Chapter 2 : Raccoon Fever

The sun set over an expanse of cornfields. As the day faded to twilight, Laney left the road and headed for a thicket. She found a hollow space beneath a wild forsythia and crawled inside. A moment later, exhaustion hit her. She must had been walking for six or seven hours straight. With this realization she gave a great sigh and lay down, not even caring about the rough ground and the stones digging into her back.

She was still wearing her flimsy office clothes, with not even a blanket for warmth. She had had no dinner and her warm bed was miles away. But those discomforts hardly registered. Why not? She was still high on the adrenalin, the miracle of her escape. Her head was still spinning from the incredible concept: I did it. I walked out! I don't have to go to work tomorrow!

She took a moment to arrange last year’s dead leaves into a pile, and curled up among them for warmth. Images and memories floated through her head as she drifted off.

Work. Those endless meetings and motivational lectures. "We have to keep our production stats up. So we can’t afford to keep substandard workers," said District Manager Hiram Petzel. "The Company has to remain profitable."

Yeah, so you can keep your 6-figure salary and your shiny new Scout 4x4. So rich stockholders can get even richer.

"We have exciting news to announce." Hiram adjusted his cufflinks. "Our Parent Company, Petron InterGlobal, has acquired several new properties..."

Exciting news? Who the hell cared? "What the hell is Petron Interglobal," Laney muttered to a co-worker, "what does it produce, and what the hell does OUR company do?"

A bored co-worker shrugged. "Beats hell outta me. Somethin’ to do with international investment, something like that."

"If you ask me," said malcontent Laney, "the only thing our company does is downsize. Every quarter they downsize more people, their profits go up more and workload grows more crushing."

"This is a really exciting time for SUC." Hiram Petzel stroked his mustache. "We’ve all got a chance to be in on this opportunity from the ground floor. So we’re asking everyone to show some team spirit during this busy Crunch Time. You’ll all be asked to work at least 20 hours overtime per week."

Mandatory Overtime. The two most dreaded words in the language. How many weeks, how many weekends, had Laney spent in that windowless cube. How many springs and summers had gone by unnoticed while Laney and her fellow prisoners slaved at their machines? And nobody dared protest. Why are we all so scared of downsizing? Laney wondered. We’re already as diminished as human beings can be.

As a child Laney had wondered why anyone went to work at all. If people could sleep outside and forage like animals, they’d be free. But people were weak and couldn’t go without their civilized comforts. Plus, she discovered, there was that pride thing: during her periods of unemployment, Mike really got to lord it over her because he was the Breadwinner and why didn’t she keep the house neater and what the hell did she do all day? Writing? Drawing? What do you think, you’re too good to work like the rest of us?

But mostly she put up with work for the same reason everyone else did. For my family.

A tear squeezed beneath her eyelid and rolled down her cheek.

It seemed Laney had been yearning to break away most of her life. At least as far back as high school. She’d dreamed of climbing out the window and running insanely across the fields, fleeing the educational prison and the shiny corridors of loneliness. What was there to keep her? A future of backstabbing competition, scrambling for a buck or a crumb of status or a shiny new TV to keep you company.

Around age 18 it seemed as if Laney would succeed in breaking away. The "counterculture" of the late 60’s provided the hope of an alternative and Laney gravitated toward it. She met some hippies and ended up hitchhiking to California with them. Of course, by the time she made it there, so had thousands of other kids, all of them destitute and looking for a place to crash. The California dream turned out to mostly consist of waiting in line for brown rice at the Hare Krishna Free Kitchen and scrambling for sleeping space at the Jesus People New Life Fellowship. Until a kindly biker had offered her a place to stay--and gotten her pregnant.

Laney delivered her daughter Rachel at the Free Clinic. And after that...she decided to try and go "normal". What else can you do when there’s a crying, helpless, sick baby to think about? Suddenly you find yourself going to night school and working the crappy slave jobs you swore you’d never stoop to. You’ll do anything for that exquisite, rosebud-faced, totally helpless being that came out of your body. You’ll even go out with a sales guy on the force. You’ll even get married.

