Chapter Fourteen
FOURTEEN
At first you don’t even notice Troy.
You’re too busy wondering how you’re all still alive.
There are trees down around you, maybe five or six, just snapped like matchsticks.
And one of your canoes is lodged in some brush fifty yards away.
It looks like someone picked it up and flung it there in a tantrum.
All the while, Troy stands patiently before you.
He doesn’t say anything, but eventually when you finish surveying the broken landscape, you look at him and you see what he’s holding.
A small white circle.
It looks like a cap.
The cap to a pill bottle.
Only there is no bottle.
“It’s gone,” he says.
“What’s gone?” says Fran.
“My Clonazepam.”
And because you have a PhD in anxiety, you know this is the official name of Klonopin, his sedative of choice. Fran reaches out and takes the cap from him.
“What do you mean? You’re already out?” she says.
“No!” says Troy. “I shouldn’t be. I think…”
“What?” you say.
“I think he took it.”
Fran’s hood is down, but she tugs hard at the strings.
“Are you sure they’re not in the tent?” she asks.
“Take a look yourself,” says Troy.
Fran strides right by you back into your shelter.
“Can you check for mine?” you ask. “It’s in the very front pocket of my bag.”
You listen as she riffles through things, the duffel whistling across the tent’s nylon, and the clump of your clothes hitting the ground. She stops only to huff out angry breaths. Then, finally, it all goes quiet and she speaks.
“Your Paxil is still here, Case,” she says. “But no Xanax.”
“I don’t understand,” says Diana. “Did he just take the sedatives?”
You’re about to posit a theory, but your thoughts are scattered by one of the most horrible noises you have ever heard in your life. It starts as a kind of high-pitched keening, like a teakettle boiling over, or a siren going past, but gradually it morphs into a full-on primal scream.
“Jesus!” says Diana. “What the hell is that?”
All you can do is plug your ears, and eventually you look up and notice that it’s coming from Troy. It’s astoundingly loud, enough to make your ears ring, and it is not stopping. If anything, it is getting louder and more terrifying by the second.
“Troy!” comes a familiar voice. “TROY!”
Will is screaming in Troy’s ear, but it’s like Troy’s gone catatonic. He won’t make eye contact. You feel a hand on your shoulder, and you turn to see Diana.
“Case,” she says into your ear just loud enough to be heard. “Can you please make him stop doing that?”
You nod, but you’re not sure how you’re going to deliver.
“TROY!” you try. “PLEASE!”
It doesn’t seem like he would have much oxygen left, but still, on he goes.
Birds scatter from the downed trees. Everyone is plugging their ears.
You walk slowly over to Troy, one ear against your shoulder, one covered with a hand, lumbering like an ogre.
You don’t get too close, but close enough to make direct eye contact.
“TROY!” you try again. “YOU CANNOT DO THAT ANYMORE! IT’S KILLING US!”
Miraculously, he stops, and the moment of silence is like the absence of life itself. A brief void you get lost in. Then he takes a breath and screams again.
“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”
Only he extends the last word so that it’s ten syllables long.
Something more like: “DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
You put a finger to your lips, and you hold it there until the die finally dies out and you’re left just staring at each other. You’re shocked that it worked, but maybe there was something in your gesture that made Troy feel like a baby again. Or maybe he just ran out of air.
“We might,” you say. “Okay? We might! But if we’re all going to die, then I want to do it in peace.”
At that, he sits on the ground. He’s wearing no shoes, you notice, and he hugs his chest with thin arms. His glasses are dotted with raindrops. The aftermath of the storm has brought a chill. He must be freezing, but he doesn’t shiver.
“He left us with no supervision,” says Troy in a raspy whisper. “And he took my Klonopin.”
“But…,” says Will.
“He’s not coming back!” says Troy sharply.
You try for a moment to think of anything other than your medication.
And what it’s going to be like with no ammunition for the worst attacks.
Your SSRIs, whether it’s Paxil, Prozac, or Lexapro, they keep you even.
But it’s the benzos like Xanax that fight fire with fire when the anxiety takes over your entire body.
