The Last One Read online

  A boulder suns itself at a creek’s U-bend. As midday passes, the land’s tallest peak casts a blocking shadow. Tucked into the darkest dark, your next Clue waits.

  “Okay,” says Black Doctor. “That’s pretty clear, right? We need to find a boulder along a creek to the east of the tallest mountain. Where’s that?”

  Banker runs his forefinger along the map, scanning contour lines. “Here,” he says. “This one’s the tallest.”

  “And there’s a blue line,” says Black Doctor. “But I don’t see the boulder.”

  Banker swallows a laugh, not wanting to be rude. Black Doctor doesn’t see his smile, but viewers will. “I don’t think they’re going to show the boulder on here,” says Banker. “Not at this scale. We need to look for the bend.”

  “Ah, right. So that’s…this?” Black Doctor jabs the map with his index finger. A comment thread will unexpectedly erupt on this topic—Black Doctor’s thick fingers. How can he use a scaple with fingers like that? one user will ask; the red line of misspelling obvious beneath as she hits post, but she doesn’t care. Another, I don’t want those hairy nubs operating on me! A lone voice of reason will tell people that one can’t actually determine an individual’s dexterity by looking at his fingers, and besides, they don’t even know what kind of doctor he is. And it’s true: Black Doctor is not a surgeon. He’s a radiologist and his stubby fingers get the job done.

  “Looks like the bend to me,” says Banker. “Now, what’s the best way to get there?”

  They take turns prodding at the map, exchanging ideas, and after a few minutes settle on a route that mostly involves following water upstream. They check their compasses, then strike out into the woods.

  When Zoo and Tracker are given their map four minutes later, they determine the destination almost instantly, and Tracker notes something that Black Doctor and Banker did not: the giant swath of white cutting through the map’s abundant green east of the mountain creek. “I suggest we follow this clearing north, then shoot a bearing to the U-bend from its northern edge,” he says.

  “Sounds great,” says Zoo with a laugh. “But will you tell me what ‘shoot a bearing’ means?”

  Tracker doesn’t understand why she’s laughing. Neither her question nor her ignorance is funny. But they’re partners for now and so he answers, “It’s using the compass to determine what direction you should move in, then following your bearing landmark to landmark in an area where it would otherwise be very easy to lose your direction of travel.”

  “Oh!” says Zoo. “We kind of did that last night.”

  Tracker blinks at her, then takes out his compass and places it on the ground atop the map. He shifts the paper slightly so the map’s north aligns with his compass’s, then twists the compass housing to bring the north needle home. “Thirty-eight degrees,” he says, mostly to himself. “That’ll get us to the field. Although…” He scans the perimeter of the map.

  “What are you looking for?” asks Zoo.

  “Declination,” says Tracker. There’s small print, but not the small print he’s looking for. “Doesn’t say. Around here, it has to be at least five degrees. So, forty-three degrees. That’s our direction of travel.”

  Zoo sets her compass to forty-three, then tucks it perpendicular to her chest. Tracker folds the map to leave their current location exposed.

  “That dead tree?” asks Zoo. A decaying, toppled-over birch is as far as she can see along the line.

  “Why not,” says Tracker.

  They begin walking.

  “I’ve heard of declination,” says Zoo, “but I have to be honest—I have no idea what it is.”

  Tracker doesn’t reply. He’s already talked more than he’d like.

  Zoo allows him a few steps of silence, then insists, “So, what is declination?”

  “The difference between true north and magnetic north,” he relents. Zoo’s curious look prods him to further explanation. “Maps are set to true north—the North Pole—and compasses to magnetic north. Factoring in declination corrects for that difference.”

  “Ah.” Zoo is trying and failing to move as quietly and smoothly as Tracker. A branch snaps under her foot and she grimaces. The cameraman following them is even louder than she is. He stumbles and nearly falls. Zoo starts to ask if he’s all right, then aborts the nicety. He’s not here, she reminds herself. And then she laughs again, thinking: If a cameraman falls in the woods and no one turns to see, did he make a sound?

  Tracker’s back and mouth curl ever so slightly.

  The next team to receive their map is Carpenter Chick and Engineer. They’re on their way within moments, as are Air Force and Biology, once they receive theirs.

  But the final group—the trio—struggles. Rancher is so thoroughly flummoxed by the map that he barely registers the Clue as Waitress reads it aloud. He knows his land, but his land is a single rolling vowel. The land here is a series of sharp consonants. Indecipherable lines burrow through his vision. Waitress is also far out of her depth. But the team’s biggest problem is Exorcist. His hands, shoulder, and pride still ache from his fall. By his reckoning, this Clue belongs to him and him alone—he was the one who climbed, the one who fell. He seethes and struggles not to rip the paper from Waitress’s hands. He is full of hateful thoughts—sexist thoughts, racist thoughts. The aftermath of his humanizing crash is the flaring of his most monstrous self.

  Exorcist is well aware of this monstrous self, though he would never choose it. He wishes he could banish it. Every time he convinces a spurned mother or belt-whipped boy that their hatred is an outside invader, it helps. Converting another’s hatred into a demon and expelling it makes it possible for him to suffer his own. But there is no one here to exorcise. He’s taken the lay of the land and it is barren. This leaves Exorcist grasping at past experiences. The Clue echoes through his mind and he says, “Boulder. I knew a woman from Boulder once. She called on me to help with a certain situation.”

  “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,” say
s 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 acco
mplish 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.