chapter 6

Chapter Six

Chris had to scramble to keep up with Sally as she pushed through the leafy foliage on a silent rampage, and he had to duck more then twice to avoid the stray branch whipping back in Sally’s wake. “Sal,” he said.

“Don’t call me Sal,” Sally replied sourly, without looking back. She pushed another branch out of her way and it snapped back, slapping Chris across the cheek accidentally.

Chris rubbed his cheek and followed again in silence. He’d only called Sally “Sal” once or twice before, and Sally had bubbled with delight at the nickname. If her smile had got any bigger, it seems it would wrap all the way around her head. Now she seemed like she didn’t even like the nickname. Chris slouched his shoulders and stared at his shoes.

“Stand up straight and be alert,” Sally said.

Chris automatically straightened his shoulders.

The woodland was densely packed and bursting with leafy green foliage showing no signs whatsoever of changing anytime soon, and thick vines draped over anything tangible. The ground beneath his feet was spongy, giving Chris a springy, stumbling gait, and it was uneven, making him stumble even more. Sunlight pooled in dusty shafts on the forest floor, gliding through the knotted foliage like silk sliding over silk or a scissors cutting through mist. The forest was mostly quiet except the slight whish-whish sound as the two explorers stepped on a patch of moss and the distant cawing of a murder of crows, perhaps a frantic flapping as other birds are scared from the underbrush.

Chris paused. He was certain he had heard something other then the birds and his own footsteps. Breathing. A snap of a twig. He turned around. The forestry, broken by their makeshift path, stretched back into darkness, but Chris couldn’t see anything else. No movement in the shadows, no shifting underbrush, and the breathing was silenced. A crow cawed.

Someone touched his shoulder and Chris yelped, spinning around and thrashing out an arm to defend himself. There was another scream, someone grabbed Chris’s wrists, and then the world spun in upside-down circles until Chris landed hard on his back.

“Chris!” Sally towered over him, smirking, her figure darkened by the glare of the sun above her. “Why’d you do that? I only tapped your shoulder.”

“Oog.” Chris rubbed a bump on the back of his head. “Did you flip me?”

Sally extended a hand. Chris took it and let Sally help him up, then he got straight to brushing the dust and moss bits off his clothes. Sally was still smirking. “I had t’ flip you, Chris, you would’ve hit me!”

“I didn’t think you knew how to flip.”

Sally’s grin broadened and she kissed her bicep and laughed.

Chris grimaced. “Well, at least it got you into a good mood, finally,” he said. He straightened up and tried to put on a look of dignity. “You know, I let you flip me.” Sally laughed again, harder, and walked away. Chris took another nervous look behind him and then scrambled after Sally’s receding voice, babbling about karate lessons from her older brother and her father.

“That sounds interesting, Sal,” Chris said as he caught up. This time Sally acknowledged the nickname with a tender smile. Chris suddenly felt the stress clear away, like he was a candlestick that Sally’s smile was melting into a puddle of soft, warm wax.

Snap.

The wax hardened again.

Chris turned around again, quicker than before, convinced that he’d heard something this time. The shadows rippled with sudden movement and then all was still. Goosebumps prickled Chris’s arms. Slowly, he backed up, turned around, and started walking again.

Snap, snap.

Chris stiffened but kept walking, trying to keep Sally in view.

Snap, crack.

Chris suddenly wheeled about and pounced into the shadows of the thicket, yelling “Aaaaarrgggg!!!” at the top of his lungs. There was an answering shriek and then Chris collided with something solid that toppled over easily, taking Chris with it. They fell together and rolled down a steep incline, cracking branches and tumbling over vines and rocks in their descent.

“Chris!” Sally yelled from the top of the incline, and there was a pounding of feet as she ran down after him.

The two landed with a splash into a river at the bottom of the incline.

The cold was a shock to Chris and he bolted out of the water, gasping like a beached whale and flailing like one two. Sally had just reached the river by that point and she grabbed Chris’s arm, helping him out of the river, then she bent down and took Chris’s captor by the scruff of his shirt collar. He was sinking like a rock because of a huge, bulky backpack that stubbornly clung to just one of his shoulders.

“Willifer!” Sally and Chris said at the same time as “survivalist” was pulled sopping wet from the river. “What are you doing here?”

