Post by morriss003 on Mar 15, 2016 17:36:31 GMT -5
We were throwing spears at the bales again, the sun having set, and I was about to throw mine in the last rays of the day when I heard Pete’s exited voice say, “Jacob’s back.”
We turned toward the parking lot, and saw Jacob staggering toward us. Mike took off running; Pete right behind. The rest of us followed at a walk. Mike reached Jacob first, and then Pete. They relieved Jacob of his backpack, and helped him lay down on the grass. Jacob was normally fastidious in his appearance, but at that moment he looked like a ragged street person, and he smelled as bad. By the time I reached them, Pete had jumped to his feet and was running toward the cafeteria.
“Did you find anyone?” I asked, hoping for some good news.
“Howard, let him drink something first,” Mike said.
I was impatient, but I understood Mike’s comment. Jacob was exhausted and his lips were cracked as if he was dehydrated. It wasn’t long before Pete returned carrying a bottle of water and a baloney sandwich, so I waited while Jacob ate and drank. When he finished, he lay down on the grass, and closed his eyes.
“Well?” John asked.
Jacob roused and sat up. “I walked three days, and on the morning of the third day, I didn’t eat any of my food because I wanted to conserve some. That afternoon I found it. The fog, I mean. It was about four o’clock. I know because I checked my watch. I was about a half mile past the seven thousand feet sign. The elevation marker, I mean.
“The road started going downhill, steep, and I saw some fog ahead of me. It was real strange, because it was level. I could see over it. It looked like the ocean, except that it was brown, and there were no waves. There was a deer standing next to the road, close to the fog. I stopped to watch it, and I saw it walk into the edge of the fog. Then it walked down farther into the fog, so its feet and part of its legs disappeared. Suddenly, I saw its head come up, and it tried to, like, jump out of the fog, but it fell down with its head and shoulders out of the fog. It was facing me, and I could see it trying to struggle. Its eyes look scared, and it was making strange sounds, and then it stopped moving. I think it was dead. Then the body of the deer started moving backwards into the fog, like something was dragging it. Then it disappeared, underneath.
“That really scared me. I was, like, not breathing and my heart was pounding. I watched for another hour, and I saw a bird fly very low over the fog, almost touching it. Something came out of the fog and grabbed the bird, and it disappeared, too. It was so fast, that I couldn’t tell what had happened. I climbed a little hill next to the road and looked over to the other side. There was more fog. It’s like we’re on an island in an ocean.
“That’s when I turned around and started back. I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t eat anything that day, I only drank water. I tried to conserve my food and water on the way back, but I ran out.”
Pete walked away, his head shaking from side to side, muttering, “No way.”
The others were white faced, even tearful. I was confused. What did Jacob’s story mean? Was there a large animal in the fog that had killed the deer? I discounted the part about the bird, because birds are fast. You can miss their movements.
“I wonder what happened to the Admin and the counselors,” John said.
I didn’t know what he meant. I was thinking, what does a fog have to do with the Admin and the others?
~~~
Nowadays, I think back and ask, what did happen? Why did they drive into the Fog? We were getting rain showers that day, and Erin believes they drove into it, thinking it was a passing cloud. That often happens in the Sierras. A cloud will look like fog, but those familiar with the area know that it’s really a low cloud. If they hit a rain shower just before they reached the fog, the hazy conditions might have fooled them. They could have driven just a few feet into it, and that’s all it would have taken before they learned the deadly difference.
~~~
Mike drew a breath. “Well,” he said slowly. “Now we know.”
I wondered, know what?
“We’ll have to tell the others,” I said.
I meant that we had to tell the others that Jacob was back, but the rest of our group thought I meant otherwise. The truth is that I was stunned into denial. It would be a long time before I faced reality. Others in the camp, such as Douglas, had similar reactions of denial, but I may have had the worst case. I don’t remember a lot about that day, but it seemed as if it was happening to someone else.
“Yes, but not today,” Mike said. “The sun’s going down. We’ll tell them in the morning.”
“Why not tell them now?” Eric asked.
I wondered about that too. John had the answer.
“Better to get scared in the morning than at night.”
It was another puzzling statement. Why would Jacob’s return be scary? Wouldn’t people be happy to see him safe and sound? The fog was far away, so it didn’t matter.
“You come with me,” Mike said to Jacob. “The rest of you… well, just don’t tell anyone, all right?”
There was a chorus of agreement from the others. I stayed silent. By the time Jacob felt strong enough to move, the sun had set. Pete and I walked ahead with John and Eric, Mike and Jacob trailing. I thought Mike was helping him to his cabin, but when Pete and I reached our hut we turned and saw Mike standing at the door to the Admin’s cabin.
To our surprise, Mike fished in his pants’ pocket and pulled out a key. He used it to open the door, but as he and Jacob entered the cabin, we heard a shout. It was Ralph hurrying toward the cabin. Mike shut the door just as Ralph arrived at the cabin. The kid must have locked it, because when Ralph tried the knob it would not budge. He banged on the door, demanding to be let in, but there was no response from inside.