And after that, it’s the car to commute in and the condo to pay for, the insurance to keep you and the children secure. Round and Round. After awhile you’re too numb to even think of jumping off the track. Too terrified of insecurity, risk, discomfort. The conditioning becomes so overpowering that it’s virtually impossible to break free... even now that the kids were grown and Mike and Laney were like strangers to each other.

Dusk fell. Fireflies danced in a glade. A single cricket sang its note in the bushes. Suddenly a tree frog joined in, and another, its high keening song filling the air. Laney hadn’t heard anything so beautiful in years. You couldn’t hear that in her condo apartment.

Why had she allowed herself to be imprisoned for so long? All this time she’d been living in a tomb, she’d forgotten that there was a beautiful vibrant world out here... a world of living things, wind, sun, stars. No matter what happened, she vowed to herself, she’d never let herself be locked up again. World, she addressed the cosmos silently, I’m coming to you.

***

She woke the next day and kept walking along Route 1, through "open country"--fields, townhouse complexes, strip malls, and land that lay there waiting to be developed. Prime Real Estate. Available, a huge sign told her, Industrial Zoned. A future office complex like the one she had just escaped.

Passing a tangle of wild rose bushes, she plucked the dried rose hips and chewed them as she walked. A motorist tossed a half-eaten candy bar out a window and Laney picked it up and ate it. By now, gnawing hunger overrode any scruples about germs and dirt. Anyway, all of that didn’t matter anymore: all that mattered was to escape the chains. She wondered if she could walk far enough to find a place where she'd never have to think about the electronic mausoleum again.

Cars passed her, and smoke-belching trucks and a tractor trailer so huge it practically blew her off the road. Still she kept going, her eyes fixed on the blue sky, toward limitless, expansive freedom.

She walked that entire day, along a four-lane divided highway through the farm country. As the sun went down, she came to an intersection, passed a convenience store and a big self-serve gas station. By now her feet were one solid ache all the way to her knees and she could feel the road through her flimsy little work shoes. As she passed the station, she heard a truck driver conversing with a mechanic.

"Yeah, I’m headin’ up to Susquehanna County to pick up a load of trees."

Susquehanna. The name sounded like blue hills and a tumbling river. Many years ago, so long it seemed a different life, she had grown up in Central Pennsylvania at the foot of the Allegheny Mountains. She took a second look at the truck, a large an open-back pickup that a person could climb into. The words BILL’S LANDSCAPING SERVICE were painted on the door.

On her cross-country hitchhiking trip to California, she recalled climbing into a truck like this and traveling over 500 miles. Why not do it again? Climb inside and hitch a nice long ride to Susquehanna County...so far that she'd never be able to get back, no matter what. Put SUC Corporation behind her forever!

Otherwise, she might have to go back. Because her feet were giving out and probably her energy and resolve as well. If she kept on like this, she would simply collapse by the side of the road and be found by the cops and returned to her prison. Back to Stacy and Mike and Hiram Petzel.

Now was her moment of decision. Forward? or back to the life she'd left behind?

She only hesitated an instant. Then she doubled back into the gas station, waited till the driver got into his truck, and got directly behind it where he couldn’t see her. She climbed onto the platform and hauled herself over the side, just as he pulled out.

Bye bye work, hello Susquehanna. She lay on the hard metal floor. The motion and vibration of truck wheels soothed her and she fell asleep within minutes.

***

She awoke next morning, stiff and sore, and tried to get her bearings. Bill’s Landscaping truck was parked in a roadside diner--Bill must have gone in for coffee. Laney wished she could have some herself... but never mind. She scanned her surroundings and saw no suburban sprawls or office complexes or expressways anywhere. Just a winding country road , surrounded by rolling hills and blue mountain ridges, their gentle bulk reassuring like the curves of a mother's body. Laney had grown up among hills like this. A few farms clung to their slopes, with a farm-supply store here and an auto graveyard there.

It was as far away as she was going to get. She jumped out of the truck, ready for another day of walking. Where to now? She had made her escape; she hadn't thought beyond that. Walking had almost become an end in itself. And so she walked all that day, reassured by the mountains. She left the township route and turned onto a dilapidated road that wound between hundred-year old farmhouses and stretches of woods.

