The Big Dark

  It was better than Christmas, better than candy, better than anything I could have imagined.

  Oh, and how the dogs loved it! You could feel the joy in them, too, the harnesses singing with their strength. The sled going airborne as we hit bumps in the trail. The sled runners zinging over the ice and through the crusted snow. The dogs yip-yipping with the ferocious fun of running together as a pack, pulling as one.

  They ran twenty miles, most of it uphill, in one hour and thirty-four minutes, before Renny called a halt. He had an old windup wristwatch, so he knew. He unhooked the dogs from their tug leashes so they could chomp on snow and then use the ground.

  “Not bad,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. “At this rate we’ll get you home by noon.”

  “Amazing” was all I could say, my heart still hammering.

  He poured a small cup from the thermos and handed it to me. “Mama said you like her café au lait. Good stuff. Caffeine to wake you, milk for your bones, sugar for energy. Drink up!”

  Unlike his parents, Renny didn’t have a French accent. He sounded pure New Hampshire, and it turned out that when he wasn’t training and tending to his dogs he was working for the state, surveying land and highways. But sled racing was his passion.

  “When my parents told me what you did for them, and about your mission, I thought, How perfect. Because these dogs come from a grand tradition of delivering medical supplies.”

  His dark eyes gleamed bright as he talked enthusiastically about the husky breed. How they were brought to Alaska from Siberia during the gold rush. How they became really famous when a deadly epidemic hit Nome, and the only way to get serum to save the people was by dogsled.

  “They called it the Race of Mercy. Six hundred and seventy-four miles from Nenana to Nome, over the most dangerous terrain on the planet. A hundred and fifty sled dogs made the relay in five days! Over rough ice, through arctic blizzards! Nothing stopped them. Now that was a beauty, as Papa would say. The world held its breath until the people of Nome were saved. The lead dog, Balto, it made him so famous he has a statue in Central Park! So you see, our little sprint today, it’s a piece of cake.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Ce n’est rien, as Mama likes to say. It’s nothing.” Renny put away the thermos and hooked the team back up to leashes, praising each dog as he did so. “Ready?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Moments later we resumed our journey.

  We flew up the trail and across the snowy fields, mile after mile, into the north country, as my new friend sang to his beloved huskies: “Gee to the swing dog! Haw to the swing dog! Pull for the lead dog! Hi! Hi! Hi! On Aby! On Aleu! On Ada and Bullet and Cricket! On Hotfoot! On Juno! On Miki and Suka and Stash! On, you huskies, on!”

  It wasn’t until the Harmony church steeple poked above the tree line that I thought about what might happen if Webster Bragg and his boys happened to see a team of splendid sled dogs racing into the village.

  I wasn’t worried that he’d shoot them—no one could be that mean—I was worried that he’d steal them.

  As it turned out, Bragg did want to steal something, but it wasn’t the dogs.

  I insisted on skiing the last few miles by myself. It seemed safer that way. I hope Renny didn’t think I was trying to hog all the glory, but I really was worried about his sled and dogs, and relieved when they sprinted out of sight and the wild yips gradually faded in the freezing air.

  As it turned out I should have been more worried about myself.

  My head was full of getting home. Everyone would be surprised to see me back so soon. I’d only been gone a few days so they’d probably assume I’d given up and turned around and the mission failed. What a cool surprise it would be when I handed Mom the bottle! And I couldn’t wait to tell Gronk about all of my adventures, especially the wild ride on the sled.

  Our house was in sight, smoke curling from the chimney—I was almost there!—when men in winter camo and white ski masks stepped out of the woods, raised their AR-15s, and ordered me to halt.

  “Drop your poles, son,” said Bragg, emerging from behind them and looking very pleased with himself. “This won’t take a moment. Everybody has to submit to a search before entering the free state of Liberty.”

  “The what?”

  “Sad to say, America as we knew it no longer exists, so I have taken the next logical step and established a new state. A free state, beholden to no one but us. We call it Liberty, and we are ruled by a single leader. That would be me.”

  “So you’re the king now?”

  He laughed, heh-heh-heh, and shook his head. “Better than the poor fool you’ve got at the moment. Leaders lead, son. They seize opportunity when it presents itself. All Reggie Kingman ever seized was another donut. Now please lower your pack to the ground and unzip it, so we can conduct our search. I warn you, contraband will be confiscated, no exceptions.”

  When I tried to resist, his boys picked me up by the arms and jerked me out of my skis. Never said a word, but they seemed to enjoy it.

  “Set him down gently,” Bragg ordered. “Save yourself some time, son. Tell us where you hid it.”

  “Hid what?”

  He smiled at me, but his strange pale eyes weren’t even slightly friendly. “Heard about your little escapade. The whole town knows, thanks to your friend, who told your sister, who told everyone in town. She thinks you’re a hero for trying. And maybe she’s right. Are you a hero, son?”

  “I’m not your son.”

  “The point is, did you succeed?”

  “No,” I told him. “The hospital was looted.”

  “Is that right? Lot of that going around. Which is another argument for strong leadership.”

  “Let me go! You have no right!”

