to run back to Sam, bring him directly here, but of course she knew she could never find her way back.

“Come on,” Walden said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “Come inside.”

Is it possible to feel defeated and triumphant at the same time? No, McKenna decided. It was not. Walking with Walden into his house, her relief was tamped down by worry. Sure, she had managed to save herself. But if Sam weren't saved, too, the only result of surviving would be a life stretching out before her, eighty years or more of knowing: she had left him in the woods to die.

At first light
, two rangers bushwhacked through the woods. There was no trail to speak of, but they both knew the area well. It wasn't the first time kids had gone searching for the waterfall, or other remnants of the Nunnehi. Usually it was kids from somewhere close enough to be called local.

“You'd think thru hikers would know better,” said Claire. She had just graduated from Purdue's School of Forestry and Natural Resources last year and started working for the Park Service in August. This was her first rescue.

Pete, on the other hand, was a native North Carolinian. He'd grown up in the Smoky Mountains—didn't need a fancy degree to learn what was what in the forest. He'd long since lost count of the idiots he'd fished out of these woods.

“None of them know better because they all think they know everything,” Pete said.

He'd been picking up cigarette butts with a pointed stick, putting them into the pouch he wore on his belt. One thing Pete hated more than anything in the world was smokers—the way they hurled butts onto the ground without any regard to
nature. The one thing you were certain to find in the most remote parts of the world was cigarette butts. Pete felt sure that if he ever got around to climbing Mount Everest, he'd reach the top, take in the view, look down, and see a cigarette butt lying at his feet.

Pete checked his compass. Claire was using her GPS, constantly noting their coordinates. “This kid's going to be a wreck if his girlfriend's story pans out,” Pete said.

“Poor thing. She was hysterical.”

“Guilt will do that to you. She knows they were both damned fools.”

Overhead, a helicopter swooped, also looking for Sam. There were other park rangers, all of them trained EMTs like Pete and Claire, scouring different parts of the woods. The radio on Pete's belt crackled, people in various spots thinking they had seen signs that the two kids had been there.

“Plenty of signs here if one of them's a smoker,” Pete grumbled.

A little farther on, they came upon a fire pit with a frame pack sitting next to it. “This must be the place where they camped,” Claire said.

“She cleaned it up nice,” Pete said. “Makes our job easier.”

They didn't have time to stop. Pete knew it would be hours before they reached the old Cherokee hut, and there was no guarantee the kid would still be there.

“I keep hoping someone else will radio that they've found him,” Claire said after they'd walked a few more hours in
silence, concentrating on making good time. Pete could tell from her voice that she was scared to stumble on a corpse.

“Don't worry. Nobody ever died of a broken ankle. Hasn't been quite cold enough for someone to freeze to death. And if the girl's timeline is right, this'll be his third day without water. Dehydration shouldn't have killed him yet.” He knew his voice sounded gruff, complaining, even while he was trying to be comforting.

“But all those things together . . .” Claire let her voice trail off. She turned up her radio as some rangers chattered. One of the helicopter pilots thought he'd seen something, but it turned out to be a deer.

“Too much tree cover,” Pete said. “Waste of time and fuel. They'll never see anything.”

Claire picked up her pace, moving past him, and Pete continued the conversation without her. “It's true a bear could get him. Even a pack of coyotes, in his weakened state. And I guess exposure can set in more easily, with everything else that's going on.”

He really didn't think she'd hear him, but she stopped, her face pale.

Then Pete saw it, the hut, just where he knew it would be. Of course all those other rangers with their helicopters and GPS satellites couldn't find this place. It took someone who'd grown up in these woods. He felt sure he could have found this place blindfolded.

“Hey,” Pete yelled. “Kid! You in there?”

Claire had already ducked her head inside the door. Pete was right behind her.

There was a tarp laid out on the ground, and a black-and-red wool coat. Other than that, the tiny hut was empty.

• • •

McKenna sat in Walden's rocking chair, listening obsessively to the radio. Her eyelid was still swollen, but only half-shut. She almost wished she hadn't let Walden talk her into eating the pancakes he'd made—every time a voice crackled through the static, she was sure she'd puke it all up. McKenna pushed her now-fruit-scented hair (did
Walden
really use this shampoo?) out of her face and leaned forward, pressing her ear to the speaker.

Walden, it turned out, did not actually live
on
the trail. He was not a wise old vagrant, or a grief-crazed serial killer. He told her he got a good chuckle whenever he got wind of one of those stories. It also amused him to see entries in trail registries, people gushing over catching a glimpse of him. Truth be told he was nothing but a retired English lit professor who lived in this cabin, and he'd hiked the AT in both directions more times than he could count. These days, he mostly stayed near his house. “Old bones aren't what they used to be,” he told her.

The radio was silent for a second. Somehow McKenna could sense it was the kind of silence that came before news. Important news.

A voice crackled through the static. “We found the hut. Tarp's here but no kid.”

She was on her feet before she even realized she'd moved.

“Walden!” she yelled.

He'd already left once this morning to retrieve her pack. He'd found it so quickly, she thought he was the one—not all these rangers—who should be out there looking for Sam. But Walden seemed intent on guarding her, making sure she didn't take off back into the woods. He was outside now, doing who knows what, but she was sure he wouldn't have gone far. She didn't want to leave the radio, she had to hear what happened next; but more than that, she needed to tell Walden. So when he didn't come, she ran outside.

Her breath and words came out in short, almost indecipherable gasps. “On the radio. I heard. The hut. It's empty. They found the hut but not Sam.”

Walden maintained his poker face. It occurred to McKenna that might not actually be his name, she'd just been calling him that and he hadn't corrected her.

