Working Cases - Episode 15

 

Time: 09:31 AM. 47 hours, 59 minutes till court hearing.
 Location: Somewhere in the western forestlands.
Status: Lost. And hungry…  
You know all those wilderness adventure programs on TV, the ones where people go hiking in the woods looking for wildlife, telling stories, and building campfires? Good. This was nothing like that.
For one we had none of the food, water, or equipment any sensible wilderness explorer wouldn’t be caught dead without . We were lost, hungry and had wandered around for three hours looking for a good position to determine where the sun was overhead. And we certainly didn’t want to meet any wildlife.
We had found a little spring and had enough water to keep us alive, thank God. I've heard people can survive for weeks without food. I didn’t want to test that theory out. 
What if we did make it out? What then? It stood to reason that the forest would already be surrounded by Duncan’s men in the unlikely event that we made it out alive. We also knew there were others in the forest with us, looking for us. We were a small group so we kept mostly quiet and out of their way. None of the trees were short or easy enough to climb, so we had wandered deeper hoping to come into a clearing or come upon a scalable tree.
We continued trudging along, changing direction every thirty minutes for two whole hours. I was on the verge of frustration when Collins called. 
“Over there!” Collins was pointing to a small patch of ground that was relatively well lit

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. We quickly made our way to the clearing. I could see the sun overhead. “So, how does the sun help us again?” he asked.
“The same way it’s helped people for millennia. I took note of our destination’s position relative to rising sun when we left the road. The time then was around six AM.” I began walking around the clearing, drawing small circles and plotting shadow positions. “This,” I pointed at an arrow I had drawn on the ground, “is where the sun is now. Assuming the sun has been moving steadily since six AM, and the wind’s still coming in from the south, this,” I drew a new arrow in another direction, “is east—where the sun is—and this over here is where the court is.” I drew myself up from the ground to look at him.
He looked impressed. “That’s impressive, but how do we keep our bearings once we leave here? If we meet trouble and have to change direction suddenly, how do we get back on track?”
That was a good question. Luckily, an answer came to me almost immediately. “Our phones!”
He shook his head, “We’ve already tried that, there’s no cell reception here.”
I beamed at him. “No, I don’t mean that. Our phones have GPS apps. We can’t use them, but they’re still there. And our phones have gyroscopes that help us maintain a fixed orientation no matter our change in direction. We can use the information we’ve extrapolated to create our own compass without needing the internet.” I brought out my smartphone and thumbed open the GPS app. “Just set due north,” I mumbled, fingers working, “and input our destination’s approximate position relative to that fixed point and… voila!” I smiled, raising the phone for all to see. “We follow this!”
“Smart,” Collins grumbled.
Gabe had been silent a long time now. I frowned. “You okay, Gabe?”
He nodded, “Okay, Uncle Nick. Just didn’t want to disturb you.”
Bless his heart. “Don’t hesitate to tell us if you need anything at all, Gabe.” Collins instructed. “Now, Uncle Nick,” he had a slight mocking tone in his voice, “are we going to get moving or what?”
I smirked at him. We were making jokes now. Progress. “We’re moving.”     
The phone was a good thing. The forest was full of Duncan’s men. The trees hid us well from view, but we had to be careful not to get too close, or box ourselves in between their groups. We doubled back, changed direction, went round, and lay down waiting so many times, it was already sundown by the time we covered a quarter of the distance.
“Great!” I spat, frustrated. “At this rate, we’ll get out of this forest in three days. We only have two left.”    
Collins chuckled. “Don’t beat yourself over it too much. We spent most of the day figuring out where we were and going in the wrong direction. Now, we know where we need to go. We’ll get there a lot faster.”
He was right. That was why it was good to have other people around. Sometimes, my stupid brain fed me all the negative misinformation. Considering we only had been moving in the right direction for about six hours, we were doing pretty well. We could cover the rest of the forest the next day, and then make it to court before our case was to be heard.
But, for now, we needed to set up camp. We were in a small hidden clearing. The trees around us were fairly scalable, so we climbed them to get a look around. We could see small camp fires lighting up around us. The men had spread themselves around the forest for the night. They had a few men on guard, probably running shifts. Collins decided since they were setting up camp too, it would be safe for us to light a fire. Our camp would be indistinguishable from theirs. We calculated the distance between their camps and replicated it. They bought it.
We found two squirrels and we had a number of frogs we caught in the water by the spring earlier. We had a good dinner. Meat had never tasted so good.
As we lay with our backs to the carpet of grass and our faces to the stars, Collins taking the first watch, I wondered if we would make it out of here. As far as places to die go, this forest wasn’t bad. The trees were beautiful, tall, stoic, and the shimmer of the leaves in the moonlight was magical.
As I closed my eyes in sleep, I resolved to wake up, to stay alive. Not for me, but for the two others stuck here with me. To die in this place would be selfish. I would stay alive for Gabe.