Farmers in pickups passed her, giving her curious stares. Cows lifted their heads to watch her go by, and went back to their grazing.

Around mid-afternoon, a chrome 4X4 truck slowed down and followed beside her.

"Hey, honey, you wanna ride?" A guy in a flannel shirt called out..

"No thanks, I’m fine."

But the truck wouldn’t go away.

"Hey, what’s the matter, cutie, your car break down?" Flannel Shirt inquired.

"No thanks, I’m all right," Laney kept her voice steady. "I don’t need a ride."

"Aww, sure you do," several voices protested from inside the 4X4. Laney didn’t dare look up at them. Her heart started to pound with apprehension.

"We’re nice guys. C’mon, don’t be shy!" "C'mon, honey, don't be so unfriendly! We won’t bite!"

Yeah, I bet you won’t, Laney growled at them silently. Get lost, jerks.

"C’mon, babe, where ya going?" said a scraggly-bearded man in a baseball cap. "You know you wanta ride with us. We’re nice guys."

I’ll bet you are. Damn! Why couldn’t they just leave her alone. Ignore them, Laney told herself, as the stress began to grind in her stomach. Asshole men--that's what kept a lot of women intimidated, afraid to break for freedom. She’d had a few bad experiences on her youthful rambles... she’d mostly forgotten them, but ever since then... she’d been afraid to ramble any more. It's safer inside your apartment and cubicle than out in that Big, Dangerous World.

"Come on, girlie, we’ll treat ya right, come on, we’ll buy ya a drink..."

Finally Laney couldn’t take it any longer. "No! Leave me alone--get lost!"

Wrong answer. The truck came to a stop, cutting her off. Several beefy fellows in T-shirts and baseball caps got out, laughing and slamming doors and saying the usual, mindless things that drunk, horny guys say when they’re together. "Hey, why ya bein’ so unfriendly?" "What are ya, some kinda lesbian?" and so forth.

Laney dashed into the nearest copse of weeds, pushing past the brambles and poison ivy and thistles. Lucky it had been casual day at work, on that long-ago day of her escape, (how long ago that seemed!) and at least she was wearing slacks and low-heeled shoes. But the thorns ripped her shirt and scratched her face as she pushed her way through.

The good-old-boys came after her, yelling and hooting, oblivious to the obstacles as they

blundered through the weeds in their big work boots. She leaped and tore deeper into the brush, running for her life. Must be drunk as hell. If they caught her she’d be another unidentified statistic on the State Police records.

"Come back here, you fucking bitch!" The bastards cursed up a storm. "You’re gonna get what’s coming to you!" "You’ll be sorry you pissed us off!"

Heart pounding, Laney risked a backward glance and saw that she was outdistancing them. She was small and trim, and they were big clumsy jerks, and anyway she was used to bushwacking... as a child she had spent a lot of time exploring the patches of woods around her home. She always hid whenever others came in sight.

They kept after her for what seemed like an eternity, kicking the bushes and cursing and whistling for her like they were calling a dog. Did they have guns? She couldn’t remember. Jesus Christ... I’m never getting out of this alive. Her face and arms were scratched raw by bramble bushes. The tangle was so thick she couldn't see the ground beneath her.

She heard a sudden rustling in the bushes nearby and then a squeak, as if she had disturbed an animal in its nest. Before she could react, the animal leaped for her. She caught a glimpse of a big furry body, larger than a cat’s, and shiny eyes in a mask-like face. She gasped in pain as its claws wrapped around her leg, cutting through the thin slacks, and its teeth sank into her flesh. Overcome with terror, Laney blundered and stumbled about until she fell over a steep embankment. Down she went.... down, down... into the impenetrable tangle of a ravine.

***

Laney sprawled on the ground, stirring restlessly among the dead leaves and brush and rocks, as if on a bed of nails. Help, she tried to cry out. But her throat was too dry and her head was on fire. Her hands scrabbled about, trying to grasp something that would pull her out of the inferno of confusion and pain into which she had fallen

Voices called out to her. "Where the hell have you been, Laney?" Mike’s accusing eyes burned into her. You’ve tracked mud all over the place. You let the kids make a mess. You taught them to be as weird as you are. Why do have to be such a nutcase?"

