Dare Mighty Things Page 11

  There were no trails. Flowing water kept appearing beside us, sometimes in thin trickles, sometimes in frantic streams, and then disappearing again. We filled the canteen in the faster-moving water, which I hoped would be a little cleaner. The iodine tablets might kill bacteria and viruses, but it wasn’t going to turn swampy river water into a clear spring.

  According to the map, we were traveling alongside a wide river. I just hoped we wouldn’t have to swim across it. One knife was not going to be helpful against an alligator.

  “Watch out for snakes,” I said over my shoulder, as Luka followed in my footsteps over a rotten log.

  “Snakes?” Like he’d never heard of the word.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Down here in the south, we have snakes. Poisonous ones.”

  He didn’t say anything. I sighed and stopped, causing him to nearly run into me. “Okay, look,” I said. “Our first-aid kit isn’t going to do any good for a snake bite. Do me a favor and watch where you step. And if you hear a weird rattling noise, let me know.”

  His eyes went wide. I could’ve laughed. Pampered son of a diplomat. The poor thing had probably never had to worry about venomous snakes in his life.

  I hadn’t dressed for the outdoors—I was still in the clothes I’d worn to jog in early that morning. Luka, too, was about as ill prepared in a thin white T-shirt and cargo shorts. Nothing to protect us from the elements.

  He offered to carry the orange backpack. I told him we could switch off. It wasn’t heavy.

  I’d burned through any residual anger at our situation by the time the sun was hitting high noon. This was the best exercise I’d gotten in weeks, and it invigorated me. Fifteen miles in twenty-four hours wasn’t even a strenuous pace. They’d paired me with Luka, which meant they wanted to know how I’d compare with him, the number-one guy. That meant it was between him and me.

  This was my opportunity to stand out.

  We took a little break near a fast-moving stream, taking turns sipping iodine-laced water from the backpack. “So what’s the plan?” I asked, sticking Band-Aids to the blisters that were eating through my feet in at least six distinct places. Damn cotton socks. “Hike until dark, set up camp?”

  “We’ll need to eat before too long,” he said. “Do you know how to start a fire?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” I answered. “But you don’t need fire to cook MREs. Which is good, because I don’t know how we’d find anything dry enough to burn.” Everything, including the air, felt soggy. “We have enough food for only one day, so we should try to make it last.”

  “Perhaps in the morning, we can fish,” Luka said. Then he cocked his head to the side. “I’m sorry. I forgot you do not eat meat.”

  “I don’t really want to waste time,” I said. “I’d rather keep going as long as we can.” I didn’t remember ever discussing vegetarianism with him. How did he know I didn’t eat meat? Had he been paying closer attention to me than I’d realized? “And it’s not like I have much choice. Tofu doesn’t exactly grow on trees around here.”

  He was still looking at me curiously and here I was, squatting in the mud with sweat dripping down past my eyes, swatting away gnats with dirty fingers. What did he see that was so interesting?

  “I’d eat meat if I had to,” I said, knowing NASA was probably listening. “Like right now, if there’s no better protein source around and I have to spend a full day hiking. It’s more of a personal preference.”

  Luka’s expression suddenly changed, entire body tensing, his gaze narrowing and shifting to something behind me.

  “What is it?” I whispered, afraid to move. “Alligator?”

  He shook his head and put a finger to his lips, then motioned for me to keep my head down. I crouched deeper into the reeds and slowly looked over my shoulder.

  About a hundred yards up the river were two figures trudging north. I could make out an orange backpack on one of them. Snatches of conversation reached my ears, but nothing intelligible.

  I turned back to Luka. “That’s Anton and Kendra,” I said quietly.

  He nodded, staying low. “It seems we are still in competition.”

  I gritted my teeth. “And they’re ahead of us.”

  Knowing the others were out there, too, and that they were likely headed for the same place, lit a fire under Luka and me. This was another race.