Silas has taken the only way to quell your brain’s full-on rebellion.
“We have to find him,” you say.
“What do you mean?” says Will.
“There’s no other choice. Maybe this is some kind of cold-turkey, scared-straight thing like Troy says. Or maybe we’ve truly been abandoned. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter.”
“It definitely matters,” says Fran.
“No,” you say. “I mean, either way we have one objective.”
“And that is…”
“To make it to the drop.”
“But we don’t know where we are,” Troy starts. “And when you’re lost…”
“We don’t have enough supplies!” yells Diana.
She’s walking toward you, dragging something across the rocky ground.
It’s a cooler, carving its way through a thick trail in the dirt.
She lugs it into the center of the group and tips it over onto a patch of grass near the shore, and you all stare, mouths open at the meager contents scattered before you.
Some almond butter, some hummus powder, dehydrated beans and lentils, oats, and a few granola bars.
There are also a couple of pans to cook with, but that’s about it.
It was supposed to be enough food for five days, but you’re at the beginning of day three and it doesn’t look like much. You and Sean could have polished this off in an afternoon.
“This was supposed to get us through half the week?!” says Will. “In what sadistic universe? My brother ate better at weight-loss camp.”
“Silas must have taken some food,” says Fran.
Of course.
“Okay,” says Troy. “So, we’re screwed. But don’t you think someone will come look for us?”
Diana huffs.
“Our families think we’re going to be out here for weeks,” she says, sitting on the empty cooler. “It could be a long time before they even start looking.”
Silence. The nearby lake reflects the passing clouds as the last of the storm finally dissolves into a light fog. A few lingering drops make rings that slowly fade in the lake’s surface.
“I’m with Diana,” says Will finally. “It’s not smart to stay here and just eat through our supplies. We need to move toward a goal. Something.”
“Why can’t we just go back the way we came?” Fran says.
“The current is moving in the opposite direction,” says Will. “Besides, we went through a chain of lakes. Do you remember the way?”
Diana walks to one of the tents and starts pulling up stakes to take it down.
“But how are we going to find the drop point?” Troy says.
Diana shrugs, and you watch her yank on a metal stake, and the left side of the girls’ tent deflates a bit. Fran gets up and goes to rescue her pack before the tent collapses. She hugs it to her chest.
“Also, what are we going to do with all this crap?” Troy adds.
“Portage it,” says Diana.
“What does that mean?”
“Portage: to carry a boat and its cargo between two navigable waters,” Diana says as if reciting from a teleprompter. “Didn’t any of you guys read the pamphlets they sent?”
“We have to carry all this?” says Will.
“And a canoe,” says Diana. “We have to put the canoes on our shoulders when we’re not using them. That’s why there’s a portage yoke.”
Everyone looks at her.
“I read it in the pamphlet,” she says. “Now, c’mon. Let’s get moving.”
Nobody shouts their agreement, but nobody challenges her either.
You leave the group for a moment and walk back over to the extinguished fire, the last place you saw Silas. You sit down in his spot.
Why was he out here so late?
Why wasn’t he already leaving? What was he planning? And what did he say about the devil? You kick at the stones that make the fire ring and curse yourself for not confronting him when he was being so weird. Just another moment when you failed to act out of simple fear and discomfort.
When you get up, you notice something on the ground.
Something very small. A soggy scrap of paper like the kind you used to play Fear in a Hat.
At first that’s what you think it is. A leftover from the game.
But when you reach your hand down and unfold the slip of paper, it doesn’t seem like a fear.
Instead, it reads, in blue pen, blotched by the rain:
One day. One hour. One minute.
You don’t know what it means, if it’s part of a poem, a song lyric, or something else entirely.
You turn around to say something, but everyone is busy packing, and you’re not sure what to say about it.
It’s just a soggy scrap of paper. So you put it in your pocket and try to focus on gathering your stuff.
Still, while you’re walking back to your tent, you reach your hand in and touch it one more time.
It’s not the first time someone you know has left a paper trail.