CHAPTER 12

Treasure. Unbelievable riches. Brian could not believe what was inside the survival pack. When he woke up the next morning, Brian examined the pack. He was too tired to do anything but sleep the night before. But now, he could watch. There was a sleeping bag and a foam sleeping pad. There were pots and pans to cook with and forks, knives, and spoons to eat with. He had two lighters, a compass to tell direction, a sharp hunting knife, and a first-aid kit.

There was also a rifle. It didn’t take him long to figure out how to put it together. He shot a bird from far away. It was too easy. On one hand the pack was great, but on the other hand it made surviving almost too easy for Brian.

Brian found a small electronic device, dry inside a plastic bag. He thought it might be a radio and was excited. He missed hearing music and people’s voices. But then he looked closely, and it said “Emergency Transmitter.” This could tell people where he was. Brian turned it on and off a few times. Nothing happened. He thought it was destroyed in the crash.

Brian then found the food packs. He decided he would have a feast. After that he would eat as little of it as possible. He started cooking beef and rice. The smell was incredible. He also drank some orange juice. It was very sweet, almost too sweet. Brian still drank it slowly, enjoying the strong taste. As he started eating the beef, he thought of home and his mother’s cooking. Then he heard the noise of a plane and saw it flying. He couldn’t believe it.

It was a bushplane with floaters, so it wasn’t hard for the plane to land in the lake. Brian still didn’t realize it was over. The pilot stepped out of the plane onto the beach. He was wearing sunglasses. “Hey,” he said, “I heard your emergency transmitter and then saw the plane.” He tilted his head. “Wait,” he stopped for a second, “Damn! You’re that kid, aren’t you? They quit looking for you a month…no two months ago! You’re him, right?”

Brian stood up and looked at the pilot. His throat and mouth had a hard time working. “My name is Brian Robeson. Would you like something to eat?”

EPILOGUE

The pilot was a fur buyer and was mapping camps in the area for future buying trips. When Brian was rescued he had been on the L-shaped lake for fifty-four days. He had lost 17% of his body weight. He quickly gained back 6%, but he remained very thin for years. Brian’s mind had also changed. He was more thoughtful, and spoke slower. Going to the supermarket amazed him. He just couldn’t believe all the food.

Brian also had dreams about the lake after he was rescued. The Canadian government sent a team in to recover the body of the pilot and they took reporters, who naturally took pictures and film of the whole campsite, the shelter—all of it.

For a brief time the press made much of Brian and he was interviewed for TV by a lot of people, but the excitement died within a few months. A writer showed up who wanted to do a book on the "complete adventure" (as he called it) but he turned out to be lazy, and it all came to nothing but talk. Still Brian was given copies of the pictures and video, and looking at them seemed to trigger the dreams. They were not nightmares, none of them were scary, but he would wake up at times with them.

After the initial surprise and happiness from his parents at his being alive—for a week it looked as if they might actually get back together—things quickly went back to normal. His father returned to the northern oil fields, where Brian eventually visited him, and his mother stayed in the city and continued to see the man in the white car. Brian tried several times to tell his father, came really close once to doing it, but in the end never said a word about the man or what he knew, the Secret.