SIXTEEN
Everyone packs up in a hurry. It might be the charge in the air after the storm, or the surreal landscape of fallen trees leaning on one another, dark against an orange sky, but nobody lingers. You all work hard, loading up your packs to leave this broken place that almost killed you. When you’re done, you stand with the rest of the group, everyone weighed down with gear, looking more like overdecorated Christmas trees than hikers. All dressed up with no place to go. That is, until Fran reveals that she actually knows how to use a compass.
“Wait, really?” says Diana. “You were listening?”
“Look,” she says. “I have ADHD. But I think my anxiety about getting lost and dying in the woods was able to override it somehow.”
“So, like: One disorder beat the other disorder’s ass,” says Will.
“Something like that.”
“You can actually navigate?” says Troy.
“I mean, I wouldn’t bet our survival on it…,” Fran says.
“But that’s exactly what youwouldbe doing!” says Troy, his face frozen with incredulity.
“What?” says Fran.
“You wouldliterallybe betting our survival on it! Like, whether or not we die. Here. In the woods. Now. Would dependon exactly that. So it’s kind of important: Do you know or do you not know how to navigate?”
Fran is silent. She has her hood down this time, but you can see her itching to pull it back up. She shifts her massive pack to a more comfortable position and takes a breath.
“Just get me a map, and I’ll see what I can do,” she says.
At which point everyone sets off to search what’s left of the campsite, looking for anything that might provide direction.
What you hope you’ll find:
A waterproof trail map
A hand-drawn route on a sheet of notebook paper
Some kind of satellite GPS that Silas was keeping just in case
What you actually find:
Absolutely nothing
“I never saw him with one,” says Troy eventually. “Did you guys ever see him take out a single freaking map?”
“Maybe he had the route memorized,” says Diana. “He’s probably been doing this awhile.”
“Great,” says Will. “So our map is stored in the brain of the sadistic bastard who left us.”
“I thought he said something about a loop,” says Fran. “Does anyone else remember that, or am I hallucinating?”
“A loop?” asks Troy. “What kind of loop?”
You get a brain zap then. The good kind. Not the kind that happens when you run out of medication, but a flash of a memory newly translated.
“The Devil’s Loop,” you say.
“The what?” says Fran.
She turns to look at you, the frustration slowly leaving her face.
“The Devil’s Loop,” you say again. “That’s what he was saying to me! ‘Are you ready for the Devil’s Loop?’ God, I wassoconfused. I thought he was going to kill me or something.”