“Hey!” Pete called, and when Ralph looked our way, he said, “Jacob’s busted down flat. Leave him alone.”
Ralph glared at us, and then he walked toward us, mumbling to himself.
Pete laughed. “Mike’s got a set on him, doesn’t he?” Then his face turned grim. “He’s gonna need them.”
“What the hell is going on?” Ralph asked.
“Jacob found some kind of fog blocking the road,” Pete explained. “He’s too wrecked to talk about it tonight, so we’re waiting until morning.”
“Probably just some bullshit that dick, Mike, told him to say.”
I could see that Pete was disgusted with Ralph, but I wasn’t so sure he was wrong. Pete and I went over to the cafeteria and scrounged something to eat and then we watched movies with the other campers before we went to our bunks. I slept early, but I woke from a dream about Pop and Nana. In the quiet calm of the night I heard Tomás crying under his blankets. I supposed he was homesick, and I didn’t blame him, for I was a little homesick, too. I sat up and grabbed my smartphone, but there were no bars indicating service. I wished Pop and Nana would forget about the bus and drive up to camp. I lay there, my face flushed with anger, wondering why the Admin or someone in charge had not contracted with a helicopter to deliver a message to us about what was happening.
~~~
Pete and I were startled to see Jacob step out of his cabin the next morning. He must have moved during the night. I guessed he wanted to sleep in a familiar place. We walked with him to the cafeteria, went into the kitchen, and grabbed a box of cereal. The place was a mess, since no one was cleaning. All forms of organization had disappeared from camp. While we were eating, John and Eric joined us. Others stopped by our table wanting to speak to Jacob, but he ignored them. Soon they became impatient.
“Come on, Jacob. What did you see?” Tyler asked.
“Tell us what happened,” Douglas angrily demanded.
“Shit!” John exclaimed. “At least let him finish eating his Cheerios!”
At a glance at the scared or scowling faces around us, I could see how the tension was growing, but I also noticed that Mike had entered the cafeteria followed by a group of girls. He walked past us and stepped on to the podium at the east end of the building.
“Hey!” he said in a loud voice. Everyone stopped talking and turned to look at him.
“Jacob’s going to tell everyone what he saw. Give him a few minutes. Some of you need to go down to the girls’ camp, and tell them that we’re having a meeting.”
“Who died and made you Chief?” Ralph sneered scornfully, and Mike flushed.
“Do you think Jackie will come out of her cabin, if you tell her what’s happening?” he asked.
Ralph snorted in contempt, but then he strode out of the building. Maybe he was going to get Jackie. I didn’t think she would come.
Jacob lifted his bowl to his lips to drink the leftover milk, took the empty bowl to the kitchen window counter, and strode to the podium where Mike was standing. Mike moved to one side. A lot of campers mobbed the floor below podium, eager for news, and Pete was among them. I wasn’t. I felt a sudden urge to use the restroom, so went to the men’s toilet, behind the cafeteria. I had heard Jacob’s report the day before, and I didn’t want to hear anymore. As I waited I heard Ralph’s angry voice, so I knew that he wasn’t pleased at the news of Jacob’s weird fog. By the time I returned, some of the kids were weeping, and others were sniffling. Pete was sitting at a table, head bowed. He looked as if he was doing some serious thinking.
“It must be aliens,” a guy suggested.
“Oh, right,” sneered another guy, “and NASA or nobody else saw it coming.”
“Maybe it’s something the Russians invented.”
“Or the Chinese.”
“Or Al-Qaeda.”
“Whatever it is,” an Oriental girl replied, “there are monsters in it, real monsters.” At that, everyone fell silent, except the few kids who were still crying. I noticed that our mouse, Kathy, was one of them, and some of the girls from her cabin were crying, too.
“Hey, Pete,” I said. “You want toss a Frisbee?”
Pete lifted his head and gave me a strange look. Then he shook his head from side to side.
“Whatever it is,” Mike said, “we have to decide what to do. We don’t know if anyone but us survived the fog. We don’t know if anyone is coming to rescue us. If they are coming, we don’t know how long it will take them to find us. We can drink water from the river, but what if we run out of food? What if we’re still here when winter comes? It’s going to freeze. It’s going to snow. What are we going to do?” For minutes there was no response.
Speaking slowly, as if she were thinking, Gwen said, “We can cut back on the stuff that we’re eating.”
I went into the kitchen to get a pudding cup, and when I came back, they were still discussing what to do. They had gathered around Mike who was standing by a table and speaking. A lot of people had left, shaken by the news.
“First on the list is the food,” Mike was saying. “We have to ration the food. We have to figure out how to get more food.”
“We could hunt game,” the Oriental girl suggested.
