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“We’ll find her,” he repeated, squeezing her hand. “And then we’ll find Danny.”
23
SILAS
Matheson search
November 21, 2018
7:00 a.m.
Marble Lake Staging Area
All around Silas, the staging area is in a frenzy of activity. Amid the cacophony of commands and shouts of instruction issuing from the com van, he hears that the subject Meg found is Spencer. He repeats this revelation slowly in his head, relishing it—Meg found Spencer—and then again aloud, grasping Miranda in united relief. Her arrival to the scene had brought an atypical tension to their usual dynamic, thanks to Silas’s lack of communication, which mercifully dissipates, at least somewhat, in the reprieve this moment has granted them. What he’s hoped for most, clutched tight in his fist, has been preserved, at least for one of his children.Spencer,he thinks,Spencer, Spencer,and while a red status still indicates the subject is in critical condition—he knows this now ... it’s been explained to him—it’ssomething.It’s something to hold on to when he resigned himself to nothing, and as the ground teams stand by, and Miranda cries softly, and the sheriff’s team uses asatellite phone to raise an emergency medic team, which is already en route, Silas paces the narrow confines of the com van. He’ll give Darcy only the amount of time it takes to place this call, and then he’s headed to the site himself, team or no team.
Of course, in keeping with the horrific pattern of this whole ordeal, his hopes remain cleanly sliced down the middle.
“What about Cameron?” he asks Santos in a tight rush as they wait for Darcy to get off the line with Washoe Medical Center in Reno.
“Yes, where’s Cameron?” Miranda echoes. It’s not that their younger son’s status has only just occurred to them, Silas decides. Just that they’ve only now gathered the courage to ask.
Santos shakes his head. There’s been no mention at all of Cameron via the radio, and Silas’s gut tightens anew in a torturous twist. Does he want news? Does he not? He has no idea, his emotions are so thoroughly scrambled. But then Darcy turns toward him, and he has to focus on what theydoknow.
“Thirty minutes,” she tells him. In thirty minutes, the medic flight they’ve had on standby for twenty-four hours will have arrived from Reno, but it will be unable to land in the same narrow meadow the tiny R22 navigated. “It will have to touch down here, in the parking lot, which means Spencer will need to be carried out to it.”
Santos pulls the team combing the lodge grounds and reassigns them to Spencer-retrieval duty. “Finding him indicates that Cameron, too, will be better served with all volunteers in the field,” he explains, while Silas thinks,About time.No more resources will be wasted looking for his kids where he knows without a doubt they are not.
The trail is too rocky and narrow for ATVs, so it’s determined that Miranda will wait here at camp for the medic flight, while the field medical team sets out on foot with the additional ground pounders, Silas and Santos among them. They hike at a blistering speed along the Lakes Loop trail over the ridge to Long Lake and then down the other side, cutting off at the shoreline to follow the GPS coordinatesMeg provided. Apparently the pond where Spencer was found is seasonal, swelling after a wet fall, and it takes Silas a moment to orient himself. When he does, he realizes they are uphill from the nearside of the lake ... confirming his hunch that the boys may have sought higher elevations. How high did they climb? Before Spencer ended up at the pond, was he traveling uphill or downhill? The unanswered questions plague him, needling at him from every angle. His entire body reacts to the sting of it: coming this far, finding Spencer, but with no answers at all. No trace of Cameron.
They’re in constant radio contact with Rick and Meg, on scene, as they hike, and then they’rethere, and the sight of Spencer is the greatest jolt to Silas’s system he’s ever experienced. Because who is this small stranger, ashen to the point of lifelessness?Not Spencer, surely. He’swrapped tightly in a blanket, his head cradled on Meg’s lap with his eyes closed, and instead of the critically injured boy in front of him, Silas sees the infant Spencer once was, as though viewing him from the vantage point of a dream. He’s a chubby toddler, struggling to walk, and then he’s a child with tousled blond hair and bright eyes who trails after Silas every chance he gets, each earnest stride stretched wide to match his father’s footfalls. He’s starting school, and then he’s hiking almost in step, leaning over the rail of the Marble Peak fire tower, narrow shoulders bent in a graceful arc, andoh!How can a life—a life sustained and not even his own—be flashing before his eyes?
He makes a sound like a sob and falls at Meg’s knee. He reaches out to take Spencer from her arms, but several hands stop him at once. People shout at him. Something about holding C-spine, precautions, preventing shock. He’s yanked back, away from his boy, his hands still empty. He has to pacify himself with a featherlight touch to Spencer’s forehead, a murmuring ofThere now, you’re safe now,and the reward of a fluttered eyelid.
A moment later a team is counting down from five, and then Spencer is lifted, to be carried out of the wilderness on a portablegurney. Silas starts to follow alongside, pressing closely enough for his hip to collide with the edge of the orange plastic backboard, but then what about Cameron? There’s a good chance his younger son is nearby, isn’t there? He scans the forest, spinning in circles, torn.
“Go with Spencer,” Meg urges him, already trotting back toward the helicopter perched on its makeshift landing zone. “We’ll keep looking!”
He takes stock of the activity around him and realizes she’s right: teams are already being redivided and sent in various directions, and if the helo gets airborne again, the best place for him to be is by a radio. He runs to catch up with Spencer’s gurney.
He continues to talk to his son nonstop the entire way back to the staging area, despite still receiving very little in response. He strokes Spencer’s head, sweeping the hair away from his closed eyes, and tells him he’s loved, and safe, and that soon he’ll be warm and fed. He tells him to simply breathe, and once, maybe twice more, Spencer blinks in response, his throat working as though struggling to swallow. Silas shouts for water, but his demands are denied; Spencer’s core temperature is too high a risk. Ingesting the cold liquid will only further deplete his son’s waning reserve of energy, Santos explains.
Halfway back to the staging area, the sound of the R22’s rotors thunders overhead. The promised second sweep. Silas cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of Meg in the spotter position.
“They’ll do a focused search of this square mile,” Santos tells him.
Others nod in approval as Silas swallows a hard lump that’s formed in his throat. It’s either hope or dread, or an awful mixture of both. In the hollow space left behind, he finally builds the nerve necessary to ask Spencer the direct question everyone needs to hear. Because what if he knows the answer?
He wills his voice not to break. “Do you know where Cameron is, son?”
Spencer’s dry lips close together in a repeat of one syllable—Cam—and everyone halts with bated breath. Silas leans nearly prone over thegurney, but Spencer says nothing further. Perhaps his few stirrings of consciousness are simply due to the jostling of the gurney. Perhaps his whisper of his brother’s name is nothing more than the slight loll of his small head from one side to the other as they navigate the rough terrain, the board pitching forward or back depending on the grade of the earth beneath their boots or the severity of the incline.
But then: “Cam?” Spencer murmurs again, with confusion, and Silas’s heart threatens to beat right out of his ribcage.
“Yes, Cam.” He presses in close to Spencer’s dry, cracked, cold lips. “Do you remember where he is?”
Spencer’s small mouth turns down at the corners, just slightly, like he might begin to cry, if he had the energy. Silas thinks he shakes his head, though the slight movement could be just more jostling.
“We’ll find him,” Silas promises, heart breaking. “You just rest.”
