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Keep Calm And Carry On

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DAY 54

As the sun swung gradually across the mountains, Mercedes became less and less certain that they'd ever see pavement again. It was stupid to leave the road behind. What had they been thinking? Neither she nor Puck were experienced hikers, and horses were creatures meant for open plains, not trails rocky, narrow, and steep.

Between the terrain, the horses, and her lack of proper footwear, their pace dragged like a sandbag through mud. They should not have taken the shortcut.

Whenever the trail leveled enough so that one misstep wouldn't send them tumbling down the slope to their deaths, Mercedes rode in Peach's saddle and let Puck and Mr. T lead the way. Most of the time, however, she was forced to walk, regardless of footwear. She thought her feet had hurt before she'd lost her shoe. That pain was nothing compared to now. The strips of cloth padding wrapped around her foot offered nothing in the way of arch support, barely protecting her skin from the ground below, and her blisters had all cracked open and bled anew.

It was nearing midafternoon when the green light of the forest began to brighten and the tree cover grew more sparse. For a brief moment, relief tugged in Mercedes' chest and she thought they had finally reached the road. She should have known better — they hadn't descended far enough yet.

Unobstructed sunlight momentarily blinded her, stepping from underneath the dense canopy into open air. The trail continued for only another few yards before it abruptly vanished underneath stones.

Directly ahead of them was a massive scree field, several hundred feet across and gleaming in the sun. Jagged shards of rock and gravel and broken bits of shed stone sitting in a slow-moving avalanche down the mountainside, leaving no room for trees or any kind of vegetation in its path. Far on the opposite side of the scree, where the tree line began anew, Mercedes could see a tiny fleck of blue on a tree trunk — the next trail marker.

"Crap," said Puck, summing up Mercedes' feelings perfectly. "I guess we just take this really, really slow."

Contrary to their first assumption, the trail did not in fact vanish entirely beneath the scree. Instead, it left a faint outline of footsteps in years past, other hikers who had trodden the gravel and stones into a barely-navigable path to follow across the rocky expanse.

Still, the scree was far from stable. Inching along little by little, they had to choose their steps with extreme care. Behind Mercedes, Peach brought up the rear huffing and puffing, snorting in indignation every time his hooves slipped in the slightest way. Mercedes could hardly blame him; she had very little confidence in the ground below and, thinking of the previous hikers who had come along this trail, couldn't imagine anybody doing this for fun.

Far, far below them, the scree field led steeply into a deep green valley. It was so far down Mercedes felt dizzy just looking in that direction, and had to tear her gaze away before she threw up.

"I hate this, Puck," she snapped.

"Don't talk too loud, you'll start a rockslide," he retorted over his shoulder.

Mercedes made a face at his back in annoyance. If she died here, she'd haunt his ass.

Every tiny slip of the rocks sent a shower of gravel skittering down the slope, and every time Mercedes' heart beat faster than before. Her pulse pounded in her chest, loudly enough that it could have been coming from inside the mountain itself. There was too far to fall, and it would be far too easy to misstep.

Suddenly her foot rolled, ankle twisted. A sharp piece of rock cut her lower calf. She stumbled and nearly lost her balance, instinctively seizing Peach's rein with a flail. He squealed in protest and jerked his head up and away from her, which in turn nearly made her lose her footing again.

Heart thumping, breath heaving, Mercedes clutched Peach's neck with sweaty hands, staring down the mountainside where her body would certainly end up once gravity claimed her.

Just ahead, Puck stared at her agape, gripping Mr. T's lead with white knuckles. "Still alive?" he asked, falsely light.

Mercedes took her time responding, drawing shaky, slow breaths. "I… I think so." She swallowed around a boulder in her throat, mouth dry as the Mojave. "Let's just — just get this over with quick. Please."

Without another word, Puck nodded and pulled Mr. T forward.

Step by treacherous step, the tree line inched closer. With every movement, Mercedes knew they were tempting fate. The ground beneath them did not care if they lived or died, and would just as soon toss them down the slope to their deaths as let them cross safely. And what a stupid way to die this would be.