“Do you know how to hunt?” Pete asked. “If you catch something, do you know how to cook it?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “I can shoot a handgun or a rifle, but I’ve never hunted.”
“There’s forty-nine of us, counting Jackie,” said Mike. “Ask around. Someone must know something about hunting or about cooking animals.”
“I do,” Jacob said. “I hunt deer and birds with my Dad. I know how to cut the patches off, and how to gut them, and how to skin them. If we can kill a deer or a bird, I can get it ready to be cooked or roasted.”
“All of us are probably good at something,” John said. “We should make a list of what we know.”
It was clear that Pete wasn’t interested in leaving, so I said, “And we should ask everyone else, and make a list of what they know, too.” I didn’t mind discussing this hypothetical organization of our camp.
“I’m great at video games,” Pete offered with an accompanying laugh. The entire discussion seemed like a game to me.
“Can we live in here during the winter?” Eric asked. They looked around, seeing the dining hall for the first time as a possible shelter.
“It’s pretty small for forty-nine people,” I said. I pushed back my hair, noticing that it had grown. I made a mental note to get a haircut when I got back to San Diego.
“And it’s got a metal roof,” Mike added. “It’s going to get very cold in here, I think.”
“But we have the stove to keep us warm,” Eric pointed out, “and we have propane in the tank, outside.”
“How much propane is in the tank,” I asked. “How long will it last?”
The girl knew the answer. “I heard the Admin say that she would have to order a refill at the end of next year. And they weren’t planning to use it during the winter.”
“So they were planning to use it for two summers?” I asked.
“How cold will it get here?” Eric asked.
I knew the answer to that. “Below zero degrees.”
“Will our sleeping bags keep us warm enough?” Mike asked.
“Some of us have mummy bags rated for below zero temperatures,” she responded, “but most of us have bags for just down to twenty degrees. If we’re stuck here, we’re going to need a lot of wood to make fires.”
“I think we need to save the propane for as long as possible, and use it to run the fridge during the summer,” said Mike. “We probably won’t need it for the fridge during the winter. Stuff will stay cold enough if we cover it with snow.”
“So, we have to stop using the oven?” she asked. “People aren’t going to like that.”
Humoring them, I said, “Well, we gotta have some rules if we’re going to stay alive.”
There was silence, and then Mike said, “That’s the hard thing. We’ve got to have some rules. And we’ve got to have some way to enforce the rules.”
“There’s a barbeque in the back,” said Pete. “We could start cooking with wood.”
“No one is using the stove, anyway,” said Eric. “I think most everybody is eating out of cans without heating it up.”
“How much food do we have, Yuie?” Mike asked the Oriental girl.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“We have a lot of hamburger patties,” said John, “and there are a lot of hot dogs and buns.”
“We have milk for a while,” I said. “Most of it is boxed, but some of it is frozen concentrated, so we have to mix it with water. And they were cutting it with powdered milk, and we have a lot of that.”
“Yuck, so that’s why the milk tastes so weird,” Pete complained, and then he added, “There are a lot of bags of rice and flour. Most of the other stuff is in cans; like beans, fruit, and corn.”
“Don’t forget the weenies,” Eric said.
“We’d never forget you,” John deadpanned.
“Let’s disconnect the stove for the time being,” said Mike. “And let’s keep this to ourselves. And let’s get the barbeque out of the storage room and build a fire in it. If we keep it going, maybe people will get used to using it.”
“Too bad the cave only has that one small section that’s really a cave,” John mentioned. “That would be way big for us.”
“What if we made it into a real cave?” Mike asked.
“What do you mean?” Eric asked.
“What if, somehow, someway, we put a front on it?” said Mike. “We could all live in it during the winter.”
“Just get a couple of girls to live with you in the Admin’s cabin,” Pete joked. “You’ll be warm and happy all winter.”
Yuie exclaimed, “Shut up!” and the rest of us laughed.
“Seriously, what about the cave idea?” Mike asked again.
“What could we use for a front?” Eric asked.
“What about taking the canvas tops off the cabins and using them?” Pete suggested.
“Too cold,” Yuie replied.
“Could we pile up enough rocks?” I asked.
“Maybe,” John replied.
“We could use logs,” Mike suggested. “There are hatchets and axes in the store room. What if we cut down a lot of small trees, and leaned them against the top of the cave?”
“I don’t know if small trees would be tall enough to reach the top of the cave,” Eric replied.
“What if we used a combination of these things?” I suggested. “What if we piled rocks high enough, that small trees would reach the top of the cave?”
“Too bad they didn’t build the cabins in front of the cave,” John said facetiously. “Then we would already have a front.”
The idea hit me. “We could move the cabins!”
They didn’t realize I was joking, but the concept was simple. We could dismantle the cabins, build a wall in front of the cave, and stack the cabins with their back ends standing on the wall and the front ends standing on the cave floor. That way we would not have as much opened area left, needing to be covered by additional means. The others loved the idea, so we spent some time discussing how it could be accomplished. When we finished, John disconnected the stove’s connection from the propane line, so no one could use it. That would have repercussions later, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. We walked as a group up to the cave to examine it as a possible shelter.
