Grizzly

The red trail marker was nailed to a birch tree upside down.

Cassia Rourke noticed it when Owen killed the engine and the truck’s last vibration shuddered out through the steering wheel. Beyond the windshield, spruce crowded the narrow turnout, their lower branches black with old rain. A rusted sign leaned beside the road, its lettering half-eaten by weather.

“This is it,” Owen said.

Cassia stared at the marker. “That’s not the trail.”

Owen looked over. His beard had grown in unevenly since graduation, blond along the jaw and dark beneath the chin. “The map says it’s here.”

“The map says a lot of things.” She reached for the folded printout on the dash. “The access point is supposed to be past the creek.”

“There’s a creek right there.”

He pointed through the trees. Water moved somewhere below them, quick and hidden.

In the back seat, Mara gave a low groan. “We drove two hours for a disagreement with a piece of paper?”

“An hour and twenty,” Daniel said.

“Thank you, Daniel. That makes it better.”

Cassia opened her door. Wet gravel shifted beneath her boots. The temperature had dropped since they left Anchorage, and the forest pressed close enough to make the turnout feel like a pocket cut into something alive. She pulled her phone from her jacket.

No service.

The words sat beneath the empty bars, clean and final.

Owen stepped around the hood. “Still nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Mara climbed out, stuffing her copper hair beneath a wool cap. Daniel came after her with the packs, one strapped across each shoulder. He had been the tallest boy in their senior class and had somehow become broader without losing the loose, sleepy posture that had made teachers mistake him for harmless.

“Maybe the tower’s behind us,” he said.

“Maybe the trail is behind us too,” Cassia said.

Owen unfolded the map against the hood. Wind tugged at the corners. They had known one another since East Anchorage High, since pep rallies and stolen cigarettes behind the gym, since Mara had broken Owen’s nose at a graduation party and Daniel had driven Cassia home in silence afterward. The couples had formed later, in separate directions, then somehow folded back together for this trip.

Cassia had agreed because she wanted one clean weekend. No hospital shifts. No messages from her mother. No old stories dragged into the light and polished until they shone.

She wanted to reach the lake marked on Owen’s map before dark, pitch the tents, and hear nothing but water and spruce.

“We take the road another mile,” she said. “Find the creek crossing. If the marker’s wrong, we don’t trust it.”

Owen tapped the paper. “The road ends here.”

“Then we walk the road until it ends.”

“That’s not the route.”

“It’s closer than walking into the trees blind.”

Mara glanced between them. “Cassia’s right.”

Owen’s mouth tightened. “Of course she is.”

The old tone slipped between them, familiar as a scar.

Cassia folded her phone into her pocket. “We came out here to hike, not reenact senior year.”

Daniel shifted the packs. “Can we save the blood feud until after we find the lake?”

Owen looked toward the forest. The upside-down marker hung from its nail, red paint flaking like dried skin.

“Fine,” he said. “We follow the road.”

They left the truck beneath the dripping spruce. Cassia locked it twice, though the second click did nothing to settle her nerves. The road narrowed almost immediately, its surface swallowed by grass and young alder. Water soaked through the cuffs of her pants. Somewhere high in the branches, a raven made a sound like a rusty hinge.

The four of them moved in single file. Owen led with the map folded in one hand. Mara followed, then Daniel, with Cassia bringing up the rear. She kept looking back at the truck until the trees took it away.

“Cass,” Mara called over her shoulder, “you’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“Counting exits.”

“I’m looking at the road.”

“You’re looking at the road like it owes you money.”

Cassia stepped over a fallen limb slick with moss. “I like knowing how to get back.”

“That’s why we brought Owen,” Daniel said. “He gets us lost with confidence.”

Owen raised one hand without turning. “I heard that.”

The road ended at a washout.

A pale wedge of earth dropped into a tangle of alder and stone. On the far side, the continuation disappeared beneath a wall of young spruce. The creek ran below, wider than it had sounded from the turnout, brown water sliding around exposed roots.

Owen stopped at the edge. “The crossing should be here.”

“It isn’t,” Cassia said.

He studied the map. “Maybe the creek moved.”

“Creeks do that.”

Mara looked down into the washout. “Can we cross?”

Daniel tested a fallen trunk with his boot. It rolled, shedding wet bark. “Not with the packs.”

The forest made small noises around them. Dripping water. Branches rubbing. A soft crack somewhere uphill.

Cassia turned toward the sound.

Nothing moved.

“What?” Owen asked.

“Nothing.”

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