  We veered off from the river, neither of us wanting to get into any sort of confrontation with Anton and Kendra. Not that I was afraid of them—but it seemed safer to keep our distance. Just in case.

  By the time the shadows grew dark under the mossy canopy and the breeze off the water grew cool, my energy was burned out.

  I was hungry. I was cranky. I was covered in itchy mosquito bites despite a liberal application of bug spray. I was splattered, neck to shins, in dried mud. But Luka was the one who wanted to stop.

  “I think we should set up camp for the night,” he said. I’d been carrying the backpack for a few hours, and Luka was taking point, helpfully clearing the path of spider webs for me.

  “Already?” I stopped, looking up to gauge the position of the sun through the bare limbs of gangly trees, just a low red disc sinking into the horizon.

  “We made good time today. We should get some rest and eat before it gets too dark.” His cheeks were sunburned despite the sunscreen, sweat dripping down his temples, and for once he didn’t look like he was having the easiest time of it.

  “We have a flashlight. It’s cooler to travel at night.”

  “They already know we can hike fifteen miles in a day. I doubt they are testing us on our physical capability.” I bristled at that, but he continued. “We will make it to the rendezvous point by tomorrow at noon.”

  But will we make it there before the others?

  Luka waited for me to consider the options. Should I try to be the leader, tell him he was wrong? Or was it better to act the team player and give in to his suggestion? We’d been playing nice so far, but how long would that hold out? This exercise seemed designed to test our interactions under stress more than any actual wilderness survival skills.

  I swallowed hard. The grimy aftertaste of iodinated swamp water coated the back of my tongue. The only reason I was able to tamp down my frustration was the little circle of plastic on my wrist.

  Because I was willing to bet my grandmother that our every move, our every word, was being recorded.

  What was more important: Getting to the rendezvous point first, or surviving this without biting each other’s heads off?

  Cooperation, I decided, was what this test was about.

  “Okay, let’s break for the evening,” I said. “We can start fresh at sunup.”

  Making camp was problematic. By the time we found a suitable place—far enough from the water that I wasn’t afraid of alligators, and dry enough for comfort—there was hardly any light left. And Luka had no idea what he was doing.

  I had to show him how to prepare the MRE. “You pour the water in the bag up to this line, here, and it reacts with the chemical packets to generate heat. So then we slide the food into the sleeve, like this, see?” I demonstrated. “And then we lean it against a rock and wait twenty minutes or so.”

  I’d been camping only as recreation, not out of necessity, but at least I knew the basics. He seemed to sense this and followed my directions, like the smart guy he was.

  Without any stakes, and only a rope and a knife, our options for shelter were limited. I’d wanted to find higher ground, but there was nothing there—it was all flat floodplain with just a few trees in clumps. “It’s a warm night,” I said. “We can sleep under the stars.”

  We settled on a nearby copse, checked the surroundings to ensure we wouldn’t disturb any snakes, and cleared an area large enough for the two of us to sleep side by side with a good two or three feet between us. We had no bedrolls, so we’d have to rough it with the solar blankets.

  But by this point, I was ready to be unconscious for a very long t
ime, and I didn’t care about the specifics. I had a guy I trusted—as much as I trusted anyone—next to me, a blanket to keep most of the bugs off me, and a pretty nice view of the sky framed by tree branches.

  And then it started to rain.

  I swatted at the first droplets that hit my face, thinking in my sleep that they were mosquitoes. And then they came again and again, so I buried my head under the crinkling solar blanket and groaned quietly.

  It was the miserable sort of rain, where water was seeping out of the air like the wringing of a damp sponge. Made my skin crawl.

  Luka shuffled around beside me. “Do you want this?” Luka asked. He was holding the orange backpack.

  It took me a minute to realize he was offering it to me as a pillow. “No, thanks.” I didn’t really like the idea of resting my head on a flare gun. And we couldn’t take it out of the waterproof backpack, in case we needed it.

  “At least the rain will help deter the mosquitoes.” Then, “We could drape one of the blankets over this branch. To keep the rain off.”