“This is going to be a lot of work,” Pete said sadly.
There wasn’t much we could do without help from a lot of other people, so we decided to hold a meeting that night to discuss how to proceed. It wasn’t long after we returned to our cabin that the euphoria of our debate began to wear off and numbness set in. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but my thoughts were about Pop and Nana. What had happened? What the hell was the Fog, Jacob had discovered? A part of me wanted to hike down the road and see it for myself, but the larger part shied away from the idea. Perhaps seeing it would have made it too real. I was still hoping my grandparents would suddenly appear at the top of the hill, driving the old Ford. Maybe the Fog was a local phenomenon.
Ahmad and Rasul accompanied us, because they and Pete were still speaking. After a while, Ralph entered our cabin. He listened to the others for only a few seconds before interrupting.
“You guys gonna let a little kid tell you what to do?” he asked, a sneer in his voice. “You gonna listen to little Chief?”
My face reddened, because I had been thinking similar thoughts, even though I had participated in the meeting with Mike.
“Not me,” Tomás said, and Brian shook his head in agreement.
There was silence in our cabin except for Ralph’s contemptuous laugh, and then Pete asked, “Who do you think should be in charge?”
Ralph frowned at him. “Jackie’s in charge.”
No one said anything, but even clueless Ralph knew what the rest of us were thinking. Jackie has lost it. He scowled, stood, and stalked out of the cabin.
After a minute of more silence, Brian said rather casually, “If no one’s in charge, there’s some good looking pussy on the other side of the river.”
Tomás grinned in a manner Pop would have described as lascivious and responded, “That’s true.”
Ahmad’s face reddened, and he snapped, “You guys leave those girls alone.”
Tomás snorted, and then he stood and left the cabin followed by Brian who muttered, “Raghead,” as he flung the canvas flap aside.
Ahmad flushed and started to stand, but Rasul put a hand on his arm. Ahmad looked down at the hand, his face angry, but Rasul didn’t take his hand away.
“We have things to decide,” he said, and after another second, Ahmad sat down.
“Who is in charge?” Pete asked.
No one said anything for a moment, and then I spoke. “Just because Jacob saw some Fog doesn’t mean something super bad has happened.”
“That’s true,” Pete replied, “but what do we do in the meantime? While we wait to see if our folks come for us?”
“Mike’s the only person in this camp who’s been thinking about that,” John stated.
The rest of us nodded, because what he said was true. Everything we had talked about in the cafeteria was due to Mike’s prodding. Food, shelter, guarding the food; these were ideas Mike had introduced.
“I don’t like this,” Rasul said. “Somehow I feel like it might be more dangerous here than at the Fog. Things could get bad, fast.”
I didn’t understand what he was referring to. How could things get worse? I thought. We’re trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with no cellphone service, and there are no adults around, except for Jackie. What else could go wrong?
“Anybody want Ralph to be in charge?” Pete asked.
“Shit, no,” John said. Ahmad shook his head, and Rasul visibly shuddered.
“That would be a good way to start a fight,” Pete said.
“That all we need; a battle for power,” John growled. “Biggest guy kicks everybody else’s ass.”
“What about you?” Pete asked, turning my way. “You and Ralph are the oldest, after Jackie. Do you want to be in charge?”
“In charge of what?” I asked, bewildered by the question.
Pete stared at me for a moment, and then he turned to the others. “One good thing about Mike is that the kid’s not an asshole. And he’s not trying for celeb status. He’s just trying to keep us alive.”
“This is true,” Ahmad said, “but he won’t get anything done without our help.”
“It would be a bad thing if people started fighting,” Rasul added. “The girls would be in trouble.”
There was more silence, and then Pete stood and grabbed his spear from where it lay against the end frame of our bunk. He took a step toward the center of the cabin and held out his arm, holding his spear vertically. “Ralph’s an idiot, but he said it. Mike is Chief.”
John stood, held out his spear, touched Pete’s knuckles with his own, and said, “Mike is Chief.”
Then Ahmad stood and Rasul, too, and they said the same words, and I swear, the same grim expression was on every one of their faces. In a befuddled daze, I stood, grabbed my spear, and echoed, “Mike is Chief.” At that moment, the Spears were born.
~~~~~
Here is the truth. Mike did not seek power; it was thrust on him by those of us in that room, at that moment. Mike could not have been Chief without the Spears to back him, and by backing him we made it clear to the rest of the camp, that we were not going to allow the strong to dictate to the weak. It would be the group that was important, not the individual. Later, Pete spoke to Eric and Jacob about what we had decided, and he returned to tell us that they were fine with our decision. I’m not sure, because I never asked him, but I think he spoke to Yuie, too.