Beneath a swirling cloud of worst-case scenarios Mercedes kept her eyes on the rocks underfoot, choosing each step with religious caution.

The minutes ticked past and they made their progress at a speed that would have made a glacier groan. But finally, finally, finally, the sunlight broke behind the trees and they found themselves standing on the far side of the scree field, safely in the shade of the trail. Only then did Mercedes release the largest breath she'd ever held, her legs trembling with adrenaline, and she had to brace her hands on her knees.

The horses seemed relieved too, ears swiveling and tails swishing as they crowded onto the trail and out of the sun. Peach snorted impatiently and stomped a hoof as if to complain that he hated hiking as much as she did.

Puck, on the other hand, released Mr. T's rein, sidestepped around her and wrapped Mercedes in a crushing hug.

Shocked, Mercedes didn't speak immediately, and Puck's hands dug into her shoulder blades hard enough to lift her onto her tiptoes. "...Puck?" she said, muffled in his shirt. He smelled awful. But, of course, so did she.

"I thought you were gonna die," was all he said, and his arms tightened.

At that, Mercedes could only lean into the embrace, holding him in return and relishing in the only connection she'd had since leaving Los Angeles.

Her heart still thudding away as the adrenaline slowly dissipated, Mercedes didn't let go until Puck did. When he did, his eyes were glassy. He shook his head and rubbed his stubbled jaw. "This was a mistake," he said. "We shouldn't have come this way. We should've stuck to the road."

Instinctively, Mercedes wanted to say You're just coming to that conclusion now? But Puck's anxiety was palpable, almost making the air ripple around him. Instead she kept her voice level and, for once, put logic before her frustration.

"Well… we can't exactly go back, Puck. We have to keep going."

"This was really stupid."

Mercedes reached out to grip his wrist, hoping it would help to anchor him before letting him spiral into a not-unreasonable meltdown. "It's okay, Puck. Just breathe for a second. We have to keep going. We'll find the road eventually."

He stared at her for a long moment. She watched him pull himself together with a deep breath, restructuring himself from the inside out, and when he nodded and spoke, his voice was even. "Let's take a break for a couple minutes, then we can go."

Puck's sudden display of emotion astonished her, so far removed from the brusque machismo he'd maintained throughout high school. He'd been so stoic since the blackout, barely wavering, keeping them both safe and fed and figuring out their next course of action, that Mercedes had forgotten.

She'd forgotten that he was missing his family too and that he was just as terrified as she was. She'd forgotten that he also didn't want to die.

Evening swept up the mountainside quickly, barely leaving them enough time to find a place to camp and build a fire before the night fell in earnest. The darkness seemed heavier tonight. The fire had to work harder to keep it at bay, crackling in exhaustion every time Puck jabbed it with a stick to move the firewood to a better burning position. An owl hooted in the trees above, and in the distance they could hear a stream bubbling along. They had considered finding a place to stay closer to the water, but decided against it in case of any large territorial animals coming to take a drink in the middle of the night.

After they'd left the scree field in their wake, a bitter tension had settled over the pair of them. The fear of nearly falling to their deaths had ebbed and what had taken its place was a simmering frustration — the opposite of cabin fever, an annoyance at the natural beauty surrounding them and a sickness of the trail. They wanted asphalt and manmade structures and road signs to clearly state where to go. They wanted out of the woods and off the mountains.

Trail boredom and homesickness aside, there was also the very real concern of their depleting supplies. Food for the horses was low, but at least they were able to supplement their diet with vegetation found alongside the trail. Puck and Mercedes, however, were nearly out. Their rationing was much more restricted now than it had been the previous week, and their stomachs rumbled audibly as they tried to settle in for the night.

Mercedes sucked the last bit of peanut butter from a packet, a remnant of the stash they'd stolen from the Purgatory resort. She resisted the urge to reach into her bag for more, saving what little was left for tomorrow and the next day, and praying that they would return to the road before they completely ran out of food. Since meeting Billy and Elizabeth, they now knew there was an abundance of edible plants all around them, but the irony was neither Puck nor Mercedes could distinguish the edible from the poisonous, and only knew enough to not take the chance.