  I wanted to groan, but didn’t have the energy. “We probably should.” It would suck to spend the next day soaked through.

  Luka got up and arranged his blanket on a low-hanging branch to cover as much area over us as possible, a makeshift tent. He let me arrange myself how I wanted and then crawled back under the drape, only a little more sheltered from the rain than before.

  I offered to share my own blanket for warmth, but he declined. “It’s big enough,” I said. “There’s a cool wind coming off the water. You’ll get cold.”

  In the dim light of the stars, his mouth twisted with indecision. Then he nodded.

  I shifted the blanket to cover us both. There was barely an inch of open air between our bodies. The only way to avoid touching him was to lie completely still. Which was fine; my body protested any movement.

  Even sheltered under the blanket with him, somehow, the boy did not smell. We had been hiking in a swamp for half a day. I knew for a fact that I smelled. He, however, wafted only faintly of summer rain. The jerk.

  Whatever crap may happen up there, among the stars that I couldn’t currently see—no matter how cramped and uncomfortable, whatever awful things might befall a human away from Earth, space had to be a better experience than this. At least you could see the stars, unfiltered.

  “What a fun night this is going to be,” I muttered. I didn’t have to speak very loud; he was that close. “They must do this on purpose, so we are extra motivated not to crash their expensive rocket ships.”

  Luka, on his back, turned his head toward me ever so slightly. Some tiny glint of light reflected off his pupils; the rest of his features were shrouded in indigo darkness. I felt his breath on my face.

  He laughed—a loud, surprised sound. It was the first time I’d heard it. I felt myself smile.

  “Yes. Are we not lucky to be here?” The smile was evident in his voice. Then his voice lowered to a serious pitch. “I find I don’t hate it.”

  Despite the heat, despite everything, I shivered.

  “Good night, Cassie.” His voice was quiet, warm, happy, and right in my ear. His slight accent held a lilt of laughter, and it was as if the entire day of stress and frustration hadn’t been that bad.

  We were a good team. We could win this.

  With warm food in my stomach, I was comfortable, even with the rain and the slightly alarming proximity of a boy with good bone structure.

  The rain gradually fell harder, tapping against the tarp and rattling it in the branches—but for the most part, we kept dry.

  I fell asleep thinking maybe Luka wasn’t so useless after all.

  I crawled out of the lean-to before Luka woke, sore and stiff and completely devoid of the good feelings that had lulled me to sleep. The sky was still gray, but the insects had been up for hours. I’d scratched scabs into my arms overnight.

  They must’ve bothered Luka, too, as he woke not long after.

  “Here,” I said, tossing him a packet of crackers as he came to sit beside me.

  He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. There was already stubble on his reddened cheeks and sleep was still heavy in his eyes. “Thank you. How long have you been awake?”

  “Since dawn.”

  He blinked up at the deep-gray sky. “It’s not dawn?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hm. Perhaps we’ll get more rain today.”

  We ate our meager breakfast slowly, trying to make it last, and shared the canteen between us. “You should put some of this on,” I said, putting the SPF and insect repellant in his hand. “Your face is bright red. The clouds won’t protect you completely, you know.”

  He took it, nodding.

  Only an hour or two after breaking camp, the sky opened up on us.

  “‘Perhaps we’ll get more rain today,’” I mimicked under my breath. “More like, What have we done to anger the rain gods?”

  It was relentless, falling on us in sheets that made visibility poor and walking treacherous. We continued to trudge north, following the river to keep our fresh water close. But our progress slowed considerably.

  It was too warm to worry about hypothermia, so even though my wet socks rubbed blisters into my heels, a little rain wouldn’t kill us. As much as I may have wanted it to.

  The rain swelled the river, forcing us to head farther and farther away to avoid its widening banks. The swamp was more water than land, and what was dry when we first encountered it could become the bottom of the riverbed in a matter of minutes. We took a quick break, checking the map and compass for our position, but without dry kindling or more MREs we couldn’t eat. Raw fish was the last thing I wanted, so we drank lots of water and pushed on.

