The Last One (17 page)

“Now’s really not the time,” says Waitress.

Exorcist plows forward. He has to. “She didn’t have a true demon, few of them do. But I could still help. I tell her, ‘Yes, you’re possessed.’ This woman, she’d been hearing ‘no’ for so long, just hearing ‘yes’ did most of the job. Lord, but did peace settle into her eyes right then.”

“We need to figure this out,” says Waitress.

Exorcist fiddles with the map, crinkling a corner. “After that, all she needed was a little handholding and prayer. Easy peasy.”

“What’s the Clue say?” asks Rancher.

Waitress has already read it aloud twice. “Here,” she says, handing him the slip of paper.

“They aren’t all that easy,” says Exorcist. “Most take a lot more effort. But there was something sweet about this case. They’re always thankful, but she was
thankful.
And I don’t mean sexually—I get that sometimes, though usually it’s part of the possession.”

“Can you focus, please?” says Waitress. “Do either of you know how to read one of these maps?”

“A creek’s U-bend,” mutters Rancher. “Well, blue’s water, ain’t it? And a creek’s a line, so where does a blue line bend?” He leans over the map. He’s holding his hat, and his striated hair falls forward from either side of his face like curtains closing.

“Lots of places,” says Waitress. “How do we find the tallest peak?”

“I think these lines are for elevation,” says Rancher.

Exorcist is quiet. He’s thinking more about the thankful woman. She was one of the few, perhaps the only, who understood. She’d held his hand before he left, clenched it tight, and said, “I know this wasn’t a real exorcism, but whatever you did it was supremely
real.
It helped. Thank you.” She was not the kind of woman to use a word like “supremely,” but that’s how he remembers it, though sometimes he thinks that maybe she just held his hand and didn’t speak at all.

“This one’s the highest, right?” says Waitress.

“Looks like,” says Rancher. Waitress makes him uncomfortable, crouched there with her midsection exposed. He thinks women should have a bit more modesty. Yet it’s hard not to sneak a glance every now and then. He’s married but doesn’t love his wife. He was head over heels once, though this no longer feels possible. He does love his children, however: two boys and a girl, ages fifteen, twelve, and eleven.

“So, a bend near this peak,” says Rancher. It’s not hot, but he’s sweating. He can feel the cameras on him.

“A river runs down either side,” says Waitress. “Both have bends. How do we know which one?”

“Something about the sunset?” asks Rancher.

“Ah, right!” Waitress claps her hands and smiles. “Never…eat…shredded…wheat!” She dabs her finger along the map’s compass points with each word. “West. The sun sets in the west, it’s the one on this side.” Her confidence flares; she’s enormously proud of herself for figuring this out. Rancher doesn’t catch her mistake. Most viewers won’t either.

Hours and hours of walking; who has the patience for so much walking? It’s unwatchable. Five teams, at least four miles each. Some take unintentional detours, and one is heading toward a point nearly three miles from where they’re meant to go. All that walking, all that struggle, condensed into a subtitle:
HOURS LATER
.

Hours later, Tracker and Zoo skirt a long field of wildflowers, then cut west. Hours later, Banker and Black Doctor totter across stones to cross a creek. Hours later, Carpenter Chick pushes a branch out of her way; it snaps back and smacks Engineer in the chest. Hours later, Air Force is hobbling along, his ankle needing a rest that Biology is willing to give but he’s unwilling to take. Hours later, Exorcist has recovered enough to say, “Let me see the map.”

Waitress hands it to him.

“Where are we heading?”

She shows him. He reads the Clue, looks at the map. His face is twisted with thought. He looks back at the Clue.

“That’s wrong,” he says.

“What do you mean, ‘That’s wrong’?” Waitress’s posture slips into an offensive stance familiar to fans of reality television; she stands with one hand on a cocked hip, her head pulled back and tucked slightly down, daring, just daring, him to keep talking. Rancher peeks over Exorcist’s shoulder.

“As midday passes, the land’s tallest peak casts a blocking shadow,” recites Exorcist. He flicks the mountain on the map. “If it’s casting a shadow in the afternoon, that shadow’s going to fall to the east.”

“No,” says Waitress. “The sun sets to the
west.
” She rolls her eyes. Next she’ll be accusing someone of throwing her under the bus.