Puck huffed as he settled on the ground, tugging his blanket tighter around his back. Rain was in the air, chilling them both.

Some nights the quiet between them was comfortable and soothing. This was not that kind of night. Despite her bone-deep exhaustion and aching joints and blistered feet, Mercedes didn't feel like she could go to sleep, so she reached for something to fill the silence. "So, what do you think?" she asked. "Is Lebron James still alive?"

Puck didn't reply. He only stared into the flames, uninterested in their usual game.

Mercedes swallowed. "No?"

He scraped a hand over his face, fatigue pulling at his features. "I really don't care if Lebron James is alive."

Mercedes' jaw clenched. "Well, sorry for trying to lighten the mood."

"Lightening the mood is something you do when one person is having a bad day. We're both miserable. Let's just be miserable."

Heat climbed in her cheeks, and Mercedes knew it wasn't from the fire. "You don't have to snap at me for trying to make the situation better."

"You don't have to make it better," Puck spat. "The situation is crap. Pretending it's not is dumb."

"Why are you taking it out on me?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not taking anything out on you. I just don't want to act like we're camping for fun."

Mercedes irritatedly pursed her lips. Her stomach growled, the blisters on her feet spiking in pain. "None of this is fun for me, Puck. I'm just trying to stay sane long enough to get home so we can find our families."

Puck glared at her across the fire. He looked thinner than she'd noticed before, shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. "Mercedes, there's a good chance that everyone we know is dead."

"You don't know that."

"Not for sure," he countered. "But do you really think even a few of them are still alive? Forget Lebron. Is Artie still alive? Is Rachel? Is Kurt?"

Each name felt like a barb lodged in Mercedes' chest, and she knew Puck had chosen those names intentionally. She spoke through her teeth. "You've seen everything I have. Smaller towns aren't as bad as big ones, and Lima's not that big. Their chances were better there than ours were in L.A. We got lucky. Why couldn't they?"

Puck made a noise of disagreement in his throat, shaking his head like she was an idiot for the suggestion. It wasn't a great argument; she knew Kurt and Rachel were in New York. But her parents and siblings were in Lima, and she had to believe they were surviving.

"Hoping isn't stupid, Puck," she argued. "God's got a plan."

At that, Puck's eyes flashed in the firelight, anger surging in his voice like he'd been struck by lightning. "Wait, you still believe in God? After all this crap?"

Every muscle in Mercedes' body instantly tightened. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"I just think it doesn't make much sense."

"Well, what I believe and what gets me through 'all this crap' is none of your business, all right? Screw you. Just worry about yourself."

The words were out of Mercedes' mouth faster than she could think them through. Puck blinked, his jaw twitching, and without another word he turned to lie down with his back facing her, yanking the blanket up and over his shoulders.

Mercedes swallowed any thoughts of arguing further, or even just saying good night , and laid back on the ground to stare upward into the dark. Anger and terror and unspeakable homesickness swirled in her veins. She laid there for what must have been hours, tossing and turning and trying not to cry, until sleep finally came for her.

When Mercedes woke, Puck was shaking her shoulder. "Get up. Mercedes, get up right now."

Disoriented, she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and immediately felt something strange. She looked down at herself and found she was covered in a light dusting of powder. "What the—?" she started. "It snowed last night?"

Confusion set in. She wasn't cold.

Puck stood over her with panic etched into every line of his face. "Come on, get up. We have to go."

Looking around their campsite, every tree and rock she could see was coated in a thin layer of snow. Even the horses were dusted with it. Something was off.

Still struggling to fully wake up, Mercedes clambered to her feet, ignoring how they screamed in protest. The air smelled different. She plucked a flake from her shirt and rubbed it between her fingers. A little black streak was left imprinted on her skin.

"It's not snow," Puck said, breathless with fear. "We have to go."

A chill settled into the pit of Mercedes' stomach. Puck was right — it wasn't snow. It was ash.

That sudden realization was immediately followed by another in rapid succession: the air smelled different because it was full of smoke.

Overhead, birds cawed and flapped and fled east. From the trail behind them, an orange glow lit the trees, growing brighter.