Time twisted up on itself, churning up voices and thoughts from decades ago.

"Your hair’s a mess," said her mom. "Why can't you be like other girls? Bea Greenberg showed me her daughter’s lovely prom picture album. Was I mortified that I didn’t have a single thing to show her!"

That’s right, mom. Laney is not the kind of daughter you’d brag about to the ladies at Temple. She doesn’t have a social life or go to proms. She sulks in her room. She makes sarcastic remarks about the normal kids... badmouths the conventions of society... makes fun of religion... writes anarchist slogans on the bathroom wall at school.

I’m sorry I was a disappointment to everyone, Laney said. But mom was proud of her later, when Laney married a guy on the Sales Force and moved into a condo in Valley Mill and had two children for Grandma to brag about. And the kids...well, surprisingly enough, they turned out to be the best things in Laney’s life.

Rachel, she cried, Marc... help me.

"Holy shit, Mom," Laney’s son Marc looked up from his computer with a wry grin. "What the hell happened to you? You get in a fight or something?"

"I hope you gave those assholes a hard time," said her tough-talking daughter Rachel. "Want me to get my band friends to kick their butts?"

The kids were her strength. They’d kept her going through thick and thin, during fights with her husband, during times when he’d walked out. When they were little she’d taken them on a million walks down by the Schuylkill River. They explored everything: the deer paths...the abandoned brownstone foundations...the tangled ravines carved by floods. When they grew older and went their own ways, they never looked down on her, never called her weird or a loser. Laney was sure they had inherited their strong, independent spirits from her.

Rachel, an animal bit me. Laney reached out to her daughter, now grown into a mouthy, independent 18-year old who played guitar and wore tie-dye overalls. Rachel, I feel sick... I think I have rabies. I’m gonna die!

But Rachel had disappeared. All of them had. Laney was alone in a glade of woods, walking round and round…or was it the trees overhead that were spinning in a circle? That must be it, because Laney found herself lying on the forest floor, her head against a rotten log.

She was dizzy and thirsty as hell. Her whole body cried out for water.

"You have a bad attitude, Laney," said Mike. "That's why you can't keep a job and no one likes you. All you ever do is complain, complain, complain.

"Shut up," she cried. "At least I don’t keep records of how many times I had sex—with quality ratings from one to 5!" And he was gone again.

Time stretched, and stretched... the sky grew dark. An eternity went by, alternating between oblivion and nightmares. She must have slept. The sky grew light and she opened her eyes, to see a pair of bright round eyes studying her. The eyes were framed by a mask of dark fur, with a pointed nose beneath.

You humans are such troublemakers, said the owner of the eyes. That's why I bit you. It's nothing personal.

"S-sorry," Laney tried to apologize, but her mouth was too dry.

In fact, I think I like you, said a voice which emanated from the raccoon. Although not really a voice, more like a simple pattern of feelings. If you follow this stream, said the raccoon’s thoughts, you’ll find help.

The animal was so human-looking, she wanted to ask it something else. But it was gone.

She struggled to her feet. Her leg throbbed where the raccoon had bit her and her head was on fire. She started walking, following the stream like the animal had said. She didn't even think to wonder that an animal had spoken to her. Apparently anything could happen out here, beyond the Cube Zone. She wondered how she was even able to walk, her head spun so.

The stream tumbled its way past the detritus of civilization: beer bottles, old tires, discarded plastic bottles. Oblivious to the filth, she dipped her burning face in and gulped down the muddy water. Then she couldn't get up. She just rolled over and lay there on her back, her head halfway in the stream, staring at the leaves overhead for an infinite time. The pattern hypnotized her. Every sight and sound was so sharp it seemed to go right through her. She could hear the hum of cars on the road, far away. She could sense the wind of their passage. She could hear the crawling of an ant up a twig and the whir of bird wings. The stir of every leaf in the wind. Each sound was pure, distinctive, crystal-sharp.

The smells were extraordinarily penetrating too. The air carried a million scents. The far-off exhaust smell. The fragrance of every plant: goldenrod, spicy sage grass, dandelion, chicory. The chemical pheromone trails laid down by horny beetles.

