Survival Stories
After my brother died, my dad said the nightmares—the ghosts—were all in my mind. That they couldn't hurt me. Turns out he was wrong.
And then we watch helplessly as the jeep burns. Flames leap from the driver's window and lick at the door frame, red tongues reaching into the black smoke. A wall of heat pushes toward us.
A dhow, an open wooden boat about the same length as ours, is motoring alongside, thudding into our hull. From the edge of the sun, another boat hurtles toward us.
I sense the gunfire more than hear it.
Duncan is yelling at Mom, "Those are warning shots. Cut the engine! They won't hurt us if we cooperate."
She drops the rifle to her shoulder. "Like I'd let you run around the forest with a loaded gun." She aims the rifle at the ground, and it occurs to me she's going to fire it. She thinks it is unloaded because that's how she keeps the gun, but I'm thinking about the cartridge I loaded, and I can't get the words out in time. She squeezes the trigger.
I lay on the gritty wooden floor of the filthy shack, frozen with terror. For weeks I had been hearing about the two girls who had disappeared, but I had never in a million years thought that something like that was going to happen to me.
But here I was, tied up, groggy, panic-stricken—and waiting. Waiting for whatever had happened to the girl who had been found "not alive." Waiting for whatever had happened to the other girl.
This couldn't be happening to me.
But it was.
The bear lowers its head. When a dog looks like this, it means you could get bitten. When a bear looks like this, it means you could be lunch. The bear's eyes harden, as if he has lost patience with us. We're on his trail and he wants us off. The bear opens his jaws. Big jaws. Really big teeth. His jaws make a smacking sound.
I whisper, "He's going to eat us."
The horses' iron shoes scraped, metal against solid stone. Slowly they struggled upward, legs bent, lungs wheezing. Society Girl's halter rope tightened in my hand. I looked back. The old mare was really having problems.
Groaning, she put her head down and lurched over one of the big rocks, her shoes slipping.
Then, as though in slow motion, she crumpled to the ground.