Mercedes swore and tore into action, shoving her few belongings into their bags and throwing them over Peach's hindquarters. Puck quickly helped her into the saddle and then ran to Mr. T and hoisted himself onto her back.

"Come on!" he cried, and kicked Mr. T into a run.

Mercedes didn't have to urge Peach to follow them; he took off after Mr. T and tore along the trail close on their heels. Sparks and embers fell like raindrops. The air grew thick, burning leaves carried on a hot breeze.

Barely breathing, Mercedes clutched Peach's mane and prayed.

The trail grew wider and flatter and up ahead, Mr. T's speed picked up, the distance between horses increasing. A glimpse over her shoulder sent horror tearing through Mercedes' body — flames leaped from tree to tree, jumping faster than the horses could run. Their campsite was already gone.

Mercedes' ears were filled with a roaring-spitting-cracking-tearing as the flames ate through the forest, sucking through the air and rupturing tree trunks as it went. The fire was catching up. It surged and pulled the oxygen from the atmosphere, towering high above the canopy like a huge creature hunting them for its dinner.

The air itself turned red. The blue sky vanished.

A low, dark shape darted out of the flame-riddled woods, dashing past Mercedes and Peach. With a flash of a whipping tail and powerful legs, Mercedes realized fleetingly that it was the mountain lion. For the briefest of moments she thought the lion would leap up and take Mr. T down with a slash of its claws, but instead it ran past Puck and Mr. T and disappeared into the smoke. Against a wildfire, they were all prey.

Mercedes screamed Puck's name, but he couldn't hear her. She could only kick Peach in the sides and hope he could keep up.

The trail dropped lower, flattening and widening further. Flames leapt past and rapidly overtook them. A column of fire lashed out and singed the ends of her hair. Heat stretched her skin over her bones, until she felt she would burst.

The entire mountainside was on fire — flames in every direction, even overhead. Seconds later, they ran past the mountain lion's burning body laid beside the trail.

Mercedes choked, smoke filling her lungs.

The trail dropped lower and lower, widening until they could run at breakneck speed. The mountain itself was gone — they galloped across a huge open meadow, but the flames walled them in still, like they were running in the eye of a hurricane.

Smoke swirled around them, prairie grasses alight, and Mercedes had to squeeze her eyes shut against the stinging heat.

She heard a scream and opened her eyes just in time to see Puck engulfed in flames.

With a jolt, Mercedes jerked out of sleep, nearly sitting bolt upright. Her breath heaved and a cold sweat had pooled in the divot between her collarbones. The phantom smell of smoke lingered in her nose, now receding, and she stared upward at an overcast sky. The air was damp — heavy with the aromas of moss and rotting leaves like what often came before rain — and it was quiet. Not even birds sang.

Watching the treetops above sway in the flameless breeze, it took her several minutes to slow her heartbeat. The wildfire had been nothing more than a nightmare, and yet the effect was real enough that she had to brush her hand over herself to check for ash.

Slowly, she was able to orient herself back into the present moment, and she finally sat up with a deep breath and a prolonged stretch.

When she turned to look towards the other side of their campsite, however, her heart immediately began to pound again, and the terror returned.

Puck was nowhere to be seen. His belongings were packed up and gone without a trace.

She hauled herself to her feet and turned to see the tree where they'd tied the horses last night. Peach stood in place, tail swishing, alone. The only things left were a slight imprint on the ground where Puck had slept, and hoof prints heading away along the trail.

A sob wrenched out of her chest, and Mercedes had to brace her hands on her knees to catch herself.

She shook her head at the ground. Tears blurred her vision, slipping down her cheeks. She couldn't believe it — Puck had left. He'd just… left her behind, like she was a piece of equipment he decided he didn't need anymore.

Mercedes clenched her fists against the wave of loneliness that threatened to crash through her. The surrounding quiet pounded in her ears, ringing so loudly it filled her head to bursting. In this moment, she was so incredibly small. And the woods, the mountains, the world were so incredibly vast.

Gritting her teeth, she instead drew a long, slow breath and allowed a spark of anger to ignite. She inhaled, and exhaled, and allowed it to blossom into a rage, and then a fury. How dare Puck leave her to die on a mountain somewhere in southwest Colorado. It was completely unacceptable.

