Talking about his tree-climbing seemed to give Chad more energy. That was encouraging. He’d need all his strength to make it across the gully.
“I saw your tree!” she realized. “It’s one of my markers for getting back to school. Follow the white branch, and then turn at the tree with the wood nailed to it.”
“That’s how I saw you and Marshall,” Chad said. “From up there.”
He said it like it was something to be proud of, in spite of all that had happened.
Tamaya wondered if he’d also seen the crazy hermit from up in his tree. Maybe that was how he’d gotten the hole in his pant leg too; not from a wolf bite, like he’d said, but from climbing trees.
Thinking about all this, she had momentarily stopped paying close attention, and suddenly looked down to see a puddle of fuzzy mud directly in front of her.
“Stop!” she exclaimed.
Chad took another step.
The stick pushed her forward. She had to hop sideways to avoid the mud, and fell into a tangle of bushes.
“What happened? Are you all right? What happened?”
Twigs scraped her face and arms. “Don’t move,” she warned. “The mud is right in front of you. Just don’t move.”
Her hair was caught, and she carefully untangled it as she extricated herself from the bush, still holding on to her end of the stick. “Okay,” she told Chad, “you’re going to have to try to go around this side of the mud, but there’s not a lot of room.”
She led him between the bush and the mud, watching every step he took as twigs scraped her legs. “Stay as close to the bush as you can. You have to walk sideways.”
He made it safely around the mud, and they continued on down the gully. Fresh scratches covered her arms and legs, but Chad was a lot worse, so there was no point in complaining. “Next time I say stop, you have to stop!”
“Sorry.”
“You almost pushed me into the mud.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
The ground became steeper. Tamaya warned Chad about the gully down below. She knew he was big and strong enough to make the jump. The tricky part would be getting him to a good jumping-off place, and then making sure he jumped in the right direction.
“I can do it,” he assured her.
As the ground became very steep, she had to turn around and walk backward. It was like going down a ladder. She gripped the stick tightly with both hands. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of the stick,” she said.
“I won’t.”
She directed every step he took. “There’s a rock just a little ways down, in front of you. Careful…careful…”
She watched his foot settle into place as she inched her way backward. “Okay, don’t move.”
She twisted her neck around. The gully seemed wider than she remembered, and the mud deeper. Just below her there was a rock jutting out from the dirt, above the gully. That seemed like the best place to jump from.
“I’ll go first, then you,” she told him.
“Okay.”
“I’m going to drop the stick now.”
“Okay.”
She counted in her head. One…two…
On three, she dropped the stick, although she still held her lunch sack. Her feet slid beneath her, but she kept her balance as she spun around and stepped down hard onto the rock.
The rock instantly gave way.
Tamaya tumbled. Her knees banged hard against the side of the slope. She shut her eyes just in time as she somersaulted into the mud.
Her feet hit the bottom of the gully and she forced her head up to the surface. Her eyes remained closed. She could feel the warm muck clinging to her face and over her eyelids. She tried to move, but it was impossible.
“Did you make it?” Chad called.
“No!” she screamed. “I’m stuck!”
She could feel grittiness on her teeth and gums. It tasted like nail polish remover. She tried to spit it out.
“Help me!” she called, then spit again.
“I don’t know what to do! What do you want me to do?”
“Get me out of here!”
For a moment Chad didn’t respond. Then she heard him, closer than before. “Try to grab the stick!” he shouted.
She stretched out her arms, but there was nothing to grab on to. “Where? Where is it?”
It cracked against the side of her head.
2 × 16,777,216 = 33,554,432
2 × 33,554,432 = 67,108,864
Tamaya was trapped in a ditch, shouting for help, and Chad was beating her with a stick. That was how it looked to Marshall from the side of the hill.
“Hey, leave her alone!” he shouted, but they were too far away to hear him.
He hurried down the hill, slapping at branches to slow his momentum.
Chad continued to swing the stick like some kind of wild man.
“Leave her alone!” Marshall shouted again.
They still didn’t hear him.
When he reached the steep drop-off, he dug the edges of his sneakers into the dirt and slid back and forth, like a skier, down toward the gully.
“Chad!” he shouted.
Chad stopped midswing.
“If you want to fight someone, fight me!” Marshall challenged.
“Marshall!” screamed Tamaya. “Save me!”
“Drop the stick!” he commanded. He edged his way downward.
Chad continued to swing it. “I’m trying to help her.”
“I said leave her alone!”
“The mud’s really bad, Marshall,” Tamaya called to him. “Chad’s blind. He’s trying to get the stick to me!”
For the first time, Marshall finally could see Chad’s grotesquely blistered and swollen face. Blind? He had to turn all his thoughts inside out and backward in order to try to take in what was happening.
“I’m almost there,” he called back. “Just quit swinging that stick!” He slid the final few feet to the edge of the gully and then tried to reach out to Tamaya. “I’m here,” he said. “Hold out your hand.”
She was too far away. “Don’t let the mud get on you,” she warned.
