Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
Everyone packs up in a hurry. It might be the charge in the air after the storm, or the surreal landscape of fallen trees leaning on one another, dark against an orange sky, but nobody lingers.
You all work hard, loading up your packs to leave this broken place that almost killed you.
When you’re done, you stand with the rest of the group, everyone weighed down with gear, looking more like overdecorated Christmas trees than hikers.
All dressed up with no place to go. That is, until Fran reveals that she actually knows how to use a compass.
“Wait, really?” says Diana. “You were listening?”
“Look,” she says. “I have ADHD. But I think my anxiety about getting lost and dying in the woods was able to override it somehow.”
“So, like: One disorder beat the other disorder’s ass,” says Will.
“Something like that.”
“You can actually navigate?” says Troy.
“I mean, I wouldn’t bet our survival on it…,” Fran says.
“But that’s exactly what you would be doing!” says Troy, his face frozen with incredulity.
“What?” says Fran.
“You would literally be betting our survival on it! Like, whether or not we die. Here. In the woods. Now. Would depend on exactly that. So it’s kind of important: Do you know or do you not know how to navigate?”
Fran is silent. She has her hood down this time, but you can see her itching to pull it back up. She shifts her massive pack to a more comfortable position and takes a breath.
“Just get me a map, and I’ll see what I can do,” she says.
At which point everyone sets off to search what’s left of the campsite, looking for anything that might provide direction.
What you hope you’ll find:
A waterproof trail map
A hand-drawn route on a sheet of notebook paper
Some kind of satellite GPS that Silas was keeping just in case
What you actually find:
Absolutely nothing
“I never saw him with one,” says Troy eventually. “Did you guys ever see him take out a single freaking map?”
“Maybe he had the route memorized,” says Diana. “He’s probably been doing this awhile.”
“Great,” says Will. “So our map is stored in the brain of the sadistic bastard who left us.”
“I thought he said something about a loop,” says Fran. “Does anyone else remember that, or am I hallucinating?”
“A loop?” asks Troy. “What kind of loop?”
You get a brain zap then. The good kind. Not the kind that happens when you run out of medication, but a flash of a memory newly translated.
“The Devil’s Loop,” you say.
“The what?” says Fran.
She turns to look at you, the frustration slowly leaving her face.
“The Devil’s Loop,” you say again. “That’s what he was saying to me! ‘Are you ready for the Devil’s Loop?’ God, I was so confused. I thought he was going to kill me or something.”
“I’m still confused,” says Will. “Is that a place?”
“Sure,” says Fran. “For outdoorsy satanists. I bet it’s perfectly safe.”
“Maybe the drop point is somewhere near there,” says Diana. “If we can find it. Whatever it is.”
“But how do we know which way to go?” asks Troy.
Another weighty silence descends. One so long, you can make out the sound of the distant rushing water your brain has filtered out over the past twenty-four hours.
But then, Fran is fumbling frantically in the pocket of her nylon pants, and you all watch as she finally pulls out a small white compass, the size of a credit card.
“True north,” she says.
She squints down at the compass.
“That’s why he was teaching us the difference, remember? Because, at first, we were going to be traveling straight north. Not magnetic north. It wouldn’t work because the declination would be off! But the loop. The Devil’s Loop. That’s got to be true north.”
“You’ve already lost me,” you say.
She shushes you, and then holds the compass steady and level with two hands.
Slowly, she rotates it to align the N on the dial with the needle.
What she’s doing is probably the most basic thing any outdoors person learns to do, but in this moment, it seems holy, like a kind of summoning of forces from the other side to provide guidance.
“So this is magnetic north,” she says softly. “But Silas told us the declination was about thirteen degrees west. Which would actually be … here.”
She rotates the compass again until the needle is over a few notches to the left.
Everyone gathers around and looks down at the small piece of plastic that is maybe going to determine whether you will all live or die.
The needle wobbles a little, and your gaze follows it into the woods, where the thick pines keep you from seeing any more than twenty feet in front of you.
“There’s not really a trail there,” you say.
The sky has cleared and the sun is just starting to peek through the lifting fog, but deep in the woods, it still looks dark, and you instantly think of fairy tales and horror movies, and all the times someone could have easily avoided a horrible fate if they had just decided to stay out of the goddamn forest.
“It might be all we have to go on,” says Fran.
You look at the empty campsite then, with only the scorched remains of the fire to alert anyone that you’ve been here. It isn’t high season, and you haven’t seen a single other paddler on the water. Nobody is likely to find your site and rescue you. But still, none of you moves.
There’s a simple choice here: woods or the campsite.
Stay put or risk action. Oddly enough, something inside you twitches.
And for a reason you don’t totally understand, you start walking.
Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, you make your way down to the lake to pick up a canoe.
It’s not a smooth operation. You have to struggle with it for at least a minute, trying to flip it just right so the “portage yoke” that Diana mentioned gets centered over your neck.
You feel a bit like a malnourished ox, but you finally manage to do it.
Then you stand up, and immediately the weight shifts and you topple like a felled tree.
You fall to the side, and the boat goes crashing to the ground next to you.
No one speaks. They continue to watch.
You stand back up. You grab the boat again.
You lift, and though your bony arms start to buckle, you manage to keep the boat still.
And when it’s steady, you hold it up until the yoke is over your neck and you gently set it on your back again.
You take a step. The canoe wobbles like a teeter-totter.
You steady it. Then you take another step.
And another. Finally, using the slowest steps imaginable, you walk back across the campsite and line up behind Fran, your shoulders already screaming under the weight.
You don’t expect anyone to follow you, especially after that performance, but gradually Fran steps forward too, her compass held out ahead of her like a metal detector.
Then Will solemnly takes the other boat, the one stuck in the bushes, hefting it with ease.
Diana works with him to carry it. And Troy steps behind you and holds up the back of yours.
Three will have to go in one. Two in the other.
For now, you just stand there, like a family of confused snails, pointed toward what you hope is north.
“Does anyone have an inspirational speech?” Troy says, his voice echoing around your boat. “I could really use an inspirational speech.”
There’s another silence then. No one so much as clears their throat until, finally, Diana pokes her head out from under her boat and looks at everyone.
“Okay, adventurers,” she says in a counselor voice. “All we have to do today is not die!”
And then you all start walking.