"The Fourth Survivor":
We were four.
Jake, Callum, Carter, and me.
I was the silent one. The one who enjoyed the dawn patrol and the journey to the south with windows rolled down and no music. Sometimes they called me "Ghost" as a joke, for my ability to vanish in the lineup or in the sand dunes with little speech.
It was 26th April, 2024. Our car was the white Chevrolet Colorado. We carried the boards to the roof, a cooler with beer and leftovers from the Coachella festival. Callum had all the stops mapped out as if it was a military operation. Punta San José, La Bocana, several unidentified spots according to some local, who assured us the rights were empty in the middle of April. Jake was still jet-lagged after coming from Perth. Carter kept checking his messages from his fiancée. I was just watching the endless highway and not thinking about how far we were from any help in case something went wrong.
We spent the first night in the vicinity of the civilized world. Second night we headed further south to find the solitude that would make the Pacific Ocean ours alone. We found it near La Bocana — an unmarked dirt road leading down the cliff to the sand patch just enough large to put up two tents and park the truck there. There was no mobile signal. There were no lights except for the stars in the sky and the moon. Just the sound of the waves smashing against the rocks down the cliff and wind whistling through the dry brush as if it was restless.
We surfed until the day died out. We ate the tacos from the cooler. Passed the bottle of cheap tequila. Spoke of nothing important. Jake showed us photos of his niece. Callum did that ritual when he stretches his long arms and cracks his back, saying that the waves would be better tomorrow. Carter checked the truck once again, making sure the boards are tied securely. I walked down the road a little bit and gazed at the dark waters until the cold crept inside of me.
I shouldn't have stayed there.
Around midnight I was awakened by the sound of the engine which was not ours.
Not loud. Not in a hurry. Just a low and careful growling of the moving vehicle without headlights. I was sitting in the tent with Jake. He was sleeping with his mouth wide open and one hand over his face. In the mesh of the tent I could see the silhouette of the second tent and Colorado truck. Beyond them there was nothing but the sharp starry sky and the constant sound of the ocean.
Then the engine switched off.
Voices. Low. Spanish. Too many for the random fisherman or a couple of people looking for a place for themselves.
I shook Jake. He woke up quickly. We both put on our shoes without saying anything. Outside the zipper of the second tent was working. Voice of Carter, sleepy, asking what the hell—
Light beams appeared. Three light beams cut across our campsite.
I don't remember the exact words after it. Something about the truck. Something about the tires. Something about the phones. A female voice intermingled with the male voices. Later I learned that her name was Ary and that she had seen us that evening, noticed what we had and told the others we were easy targets. At the moment all I knew was that the beams were getting closer and the voices were no longer quiet.
Callum appeared outside of the second tent first. Tall. Calm. Trying to speak. Hands partially raised in the universal sign of "we don't want trouble".
Someone responded with the gunshot.
It was not loud like in movies. It was just flat and final, like the sound of a door closing in the empty house. Callum fell down. The sound he made when he landed on the ground is the sound I hear when the room becomes quiet enough.
After that happened everything in fragments.
Carter's yellings. Jake pushing past me to get to his brother. More gunshots — two or three of them. Light beams swinging madly. Someone crying in Spanish. Alarm of the truck working for a half of a second before it was turned off. I remember the smell of gunpowder mixing with salty air. I remember the feel of the dirt under my hands when I landed on the ground crawling.
I didn't run towards the battle. I ran away from it.
Right into the darkness of the brush, fast and low, like you move when your body decides that survival is more important than bravery. Brush scratched my arms. Rock tore the skin of my knee. Behind me voices rose and fell. Shot. The sound of the dragging.
I found a small depression in the ground, sixty meters away from the campsite—a small depression of the land where the brush grew thicker. I pushed myself in it and stopped breathing.
They were searching for some time.
Light beams swept the edges of the clearing. Someone shouted in English mockingly, asking if there was a fourth one. Someone laughed. Then I heard the engine starting and the light sounds of the fire appearing as they set our tents on fire. Smoke moved towards me, heavy with the smell of melted nylon and something else.
I stayed there in that depression until the engine noise faded away and the only light remained was the orange light of what used to be our camp.
When I finally got up, my legs wouldn't work properly. I crawled back towards the cliff, staying low. Colorado was gone. Tents were just blackened skeletons. Two black shapes lay near the place where the second tent was. I didn't approach them. I already knew it.
I walked.