He didn’t care about himself. He let one foot slide down the side of the gully into the mud as he reached for her. The mud was well past his knee when the tips of his fingers touched Tamaya’s. Mud pasted her face. Her eyes were shut tight.
“Lean a little toward me,” he urged as he inched just a little bit closer.
She bent toward him.
He grabbed her hand. “I gotcha!”
He pulled hard, but she wouldn’t budge. “Try to take a step,” he urged.
“I’m trying!” she screamed.
It was hopeless. He looked at Chad, standing motionless on the other side. “Chad, we need you.”
“I can’t,” Chad answered.
“You have to,” said Marshall.
Chad took a tentative step, then stopped. “I can’t,” he repeated.
Marshall let go of Tamaya. It took all his effort just to raise his own leg out of the mud. He moved along the side of the gully until he was safely clear of Tamaya.
“Jump toward my voice,” he told Chad. “Jump as hard and as far as you can.”
“I can’t.”
“Just do it, you thumb-sucking coward!”
“Hey!” Chad shouted, then came flying toward him.
Marshall grabbed him by the arms as he landed, to keep him from falling backward into the gully. “C’mon,” he urged.
He guided Chad back to Tamaya, and they each stepped down into the mud.
Tamaya stretched out her arms.
Marshall grabbed one hand, and Chad found the other.
They pulled.
She still wouldn’t move.
“Keep pulling!” Marshall urged.
A deep grunt came from somewhere inside Chad, and Tamaya moved just a little bit closer.
They kept pulling. Another grunt, and Tamaya took a small step. Then another.
“Put your hand on my shoulder,” Marshall told her. As she did, he wrapped his arm around her waist and then pried her up and out of the mud.
2 × 67,108,864 = 134,217,728
2 × 134,217,728 = 268,435,456
Marshall took off his sweater and used it to wipe the mud away from Tamaya’s eyes. He and Chad had managed to pull Tamaya up the side of the hill to where the ground was less steep. Chad now sat, head down, breathing hard and unevenly.
Tamaya could feel the pressure of Marshall’s finger behind the soft sweater fabric as he gently rubbed each eyelid.
“Okay,” he whispered to her.
She was afraid to open her eyes.
“I’ll get you home, no matter what,” Marshall promised.
She listened a moment to Chad’s raspy breathing, then allowed her eyes to open.
Marshall appeared blurry at first, but that might have been from keeping her eyes so tightly shut for so long. She blinked. His face was pale and worried.
“I can see you,” she told him.
He gave her a small smile.
She took the sweater from him and used it to wipe the rest of the mud off her face, and then her neck and arms. She knew it wouldn’t stop whatever was in the mud, but she took comfort in knowing that she’d be home soon. She could take a bath, wash her hair, and go see Dr. Sanchez.
“Here, use this too,” Marshall said. He pulled his school shirt up over his head, turning it inside out in the process.
“No, you’ll get cold.”
“I’m all right.”
She took his shirt and used it to clean the inside of her mouth. She rubbed it over her teeth and her gums. She wrapped her tongue with it, then twisted it back and forth.
She cleaned her ears, and then her nose, using her pinky to stick the cloth up each nostril.
“Here. Thanks,” she said, but Marshall just put up his hands.
She let the shirt drop.
Chad groaned as Marshall helped him to his feet.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” he rasped.
She hoped he’d have the strength to make it back. It was already getting dark.
Marshall held Chad’s arm as he led him up the hill. Tamaya was on the other side of Marshall.
“You’re a good guy, Marshall,” Chad said. “Sorry about…”
His voice trailed off, and Tamaya was afraid he might pass out, but then he seemed to gather his strength again. “You want to know why I hated you?”
“I already know why,” Marshall told him. “You thought I called you a liar.”
“You called me a liar? When?”
Tamaya’s bare foot stepped on a sharp twig, but she suppressed the pain. The important thing was to keep going.
Marshall reminded Chad about the time he had bragged about riding his motorcycle into the principal’s office. “I said, ‘No way!’ but I just meant it like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool,’ not that I thought you were a liar.”
“Oh, yeah, I knew that,” Chad said. “I was just giving you a hard time. Besides, I was lying. I’ve never even been on a motorcycle.”
Marshall gave a short laugh as he shook his head.
Tamaya knew this was between Marshall and Chad and she should keep out of it, but she couldn’t help herself. “Then why’d you hate him?” she blurted. “He never did anything to you!”
Chad took a deep breath, then said something that sounded to Tamaya like lasagna.
“What?” asked Marshall.
“Your birthday is September twenty-ninth,” Chad said.
“How do you know?”
“And your mom made your favorite dinner.”
“Lasagna,” said Tamaya. So he really had said that.
“I heard you talking about it at school.”
“So?” asked Marshall.
“So, you know when my birthday is?” Chad asked.
He didn’t.
“September twenty-ninth,” said Chad.
Tamaya was having a hard time trying to put all this together. “And that’s why you hated Marshall?” she asked. “Because you have the same birthday?”