She lay entranced by the cascade of sensations. Who could have imagined that a ragged little patch of woods and weeds could be so rich and alive! Every tree and leaf had its own signature of sounds and scents…all so intense that she could practically hear the thoughts of every living thing around her. The strength and serenity of the oaks, the tiny insect sparks, the squirrels’ frantic vitality...all of it lay open to her.

Laney was drunk with the vast aliveness of nature: a great song that swelled beneath the dead burden of concrete civilization. A chorus of infinite depth and variety...a chorus of celebration that pulled her into its delirious vortex. You belong to us. Welcome to the sisterhood of all beings.

A slow exaltation stole over her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. At last, Laney had found acceptance. A sisterhood that didn’t exclude her. Yes! I belong to you. She wanted to join hands with the sisterly circle…but she was too weak to move.

So she spent an eternity just listening to the voices of the trees and rocks, animals and insects, absorbing their stories and their viewpoints. Every rock... every patch of earth... all of it vibrated with a life that she had only dimly grasped before. She could almost feel the earth turning... almost hear its voice. Her voice. She sensed a great message in the voice, and struggled to understand. A scrap of rationality told her that she must be hearing the voice of God. And that last scrap of reason told Laney that when you see God, you may be about to die.

But what did that matter? She would rejoin the fellowship of all life. Her substance would become part of these vibrant trees, this nurturing earth. Everyone dies, and this was as good a time and place as any. She’d escaped from the concrete hell and discovered the heaven beneath her feet: a simple stream, a muddy hillside, a patch of scrub forest. A community of kindred spirits.

Still, a far-off shred of sense told Laney that she really ought to try to stay alive. So she forced her body to move, struggled to work her legs as she’d work some remote-control vehicle. The body staggered to its feet and began to walk.

And so she walked, with her leg swollen and throbbing from the bite and her head so light she felt as if she might float off any moment. She walked with no destination, eyes unfocused, stumbling over rocks, fallen trees, junk piles, and sometimes in and out of the stream itself. Though she knew her leg hurt, her feverish mind was not registering pain as it should: every bump and jolt was just another gloriously profound sensation to be savored. If this was sickness, she’d take it any time. She was delirious with joy. By comparison, she had been deaf, blind, sick and crippled her whole life. She held out her arms, raised her face to the sky and spun about. I’m cured! Cured!

But eventually Laney smelled smoke and instinctively turned towards it, because smoke meant people. It might be danger...or it might be someone who could help. Though Laney was far beyond pain, prudence or fear, an instinctive part of her had taken over: a part that wanted to live.

Tangletown Fever

Chapter 3: Tangletown

She stumbled into a tiny hollow, in the midst of the scrub woods. And there in front of her bleary eyes sat a man huddled over a small fire. She was too sick to worry about whether it was safe to approach a strange man.

"Help," she gasped out, and collapsed in front of him.

***

"There. That should do you."

Someone lifted her head, pouring a sip of bitter liquid between her lips.

She opened her eyes to see someone bending over her. Against a too-bright sky, all she could make out was a silhouette--a wild shock of hair. The apparition looked so strange she wondered if he was human or maybe some kind of elf or wood spirit.

Then again, perhaps she was imagining the whole thing. Her face felt as if someone had turned an oven on inside her head.

"Ah. You're awake," he remarked, gently replacing her head on something that crunched and prickled like a pile of leaves.

She lay there, letting time pass, heard him rustling about. She didn't have the strength to lift her head and see what he was doing. A bit later he approached and Laney caught sight of a penknife in his hand. All she felt was a distant regret. Oh. This is where he kills me and cuts up my remains.

"Don’t be afraid," the stranger reassured her. "I’m going to cut this fabric and fix your leg."

"Oh." His calm voice and sure, confident touch said doctor. She felt a surge of gratitude. Safe. A moment later, she felt him pressing something wet against her leg.

"A poultice of plantain," he said. His voice was rusty, as if unused to conversation. "And some willow bark tea, for the fever."

He fed her another sip of the liquid from a long-discarded Seven-Eleven cup.