~~~~~
Things changed permanently that day, although I was unaware they were changing, except for noting that Ralph, Brian, and Tomás moved out of our cabin that evening, and Ahmad and Rasul moved in.
We turned toward the parking lot, and saw Jacob staggering toward us. Mike took off running; Pete right behind. The rest of us followed at a walk. Mike reached Jacob first, and then Pete. They relieved Jacob of his backpack, and helped him lay down on the grass. Jacob was normally fastidious in his appearance, but at that moment he looked like a ragged street person, and he smelled as bad. By the time I reached them, Pete had jumped to his feet and was running toward the cafeteria.
“Did you find anyone?” I asked, hoping for some good news.
“Howard, let him drink something first,” Mike said.
I was impatient, but I understood Mike’s comment. Jacob was exhausted and his lips were cracked as if he was dehydrated. It wasn’t long before Pete returned carrying a bottle of water and a baloney sandwich, so I waited while Jacob ate and drank. When he finished, he lay down on the grass, and closed his eyes.
“Well?” John asked.
Jacob roused and sat up. “I walked three days, and on the morning of the third day, I didn’t eat any of my food because I wanted to conserve some. That afternoon I found it. The fog, I mean. It was about four o’clock. I know because I checked my watch. I was about a half mile past the seven thousand feet sign. The elevation marker, I mean.
“The road started going downhill, steep, and I saw some fog ahead of me. It was real strange, because it was level. I could see over it. It looked like the ocean, except that it was brown, and there were no waves. There was a deer standing next to the road, close to the fog. I stopped to watch it, and I saw it walk into the edge of the fog. Then it walked down farther into the fog, so its feet and part of its legs disappeared. Suddenly, I saw its head come up, and it tried to, like, jump out of the fog, but it fell down with its head and shoulders out of the fog. It was facing me, and I could see it trying to struggle. Its eyes look scared, and it was making strange sounds, and then it stopped moving. I think it was dead. Then the body of the deer started moving backwards into the fog, like something was dragging it. Then it disappeared, underneath.
“That really scared me. I was, like, not breathing and my heart was pounding. I watched for another hour, and I saw a bird fly very low over the fog, almost touching it. Something came out of the fog and grabbed the bird, and it disappeared, too. It was so fast, that I couldn’t tell what had happened. I climbed a little hill next to the road and looked over to the other side. There was more fog. It’s like we’re on an island in an ocean.
“That’s when I turned around and started back. I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t eat anything that day, I only drank water. I tried to conserve my food and water on the way back, but I ran out.”
Pete walked away, his head shaking from side to side, muttering, “No way.”
The others were white faced, even tearful. I was confused. What did Jacob’s story mean? Was there a large animal in the fog that had killed the deer? I discounted the part about the bird, because birds are fast. You can miss their movements.
“I wonder what happened to the Admin and the counselors,” John said.
I didn’t know what he meant. I was thinking, what does a fog have to do with the Admin and the others?
~~~
Nowadays, I think back and ask, what did happen? Why did they drive into the Fog? We were getting rain showers that day, and Erin believes they drove into it, thinking it was a passing cloud. That often happens in the Sierras. A cloud will look like fog, but those familiar with the area know that it’s really a low cloud. If they hit a rain shower just before they reached the fog, the hazy conditions might have fooled them. They could have driven just a few feet into it, and that’s all it would have taken before they learned the deadly difference.
~~~
Mike drew a breath. “Well,” he said slowly. “Now we know.”
I wondered, know what?
“We’ll have to tell the others,” I said.
I meant that we had to tell the others that Jacob was back, but the rest of our group thought I meant otherwise. The truth is that I was stunned into denial. It would be a long time before I faced reality. Others in the camp, such as Douglas, had similar reactions of denial, but I may have had the worst case. I don’t remember a lot about that day, but it seemed as if it was happening to someone else.
“Yes, but not today,” Mike said. “The sun’s going down. We’ll tell them in the morning.”
“Why not tell them now?” Eric asked.
I wondered about that too. John had the answer.
“Better to get scared in the morning than at night.”
It was another puzzling statement. Why would Jacob’s return be scary? Wouldn’t people be happy to see him safe and sound? The fog was far away, so it didn’t matter.
“You come with me,” Mike said to Jacob. “The rest of you… well, just don’t tell anyone, all right?”
There was a chorus of agreement from the others. I stayed silent. By the time Jacob felt strong enough to move, the sun had set. Pete and I walked ahead with John and Eric, Mike and Jacob trailing. I thought Mike was helping him to his cabin, but when Pete and I reached our hut we turned and saw Mike standing at the door to the Admin’s cabin.
To our surprise, Mike fished in his pants’ pocket and pulled out a key. He used it to open the door, but as he and Jacob entered the cabin, we heard a shout. It was Ralph hurrying toward the cabin. Mike shut the door just as Ralph arrived at the cabin. The kid must have locked it, because when Ralph tried the knob it would not budge. He banged on the door, demanding to be let in, but there was no response from inside.