  That made him smile even more. “This is about might, Charlie, not right. Too much emphasis on individual rights is what ruined this country in the first place! It obscured the fact that in nature only the strongest survive. Encourage the weak and you dilute the race.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care. Let me go!”

  “Caucasians are the only pure race, like white is the only pure color,” Bragg said, going into lecture mode. “Mix with the darker bloods and we lose our natural superiority. That’s not going to happen in Liberty. No way. We’re white and we’ll stay that way. And to do that we have to control our borders.”

  “Nothing in his backpack,” one of his boys said, scattering my stuff on the snow.

  “No, he’d keep it close,” Bragg said craftily. “Hold him still.”

  They seized me by the wrists and ankles, pinning me in place.

  “Sorry about this, son. Things would go easier if you just obeyed orders.”

  Bragg grinned that coyote grin of his as he unzipped my parka. He rooted around the inside pockets, and then with a grunt of satisfaction shook the extra-large pill bottle in my face.

  “Consider these confiscated,” he said. “If your mother needs medication she can ask me pretty please. From now on everything goes through me. Fuel, firewood, food, medication. Everything. I’ll decide who gets what. Understood?”

  “No!”

  “I hope you will in time. I really do. We’re going to need men like you in this brave new world of ours.”

  “Give those back, they’re mine!”

  He snorted in disbelief. “Really? You took them from someone else. I took them from you. That makes them mine, to do with as I see fit. We’ll confiscate those skis, too. See if we can keep you a little closer to home, for your own protection.”

  “Those belong to Gronk!”

  “Not anymore. Haven’t you been listening? Everything belongs to the free state of Liberty, and therefore to me. It’s difficult for you to grasp, perhaps, but eventually you’ll come to understand that my way is the best way.”

  “Never!”

  He shook his head, pretending to be sorrowful. “Never say never, Charlie. Not if you want your moth
er to get her pills. Now get out of here, son. Go home and explain the situation. Tell your mother, tell your friends. Tell Kingman. Tell him if he doesn’t like the way I’m doing things he can come out to the compound and we’ll discuss it, man to man. Or man to donut, if that’s what it takes.”

  Bragg laughed that terrible laugh, and then he and his boys slipped into the woods and were gone.

  This is embarrassing, but when my mom and Becca raced out of the house to greet me with cries of joy and hug me till it hurt, I started weeping. Partly it was the look on their faces: worry and love all mixed up together. But mostly it was Bragg. It felt like he’d reached into my head and flipped a switch and changed everything. The adventure down the mountain, the risks taken, the people who helped me along the way—none of it counted.

  He’d stolen more than the pills from me.

  Becca said, “I knew you’d make it, Charlie! Everybody said it was too far, but I knew if anyone could do it, you could!”

  I decided right then and there not to point out that if she and Gronk had kept my secret, that rotten crud Webster Bragg wouldn’t have had a clue. Because they couldn’t have known what he would do, and besides, only a jerk would complain when his friends brag about him and think he’s brave and stuff. Even when he’s not. Even when he’s failed.

  Mom patted my face dry with her sleeve and kissed me on the forehead. “Your brother must be tired,” she said to Becca. “Let’s get him inside and let him rest.”

  I figured the first thing she’d do when she got the chance was read me the riot act, how I’d broken her rule about not skiing, but she never mentioned it. Something had changed, like maybe she’d realized I wasn’t a little kid anymore, and had to do things on my own sometimes, even if I failed.

  And boy did I blow it this time. I was right to worry about Bragg and his boys, should have found a way to avoid them on the trip back. Circled around somehow. But I was in such a hurry to get home, wanting to be the big hero, that I walked right into his trap. And I was going to have to explain to my mother and my sister that it was all for nothing. I might as well have never tried. Except it was worse, because now we’d have to go begging to Webster Bragg.

  I wanted to confess everything, no excuses, but first I needed to calm down so I didn’t start weeping again. Some hero, right?

  Get a grip. Face the music. Admit I screwed up.

  The first thing I noticed when we entered the house was what a great job Becca had been doing with the firewood. She had restacked everything neat as a pin, and the stove was the perfect temperature, warm enough to radiate heat but not so hot as to lose it all up the chimney and burn more wood than necessary. Perfect. And totally typical Becca.

  I wished she wasn’t sitting there beaming at me. That would stop when she heard how I messed up.

  Mom handed me a mug of hot cocoa and took a seat opposite me. She, too, was beaming.

  This was going to be awful.

  “Before you say a word,” Mom said, raising a hand, palm out, “your sister and I discussed this. You running off without informing us. And she persuaded me to see how it might look through your eyes. That you wanted to do the right thing, even if it meant risking your life. That you were doing it as much for her as for me.”

  My jaw dropped. How did Becca get that from a ten-word note? Gone for medicine. Be back as soon as I can. That’s all I wrote. Of course she talked to Gronk, who filled her in on the details, but still. Smarter than your average chipmunk. My father used to tease her by saying that, when she’d done something clever or smart or way ahead of her age. She loved it because she loved chipmunks, and Dad knew that, of course.

  “You made it back unharmed. That’s all that matters,” Mom said. She cleared her throat. “But I do feel it is my duty to impose some sort of punishment.”

