1 – Predictably Lost

"Hold up…my fucking feet are killing me," Billy said, more in a whine than a voice.

"It's not our fault that you aren't prepared for hiking in the mountains," Petey said. "I mean, look at your shoes. Sneakers?"

"What?" Billy asked, "I thought they would be comfortable enough. They're my most broken in pair…"

"They're SNEAKERS!" the smarmy, know-it-all Petey declared as if no one knew.

"Yeah, man. Where's the boots?" Robson asked as he walked by a grumbling Billy, who for the third time in twenty minutes had to shake the pebbles out of his running shoes and massage the arches on the bottoms of his feet, which felt like they would snap at any second.

"You guys are going the wrong way…" Trish shouted as she passed the temporarily crippled Billy. "We're supposed to head east!"

Petey stopped about 50 feet down from where Trish and Billy were standing, his feet kicking pebbles down the slight angled slope of a narrow path that they had all been following, guiding them down a very level portion of the mountain.

"Hold up, guys!" Petey shouted down to the group ahead of him.

The sun was setting fast in the higher landscape of this section of the White Mountains, and they all realized that they were losing daylight by the minute.

Trish flicked her 'designer' compass, made by one of those Italian hand purse designers, and it bobbed around in circles incoherently. The shiny gold trim and beautifully etched brand name logo made it a great accessory to the most fashionable camper, but they forgot to do one thing to it when they built it…they forgot to put an actual dependable compass in it. They had another one, a good one, too, but they lost it when Petey, the dorky kid ever trying to be cool, was looking down at it trying to show everyone that he could lead them as he walked to the edge of a steep ledge. If Billy hadn't grabbed his shirt at the last second, the compass would not be the only thing rolling down the side of a dirt-filled, rocky mountainside.

So there they were, feeling like they had walked in a giant circle all day, and anxiety started wearing visibly like a new jacket on everyone.

Robson turned to the group and said, "the next flat clearing we find, we will have to camp. It's going to be dark soon. Start looking for good firewood, and we'll build a campfire."

The others nodded, all of them on a finely balanced emotional plateau, with one side made of relief, with being able to get off their feet for a while and get some rest, and the other, of sheer terror, as all of them realized though no one said aloud how lost they all really were.

What seemed like hours turned out to be just over an hour, and two tents were up, a campfire had just passed the stages of coming to life and legitimate flickers lapped up toward the sky. A few of them were already huddling in close, in an anticipatory wait for warmness as the September chill slowly crept in with the darkness.

One of the heaviest backpacks that were being carried was the one that Billy had, and it was an insulated soft-wall cooler that kept enough food for them for four days. Robson pulled a zip-lock bag of marinated meat out of it, and commented at how well the cooler was working. He laid a grill rack that they had been carrying across the now hungry flames, and began grilling the meat.

Robson was a Brazilian born native, tall with dark skin and deep, almost-black, brown eyes. He was clearly the most experienced with the outdoors, and had no problem with silently being the leader of the group. He spoke with an accent, as Portuguese was his native language, but somehow the accent got much thicker around pretty girls.

Tanya sat across the fire from him, sporadically looking up at him while writing continuously in her journal. Every time they stopped, she would feverishly start to write. She was a journalist for the college newspaper, but it was more than that. It was clear that she would be a 'best selling' author someday. She had tapped into her passion at an early age, and already had two complete novels written.

Robson stared at her as she wrote. Her tight corn rolls pulled back showing her rich ebony skin against the firelight. Those lips…Robson thought of what he would do to her sexually if she'd ever let him. He wasn't sure if he liked her in a relationship sort of way, but he was clearly attracted to her physically. He'd subtly peek at her during the hike and those thoughts would come back again.

Gwen broke into the clearing from the bushes at the side of the camp with more seasoned wood. She had a small hatchet dangling from a loop on the side of her painter's pants that she was wearing, and she dropped the newly chopped pile of wood onto the ground near the fire.

She went and sat near it, as she smelled the garlicky marinade dripping into the fire and sending delicious waves of aroma throughout the campsite. She waved her cold hands over the urgent heat now coming from the burning pile in the center of the circle of rocks.

Petey came out of the guys' tent with a platter, a long loaf of bread and a bag of chips, and joined them.

It wasn't long before they were all eating contently and quietly around the fire, sipping on bottles of water. They all stared at the fire in the sedated, trance-like affect that a campfire's hypnotic properties offer. Billy snapped out of it for a moment, as he poked around in the hot embers with a long stick.

"Does anyone have any spooky stories?"

They all looked around at each other half-heartedly, each trying to think of something scary enough to tell that would have the impact that they were all hoping for.

Finally, Robson, who looked like he was struggling the hardest with something, broke the ice.

"Okay, is there anyone that gets scared very easy?" He paused, waiting for a response. In his estimation, the girls could all handle it; it was Petey who he thought might not be able to swallow after he told his story.