She couldn't sit here and cry and give herself any time to process. Doing so would only guarantee her death. The only thing she could do now was survive anyway. Maybe she could catch up to Puck and give him a piece of her mind.

She began packing up her belongings, what few they were, and slung her bags over Peach's rump. She took a moment to re-wrap the filthy cloth padding around her shoeless foot and hissed in pain as it aggravated her blisters. Her other shoe was worn almost clean through the sole, but she could do nothing about that until she'd returned to civilization — or, at least, what was left of it.

Untying Peach's lead from the tree, she walked him the few feet to the trail and tried her best to climb up into the saddle, but it was no use. She'd always had Puck help her with this part. There was such an extreme height difference between her and the horse that without the flexibility of a gymnast, reaching the stirrup was nearly impossible. Peach huffed, as if to laugh at her for trying.

One or two attempts proved unsuccessful, and she began looking around for a stump or something nearby to use as a stepstool. Frustration bubbled in her veins. She fought another rush of tears.

"...Mercedes?"

At the sound of her name, Mercedes jumped and whirled on her toes. Puck stood on the trail with Mr. T at his side, an expression of utter bewilderment on his face.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

The breath gusted out of her lungs so quickly that she felt lightheaded, and — foot pain be damned — she ran to Puck and seized him in a vise-tight hug.

"Um…" was all Puck could say, hands hovering in the space above her shoulders, completely unsure of what to do.

"I thought you were gone."

Awkwardly, Puck returned the hug. "I just took Mr. T down to the stream for a drink," he explained. "You were tossing and turning all night. I figured I'd let you sleep."

Relief and joy and guilt for assuming the worst eddied in Mercedes' head, all blending into an overwhelming cocktail of feelings she barely knew what to do with. She squeezed him tighter.

"Why would you think I left?"

Swiping tears from her cheeks, Mercedes finally released him and stepped back, embarrassment now added to the mix. "I just— After last night, I didn't know…"

Puck's face was strangely solemn. She'd never seen him look like that before.

"You really think I would up and leave because of that?" he asked. He sounded hurt, and he had every right to be. He'd done nothing to earn anything but faith from her. "Mercedes—" He stopped, then shook his head and started over. "You're literally all I have. Don't ever tell me to just worry about myself again."

Mercedes swallowed, her throat aching. "I won't," she promised.

For a moment, she thought Puck might ream her out further, but he only jerked his head in the direction they were heading. "We should go. We're losing daylight."

There was another thousand miles to go between them and home, more terrain to cross and more obstacles to overcome. More threats lurking in the dark or hiding in plain sight. The only possible way they would make it home was by having each other's backs, and whatever disagreements they might have along the way had to be secondary to their joint survival.

As she fell into step behind Puck, setting forth on the trail for yet another day, Mercedes felt like she had an awful lot of growing up to do.

DAY 56

The trail wound ahead, turning and returning, dipping and rising, crossing streams and gullies and occasionally vanishing entirely until they could spot the next trail marker. Misery followed Mercedes with every step. Every part of her body ached — sore muscles still not acclimated to hiking daily and stiff from sleeping on the ground, hips protesting each minute in the saddle, head pounding from stress and a likely vitamin deficiency — but none of it compared to her feet. Her remaining shoe provided no support and little padding between her foot and the dirt and rocks beneath, and the metatarsal bones hurt so much that the pain had climbed up into her shin, almost to her knee. Her other foot was even worse.

Their food officially ran out when they stopped for lunch. It didn't amount to much of a lunch, really. Just the last few peanut butter packets — a desperate shared plea for protein — and then Puck shook out the empty bag and confirmed one of Mercedes' worst fears: there was nothing left until they made it to the end of the trail.

And to top everything off, it was raining.

Not just rain, either. The skies were well and truly pouring. The clouds that had been brewing slowly but surely for the last two days had at last opened up in a torrential downpour that turned the trail to mud and sent rivers gushing down the mountainside. All four of them — Puck, Mercedes, and both horses — were soaked through to the bone. They didn't have any of the proper rain gear (the hardcore kind, typically reserved for mountaineers with a lot of disposable income to spend on GoreTex) but even if they had it would have been made redundant.

