A Virtual Hike

Maxwell sounded like a Dalek with a speech impediment.

“It’s the signal. Are you on WiFi?” He asked Nick.

“No, I’m not on WiFi, I’m in the middle of the forest, how would I be on Wifi?”

“I don’t know. How would I know forests don’t have Wifi?” Maxwell realised he needed to get out of his apartment more. He would start as soon as the quarantine was over.

“I heard you perfectly that time. Did you do something different?” Nick asked, panting. The screen showed a thin, short man wearing a black beanie. It made him look like a boxer or a bank robber cartoon.

“I turned the BlueTooth off,” Maxwell responded. He was bigger than his friend, and he needed a shave and a haircut. The lockdown had taken its toll. “Alright. So... how are you? And why are you in a forest?”

“I thought I’d show you around. Take you on a virtual hike, you know... now that you’re stuck down there.”

“That’s nice of you. It’d be even nicer if you used your back camera instead of the front one. I’ve seen your face before. I don’t think it changed much since last time.”

“Alright, alright.” The screen’s image changed from showing Nick’s face to showing Jeffrey pines and white firs.

Maxwell could hear Nick stepping on layers of dead branches, bark and, quite possibly, animal droppings. “Are you on a trail?”.

“Nah, I thought it’d be cool to take you on a little adventure.” Nick replied.

Maxwell laughed. “Ok, but be careful. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yeah, yeah, there’s this sweet lookout up ahead. I thought you’d appreciate the view.” Nick breathed a sigh of relief. ”Finally, it’s no longer uphill from now on.”

While Nick threaded across the woods, the two friends enjoyed talking and gossiping. They hadn’t spoken for a couple of years now, so there was a lot of catching up to do. After discussing everything from their last christmas dinner to their high school crushes (Maxwell was madly in love with a bookish short brunette, Nick unsuccessfully pursued Barb, a blonde cheerleader) the conversation started to wane. After a few minutes of silence, Maxwell noticed Nick was a bit out of sorts.

“Are you okay, dude?” He finally asked, breaking the man code rule which forbid openly displaying concern for his friend.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Nick’s camera stopped moving for a few seconds. “It’s just that I should be there by now. It wasn’t this far.”

“Are you lost?” Said Maxwell.

“No,” lied Nick as he walked deeper into the woods.

“Those branches look sharp.”

“Shut up!” Said Nick as he tried really hard to avoid getting an eye poked out.

“It looks pretty dense.”

“Ouch!”

“That’s a lot of branches.”

“I could do without the narrating, thank you very__ OUCH!” It looked like Nick finally made it through the thicket. Then his camera pointed down and showed the palm of his left hand. It had a diagonal gash that was bleeding profusely.

“Does it hurt?”

“What do you think?” Nick snapped. “Whatever. We’re close. I’m just gonna keep going.”

“Alright.” Maxwell heard himself say. He thought he would say No, head back. I don’t need to see the lookout but, apparently, his mouth had another idea.

*****

They didn’t talk for a while. Nick was busy trying to find his way in the woods. Every couple of minutes he made a sudden stop, grumbled a couple of expletives, and retraced his steps. In the meantime, Maxwell was admiring the scenery and trying really hard not to be a back-seat driver.

Eventually, the camera stopped moving. Maxwell heard Nick mumbling away from the microphone. Then his face appeared on the screen. He looked concerned.

“Hey, man, take a look at this.” Nick’s voice was quiet and shaky. The camera was showing a bush. More precisely, it was showing something on the leaves of the bush. Something red. “Is that… is that blood?” He asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Can’t really tell from here.”

“Is it from my hand? Have I’ve been walking in circles?” Nick’s was getting louder by the word. “Dammit!”.

“Calm down, man.” Maxwell knew how stupid was trying to appease someone by telling them to calm down, but he didn’t know what else to do. “Just go back. No need to show me the lookout.”

“I don’t know how to go back. I’ve been trying to go back for the last 15 minutes,” Nick muttered. Maxwell was just holding his face with his hands and staring at the screen. Part of him was considering hanging up and letting Nick deal with this by himself. Another part of him felt very guilty about considering that idea.

“Should we call the rangers?” Maxwell suggested after Nick calmed down a little bit.

“I don’t even know where I am, man. And the map app is not working. The arrow doesn’t move when I walk. What are we gonna tell them? We are gonna make them search the whole forest?” Maxwell couldn’t see Nick’s face, but if he could, he guessed he would see his eyes watering.

“Nick, why don’t you keep walking? You need to find some point of reference. A mountain or something.” Maxwell had no idea what he was talking about but it looked like Nick needed some leadership. “I’m here, ok?”

*****

More than an hour went by and they weren’t any closer to the lookout nor to figuring out the way Nick came. The conversation would sound relaxed to an outside listener, just a friend helping another friend to get his bearings in the woods. In reality, both of them were on the verge of panic. Every now and then, they would end up back near the bloodied bushes. Then, they would backtrack and figure out their previous route so they could try something different. Still, they would eventually end up near those bushes again.

It was their latest attempt at this when Nick stopped on his tracks.

“Do you… do you see that, Max?” He said, pointing a trembling camera to the undergrowth.