“Hey!” Pete called, and when Ralph looked our way, he said, “Jacob’s busted down flat. Leave him alone.”
Ralph glared at us, and then he walked toward us, mumbling to himself.
Pete laughed. “Mike’s got a set on him, doesn’t he?” Then his face turned grim. “He’s gonna need them.”
“What the hell is going on?” Ralph asked.
“Jacob found some kind of fog blocking the road,” Pete explained. “He’s too wrecked to talk about it tonight, so we’re waiting until morning.”
“Probably just some bullshit that dick, Mike, told him to say.”
I could see that Pete was disgusted with Ralph, but I wasn’t so sure he was wrong. Pete and I went over to the cafeteria and scrounged something to eat and then we watched movies with the other campers before we went to our bunks. I slept early, but I woke from a dream about Pop and Nana. In the quiet calm of the night I heard Tomás crying under his blankets. I supposed he was homesick, and I didn’t blame him, for I was a little homesick, too. I sat up and grabbed my smartphone, but there were no bars indicating service. I wished Pop and Nana would forget about the bus and drive up to camp. I lay there, my face flushed with anger, wondering why the Admin or someone in charge had not contracted with a helicopter to deliver a message to us about what was happening.
~~~
Pete and I were startled to see Jacob step out of his cabin the next morning. He must have moved during the night. I guessed he wanted to sleep in a familiar place. We walked with him to the cafeteria, went into the kitchen, and grabbed a box of cereal. The place was a mess, since no one was cleaning. All forms of organization had disappeared from camp. While we were eating, John and Eric joined us. Others stopped by our table wanting to speak to Jacob, but he ignored them. Soon they became impatient.
“Come on, Jacob. What did you see?” Tyler asked.
“Tell us what happened,” Douglas angrily demanded.
“Shit!” John exclaimed. “At least let him finish eating his Cheerios!”
At a glance at the scared or scowling faces around us, I could see how the tension was growing, but I also noticed that Mike had entered the cafeteria followed by a group of girls. He walked past us and stepped on to the podium at the east end of the building.
“Hey!” he said in a loud voice. Everyone stopped talking and turned to look at him.
“Jacob’s going to tell everyone what he saw. Give him a few minutes. Some of you need to go down to the girls’ camp, and tell them that we’re having a meeting.”
“Who died and made you Chief?” Ralph sneered scornfully, and Mike flushed.
“Do you think Jackie will come out of her cabin, if you tell her what’s happening?” he asked.
Ralph snorted in contempt, but then he strode out of the building. Maybe he was going to get Jackie. I didn’t think she would come.
Jacob lifted his bowl to his lips to drink the leftover milk, took the empty bowl to the kitchen window counter, and strode to the podium where Mike was standing. Mike moved to one side. A lot of campers mobbed the floor below podium, eager for news, and Pete was among them. I wasn’t. I felt a sudden urge to use the restroom, so went to the men’s toilet, behind the cafeteria. I had heard Jacob’s report the day before, and I didn’t want to hear anymore. As I waited I heard Ralph’s angry voice, so I knew that he wasn’t pleased at the news of Jacob’s weird fog. By the time I returned, some of the kids were weeping, and others were sniffling. Pete was sitting at a table, head bowed. He looked as if he was doing some serious thinking.
“It must be aliens,” a guy suggested.
“Oh, right,” sneered another guy, “and NASA or nobody else saw it coming.”
“Maybe it’s something the Russians invented.”
“Or the Chinese.”
“Or Al-Qaeda.”
“Whatever it is,” an Oriental girl replied, “there are monsters in it, real monsters.” At that, everyone fell silent, except the few kids who were still crying. I noticed that our mouse, Kathy, was one of them, and some of the girls from her cabin were crying, too.
“Hey, Pete,” I said. “You want toss a Frisbee?”
Pete lifted his head and gave me a strange look. Then he shook his head from side to side.
“Whatever it is,” Mike said, “we have to decide what to do. We don’t know if anyone but us survived the fog. We don’t know if anyone is coming to rescue us. If they are coming, we don’t know how long it will take them to find us. We can drink water from the river, but what if we run out of food? What if we’re still here when winter comes? It’s going to freeze. It’s going to snow. What are we going to do?” For minutes there was no response.
Speaking slowly, as if she were thinking, Gwen said, “We can cut back on the stuff that we’re eating.”
I went into the kitchen to get a pudding cup, and when I came back, they were still discussing what to do. They had gathered around Mike who was standing by a table and speaking. A lot of people had left, shaken by the news.
“First on the list is the food,” Mike was saying. “We have to ration the food. We have to figure out how to get more food.”
“We could hunt game,” the Oriental girl suggested.
“Do you know how to hunt?” Pete asked. “If you catch something, do you know how to cook it?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “I can shoot a handgun or a rifle, but I’ve never hunted.”