Not towards the highway. It seemed too opened, too obvious. I followed the coastline to the north in the dark, keeping the sound of waves to my left, stepping over the rocks and soft sands. My phone was still in the tent. My shoes were filled with my own blood from the cut on my knee. Every sound made me freeze—wind, night birds, the bark of a dog somewhere in the distance.
At about the dawn I discovered the narrow dirt road and a wooden cross placed there years ago. I sat down near it and waited for the sunrise which would let me check if someone was coming.
Nobody did.
The fisherman found me near midday. The old man in the pick-up with fishing nets and the face that had seen too much already. He asked me few questions. He only looked at my blood-stained clothes and the uncontrollable shaking of my body and told me to get in.
The rest became a blur of the police stations, questions in two languages, and the cold certainty that the well they dragged the bodies from was just a few kilometers away from me. The certainty that the fourth body already in the well had been there longer than any of us. The certainty that those guys wanted the tires and the phones, and didn't care who they had to kill to get them.
I told them everything I knew. The female voice. The number of light beams. The fact that Callum tried to speak first. They arrested few guys. Some of them are still waiting for the trial. One of them took the deal already.
None of it changed the fact that remains with me.
I was the silent one. The one who vanished in the darkness instead of staying in the light with my friends. Some nights I tell myself that if I had stayed, there would be only four bodies in the well instead of three. Other nights I know that it is a lie I've invented to survive.
The Pacific still looks the same from the distance. Clean. Endless. Full of the promise.
"The Forest Road":
I am Tom. By the summer of 2005 I was thirty-two years old, worked as a builder out of Eugene, and I liked forests much more than TV does the majority of people – as something to spend the hours of leisure time in. In late June I went with my old Ford Ranger on Forest Service Road 2134, which is located a bit south of Oakridge, in search of a suitable place to spend a couple of days in solitude. There was no particular plan; I just needed a cooler, a tent, a sleeping bag, and silence.
At four in the afternoon I found it. That was an unmarked pull-off, three miles up the asphalt road – a flat surface covered with needles under the firs. Perfect. Undesignated. Private. I installed camp, started a fire, roasted a couple of hot dogs, and watched the sunlight disappearing behind the trees. There was some traffic on the road higher at noon, but by dusk everything became absolutely silent. The silence that makes the ringing in your ears.
That night I went to bed very early. No radio, no book – just the creek sounds somewhere down there and the cracking of the fire slowly fading away. What I remember was the fact that that was one of those rare nights when the world seems to be exactly as large as it should be – small enough to fit in.
Sometime after midnight the dog started barking.
It wasn't my dog – I had no pets. The bark came from farther up the road, short and sharp at first, but then long and urgent. Then it stopped. Just stopped, as someone would have turned a switch. I listened to it for a while. After a couple of minutes I heard something like the sound made when a car door is being closed. Or maybe a trunk. Then there was nothing again. I tried to persuade myself that it was the sound made by other people camping there. They often did that out here – pulled off at the first unoccupied place.
I went to sleep.
The next morning was clear and cool. I brewed a cup of coffee on the small stove and went up the road for a walk. That was when I saw their truck. It was a dark GMC Jimmy, parked nose-first into the trees at another dispersed campsite, half a mile farther. The license plates were missing. Both of them. That was the first thing I realized was wrong with that scene. You do not usually take plates off your vehicle unless you are planning to never return for it, or you are planning to hide it forever.
I was about to continue my walk. Almost. I stopped at that campsite – something in its dead stillness was disturbing me. No one was speaking. Nobody was moving. The tent still stood. Two chairs were placed as if people would sit on them the previous night. And there was a dog – golden retriever, a big and quiet one – lying near the fire circle in the way it seemed to be sleeping.
I called out. Nobody answered.
I should have left immediately and driven directly to the ranger station. Instead I went closer to the campsite, as you go closer in order to find a normal explanation of everything. That dog was not sleeping. There was the blood under it, dark and dried up in the dust. Further beyond it, two people lay on the ground near the tent. It was a man and a woman, both wearing their clothes and both being absolutely still. I did not need to approach them in order to understand that they were dead. The way their bodies were laid out, the dark stains on their clothes and the ground – it could only mean that someone had shot them from the distance and killed in close contact with them.
I stood there longer than I should have. Long enough for the deadening silence to start pressing on my ears. Long enough to see that some of their gear was missing – fishing rods, a shoulder holster, maybe a handgun. The doors of that GMC Jimmy were closed. There were no signs of a struggle that would make sense. Only two people who came out to the forest in order to have a quiet overnight stay in the Willamette National Forest and who have never returned home.