“Yeah… It kinda looks like something walked through there. Look at the blood and all those broken branches. Um… Do you think it was you?”

“I don’t think they’re the same bushes from before,” Nick replied.

The camera slowly drew near the plants. When it got five feet away, Maxwell noticed there was something lying in the muddy underbrush.

“Is that… a body?” Said Nick.

“Get closer.”

“No way I’m doing that. No way!”

“What if he needs help? You can’t leave him lying in the mud, dude.”

Maxwell heard Nick spurtle a couple of f-words and taking a sequence of deep breaths. “Alright. Give me a second,” he said.

Maxwell could only see Nick’s feet as they moved closer to the bushes.

“Hey, what is it? Mind the camera, I want to see!”

The camera was still. Maxwell could hear Nick saying a word over and over again in crescendo. The word was No.


“What’s going on, Nick? Talk to me.” Maxwell struggled to remain calm until he finally yelled, “Nick, what’s going on?”

“Take a look by yourself.”

The camera was pointed towards the body. Maxwell recognized the bloodied hat it was wearing. He recognized its dead eyes, and the injury on its palm, soaked in black blood. The body was Nick’s.

*****

Nick was crying out of frame. Maxwell couldn’t think of anything to say. Every now and then, Nick would sound like he was getting a hold of himself, and resume crying again.

“What the hell am I gonna do, man?” Nick would start saying. ”I don’t know where I am, or where I’m supposed to go. I don’t wanna die here… like… like that,” he said pointing to the other Nick’s corpse.

The other Nick’s corpse... that’s how they were talking about it. The situation didn’t make any sense but at least they named it. Naming things is often the first step to thinking about them.

“Maxwell… the sun is setting.” Nick’s voice trembled. “It’s gonna be dark soon.”

“I’m calling the rangers.”

“No, please don’t hang up. Please, don’t leave me alone… with this thing.” Nick begged, referring to the body.

Maxwell pondered the circumstances for a few moments.

“How about this? My sister can call the rangers for us, they’ll rescue you and they’ll take care of everything. I’ll just text her, so I don’t need to interrupt the call or put you on hold.”

“Ok. Do that. Yeah. Do you think I should keep going? Keep walking? It’s getting dark,” asked Nick.

“Give me a second…” said Maxwell while he finished sending his sister the details: How Nick was dressed, his approximate location, the fact that they found a body. He omitted the part where the corpse was identical to his friend.
“Ok. No, don’t move. In fact, send me a panoramic of where you are, while there’s still some light, so my sister can send it to the rangers. Perhaps it will help th__”

A series of noises interrupted Maxwell. It sounded like lots of branches breaking, and shrubs rustling.

The pair stood still, holding their breath. They were hoping it was their imagination, but it wasn’t. A thunderous roar confirmed it. Something was coming. Nick started running and the image on Maxwell’s cell phone screen became a blur.

*****

After what must have been a mile, Nick finally stopped running. Maxwell couldn’t see much because the sun had already disappeared from the sky, but he could hear Nick trying to catch his breath. The sounds of snapping branches kept coming from the distance. Something was moving through the woods. And it was getting closer.

“Oh, man, look at this,” said Nick as he turned on the cell phone’s flashlight. ”Just look at this!”

On the ground, there was a huge paw print. It didn’t look like anything Maxwell had seen before. It resembled an elongated human hand with sharp claws at the end of each finger. And it was bigger than a bear’s paw. Bigger by a foot, at least.

They heard the roaring again, coming from deep into the woods. Nick started sprinting, trying to get as far away as he could from the origin of the sound. Maxwell was watching everything from his cell phone thanks to the light coming from Nick’s phone’s flashlight. Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, he realised what happened. Nick had, while running, moved a branch out of the way with his injured palm and the wound reopened, resuming the bleeding. Maxwell remembered the body was intact except for the hand and its head. He also noticed the place he was looking at was very similar to the glade leading to where they found the body.

“Stop!” Maxwell yelled with everything he’d got, ”Stop running!”

Nick slowed down.

“Look up ahead! That’s where we found the body. Look above it. There’s a low branch, you see?” Said Maxwell.

“I don’t remember that low branch being above the body. And there’s no body, man.” Nick managed to say while trying to get a second wind.

“Because the branch was on the ground, next to the other Nick. He hit his head with that thing so hard while running, he broke it off, knocked himself out and then drowned on the mud.” Maxwell was smiling. He cracked it. He knew how to keep his friend alive. ”That’s what happened. If you walk around the bushes carefully, you should be fine.”

Nick calmed down and slowly made his way around the thicket. The noises in the forest were loudly closing in. The sound and image from the cell phone started to break up. At the same time, Maxwell received a text from his sister. After a pause filled with the sound of static, Nick’s voice was very clear.

“No, I’m not on WiFi, I’m in the middle of the fucking forest, how would I be on Wifi?”

Maxwell was reading his sister’s text.

“I heard you perfectly that time. Did you do something?” Nick asked, panting.

Maxwell wasn’t listening. He was screaming.

“I thought I should show you around. Take you on a virtual hike, now that you are stuck down there.”

Maxwell screen only showed his sister’s text.

I don’t know how to tell you this. They found Nick’s body three days ago.