The one and only thing that gave them any hope was that the trail seemed to be finally going down more frequently than it was going up.

Mercedes clung to that hope like a buoy in a storm. For hours she perseverated on the singular desperate eddying thought that there were only two outcomes here: either they would find the road today, or they would never make it out of the woods alive. She threw all her energy into the first possibility and each time her anxiety drifted toward dying, she dragged it back with a heaving effort.

So deep in her own thoughts, Mercedes almost didn't notice when Puck stopped ahead, and nearly bumped into Mr. T's rear.

"Mercedes," Puck said, his voice hushed, barely audible through the pouring rain.

"What's up?"

"Come here."

Mercedes frowned and after a moment's hesitation dropped Peach's lead. Peach wouldn't go anywhere; his herd instincts kept him near Mr. T and it's not like a horse could easily navigate away from the trail. She sidestepped around Mr. T's haunches, feet squelching in the muck.

Puck put a hand on her shoulder and pointed ahead.

Her heart skipped with such a shock that she felt abruptly lightheaded. She grabbed Puck's arm.

Up ahead, the trail grew wider and flatter, more graveled. Standing erect at the trailside was a large wooden sign with a shingled roof overhead, rainwater cascading off its edges. The sign was informational, with a large topographical map in its center and educational blurbs about local wildlife along the borders, as well as weather bulletins and safety warnings.

Apart from the ranger cabin, it was the first sign of human activity since they'd left the road nine days ago, and Mercedes wanted to cry.

On the same token, she didn't want to get her hopes up if they still had a long way to go. Part of her thought the sign might be a mirage, teasing a return to a world they would never reach, and as they passed by she had to reach out and touch it to make sure it was real.

But barely another quarter mile further, the trail spread out into a wide flat space. The tree cover broke. They found themselves in a small dirt parking lot patched with splashing puddles, with a scattering of wooden picnic tables and even a vibrantly green port-o-potty.

Mercedes shrieked at the top of her lungs and ran to Puck, and before they knew it they were both jumping up and down, clutching hands and whooping in relief. "We made it! We made it! We made it!" she cried. The pain in her feet was completely forgotten.

Just beyond the parking lot entrance, they could see honest-to-god pavement. It was manmade and unnatural and the most welcome thing Mercedes had ever laid eyes on.

They took a rest at one of the tables for a short time, delighting in their accomplishment and in the fact that they were still alive, allowing themselves to breathe easily. As they sat the rain at last petered out and lightened to a soft drizzle, then a sprinkle, and then just a few drops here and there, leaving only a mist behind.

The trailhead and parking lot would have made for an excellent campsite if they'd had any food left, but despite being thoroughly soaked and exhausted they elected to keep pushing forward in the hopes that they might reach a town or at least a gas station before sunset. Personally, Mercedes wanted to put as much distance between themselves and the trail as possible.

The mist pressed against their damp skin and wet clothes as they headed for the road and Mercedes barely noticed, so relieved to finally be riding without the fear that she would fall to her death. She never in her life thought she'd be glad to be on horseback, but here she was, and the most beautiful sound she'd heard in months was the horses' hooves finally clip-clopping on the asphalt.

"Which way?" she asked as they stepped out from the trees at last, into the grey sunlight filtering through the heavy cloud cover. The road stretched and vanished into mist in both directions.

Puck scratched his head for a moment, considering, and finally tugged Mr. T to the left. "Come on," he said, his voice barely carrying through the thickening fog.

Mercedes followed, and only a couple minutes later a bright blue directional sign appeared on the roadside, blooming out of the fog like spilled ink through paper. As they drew nearer and the writing on the sign became legible, Mercedes' heart leaped in her chest.

LAKE CITY — 9 MILES

Nine more miles, and there would be buildings where they could find shelter and search for food. Nine more miles, and they would be safe. Nine more miles and they could be done with the mountains for good.

