“There’s not much left. If we budget it, we have enough for lunch and dinner. After that, we’ll have to forage.”
“Do you know how to forage?” Riley asked.
“Yes.”
“Let me rephrase that. Have you ever actually foraged?”
“No, but I’ve watched just about every episode of Naked and Afraid, so I’m pretty much an expert at this point.”
Riley cut her eyes to Emerson. “The people who go on that show mostly just sit around and starve until they go crazy, get sick, or threaten to kill each other.”
“That’s true, but you have to remember they’re disadvantaged in that they are forced to survive naked. Most of us are committed to wearing clothes on this trek,” Emerson said.
Riley looked at Emerson. “Keep it up. Your time is going to come. Live in fear.”
“I believe I’m being challenged,” Emerson said.
“It’s going to happen when you least expect it,” Riley said. “Total nudity. And we won’t need protection because I’ll be completely clothed.”
“We’ll see,” Emerson said. “I have excellent unagi when it comes to nudity.”
They walked in silence for the next two hours, listening to animals rustling in the underbrush, watching for signs that bears might be ahead. Finally the forest opened up into a vast meadow. The lower portions of Sour Creek Dome loomed on the other side, maybe three miles away.
Wayan Bagus pointed into the distance. “What’s that?”
“I don’t see anything,” Vernon said.
Emerson looked through his binoculars. “It’s a fence, but it’s probably a mile away.”
“Is that another one of your siddhi powers?” Riley asked Wayan Bagus. “Being able to see and hear at extreme distances?”
Wayan Bagus shrugged. “I hear and I know. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Vernon kicked a stone off the path. “My phone stopped working, which means my ratings are gonna drop like a rock on Fantasy NASCAR. We have no food. I’m hauling around a three-pound hunk of useless metal that serves no purpose other than being lucky, and I have absolutely no idea what Little Buddy is talking about half the time. Good grief. Holy crap. Somebody give me a Snickers.”
“We ate all the Snickers,” Emerson said, “but I have a couple PowerBars left. Do you want peanut butter or raspberry swirl?”
Vernon took the peanut butter, and the march resumed. A half hour later Emerson pulled up, and everyone stopped behind him. There was a twelve-foot-tall razor wire fence separating them from Sour Creek Dome.
“Looks like somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to keep people out of this area,” Emerson said.
“I don’t know about that,” Vernon said. “That fence looks like something out of Jurassic Park. I’m more concerned about what they’re trying to keep in than what they’re trying to keep out.”
“You think there’s a Tyrannosaurus rex in there?” Riley asked.
“Man-eating genetically engineered dinosaurs, Bigfoots, crazy park rangers,” Vernon said. “Who knows? I don’t know which one is worse.”
Riley looked to the right and then to the left. The fence stretched in both directions with no end in sight. “How do we get across?”
“I reckon up and over,” Vernon said, reaching out and grabbing on to the chain-link. There was a loud snapping sound, an arc of electricity jumped from t
he fence to Vernon, and Vernon went flying in reverse, landing on his back ten feet away.
Riley rushed over to Vernon. “Are you okay?”
Vernon looked up at Riley. His eyes were lazily rolling around from one side to the other, and his boots were smoking.
“Pamela Anderson?” Vernon asked. “Why aren’t you wearing your red bathing suit? Did I almost drown?”