“He’s right,” says Rancher, and Waitress spins to face him. “Look at it this way. If you got a light on the left of an object”—Rancher holds his right arm in front of his face, then pulses the fingers of his left hand to its side—“the shadow will fall to the opposite side.”

Her mistake is obvious now, to everyone. Waitress’s face is flushed. She misses her old team: the scrawny Asians and the bossy blonde.

Exorcist is laughing. “You ought to have been a teacher,” he says, slapping Rancher’s shoulder. He sobers quickly once he looks back to the map. “We’re way off course,” he says. “We’ve got to cut east.”

Miles away, Tracker and Zoo are not off course. They are on course, the best possible course.

“There it is!” cries Zoo, pointing at a six-foot-tall boulder resting by a small creek. The water’s turn is obvious on the map, subtle in person. Viewers will be shown an aerial shot to confirm that the location matches the Clue.

Zoo jogs ahead of Tracker, who raises an eyebrow at her exuberance. Sunset is only a couple hours away, and this stretch of land is largely in shadow. “Tucked into the darkest dark,” says Zoo, as she reaches the boulder. “Darkest dark.” She’s searching the base for a hole. It takes her eight seconds to find. All eight seconds will be shown, and viewers will feel like she’s failing, like she’s taking forever, because they’re used to scenes like this being shortened. From Zoo and Tracker’s perspective she finds the metal box very quickly.

She pulls out the box from its niche and unlatches it. Tracker is at her side now. As Zoo opens the box he cranes his neck to see.

Five rolls of paper, like miniature scrolls.

“We’re the first ones here,” says Zoo.

Tracker isn’t surprised that they’ve beaten Banker and Black Doctor. Open ground saves time, always. “What does it say?” he asks.

Zoo hands him one of the scrolls, then closes the box and tucks it back into its shadow.

Tracker unfurls the Clue and reads it aloud. “An animal made prey. Pursued, it leaves a trail. Within a mile, it crosses. Follow the trail.”

“Crosses,” says Zoo, and she looks to the stream. She doesn’t see a trail. Tracker does. He also sees signs of the human who made the false animal tracks—the Expert wasn’t careful; he wants these tracks to be found.

“There,” he says.

Zoo follows his gaze upstream. “Where?” she asks.

“There,” Tracker says again.

She strains to see, and fails. “I don’t know what you’re looking at,” she says. “Can you please point it out?”

Tracker glances at her, an unspoken statement that Zoo hears.

She pauses. Then, “I get it. I understand that we’re competing against each other. But for now we’re a team. I’m not asking for a master class, I just want to know where to look.” All but the last sentence will be cut, and viewers will hear no pause.

Again, it’s easier for Tracker to help than to refuse. He walks a few yards upstream, then crouches by the water. “Here.” With strained patience he shows Zoo where to look, and though she cannot see everything, she sees enough. She sees the snapped flower stem, the tiny tuft of hair on a raspberry thorn, the hoofprint in the mud.

“So it crossed here?” she asks. But before Tracker can respond, she continues, “Wait, no. It’s just walking upstream. It didn’t cross yet.”

Tracker nods. Together, they follow the trail. Slowly, watching for more signs.

Banker and Black Doctor approach the boulder. The sun has dipped; Tracker and Zoo have advanced out of sight.

“Someone beat us,” says Banker, startled, when he opens the small lockbox.

“Cooper and the blonde, I’ll bet,” says Black Doctor.

“What did they do, run the whole way here?”

“I guess.” Black Doctor takes a Clue and reads it aloud. He’s not impressed; he’d expected more of an intellectual challenge, maybe some wordplay or a riddle.

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.

Though she’s seen many dead animals, Zoo’s never seen a deer strung up like this. “Its eyes look like marbles,” she says as she deposits the token.

“Looks like dinner to me,” says Tracker.

“You know how to dress it?”

Tracker nods. Intellectually, Zoo is interested in learning how to skin and gut an animal, but her stomach churns at the thought of getting all that gore on her hands. She wants to eat the doe; she doesn’t want to be the one to butcher it. And despite her good cheer, she’s exhausted. All she really wants to do right now is sit with her back against a nice, straight tree and close her eyes. “I’ll collect some wood and start a fire,” she says, tapping the fire starter that hangs from her hip.