She sneaked another look at the "doctor". He, too, looked like something discarded on the road, his face weatherbeaten and grimy and sunburned, his hair wild as thistles, and his cheeks covered by a scraggly salt & pepper beard. His tattered flannel shirt, with no buttons, looked like something scrounged from a trash bin. The torn fabric revealed a skinny frame beneath. Some doctor! More like a homeless bum.

"Thanks." Laney tried to choke the bitter liquid down. That exhausted her, and she fell back asleep.

***

When she awoke, it must have been morning by the pearly light in the sky. She wondered how many days had passed. She was feeling much better. Her head felt normal again, and the pain in her leg had subsided to a mild ache.

She remembered a ragged man who had given her liquid last night (was it last night?) She gazed around the tiny clearing and there he sat, leaning against a tree, deep in concentration. She watched him, fascinated, as wrote in a tattered notebook. He looked like a bum... but his eyes, squinting beneath craggy brows, gave the impression of fierce intelligence.

She drifted back to sleep and awoke much later to a series of liquid musical notes. When she searched for the source she saw her rescuer leaning against a tree, whistling as he carved shavings off a stick of wood with a penknife. For awhile she just watched and listened, enchanted. How long since she had heard an adult, or anyone at all, whistling? It seemed to be a forgotten art. For a moment she recalled her first impression of the man: some kind of elf or wood spirit. She wondered what he was making: shavings for more willowbark tea? A spoon or implement? Mere amusement?

She gathered her courage and spoke. "Th-thanks for your help, mister."

He raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

"My leg feels much better," she went on. "What did you do?"

"Plantain leaves," he told her, "steeped in boiling water."

His precise diction reminded her more of a professor than a tramp.

"Where'd you learn that?"

He tapped his forehead. "I'm a student of nature."

"Oh." She wished she dared ask him what he was doing here. Had he walked away, like she had?

"Do you, uh... do you live near here?"

He shook his head. "Nope." He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, as though afraid of something. What did he fear? How much did she dare ask him? Maybe if she revealed something about herself first... "I'm sort of, like, a runaway."

"Is that right?" He raised an eyebrow and gave a wry, elfin smile that made her wonder if he were a little nuts. But not in a dangerous way... she sensed no threat from him.

Laney decided she liked him. She always had a soft spot for people who were a bit weird.

She heard the whine of a truck on the highway, miles away. Her rescuer raised his head with a listening expression. His eyes crinkled in deep thought and then he announced, "I've got to be going." He sprang up, started kicking dust on the fire.

"Wait," Laney cried, in a sudden panic. What if he left her alone here? When she’d walked off the job, she'd felt strong--strong enough to walk forever. But now she was sick, helpless. Where was she going to go now?

She supposed she could have made her way back to the highway... but the idea repelled her. Even the memory of the road--the grinding truck gears, the stink of exhaust, the ugly gray pavement--turned her stomach. She felt oversensitive, her senses peeled raw. "Can I... can I come with you?"

"No. No one else can go where I go." She detected a trace of bitterness. Obviously he didn't want company. He picked up a battered sack and turned away.

She searched frantically for something to keep him from leaving. "A--an animal bit me a few days ago," she said to his retreating back. "That's how I got sick."

He turned and looked at her. "Yes, that happened to me once," he said, stirring the leaves with his foot, seemingly waiting for her to tell him more.

"It--it was kind of weird." She sensed she had caught his interest. "It looked like a raccoon, and I...I thought I heard it talking to me. I guess I must have been feverish." As she recalled it, the experience became more and more vivid and she wanted to tell everything. "I... felt this peculiar kind of...sensitivity. I could hear and smell everything, for miles around. I heard things that no one can hear."

"Really?" The woodsman raised his eyebrows. "Such as?"

"The voices of trees and mountains, and the earth itself."

He stared at Laney until she became embarrassed. "It was like I... was seeing a vision," she went on. "I... I felt the aliveness of everything around me. I mean, it was probably the fever, but... it was like I saw God! It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me."

"Yes," he nodded, "it certainly is." His expression softened; the guarded suspicion had melted away.

"You mean it happened to you too?" She couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.

He nodded, with the shyest, sweetest smile that made him look like a little boy. Laney felt an instant connection with him. "My name's Laney. What's yours?"