I left the campsite carefully – as you would leave from the campsite where a sleeping bear is located. Went to my truck. Drove out without looking in the mirrors more than necessary. Fount the pay phone in Oakridge and informed about it. I sounded not like myself.
Deputies arrived there. Soon there were more of them. They blocked that road and nearby campgrounds. They interviewed everybody who was staying in the vicinity on that holiday weekend. No one confessed that they heard the shots fired. Not a single one. That part still puzzles me. The forest was able to carry the sound. Maybe the trees swallowed it. Maybe people just did not want to know what they have heard.
Their names were revealed to me later – as names of the strangers who become the local weather conditions. Their names were Stevan Haugen, fifty-four, and Jeanette Bauman, fifty-six. Teachers. Good people, by all accounts. He was a counselor and a track coach. She had recently moved to Oakridge in order to live with him. They had a dog named Caesar who never left his master. They had no enemies anyone knew. They had no reason. The later FBI profile of the murderer suggested that he was protecting his personal territory – like the forest itself belonged to him and these two people just parked in the wrong quiet place.
They never found him.
Sometimes I wonder if the person who killed them still lives nearby. If he passes by the memorial they erected for their loved ones and feels nothing. If he still thinks of that piece of road as his.
"My Best Friend":
We only intended to spend the night there.
Dave and I were traveling for days; Boston to California, him to grad school and me along as it was the only pure thing left. Rattlesnake Canyon was supposed to be just a detour for us. A camping in the wild overnight to visit the caverns tomorrow. We wrote down the backcountry permit. The park ranger advised a gallon of water per person per day. We agreed, having only three pints among us plus some Gatorade. We thought we were wise.
We arrived to Rattlesnake Canyon Wednesday evening. The place was surrounded by the white rocks that reflect heat at any time of the day. We made a fire, cooked hot dogs with one pint of water and chuckled at how deserted this place was. The map we had was a topo map. We did not know how to interpret the contour lines in such landscape. We hoped that we will find the trail tomorrow.
But we were wrong.
The next day we were walking in circles. All washes looked the same. All limestone shelves were similar. The sun was climbing and the temperature rising above anything tolerable. By noon we had no water anymore. We licked water from rocks. We tried the fruit of the cactus but spat it out most of the time. Once I strained my urine through my baseball cap and got so ill from the taste that almost lost consciousness. Dave refused to do the same after that.
By Friday the reality shrunk into the distance between our shoes and the next ridge. We still were talking trying to lift each other's spirits as friends usually do when the only other alternative is dying. But the words became less frequent. Dave's lips opened and stayed that way. So did mine. The tongues became leather. The sky was cold and indifferent.
The pain changed Saturday night.
Dave started vomiting. There was nothing left to vomit, but the dry heaving lasted for many hours. He lay curled on the white rocks making some sounds that I hear every time I'm alone in the room. I sat by him. I told him that help was coming. I told him that we were near the trail. I told him anything.
He did not believe me anymore at 3 a.m.
I remember his voice asking for the knife. Hoarse, thin and almost polite.
"Get the knife."
I refused. I repeated it several times. He took my wrist in a grip I did not think he was still capable of and dragged me closer. His eyes sunk in his face and the whites of them became yellow.
"You know they are not coming," he said. "Put the knife through my chest. Please. I cannot take another day of this."
I held the folding knife in my hands. It was four inches long. We had used it to cut sausage and open crackers. Ordinary things. My hand was shaking so much that the knife was clicking on itself.
The first time Dave himself guided the knife. It entered the skin but not deep enough. He made some sound like air leaving a tire. He jerked his body. I pulled the blade off and pushed it in again. This time I used all my strength. The knife found the gap between the ribs and slid in to the end. Dave's eyes did not leave mine. He smiled. A strange smile.
"Better," he whispered. "It is better."
He kept breathing for a few minutes. I covered his face with my shirt as he asked. He jerked once and stopped breathing.
I sat beside him till the sky began to brighten. Then I did what the journal says I did. I gathered the stones. Some of them were heavy. Seventy pounds, as the investigators later said as if this proved something about my strength and my guilt. I piled them carefully over his body. A long and low stone pile. Seven feet wide and two and a half high. I made it neat since everything else would feel like abandoning him to the animals and the sun.
Then I wrote in the spiral notebook we were using.
*I killed & burried my best friend today. Dave had been in pain all night. At around 5 or 6, he turned to me and begged that I put my knife through his chest. I did, & a second time when he wouldn't die. He still breathed and spoke, so I told him I was going to cover his face. He said OK. He struggled but died. I burried him w/ love. God & his family & mine, please forgive me.*
I meant every single word.
