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They walked all morning down a familiar trail until the sun blazed high above them, the heat nearing its peak on this early-summer day. They followed faded trail markings tied on the low branches of the trees that closed in around them. Two years after the permanent power failure, Evan had tied these in roughly ten-metre intervals to mark the path from the old reserve site to the new camp. The orange tape was fraying at the ends, and some had lost nearly all colour.
Evan had told the others that he wanted to stop at the old reserve first, but hadn't said why. Nangohns assumed he wanted to scavenge for anything that might be of use on their trek. The route they had settled upon followed the big river south, and to get there, they had to walk east first, through the former rez. It had been years since most of them had seen their old houses and the buildings in which they once worked, lived and played.
"We gotta be getting close, eh?" Cal asked no one in particular. They had walked mostly in solemn silence all morning, but by now they had reached the anonymity and neutrality of the deep forest.
"Just up this way is the far end of the rez, the west side," confirmed Evan.
* * * * *
The summer humidity and afternoon heat fell upon them, and beads of sweat formed on their brows and shoulders. Shoots of grass burst up through the road, some up to their waist. The overgrown ditches seemed to close in on the former roadway.
Evan's nose picked up a hint of sweetgrass as they approached the former centre of town, where major buildings like the outdoor hockey rink, band office, school, and gymnasium still stood. The grey metal roof of the rink to their right was intact, but the thick white plastic boards that enclosed the ice surface had mostly collapsed. Ahead, the brown outer walls of the band office were faded, and scorched in some places. Trees and bushes grew high around the school and gym, and most of the windows of all the buildings were broken.
Evan had not planned to stop anywhere else here; anything useful had been picked clean long ago. The crunch of gravel below the soles of his boots evoked a haunted memory of the place as he led them eastward, past the familiar sites—the baseball field and jumping rocks on the shore of the big lake. The grey gravel infield of the ball diamond had become green with weeds, and the outfield grass was as high as the chain-link fencing that enclosed the play area. The wooden bleachers were long gone.
They approached the community store on their left.
"Remember this freakin' place," grumbled J.C. Nangohns did, vaguely. It had been part of a chain of grocers servicing First Nations in the north that sold food at inflated prices to the people who lived there. Nangohns remembered pleading with her mother to buy her something from the colourful candy display at the checkout counter, but being told it cost too much money—a common refrain from the other grown-ups about that store. Now, the front door stood open, but it was too dark inside to see if the shelves were still there. In the first days of the blackout, panicked shoppers had ransacked the place. Evan thought back to scanning the near-empty shelves that day in astonishment. He realized now, that had been just the beginning.
Down the road beyond the store there was a long slope, heavily overgrown. This was where the ploughs had dumped what they cleared from the roads every winter, creating an enormous snowbank—yet another grim landmark from that first winter. According to the scattered stories Nangohns had picked up over the years, this was where Tyler and Isaiah had dumped the body of the man called Justin Scott, whose handguns they had come for and now carried. They had dragged his corpse there on a sled, his body drained of blood from the bullet hole in his head. They rolled the intruder's nearly three-hundred-pound frame down the bank and left it there to freeze: a warning to any other potential trespassers. By spring, his remains were gone, eaten up and carried away by the birds and animals.
If the tangled slope had stirred these memories in Evan and Tyler, they did not let on. They fixed their eyes on the bush ahead, steering them east, with hopes of reaching the river by the late afternoon, where they'd set up camp for the night. As expected, the service road along the hydro lines that led south was completely grown over and unreliable for passage or guidance. They knew the river would lead them south and eventually to the city of Gibson—the next major stop on their trek. It was a route their ancestors had followed since long before wires cut through the land.
Evan led them into the thick brush, and they swatted at flies for hours until it was time to settle by the river and rest for the night.