"Conrad." He hesitated for a long moment, his eyes resting on her and darting away, as if unsure what to do next. "Well, then. Goodbye, Laney." Abruptly he turned away.

"Wait!" Laney realized she was too weak to fend for herself.. She didn’t want to be left alone. "Please... don’t go. I’m sorry if I said something wrong." Panicked, shestruggled to her feet. "Do you have--" do you have anything to eat, she wanted to say. But her legs gave out before she could say any more.

Conrad turned back and stood there studying her for another space of silence, then knelt beside her. "How long since you’ve eaten?"

"I don’t know... a few days, I think."

He reached into his tattered backpack and pulled out a crumbly loaf wrapped in a cloth, followed by a plastic soda bottle full of water. She grabbed the supplies with both hands, suddenly realizing how hungry she was.

"Easy," he warned her, but she ignored him.

"I came all the way from Eagleville," she told him, still stuffing her face with both hands. "Walked off my crappy job. I just had to get away." At this point she was ready to tell him her whole life story if it would keep him here. "I’m through with the whole system."

She thought she saw a flash of amusement in his eyes, and maybe something else.

"Well, come on. We’ve got to hurry--before someone finds us."

The wilderness vagrant looked slight and thin, but his grip felt surprisingly strong as he reached to help her up. She was still pretty weak, and her leg was still swollen and throbbing from the bite. But Laney was safe now... she put her trust in the strange "doctor" completely, and leaned on him as if he were an older brother.

They started walking. She took some rests at first, while Conrad waited with an impassive expression on his face. For awhile they had to weave their way between roads and towns, keeping to the corridors of woods and fields, following the small streams. Laney noticed that her companion took pains to crouch down under cover whenever a car came close enough that they might be spotted. She wondered what he was hiding from. She’d hide too, of course, from potential rapists or maybe cops looking for her. What about Conrad?

Later they started to climb, and the roar and whine of roads diminished until she heard nothing but the reassuring whisper of trees. Laney had no idea where they were. The stillness grew more profound, the trees taller.

"Where are we?"

"Route 10 is that way," Conrad pointed east. "The Interstate is to the North of us; the Susquehanna River is to the West. We're on Big Oak Mountain, five miles from the town of Susquehanna Fork."

She smiled. The man was a walking map! But what it all meant, was that she had put a lot of distance between the suburban wasteland and herself.

They sat down to rest on a log and Conrad took out another chunk of his crumbly, bitter-tasting bread.

"What do you call that stuff?"

"Acorn bread," he told her. "Made it last fall. Boil the acorns several times to get rid of the bitterness. It's a rich source of protein. Anthropologists say that prehistoric humans were nourished primarily on acorns for the greater part of their span on earth."

"Really?" She liked hearing him talk. It was just like listening to a professor who can't resist dropping little crumbs of knowledge. "How’d you learn all these survival arts? They didn’t teach us that in school."

But Conrad just gave a self-deprecating shrug. After that they sat there in companionable silence, resting and munching the hard morsels of bread. It was the first real meal Laney had eaten in two or three days. She wondered why the unfamiliar food wasn’t making her sick. As she relaxed beneath the towering oaks, she took stock of herself.

Here she was, with no money or ID, probably hundreds of miles away from her home, with nothing but the clothes on her back--flimsy office clothing that was torn and filthy, and shoes fit for the office, but not for the wilderness. And here she was, barely recovered from what was probably a fairly serious illness, somewhere in the trackless boonies of northern Pennsylvania with a mysterious vagabond about whom she knew nothing.

And she felt a remarkable sense of peace and well-being.

She knew that she was hungry and tired, but the sensations didn't consume her as they normally would have. It was as if she had a shield of endurance, which kept them at bay.

But other sensations reached in farther than they ever had before. Her eyesight, hearing and smell all seemed to be extraordinarily sharp. And with them came something else--a feeling of being related to everything around her. Of being in touch with the flow of life. A profound understanding of the world, as if she was picking up details she had always missed before.

She had lived in apartments and cubicles, and there must have been a wall inside her soul as well. When she walked away from the cubicle prison... had she freed her soul as well?

They resumed walking. At dusk, Conrad sat down without a word, and curled up in the weeds to sleep. But then, remembering that Laney was there, he gave her a tattered blanket out of his sack. As for himself, he went to sleep with no cover at all.

