The Last One(20)

In time I realize I do know one other thing: Wolves don’t live around here. The closest wild wolf would have to be in Canada, or maybe North Carolina. The probability of the animal that attacked me being a wolf is infinitesimal.

Whatever it was, I killed it. Not to eat, not cleanly with a trap. Animal-loving me, who has spent her professional life working with children to inspire in them a respect for—a love of—nature. Not for the kids’ sakes. That’s what everyone gets wrong. It’s not the teaching that I like. I think of Eddie the red-tailed hawk, Penny the fox. I’m not supposed to name the ones slated for release, but I do. I always do.

Eventually, I regain my feet and stumble out of the brook. My legs are numb as I return to the destroyed debris hut. Twilight has given way to dawn; squinting, drawing closer in tiny movements, I’m just able to make out the animal, the front half of which juts from the leaves. Its head looks like a boulder was dropped on it.

Is that what I am now—a boulder careening downhill, driven by inertia instead of will?

I pick up a branch and sweep the crimson leaves off the top of the shelter, then pry up the sticks covering the body. I’m still shaking and my throat is raw.

The animal is smaller than I thought—about the size of a collie—thin-legged, its bushy tail stained with excrement.

Not a wolf, but a coyote. The longer I look at it, the smaller it seems.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you got sick.

I’m sorry I killed you.

I dig out my boot and backpack from the rubble. Thick rents run through the toe of the boot. I poke it with a stick, which slips through easily to strike the inner sole. Some of the holes go all the way through the sole; the boot is useless. The front of my backpack is shredded too, and it’s several minutes before I find my glasses. The frames are twisted, both earpieces snapped off. Only one lens is intact, the other shattered where a tooth struck it like a bullet.

Fear distinct from the fear I felt during the attack drifts over me. An equal, opposing fear. A slow fear. My vision isn’t bad compared to a mole’s, but it’s bad enough. I haven’t gone a day without corrective lenses since fourth grade.

“I can’t see,” I say, turning around. I lift my chin, hold up my ruined glasses, and directly address the cameras for the first time since Solo started. “I can’t see.”

Help should be here by now. An EMT should be sitting me down, handing me the ugly backup pair of glasses I entrusted to the producer the day before we started. I look at a bright red scratch that runs across the back of my right hand, dotted with pinpricks of drying blood.

“I need the vaccine,” I say to the trees. My heart is speeding. “Day zero and day three, post-exposure.”

They required us to get rabies vaccinations before we came. It was one among a plethora of requirements: a full physical, a tetanus booster, proof of a whole host of other shots that I already had for school and work. Rabies was all that I needed to meet their requirements.

“I’m not immune,” I call. My voice cracks. The rabies vaccine is atypical in that instead of creating immunity, receiving it pre-exposure only decreases how many doses one needs after exposure. I hold up my hand and turn in a circle. “I have a cut, look. I touched its saliva. I need the shots.”

There’s no answer. I stare at the blur of leaves, squinting, searching for a camera mounted on a branch, a drone hovering above. It must be there, it must be. I think of the boulder, of Heather’s taxidermy bear and the first prop splattered at the base of a cliff. I think of the doll, its mechanical cries twisting through the cabin’s suffocating air. My fear begins to morph, to sharpen, and even as I wait, I know no one’s coming.

Because they planned this.

I don’t know how, but they planned this and now my glasses are broken and I can’t see.

I feel as though my anger will split my skin, flay me alive from the inside.

I can’t fucking see.





6.


The host projects his voice as though onstage. “For our first Team Challenge you will be working together to find edible plants,” he says. He slept well. The contestants did not, except for Tracker, who sleeps better outdoors than in. “Whichever team collects the most different types of edible plants in half an hour wins. However, that doesn’t mean you can go picking flowers all willy-nilly.” The host wags his finger, and Carpenter Chick’s eye roll makes Zoo laugh. Both action and sound will be cut; this is a somber moment. “For each incorrect identification your team makes, one point will be deducted from your score.” He hands each team leader a brightly colored tri-fold pamphlet. “You’re playing for something very important—lunch.”

Tracker woke before dawn to check his traps, and a rabbit became breakfast for his team. Biology also shared her protein bars, though she was no longer obligated to do so. The eight contestants outside their team are famished, and the host doesn’t know about the rabbit.

The next several minutes are compressed to an instant. The teams are ready, and the host shouts, “Go!”

“I bet Cooper knows all this stuff,” says Carpenter Chick to her teammates. “One of us should just follow him.”

“I’ll do it,” says Waitress, wishing she were on his team.

Zoo doesn’t like this idea. All her life she’s followed the spirit of the law as well as the letter. “I know some of these,” she says, looking at the handout. “And I think I saw Queen Anne’s lace yesterday. We can do this on our own.”