“There’s forty-nine of us, counting Jackie,” said Mike. “Ask around. Someone must know something about hunting or about cooking animals.”
“I do,” Jacob said. “I hunt deer and birds with my Dad. I know how to cut the patches off, and how to gut them, and how to skin them. If we can kill a deer or a bird, I can get it ready to be cooked or roasted.”
“All of us are probably good at something,” John said. “We should make a list of what we know.”
It was clear that Pete wasn’t interested in leaving, so I said, “And we should ask everyone else, and make a list of what they know, too.” I didn’t mind discussing this hypothetical organization of our camp.
“I’m great at video games,” Pete offered with an accompanying laugh. The entire discussion seemed like a game to me.
“Can we live in here during the winter?” Eric asked. They looked around, seeing the dining hall for the first time as a possible shelter.
“It’s pretty small for forty-nine people,” I said. I pushed back my hair, noticing that it had grown. I made a mental note to get a haircut when I got back to San Diego.
“And it’s got a metal roof,” Mike added. “It’s going to get very cold in here, I think.”
“But we have the stove to keep us warm,” Eric pointed out, “and we have propane in the tank, outside.”
“How much propane is in the tank,” I asked. “How long will it last?”
The girl knew the answer. “I heard the Admin say that she would have to order a refill at the end of next year. And they weren’t planning to use it during the winter.”
“So they were planning to use it for two summers?” I asked.
“How cold will it get here?” Eric asked.
I knew the answer to that. “Below zero degrees.”
“Will our sleeping bags keep us warm enough?” Mike asked.
“Some of us have mummy bags rated for below zero temperatures,” she responded, “but most of us have bags for just down to twenty degrees. If we’re stuck here, we’re going to need a lot of wood to make fires.”
“I think we need to save the propane for as long as possible, and use it to run the fridge during the summer,” said Mike. “We probably won’t need it for the fridge during the winter. Stuff will stay cold enough if we cover it with snow.”
“So, we have to stop using the oven?” she asked. “People aren’t going to like that.”
Humoring them, I said, “Well, we gotta have some rules if we’re going to stay alive.”
There was silence, and then Mike said, “That’s the hard thing. We’ve got to have some rules. And we’ve got to have some way to enforce the rules.”
“There’s a barbeque in the back,” said Pete. “We could start cooking with wood.”
“No one is using the stove, anyway,” said Eric. “I think most everybody is eating out of cans without heating it up.”
“How much food do we have, Yuie?” Mike asked the Oriental girl.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“We have a lot of hamburger patties,” said John, “and there are a lot of hot dogs and buns.”
“We have milk for a while,” I said. “Most of it is boxed, but some of it is frozen concentrated, so we have to mix it with water. And they were cutting it with powdered milk, and we have a lot of that.”
“Yuck, so that’s why the milk tastes so weird,” Pete complained, and then he added, “There are a lot of bags of rice and flour. Most of the other stuff is in cans; like beans, fruit, and corn.”
“Don’t forget the weenies,” Eric said.
“We’d never forget you,” John deadpanned.
“Let’s disconnect the stove for the time being,” said Mike. “And let’s keep this to ourselves. And let’s get the barbeque out of the storage room and build a fire in it. If we keep it going, maybe people will get used to using it.”
“Too bad the cave only has that one small section that’s really a cave,” John mentioned. “That would be way big for us.”
“What if we made it into a real cave?” Mike asked.
“What do you mean?” Eric asked.
“What if, somehow, someway, we put a front on it?” said Mike. “We could all live in it during the winter.”
“Just get a couple of girls to live with you in the Admin’s cabin,” Pete joked. “You’ll be warm and happy all winter.”
Yuie exclaimed, “Shut up!” and the rest of us laughed.
“Seriously, what about the cave idea?” Mike asked again.
“What could we use for a front?” Eric asked.
“What about taking the canvas tops off the cabins and using them?” Pete suggested.
“Too cold,” Yuie replied.
“Could we pile up enough rocks?” I asked.
“Maybe,” John replied.
“We could use logs,” Mike suggested. “There are hatchets and axes in the store room. What if we cut down a lot of small trees, and leaned them against the top of the cave?”
“I don’t know if small trees would be tall enough to reach the top of the cave,” Eric replied.
“What if we used a combination of these things?” I suggested. “What if we piled rocks high enough, that small trees would reach the top of the cave?”
“Too bad they didn’t build the cabins in front of the cave,” John said facetiously. “Then we would already have a front.”
The idea hit me. “We could move the cabins!”
They didn’t realize I was joking, but the concept was simple. We could dismantle the cabins, build a wall in front of the cave, and stack the cabins with their back ends standing on the wall and the front ends standing on the cave floor. That way we would not have as much opened area left, needing to be covered by additional means. The others loved the idea, so we spent some time discussing how it could be accomplished. When we finished, John disconnected the stove’s connection from the propane line, so no one could use it. That would have repercussions later, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. We walked as a group up to the cave to examine it as a possible shelter.