Willifer slumped on the bank and vomited up a couple mouthfuls of water and couldn’t reply until he had finished hacking. Sally patted him on the shoulder somewhat sympathetically. “You see what your stupid backpack did?” she said. “It nearly killed you.”

There was a strangled gasp and then more violent hacking.

“Why did you follow us?” Chris asked.

Willifer drew in another gasp of air and then vomited out the last bit of water caught in his lungs. Then he flopped over onto his back and started panting front the effort. When he finally was strong enough to speak he sat up shakily and said between gasps, “Vondra…gasp…told…me to.”

"She what?" Sally snatched a sopping lock of Willifer’s hair and pulled him to his feet with it. Willifer let out a yowl and flapped his hands weakly, trying to free his hair from Sally's iron grip to no avail. Sally, her fingers embedded in a tangled knot of Willifer’s hair, wrenched him closer and put her lips to his ear. "Listen up, survival monkey." Willifer squeaked. Sally dug her fingers deeper into his scalp. "When I tell you to stay home, you stay home. No matter what Vondra did or didn’t say."
Willifer squirmed and winced as his hair was pulled taut in Sally's entangled fingers. "It didn’t really seem up to me, miss Sally Dumberkew, ma'am," he squeaked meagerly.
Sally grunted. "So in times of possible danger to your well being, you decide to revert to sweet talk to save your own skin? You should be ashamed of yourself."
Willifer whimpered. "I'm sorry, Sally," he said.

"Huh." Sally didn't look moved.

Chris reached over and gingerly untangled Sally's fingers from Willifer’s hair. "C'mon, Willifer, you better get going."

"b-but, but...." Willifer blubbered. He stuck out his lower lip and pouted. "Vondra told me to go with you."

"I don't care what vondra said," Sally said bitterly.

Chris touched Willifer’s shoulder. "Let's go, Willifer."

Willifer shrugged Chris off and stuck his lip out further, adding a tiny quiver. “But I wanna stay,” he said, crossing his arms across his chest and planting both feet as firmly as he could on the uneven ground. Sally snorted.

“You’re not a baby,” she said.

“I want to stay and I have to stay, or else Vondra’s gonna tan my hide,” Willifer said, the whine draining from his voice into a defiant tone. Chris looked surprised. Sally looked utterly disgusted.

“I promise,” Sally said in a chilly voice, “she won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”

Willifer softened and began blubbering again, crunching his eyebrows together. “But I can be a very valuable additition to your team,” he said.

“We aren’t a team,” Chris said, blushing. “I sort of just…piggybacked onto this.”

Willifer rolled his eyes. “Pfft. Whatever. Whatever you are, I can be a nice addition. I am a skilled survivalist.”

“…that almost drowned in a river because of your stupid survivalist backpack,” Sally grunted. “And spent nearly five minutes puking up water because of it and hacking up some lung.”

It was Willifer’s turn to a bright, beet red. He clasped his hands behind his back and scuffed a toe into the loose dirt of the slope. “That was only for three minutes.” Back to business mode. “But seriously, I’m a killer survivalist, if you’ll ignore the oxymoron. I know some first aid and I’m quick on my feet, and quick in the mind if I go say so myself.”

“You didn’t even react when Chris attacked you,” Sally scoffed, but Chris could tell she was slowly breaking down under Willifer’s insisting. “You just fell over like a wet noodle.”

Again, Willifer scuffed his toe into the dirt. “If I had seen it coming I would have reacted sooner.”

“Sure.” Sally rolled her eyes. “Right.”

The blush in Willifer’s cheeks deepened. “It’s true. Honest. C’mon give me a break.”

A long, tedious silence lapsed, and then Sally sucked in a deep breath and let it drain gustily from her puffed cheeks. She rubbed her eyes. “Okay, okay, fine, you can stay.”

Willifer’s eyes lit up. “Really? Really truly? Like…seriously?”

“I suppose.”

“Good for you, Sally,” Chris said with a smile.

Sally grimaced. “Well, let’s get on with it. I have land to explore, survey, whatever you want to call it.” Then she turned briskly and stalked back up the hill, her toes digging into the earth and sending it scattering down the hill in her wake. Chris looked at Willifer and Willifer looked at Chris, then both boys shrugged, grinned at each other, and started up the hill after Sally.

“She’s pleasant, isn’t she?” Willifer whispered into Chris’s ear.