Realistically, Mercedes knew there were more mountains to come, but she and Puck had learned their lesson: stay off the trails, stay on the road. Nothing down the road could offer a bigger threat; at least, none that she could think of. While she was still worried about other people and what dangers they might pose, the mountains and the woods frightened her more.

It was difficult to tell what time of day it was in this weather, but Mercedes was sure that even if they didn't cover nine more miles today, they would arrive in Lake City early tomorrow. They could go without dinner for one night now that reprieve was near.

Far ahead, at the edge of what they could see through the fog, a shadow of an animal moved in the center of the pavement.

Mercedes rode alongside Puck, picturing all the things they might find in Lake City. New clothes that weren't filthy, stashes of food, and shoes! Shoes were a must. Maybe the town would have a proper camping store where she could get boots like Puck's, but even just a pair of sneakers to last another few hundred miles would be heartening.

And to sleep indoors! They would find a gas station or an abandoned house or even an unlocked shed. Anything with a roof would be a palace.

Puck made a low hmph noise in the pit of his throat, breaking Mercedes' train of thought. He was frowning ahead, eyebrows knitted in concentration.

"What?" she prompted him.

"What kind of animal is that?" he asked, squinting to try and discern the exact shape of the creature on the road.

Mercedes followed his gaze, scrutinizing it more intently. It was low to the ground and seemed to be rolling, or at least moving in a way that wasn't typical of an animal crossing the road. She shrugged. "Probably just a porcupine or something," she dismissed.

Puck hmphed a second time, but they continued, following the painted yellow lines along the road.

A minute later, Mr. T abruptly halted, her ears swiveling back and forth, then Peach did the same.

Peach anxiously huffed, and Mercedes felt the hair on her arms stand erect, although she couldn't understand exactly why. Mr. T sidestepped, pulling Puck further away.

"What the—" Puck started, and then Mercedes saw his expression melt from confusion to a dawning terror.

She looked ahead just in time to see the animal in the road pull apart into two. It wasn't a single animal; it was a pair, playing and wrestling with each other. Two bear cubs.

This realization only had a half second to marinate, and then there was an ear-splitting roar and a crunching-snapping-breaking as an enormous mass of fur and teeth burst from the trees directly to their left.

Puck swore at the top of his lungs and Mercedes screamed, freezing in horror. She didn't need to react, though — Peach took off instantly at a gallop, and Mercedes hunkered down and desperately gripped his mane. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to watch herself get torn to shreds by a bear, and clung to Peach's neck.

All she could do was hang on for dear life and pray. She listened to the pounding of Peach's hooves and his heaving breaths and the wind whistling past her ears. Somewhere in the mix was the thudding of her own heart, pumping adrenaline into every cell of her body until her skin was on fire.

She prayed for the bear to leave them alone. She prayed that she would live to see another day. She prayed to see her family again.

Of all the ways she could have died, mauled by an angry mother bear was not one Mercedes would have predicted. This had to be a nightmare, conjured up by constant stress and fear. This couldn't be real.

But as the seconds ticked by, she didn't wake up.

She lost track of time — it might have been only a few minutes, but she wouldn't have known. It could have been an hour or more. Peach eventually slowed, his hide matted with sweat, and Mercedes couldn't tell where her heartbeat ended and his began.

She couldn't bring herself to sit up and open her eyes.

She didn't hear any snarling, or claws scraping on the pavement. No audible signs that the bear had followed them. No noise at all, other than Peach's hooves on the road.

Mercedes breathed intentionally, focusing on inhaling and exhaling in long, measured pauses as she tried to calm herself down. She listened to the steady clip-clop-clip-clop beneath her, letting Peach be a metronome to which she could align herself. One-two, one-two.

Eventually, a creeping sense of dread wound its way into the back of Mercedes' head, slowly, like tree roots taking hold in stone. The hoofbeats were wrong. One-two, one-two. Not enough.

One-two, one-two. She could only hear four hooves.

Mercedes at last sat up in the saddle, forcing her eyes open. The fog was thick and suffocating, the surrounding trees reduced to ghosts. The sun and sky invisible above. The air in her lungs felt tight, lacking in oxygen.

She pulled Peach to a stop, twisting to look behind her only to see a completely empty road.

She was alone.