The Last One(43)

Banker is more intimidated. “We need to figure out where an animal crossed this stream?” He glances toward the dipping sun, which is tucked behind a cloud. “We don’t have much light left.”

“Then we’d better get started,” says Black Doctor. “You look upstream, I’ll look down?”

They separate.

Several miles away, Exorcist’s good humor has faded. A blister has blossomed on his left big toe and each step is agony. “I never should have followed a woman,” he grumbles.

Waitress’s hamstrings are shrieking, part of her body’s reaction to having gone several days without caffeine. She was expecting headaches—one of which she also has—but she wasn’t expecting these sharp muscle pains. She thinks they are just a reaction to an unprecedented amount of walking. She’s frustrated and uncomfortable, and she takes the bait. “Screw you,” she says to Exorcist. “You were there, you could have chipped in at any time. But you were yapping about some idiot customer instead. That was your choice.”

Exorcist whirls to face her. There is a perfect visual as Waitress steps forward and shoves her face close to his, her profile tipped ever so slightly upward. Our two redheads, face-to-face. Freeze the moment and one could easily think they’re about to kiss as anger turns to passion. But no, the passion these two share is strictly hostile.

Rancher places a hand on Exorcist’s shoulder. “Fighting won’t accomplish nothing,” he says. “Come on.”

“You are mistaken,” says Exorcist slowly, leaning in even closer to Waitress, “if you think I will forget this.” A wisp of wind blows one of Waitress’s curls forward to brush his chest. “Nor will I forgive. I am a godly man, and my God is one of wrath.” He spits onto the ground, the glob landing next to Waitress’s sneaker, then pivots and walks away.

“Psycho,” whispers Waitress, but it’s clear she’s shaken.

At the stream, Banker calls, “I think I found a track.” Black Doctor hustles over to see. It’s the same hoofprint that Tracker showed Zoo, and Zoo’s footprint is etched softly in the dirt a few inches away.

Carpenter Chick and Engineer are the next to reach the second Clue, but Air Force and Biology are not far behind—when they spy the boulder, the other team is still standing beside it. It’s an awkward moment; the contestants don’t know if they should acknowledge one another or not. The editor takes this awkwardness and spins it into mutually disdainful silence.

Air Force sees the first hoofprint and is caught in indecision. He doesn’t want to give the direction away to the other team, but every second spent pondering how to gain an advantage over Carpenter Chick and Engineer is an additional second separating him and Biology from the two teams ahead. He decides that is the greater concern and calls to his partner. Carpenter Chick jerks her head toward him like a scent hound.

Soon all four contestants are moving north, Air Force and Biology in the lead by about ten feet.

“It crossed here,” says Tracker, upstream.

Zoo is about to ask how he knows, then decides to try to figure it out for herself. She squats by the grassy bank. She doesn’t see any sign of the prey they’re following, but notices that the stream is shallower here, that they are at what appears to be a natural crossing.

Then she sees it: fresh scrabble marks in the far bank, the mud there rich and overturned. “The far bank,” she says.

Tracker feels something he hadn’t expected to feel: pride. He’s proud of his verbose and jolly teammate, for not asking him for help, for finding the sign—the most obvious sign, at least—for herself. “There’s also this rock here,” he says, pointing to a small round stone that’s been kicked up from the streambed and lies atop a bigger rock, breaching the water’s surface.

“Oh, yeah,” says Zoo. “It kind of looks like a cairn.”

A cairn is exactly what the small rock centered on top of the larger rock is meant to be, albeit a shorter, more subtle one than would usually be constructed. The Expert built it to draw the eye.

Zoo and Tracker cross the stream. Zoo leaves several dirty tread marks on stone, which she notices, but Tracker’s already moving on and she follows. The trail is obvious from here, matted grass and snapped brush. They follow it toward a copse of birches. A wooden box hangs from the closest tree.

Tracker opens the hanging box. The inside of the lid has HUNGRY? painted across it.

“Yes,” chirps Zoo. “Yes, I am.” She and Tracker peer inside.

The box contains five circular tokens hanging on pegs. Each token features a different etching: a deer, a rabbit, a squirrel, a duck, and a turkey.

“What do you think?” says Zoo. “Deer?”

“That’s what we’ve supposedly been following,” says Tracker, which she takes as assent. Zoo extracts the token. It’s the size of her palm and made of birch. She flips the token over. On the back is a bearing: nineteen degrees. She sets her compass.

Banker and Black Doctor have nearly passed the crossing when Black Doctor says, “Hey, are those footprints?” Banker slips and leaves a tear in the far bank. With each crossing, the path becomes more obvious.

The trees around Zoo and Tracker thicken, then thin, and then they see it: a doe, hanging from her hind legs in a tree. Her tongue lolls from her mouth about two feet off the ground. Next to the dead doe is a tarp with a bucket and cast-iron skillet on top of it, as well as a small box with an etching of a deer and a token-sized slot.