“Ah, she’s fine,” Chris said dismissively, waving it off with his hand. “She’s just stressed. I am too,” he admitted. “I’m worrying about my parents, who are probably having a freak attack or a heart attack looking for me right about now.”

Willifer nodded knowingly. “Y’know, you’re lucky. To have a family, that is, that cares about you.” He looked down. They lapsed into silence. It was Chris who decided to break it.

“What about Vondra?”

“She’s not my real mom,” Willifer said, “she adopted me and my brothers.” He laughed softly. “If I lived here from the beginning, I wouldn’t know how to speak that well.” He ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back against his scalp. “Vondra didn’t live here from the beginning, either.”

“Then where did you come from?” Chris asked. “The other side of Dumberkew?”

“Well, yes,” Willifer said, shifting his backpack (which he had shrugged over his shoulder before he left the river) until it rested comfortably on his shoulder. “Vondra was one of the first people to live there, before the boundary line was created and before Reagan Dumberkew attempted his…” Willifer shrugged, “…attempts. He was still mulling over the idea at the time.” Willifer smiled shyly. “I was just a baby, along with my brothers.”

“So…all of those boys…are your actual brothers?”

“My real mom really needed a hobby.” The shy smile spread into a grin. “It was never boring at our house when we were growing up.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Boys!” Sally called from the top of the hill. “Stop lollygagging and get a move on. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before it gets dark!”

Chris and Willifer crested the hill and fell in step behind Sally, just a few steps back, and ducked their heads together, talking quietly.

“Mother and father were young and irresponsible,” Willifer said. “They couldn’t handle all of us. They gave us to Vondra, who was an old family friend, and didn’t want anything else to do with us.”

Chris frowned. “That’s terrible.”

Willifer shrugged limply and gave Chris a tiny smile. “Well, at least we ended up with someone who loves us and takes care of us.” Another silence, and Willifer kicked at a couple fern fronds, sending a couple of scruffy-furred rats scurrying into the underbrush.

“Was she was one that told you to be prepared?” Chris asked. “Vondra, that is.”

Willifer nodded. “She always wanted me to be careful out in the wilderness.” He smiled again. “For homework, she would always take us out into the forest and stage a ‘predicament’.” He chuckled. “I nearly failed every time but it was such a rush.”

“Hmm.”

“Chris? Willifer? Come here a second.”

Sally’s voice was a hushed call, like she was trying to keep her voice quiet but yell all the same. The metallic whisper of the wind brought the scent of doused ashes. Chris and Willifer exchanged glances and then bolted towards Sally, pushing away the foliage. The buckles of Willifer’s backpack clang-clang-clanged together as he ran.

“Sally?” Chris called.

Sally wheeled around and put a finger to her lips. “Shh, Chris.” Chris raised a quizzical eyebrow and Sally motioned for them to follow. Chris and Willifer shared a look and then they crept over to Sally and peered through the knotted vines. In front of them was a dirt-floored glade peppered with a ring of five or so huts, made out of fern fronds and woven sticks. In the middle of the glade was a fire pit with black, chalky ashes, smoldering and steaming from previous use. The glade seemed deserted otherwise, and beside the swaying of foliage in the breeze or the rustling of forest creatures in the bushes, there was no movement or noise to prove this notion wrong.

Sally started to take a step out into the glade but Willifer grabbed her and pulled her back.

“Let go, creep!” Sally said, trying to tug her arm free.

“But Sally!” Willifer hissed. “You don’t know who lives here! There could be a wild bandit or murderer in there waiting with an ax to chop your head clean off! Ooh, and I’m allergic to the sight of blood.” Willifer shook his head vigorously. “Oh, awful awful awful.”

Sally gave a final jerk that dislodged Willifer’s fingers and she scowled at him. “I think I’ll be fine, mister survivalist. No one is here.”

She parted the foliage and stepped into the glade, followed cautiously by Chris and Willifer. Sunlight pooled on the forest floor, making little hazy waves of heat dance from the earth and evaporate into the air.

“See?” Sally said triumphantly. “No one’s here.”

“Let’s move on Sally,” Chris said in a low voice. “Like you said, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before sundown. And I don’t like it here.” He looked around and shivered. “Kinda gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah,” Willifer said. His eyes were as big as soup bowls. “There could be murderers here!”

“All right, all right,” Sally said. “We’ll go. But I want to come back tomorrow, earlier.”

“Okay, Sally,” Chris said, relieved to be leaving. “Let’s just go.”