“That's a hard thing to hear,” he said. “But it's still a good sign that they found the hut. He can't have made it far. They're going to find him soon.”

“I need to go out there,” McKenna said. “I can call for him, maybe the dog would come back and help.” Hank had not reappeared since delivering her to Walden.

“They've got dogs out there already, tracking his scent. Trained dogs. And helicopters. Rangers who know what they're doing, who can give him medical attention. You'll just be in the way.”

“I can't stand doing nothing,” McKenna said. “I'm going crazy.”

“Better to go crazy than get lost again. You think you'll help your boyfriend if those rangers have more than one person to search for? You don't have a broken ankle, which only means you'll cover a lot more ground. Get even more lost than he ever could.”

McKenna sank down to the grass at Walden's feet and covered her face with her hands. She knew he was right. But she also knew she couldn't stay here waiting for news. Her body was crawling with helplessness, and with the not knowing.

Apparently, the old man didn't appreciate her fragile state. “What you need to think about, young lady, instead of marching off into the woods again, is calling your parents.”

The pancakes roiled anew in her raked, raw stomach. She couldn't even begin to think about getting in touch with them, everything she'd have to confess.

“Lucky for you,” Walden said, his voice softening the tiniest bit, “I don't have a phone. So you're going to have to wait. At least a little bit. Here,” he added, thrusting a water bottle under her nose. “Keep hydrating.”

• • •

Sam was pretty sure this was it.

He could hardly remember when or why he'd pulled himself out of the hut. All the stories he'd been telling McKenna, almost as jokes—ways to amuse himself, to impress and entertain her—now they were flitting around in his head, moving
in front of his eyes. Spirit people holding him, talking to him. One even lifted a cup of water to his lips, Sam could swear he felt the cool dampness, it was real, until he tried to drink, and only gagged on his own deathly dry throat.

Deathly.
That was the word, it had hovered so close around him when he was inside those four walls. As if other people had crawled in there to die and now it was his turn. The air felt sick with it, he could smell it—his own body, churning away at his insides, getting to work consuming whatever was left of him, at this point only craving water to wash it all down, to wet the cracked rasping dryness of his lips. He couldn't feel his ankle anymore, couldn't feel his leg at all.

She would want him to stay there. That's what had kept him there. Waiting.

At some point, while waiting, you realize that it's never going to happen. Sam couldn't say when that point arrived because he'd lost all track of time. Maybe McKenna had left a couple days ago. Maybe a couple hours. Maybe weeks. Maybe he'd been here in this hut his whole life, or at least since he'd left West Virginia. When was that? A million lifetimes ago and maybe just yesterday. Maybe he'd walked right out of that mean SOB's house, and gone right to this hut.

He'd been here ever since, making all that crap up about hiking to Maine and back. About meeting a girl. About there being someone out there, someone who gave a hang, searching for him.

Sam's eyes blinked open. He hadn't known they'd been
closed. There was a little Tinkerbell kind of light, floating just outside. He couldn't stand up, but he could roll over. He could slither out on his belly, into the sun. He hadn't realized how cold it was, that he was shivering, until he slithered like a snake out of a hole into that patch of warmth.

He squinted. He saw the stick McKenna had found leaning against the hut, and he pulled himself up onto it. Staggered a few steps, then fell. Righted himself. At least he might be able to get to water. If he could drink a little water, he could last another couple days.

Tinkerbell danced and flitted. This direction and that. He wished she would stay still. He wished she would talk to him.

What would he give to hear McKenna's voice right now? He laughed at the thought, he'd give anything, but of course he had nothing left. What he wanted more than surviving himself was to know she'd found her way to someplace safe. He could stand being out here in the woods, freezing cold and dying of thirst, as long as he could imagine McKenna dry and fed and clean. That's what he would give. His life for hers.

Tree roots. Yeah, you'll find them in the woods for crippled idiots to trip over. Sam fell, no water in sight, and this time he knew he wouldn't be getting back up.

He couldn't say how much time had passed, hours or days, until another mirage: voices. Unfamiliar voices that knew his name. Sam didn't even bother yelling back. It was enough jackassery for one day, for one lifetime, dragging himself away from the one place anyone knew to find him, to follow a bit of light
that of course abandoned him. Even if he'd
wanted
to answer, there was no voice left in him, everything had dried up, every last calorie gone and used. He was done.

“Oh my gosh,” the voice said, a female voice. “That's him.”

“Is he breathing?” a male voice asked.

Sam tried to focus on the face hovering over him. Two fingers pressed against his throat, another hand resting on his chest. Brown eyes, brown hair. Young, frightened, hopeful. Maybe this was really happening. If he were going to hallucinate a girl, he felt positive he would hallucinate McKenna.

“Yes,” the girl said. She was wearing khaki, a badge, a ranger uniform. This made him less hopeful. Much as he loved McKenna, he also might hallucinate a ranger.

Another one appeared, a guy, his frowning face blocking out the girl's. A beautiful sound, the top of a canteen being unscrewed. Cold metal against his lips and then, like life entering his body after he'd given it up completely: water.

“Take it easy,” the girl said, soothing. “A little at a time. Not too fast.”

Sam pulled his head away. Breathed deep. Went for the water again. Dampness washing over his dry lips and throat. The world lurched into focus. This was real. The man had put down his pack, pulling off what Sam guessed was a collapsible stretcher. The girl gave him another sip, then moved down to his feet to examine his ankle. Sam winced as the pain returned. The man threw a blanket over him.

“You're a real true-blue ass. You know that?” the man said.

“I know,” Sam croaked. And then, because he'd never been so grateful in his whole life—and now his life would, in fact, continue—he said, “Thank you. I know I messed up. But thank you.”