“This is going to be a lot of work,” Pete said sadly.
There wasn’t much we could do without help from a lot of other people, so we decided to hold a meeting that night to discuss how to proceed. It wasn’t long after we returned to our cabin that the euphoria of our debate began to wear off and numbness set in. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but my thoughts were about Pop and Nana. What had happened? What the hell was the Fog, Jacob had discovered? A part of me wanted to hike down the road and see it for myself, but the larger part shied away from the idea. Perhaps seeing it would have made it too real. I was still hoping my grandparents would suddenly appear at the top of the hill, driving the old Ford. Maybe the Fog was a local phenomenon.
Ahmad and Rasul accompanied us, because they and Pete were still speaking. After a while, Ralph entered our cabin. He listened to the others for only a few seconds before interrupting.
“You guys gonna let a little kid tell you what to do?” he asked, a sneer in his voice. “You gonna listen to little Chief?”
My face reddened, because I had been thinking similar thoughts, even though I had participated in the meeting with Mike.
“Not me,” Tomás said, and Brian shook his head in agreement.
There was silence in our cabin except for Ralph’s contemptuous laugh, and then Pete asked, “Who do you think should be in charge?”
Ralph frowned at him. “Jackie’s in charge.”
No one said anything, but even clueless Ralph knew what the rest of us were thinking. Jackie has lost it. He scowled, stood, and stalked out of the cabin.
After a minute of more silence, Brian said rather casually, “If no one’s in charge, there’s some good looking pussy on the other side of the river.”
Tomás grinned in a manner Pop would have described as lascivious and responded, “That’s true.”
Ahmad’s face reddened, and he snapped, “You guys leave those girls alone.”
Tomás snorted, and then he stood and left the cabin followed by Brian who muttered, “Raghead,” as he flung the canvas flap aside.
Ahmad flushed and started to stand, but Rasul put a hand on his arm. Ahmad looked down at the hand, his face angry, but Rasul didn’t take his hand away.
“We have things to decide,” he said, and after another second, Ahmad sat down.
“Who is in charge?” Pete asked.
No one said anything for a moment, and then I spoke. “Just because Jacob saw some Fog doesn’t mean something super bad has happened.”
“That’s true,” Pete replied, “but what do we do in the meantime? While we wait to see if our folks come for us?”
“Mike’s the only person in this camp who’s been thinking about that,” John stated.
The rest of us nodded, because what he said was true. Everything we had talked about in the cafeteria was due to Mike’s prodding. Food, shelter, guarding the food; these were ideas Mike had introduced.
“I don’t like this,” Rasul said. “Somehow I feel like it might be more dangerous here than at the Fog. Things could get bad, fast.”
I didn’t understand what he was referring to. How could things get worse? I thought. We’re trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with no cellphone service, and there are no adults around, except for Jackie. What else could go wrong?
“Anybody want Ralph to be in charge?” Pete asked.
“Shit, no,” John said. Ahmad shook his head, and Rasul visibly shuddered.
“That would be a good way to start a fight,” Pete said.
“That all we need; a battle for power,” John growled. “Biggest guy kicks everybody else’s ass.”
“What about you?” Pete asked, turning my way. “You and Ralph are the oldest, after Jackie. Do you want to be in charge?”
“In charge of what?” I asked, bewildered by the question.
Pete stared at me for a moment, and then he turned to the others. “One good thing about Mike is that the kid’s not an asshole. And he’s not trying for celeb status. He’s just trying to keep us alive.”
“This is true,” Ahmad said, “but he won’t get anything done without our help.”
“It would be a bad thing if people started fighting,” Rasul added. “The girls would be in trouble.”
There was more silence, and then Pete stood and grabbed his spear from where it lay against the end frame of our bunk. He took a step toward the center of the cabin and held out his arm, holding his spear vertically. “Ralph’s an idiot, but he said it. Mike is Chief.”
John stood, held out his spear, touched Pete’s knuckles with his own, and said, “Mike is Chief.”
Then Ahmad stood and Rasul, too, and they said the same words, and I swear, the same grim expression was on every one of their faces. In a befuddled daze, I stood, grabbed my spear, and echoed, “Mike is Chief.” At that moment, the Spears were born.
~~~~~
Here is the truth. Mike did not seek power; it was thrust on him by those of us in that room, at that moment. Mike could not have been Chief without the Spears to back him, and by backing him we made it clear to the rest of the camp, that we were not going to allow the strong to dictate to the weak. It would be the group that was important, not the individual. Later, Pete spoke to Eric and Jacob about what we had decided, and he returned to tell us that they were fine with our decision. I’m not sure, because I never asked him, but I think he spoke to Yuie, too.
~~~~~
Things changed permanently that day, although I was unaware they were changing, except for noting that Ralph, Brian, and Tomás moved out of our cabin that evening, and Ahmad and Rasul moved in.