“No one cooked me lasagna,” Chad said. “No one did anything. You want to know what my dad said? ‘Why should we celebrate the day you were born?’ ”
“That sucks,” said Marshall.
“That’s still no reason to hate Marshall!” Tamaya insisted.
“I’m not saying it is,” said Chad. “I’m just trying to explain, that’s all. I figure I owe you that.”
Tamaya was trying to make sense out of Chad’s logic, when her foot kicked something hard. This time she couldn’t suppress the pain. She cried out as she fell onto the leaf-covered ground.
Marshall and Chad stood over her. “Are you all right?”
Her foot throbbed. She hoped she hadn’t broken anything. “Man, oh, man,” she said as she winced in pain. She took a couple of breaths, and the pain subsided a little bit. “It’s just so dark, I can’t see where I’m stepping!”
“What are you talking about?” asked Marshall. “The sun’s out. There’s plenty of light.”
Tamaya closed her eyes. When she opened them a second later, the world had gone completely dark.
2 × 268,435,456 = 536,870,912
2 × 536,870,912 = 1,073,741,824
Marshall walked between Tamaya and Chad, an arm guiding each of them. He wore only one shoe, having given the other to Tamaya. It was way too big for her, but she was glad for the protection, even if it flopped a bit with every step she took.
She could still see blurry shapes up close, just like Chad had described, but only if they were right in front of her face. She had lost track of time. She had no idea how far they’d gone or how much farther they had to go.
“Do you know the way?” she asked Marshall.
“I think so.”
“Look for a white tree with a branch that sticks out. It points the way back.”
“There are a lot of white trees.”
“Also a big tall tree with wood planks nailed to it,” she told him. “That’s Chad’s tree. That’s how he saw us yesterday.”
“I have more than one tree,” said Chad. “I climb up one, and then I see one that seems taller, so I climb that one. I want to try to find the highest tree out here.”
“That’s cool,” said Marshall.
“You think? I figured you’d all think it was stupid. Like I was a little kid or something.”
“No, that’s way too scary for a little kid,” said Marshall.
“Too scary for me!” Tamaya agreed.
“You? No way!” said Chad. “You’re not scared of anything. I’ll take you guys up sometime. There are some boards at the top you can sit on.”
Once again, Tamaya could hear renewed energy in Chad’s voice as he talked about his tree.
“You can see for miles,” said Chad.
For miles? That was nice to imagine, considering she and Chad couldn’t even see for inches.
Marshall stopped suddenly. Tamaya felt him tighten his grip on her arm.
Chad must have felt it too. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Shh!” Marshall whispered. “I hear something.”
Tamaya listened. It sounded like the scattering of leaves and dirt. Something was moving, some kind of animal, or maybe several animals.
“Chad,” she whispered. “When you were up in your tree, did you really ever see the crazy hermit and his black wolves?”
“I saw a guy with a beard. No wolves.”
The sound grew louder. There was definitely more than one animal. A dog barked. It was coming toward them. More barking, from more than one dog.
A dog barked right in front of Tamaya. She cringed, but then Marshall said, “It’s not going to hurt you. I think maybe we’re rescued.”
From a distance, she heard a man’s voice call, “They went this way!”
She bent down and tentatively reached out to soft, warm fur. A wet tongue lick
ed her face.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she said, not wanting the dog to get her rash.
“They’re here!” someone shouted, and the next thing she knew there were lots of voices talking all at once. “Are you injured?” “How’d you get here?” “Did someone hurt you?”
“They’re both blind,” Marshall said. “There’s something bad in the mud out here.”
She heard what sounded like someone talking on a phone. “We got ’em. All three, two boys and a girl. We’re going to need an ambulance. No, they say they weren’t abducted, but we’ll keep searching.”
Tamaya felt a hand on her shoulder. “You’re safe now,” said a man’s voice. “I’m going to carry you back to the school, and then you’ll be taken to the hospital.”
“Careful. I’m all covered in mud,” she warned.
The man chuckled and said, “A little mud never hurt anyone.”
She felt his arms wrap around her, and he lifted her up off the ground.
Tamaya was too cold, and too tired, and too sore to try to explain. It was too late now anyway. She let herself sink into his warm wool coat. He’d find out about the mud soon enough. They all would.
As he carried her out of the woods, she asked the name of the dogs.
“The one that you were petting is Missy, short for ‘Miss Marple.’ We also have Nero, Sherlock, and Rockford. All named after famous detectives.”
“’Cause they’re good at finding people?”
“They’re the best.”
“I love dogs,” said Tamaya.
The following is excerpted from the Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings, held three months after Tamaya was carried out of the woods:
Senator Wright: Were you able to determine if these organisms were, in fact, the same as the ergonyms that are used in Biolene?
Dr. June Lee (research scientist, National Institutes of Health): The DNA is nearly identical, but not exact. We believe that they are a mutated strain of the Biolene ergonyms.
Senator Foote: But aren’t there millions of different kinds of microorganisms living on this planet?
Dr. June Lee: Yes.
Senator Foote: And most of these have never been studied.