The ranger found me that afternoon. Lance Mattson. He walked into the little shady lean-to I had made and asked where my partner was. I pointed at the stone pile and answered the only truth left in my mouth.
"I killed him."
They flew me out. Gave me water. The doctors in the hospital said that I was dehydrated but not dying. Dave's autopsy said the same about him—moderate to severe dehydration but not fatal. The fact that this was the cause of death still pains me. They accused me of murder. I pleaded guilty to second degree. I spent sixteen months in prison. The judge called it what the law required. Euthanasia is still murder.
People still ask me if I think about it. As if there is an option.
I am alive.
This is what never stops being true, and never stops being the worst of it.
I am alive, and he lies under those stones in Rattlesnake Canyon, and the desert does not care which of us was right.
"The Tent Intruder":
We had come down from Cedar Falls the previous day—21st July 2022. Maquoketa Caves State Park. The kids had been bouncing in the back seat for an hour now, debating as to which cave we would enter first. Dancehall. Rainy Day. Ice Cave. Arlo, the nine-year-old, had already memorized the trails' map. Lula, aged six, kept on asking whether the bats would come out when we enter the caves. Sarah just smiled and told them both to wait and see.
We parked somewhere near the upper campground, a bit away from the main loop where the trees hung low and the floor remained soft. Our big family tent—blue and gray, with mesh ceiling so that one could view the stars if the weather cooperated. Tyler lit a small fire while I packed the cooler. Arlo and Lula played hide and seek between the picnic tables until the light began to dim. There weren't many people camping here that night. About a dozen tents were occupied. Enough peace and quiet so that one could listen to the distant rush of the creek and the occasional noise of vehicles far below.
The family from Nebraska had pitched their tents at about seventy-five yards away from ours, hidden among the overgrown shrubs. The parents along with their son in his early twenties. We greeted them once when we crossed their camping place en route to the washrooms. That was all.
Night fell peacefully. No sign of the rains despite the predictions. We zipped up the tent around ten. The kids dozed off instantly, Lula cuddled to Sarah's side while Arlo lay with his flashlight clasped in his hand under the sleeping bag. Tyler and I talked about work, about the library where Sarah worked, about how Arlo was growing older than sharing a tent. Then we too succumbed to the quietude.
I woke up to the sound of the zipper.
Slow. Deliberate. Such sounds that when heard in the dead of night give you the sense of familiarity. Not the blowing of the wind. Not a raccoon. The sound of the zipper on the front of the tent being opened slowly.
I sat up. The mesh ceiling revealed nothing but the gray sky at dawn—sometime before six. Tyler was already up, half out of his bag. Sarah groaned in her throat. Lula moved in her sleep. Arlo lay still though his eyes were wide open. I could see the gleam of his eyes in the dimness.
The flap opened.
The man entered. Young. Early twenties. Dark hair. No words came out of his mouth. No necessity to say anything. He had a thing in his hand that looked strange—a metal block, not like any gun I'd ever seen. Something sharp and thin was there in his other hand. A blade.
What happened next is broken memories.
Tyler jumped first. There was a sharp crack—two such cracks, one following another, and the burnt smell of the gunpowder filled up the tent. Tyler hit the ground with a thud. Sarah screamed loud, then the man was on her. The sound of the blade slicing the flesh. Repeated. I tried to crawl towards the children. My hands slipped on something warm and slippery.
Lula was crying. The man turned around. One more crack. Then the silence of a small body being squeezed to death.
Arlo moved.
I don't know how. It seemed that he was suddenly past the man, outside the half-opened flap of the tent and running. Bare feet on the wet grass. I heard him much later even though I couldn't see his face—his voice, shrill and broken, calling for help at the neighboring tents. He was later identified that those tents belonged to the parents from the Nebraska family. The woman was the one who called 911.
I remained lying down, under the sleeping bags, under the weight of what remained of my family. The man stood in the middle of the tent for sometime, gasping heavily. Then he stepped outside, into the gray light and the zipper closed behind him.
I don't remember for how long I remained lying there. For a long time. Long enough for the sun to rise higher. Long enough to hear the first sirens at a distance. Long enough to realize that the wetness soaking the floor of the tent will never go away from my skin.
The man was found dead later that morning at some distance from the camping area. Self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The same strange homemade gun. The investigators stated that the man acted alone, having no connection whatsoever to us. No particular reason for it. He was a young man who walked into the tent of a family he had never met before and decided that the world should end for the three people.
Arlo survived. He ran away. He lived. It is the only clean fact in this whole story.