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “Therefore you will not watch TV, or play with your Xbox, or communicate by cell phone for the next twenty-four hours.”

  She and Becca looked at each other and then burst into giggles. They waited for me to join in, but I just couldn’t.

  Instead I burst out: “I got the medicine, but Mr. Bragg stole it before I could get home! And Gronk’s skis, too!”

  It was terrible, seeing the laughter die, and the happiness instantly melt away.

  Mom took a deep breath. “He did what? Charlie, start from the beginning.”

  And so I did. I described how me and Gronk planned it, and he gave me his super-duper sleeping bag and his best skis, and all that venison jerky. How I evaded Bragg and his boys on my way out of town. How far I got that first day, after passing the plane wreck and escaping from the coyotes, and helping the old man out from under his woodpile. I told them everything, the half-burned city, the not-welcome motel, the looted hospital, and Lydia’s refuge for mentally ill people who had nowhere else to go. I described the fantastic dogsled ride, which should have been exciting, but my heart wasn’t in it, because when I got to the end Bragg was still there, stealing the medicine and Gronk’s skis.

  When I was done my mother’s face looked like it had been chiseled in pale stone, and Becca’s eyes were burning with a fierceness that kind of scared me.

  “He said what, exactly?”

  “Um, that if you needed medicine you’d have to go ask him pretty please.”

  Becca rose from her seat. Her hands were fisted at her sides. I couldn’t quite see the steam coming from her ears, but it had to be there.

  “I’m calling a town meeting,” she announced, and marched to the door.

  Mom said, “Becca, wait. Let’s think about this.”

  “No, Mom. It can’t wait.”

  Out the door she went, no hat or coat or mittens. A few minutes later the church bell began to ring.

  Mom was pretty shocked, not only by what Bragg had done but by Becca’s act of defiance. She sat there stunned as the church bell rang the call to meeting, and then her face cleared and she said, “Your sister is right. This needs to be done.”

  We left the house and followed the crowd to the town hall. Not everybody in Harmony showed up, but many did. And most of them seemed to have the wrong idea.

  They thought we were gathering to celebrate.

  Mrs. Adler hailed me as we entered the hall. “Charlie! That was fast! We’re all so proud of you. Congratulations!”

  I wanted the Earth to open up and swallow me. It’s bad enough to be a failure, but having people think you’re a hero when you’re not, that’s way worse.

  Reggie Kingman hurried in, smiling and clapping his hands. The moment he saw my expression, his smile froze. I was getting a lot of that. Grins of celebration turning to puzzlement. Gronk ambled in with his parents, ready to party, spoke with Becca for a few moments, and then gave me a look so sorrowful it was like a punch to the stomach.

  By the time the seats filled, everybody seemed to understand that something was wrong. This wasn’t going to be a party. There wasn’t anyone to celebrate, certainly not me.

  People stirred uncomfortably on the hard wooden seats, waiting for the bad news. When a hush came over the crowd, Reggie Kingman, who had been seeing to the pellet stove, went to the stage and said, “Thank you all for responding. Rebecca Cobb called this meeting. I think we should hear what she has to say.”

  I’ve always known Becca was something special. Not just because she’s my sister but because she has such a clear way of seeing things. Even when she was really little she looked at the world like it was a puzzle to be solved. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that her gentle, husky voice somehow managed to fill the hall.

  “Hello, you all know me. I’m the one who was blabbing about my brother, Charlie, and the cool thing he was trying to do, even though it scared me almost to death.” After describing what had happened with me and the medicine and Webster Bragg, she said, “This isn’t just about my mother’s medicine. Or having to beg from that big creep. Because maybe we would, if that’s what it took. This is about what happe
ns next, and that’s what worries me. Mr. Bragg wants us to do something, that’s why he stole those pills. He’s picking a fight. And the only reason a bully ever picks a fight is because he thinks he can win.”

  Becca paused and looked around, as if searching the room for clues. “Why would he think that?” she asked. “Thank you for listening and now I’ll sit down.”

  When she got back to where me and Mom were waiting in the front row, her chin was trembling but her eyes were dry.

  Leave it to my sister to be braver than me.

  Kingman cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Rebecca. You’ve given us a lot to think about.”

  Someone in the back of the hall shouted, “What’s to think about! Arrest those men and be done with it!”

  From the sound of it, he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  Kingman held up his hand, and the crowd went quiet. “It’s not that simple. I agree with Rebecca. Bragg did this to provoke a reaction. Figures we’ll march out to his compound to confront him. Me and whoever else volunteers. He wants us to do that. Why? Maybe he has an ambush in mind.”

  “So we do nothing, is that it? Rest of us have been contributing firewood and food. Not that weasel Bragg! He even thieved firewood from the elderly, and you haven’t done a thing about it!”

  Officer Kingman nodded wearily. He’d heard it all before. “Agreed. Sooner or later we’ll have to deal with Mr. Bragg. He and his boys are eager for an excuse to engage in violence. That’s obvious. But I don’t want blood on my hands, not if I can help it.”

  “You worried about Bragg’s blood or your own?”