Next morning they resumed their trek, taking an overgrown logging road along Big Oak Mountain. Around noon they descended steeply to an expanse of what looked like fields overgrown with young trees: a forest in progress. Laney walked in a wary crouch, afraid another animal might rush out and chomp on her leg. Once she was startled by a rustling in the tall grass and she nearly ran.

Conrad made a sudden right turn, and a moment later Laney came to a stop as a rusty

rusty chain-link fence blocked her way. "Wait--what the hell’s this!" She followed Conrad’s retreating back as he walked along the fence perimeter. A sign, barely readable, warned her: CAUTION: CHEMICAL HAZARD. THIS AREA CONDEMNED BY U.S. HEALTH DEPARTMENT.

"Oh shit, just what I need, it’s a toxic waste dump," Laney muttered.

Conrad, oblivious, lifted a loose corner of the fence and rolled underneath.

"Conrad? Isn’t it dangerous?"

But the woodsman was too far ahead to answer, so she was compelled to follow after him. On the other side of the fence the weeds grew taller than ever.

Beneath huge stands of burdock and blueberry, she felt old concrete beneath her feet. She saw something gray among the tangles of ivy, and identified it as the ruins of a house. Soon she noticed other ruins blending into the vegetation, with trees growing out of their roofs.

"It's an abandoned town," she exclaimed.

"The town of Blue Fork," the Professor told her. "A thriving mining town in the 1850's. The site of the Blue Fork Steel Fabrication Plant, and several related industries, until around 1950. Then there was a disastrous toxic waste accident. According to the history, there were massive fish kills in the rivers and a high cancer die-off rate among the residents. Cleanup efforts were unsuccessful and eventually the entire area was declared unfit for habitation."

He recited this whole tragedy in his detached, lecture-like voice. Laney imagined a town poisoned, everyone leaving, abandoning their houses because no one would buy them. Those who couldn’t afford to leave must have simply stayed to die. A town slowly falling into decay like an ancient graveyard.

They came to what had once been a street. Now it was a tunnel-like path through the forest. The caved-in remains of tall Victorian houses peeked out like skeletons from under tangles of weeds and vines.

"This place is incredible," Laney exclaimed, keeping her voice hushed as if afraid of disturbing the ghosts.

Such a sad place, like one big graveyard... but Laney began to perceive another message in the abandoned town. The toxic chemicals had dissipated, and a one-time industrial center had been reclaimed by nature. For someone like Laney, who had just walked away from the Big Machine, that wasn't such a bad message. She was starting to like this place.

They came at last to a collection of ruined factories--decrepit shells of brick and corrugated metal. Laney could barely make out their outlines beneath the mats of ivy and creeper vines that covered them.

"The Blue Fork Steel Fabrication Plant," said her tour guide, and headed for the closest of the crumbling hulks. Its great smokestack had rusted out and broken halfway off; its half-collapsed roof was full of gaping holes.

"Jesus Christ!" She hoped he wasn’t actually going into the death-trap structure. "Welcome to Industrial Decay," she muttered.

The Professor's lip twitched in a smile, but he said nothing. He seemed to have forgotten her presence as he headed right through the big entrance bay into the cavernous darkness beyond. Inside, it wasn't as dark as it had appeared, for the holes in the roof provided a lot of light. She could see the hulking shapes of great ducts, boilers, pipes and defunct machinery.

Conrad picked up a large bolt, turned it over and over in his hands. "Old technology is discarded," he said to an imaginary class of students. "Millions of workers become obsolete and are discarded like rusty screws. And yet the Machine marches over their corpses without missing a step."

He put the piece of metal in his pocket.

A moment later Laney heard the scratch of claws on metal. She looked up and beheld two eyes in a mask-like face. A raccoon, just like the one that had bit her, scurried along the top of a boiler, level with Conrad’s shoulder.. It approached the Professor and leaped--

"Look out!"

The raccoon landed on Conrad's shoulder. But Conrad, instead of fighting it off, reached around and took the creature in his arms. "Mask," he greeted it, with tender regard. "It's good to see you, friend."