"I used to hunt with my Uncle Paolo, when I was an early teenager in Brazil. We would go into the rainforests and climb into the Andes Mountains. He would tell my aunt Renata that we were on our annual hunting trip to get his antelope meat, which he usually did end up getting, but he was always out hunting for the Albino Andean Mountain Lion; that was his real reason for going. He saw it with his own eyes once, and he knew that he missed the opportunity of his life, and that's why he would spend the rest of his days trying to find the creature again. This one particular year, I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, and we were in the forest. He was a very good hunter, and we never lost direction, except for this one time. We had picked up a trail and followed it for miles, and we couldn't find our way back, very similar to the situation that we are in now. I wasn't worried, because I had the best person to be with in the wild with me. We soon came upon the shock of our life…we came upon a real life Aborigine caught in a monkey net. It looked like some poachers had laid out a trap and forgot about it. Anyway, this native couldn't get out of the net, and began to panic when he saw us. Paolo showed his hands disarmingly and tried to communicate to this painted and pierced creature that he wasn't trying to hurt him. As soon as Paolo pulled his knife out to cut the net open, the captured thing started freaking out; screaming like an animal, and speaking sounds I'd never heard before."

Robson's eyes got wide as he told the story, and everyone had leaned in to hear, captured by Rob's storytelling ability.

"So my skilled uncle, through all of the thrashing and jumping around that this guy was doing, managed to cut the knot that bound the net high, and he slowly lowered the prisoner to the ground. The native was breathing heavy at this point, but not really making any other sounds. My uncle cautioned me to stay back, as this was the time that was the most dangerous. As soon as he pulled that net open, the thing would strike with everything it had to defend itself. My uncle with his big knife and big skills, cut the top portion of the net in one slice, and jumped back ten feet all in one fluid movement. He quickly dropped the knife at his feet and showed his empty hands to the native. The Aborigine pulled the net off and started for Paolo, but stopped when he recognized what Paolo was gesturing with his hands. In America, I think you call it "shoo", but Paolo was gesturing with his hands for him to run away, and he understood it. The native ran to the edge of the clearing and turned one last time to acknowledge my uncle. He stared long and hard at my uncle, before disappearing into the trees."

"What did he look like?" Petey asked.

"He was very small, by human standards. Maybe 4 to 4 and a half feet tall, at the most. And he had long dirty hair, with red paint all over his body. He also had raised bumps and skin piercing everywhere. But the story is not over…"

Rob continued, "we tried to double back, and go the way we came, but we couldn't pick up the trail that we originally came in on. And then we stumbled onto them."

Everyone looked at each other.

"A whole clan of them. They were the dressed the same as the prisoner. They practically jumped us. My uncle wasn't prepared to be the hunted. They bound our hands and tied them to a long stick, and forced us back to their camp, which was not far away. My uncle never lost determination, and he told me several times that we would escape, and to stop crying. The most frustrating thing for him was that he couldn't explain himself to them. They weren't even interested in explanations. At that point, I had no idea what they wanted, but I would find out soon enough.

It was maybe a day that we spent in a cage that they built. My uncle saw him first. The one we saved. He called to him, and when the native turned, he recognized my uncle right away. He made the hand gesture, the 'shoo' gesture to him, and he understood. My uncle frantically gestured to the latch that was out of reach, but the Aborigine friend ran away. Dread set in. We were in for something bad, though we didn't know what, and my uncle sure wasn't going to get into that conversation with me. I kept thinking that maybe we were going to be some kind of sacrifice to them or something. Our friend came back a while later with what appeared to be the leader. He had more bones, paint and piercing, and just like American Indians, he wore a big headdress. They spoke in front of the cage for several minutes, and the chief finally opened the latch and stepped back to let us out. He bowed nobly, and I figured out that he was showing his gratitude for saving his kin by letting us go. That is, until the spears crossed in our path. My uncle looked to the leader with confusion, and the leader smiled at him. He put his hand to his mouth and chomped his teeth. He was telling my uncle that we were to eat with them. He quickly looked to our friend, the one that we saved, and the native was nodding hard. He went from gesturing the "eat" that the chief was doing to the "shoo" that we taught him in the woods. He was telling us that we were free; we just needed to stay for dinner. My uncle nodded, and they took us to the center of the village where they were already gathering.

We were so swept up in what was going on, that we didn't even notice. We got handed wooden bowls with great smelling roasted meat in them. Everyone chomped hungrily at their food and didn't pay us much attention. The chief waited for us to eat before he would, though. My uncle told me to eat so that we wouldn't offend the leader, and I couldn't deny the smell; it was so tempting with the smokiness of the wood fire that they cooked on. I didn't notice until I had a huge piece of the tender meat hanging out of my mouth. I didn't notice until my uncle almost choked. I didn't notice that the meat that they were carving off of the roast on the rotisserie over the open fire had a familiar shape…"

The horror on everyone's face at the campfire said it all. He didn't even have to say it, but he did.

"It was a human."

Groans of disgust and remorse were loudly expressed, and Rob stared intently at the fire.

"The chief bowed again after we regained our composure and finished our bowls, and made the 'shoo' gesture. We gathered our things and left. We never really talked about it again after that day. I just remember him telling me that sometimes we have to be brave and do things that we wouldn't ever expect to have to do, and that he was very proud of how I handled it."

The silence crept in for a minute, and finally, Tanya asked, "Is that a true story?"

A smile crept onto Robson's face. "Maybe I don't even have an uncle Paolo…"

The tension lightened and people started to laugh. "Then again, maybe I do…"

And the groans came back.