  At some point I thought I might have seen the flash of an orange backpack deeper in the woods, but whoever it was never came closer.

  “How are we doing?” I asked.

  Luka was on point again, following the map and the compass. It took him a long time to find our position on the map, swiping water from his eyes often. “Should reach it within the hour.” Suddenly he stopped short, made a noise that sounded like a curse in his native language.

  “What?” I caught up with him.

  “The rendezvous point is just there,” he said, pointing.

  And then I saw our problem.

  The rain had swelled what was probably, on dry days, a shallow stream. Now, between us and our destination was an angry, turbulent creek, opaque with mud and clotted with debris. It was maybe twelve feet across, no telling how deep.

  “Yeah, we aren’t crossing that,” I said.

  “We could go around it?” Luka suggested.

  “How long would that take?”

  “I’m not sure. This is not on the map.”

  I took it out of his hands. He was right; only the main river, behind us, was outlined. Not the smaller tributaries. “Damn.”

  So this was our dilemma. Did we do the dangerous thing and try to ford a fast-moving body of water alone and without supplies? Did we wait here, hoping our “rescuers” would come and get us even though we were a quarter mile off from the rendezvous point? Or did we find another way around?

  The problem wasn’t so much what to do—it was what did NASA want us to do?

  My default response to a problem was always to seek the most straightforward solution. Shortest distance from point A to point B lay across that creek.

  “We should wait here,” Luka said, just as I’d decided to go forward. “I don’t think NASA would want us to endanger ourselves further. We are close enough to the rendezvous point. They will come and get us.”

  “But we’re so close. We could be the first ones there and win this thing. The others are probably right behind us. Do you want to be last, on top of everything? It’s probably not that hard to cross. We can just find a few logs, make a bridge.”

  I started forward, but Luka grabbed my arm. “Cassie, no. It’s dangerous.”

  I glared
, and he dropped my arm like it was hot. “Going into space is dangerous. Are you going to stop me from doing that, too?”

  His lips parted, as if he was going to speak but couldn’t find anything to say. Then he closed his mouth into an unhappy line. “Fine, we will do it your way.”

  His accent was more pronounced when he was mad.

  Just wait until we get back, I thought. Once you’re clean and dry and fed, you’ll thank me.

  It wasn’t hard to find a fallen tree or two. Problem was, I overestimated how strong they’d be. Most were little more than saplings, which were useless. The biggest ones were still wetland trees and had been soaked by rain for a day or more, rotting from the inside out. We found one that was only just starting to rot, and using mostly Luka’s brute strength, plopped it across the creek.

  It wasn’t long enough.

  “That’s okay, we’ll just get another,” I said, having to talk a little louder because of the noise from the water. At least the rain had stopped.

  Luka’s eyes told me he wasn’t too keen on this plan, but he did it anyway. The second log he tried to launch was immediately swept away and taken downstream.

  “Cassie . . .” Luka’s voice held a note of warning.

  I snapped at him. “This will work, okay? We just have to do it right. Maybe you can anchor the log for me while I wade across?”

  His jaw was set. “We’ve barely eaten. We’ve been hiking nonstop. Look at you—your hands are shaking. Even if we can make a way across, you don’t have the strength to fight the current right now. This is not worth drowning for.”

  I wanted to shoot back that if this wasn’t worth it, nothing was. But watching the log that Luka had struggled to lift get swept downstream like it was made of paper . . . maybe I didn’t want to risk it.

  “You rest. I’ll find something to eat.”

  “No!” I wasn’t going to let him do that to me. Make me look like the weak little girl who needed a man to feed her while I sat around because I was tired. I didn’t want to waste time fishing, then cleaning, cooking, and eating—not when the end was literally in sight. But I didn’t have any other ideas. “They’re judging us both on our survival skills, not just you. I’ll come with you.”