Burn

Two friends, Jess and Storey, emerge from the woods to find a lake with a village nearby. Like most of the other villages they’ve seen, the houses and stores are mostly burned to the ground. They find four blackened, burned bodies in the ruins and wonder where the rest of the residents are. Down at the marina, the friends find the boats and docks undamaged by the fire, and they scrounge for food and supplies.

Neither Jess nor Storey knows what has happened during the time when they were isolated on a camping trip. Storey believes that the country must be at war. They’ve been on their own for six days, wandering through the woods, encountering bodies and burned homes. Storey tries to reach his partner, Lena, but finds that there is no cell phone connection.

The friends are in the middle of northern Maine, closer to Canada than they are to the nearest state, New Hampshire. They decide that they’ll hike to Randall the following day, and Quebec in the days afterward, provided they can find a car to drive. Jess thinks of the recent summer they’d experienced, in which Maine had been “convulsed with secession mania,” which pitted the population centers against the sparsely populated rural inland communities (9). Jess and Storey had decided to go on the trip against their better judgment, as they assumed that a full-blown war would not break out suddenly. Now, though, they’ve become isolated, surviving on the freeze-dried dinners they’d initially packed for a week of hunting. The friends decide to camp in the woods for another night and search the boats in the morning for food.

That night, Jess gathers wood for a fire, considering what must have happened to the residents of the town, as it seems they’d fled in a hurry, without their boats. Jess figures that the people who attacked the town are now camped in Randall, five miles up the lake. Storey comes up from the water, looking shaken. He tells Jess that he found a body of a woman who’d drowned herself.

After a dinner of mac and cheese, rain sets in, and the friends camp out in the tent to plan the following day. Jess contemplates the differences between his situation and Storey’s: While Jess is alone, having been left by his ex-wife the previous year, Storey is desperate to return home to his family in Vermont. This trip is a yearly tradition for the friends. After first setting out, they’d hunted for five days before discovering a bridge that had been destroyed with explosives. They’d been hiking since then, discovering burned vehicles, homes, and bodies along the way as they try to make their way to civilization.

According to the map, the town they’ve found is named Green Hill. The friends lay in their tent in the predawn, listening to rain hit the tarp. They discuss who the fighters might be, with both of them assuming secessionists, but neither knows for sure. Storey tells Jess that the woman he’d found drowned in the lake the previous day was pregnant, which disturbs Jess.

They emerge from the tent into the cold morning. Jess tells Storey that he’ll go find them some food, and he walks down the center of the burned town, observing his surroundings. He keeps an eye out for vehicles, but only finds the burned skeletons of cars. He comes across a sailboat with intact sails named the Isabella. Finding a pair of bolt cutters, Jess cuts the lock off the sailboat’s door and heads into the cabin, where he finds food.

Jess heads back to Storey, and the two friends have breakfast. They decide to continue along the shore of the lake, as sailing would make them too visible. As they walk, they discuss the burned buildings: All of them were burned to the ground, as if they’d been burned on purpose. They assume that the town was bombed, which would explain the structural damage. Jess worries about Storey, who is highly anxious about his family and the effort they might be spending to head into the war zone to find Storey.

Jess imagines a conversation with his ex-wife, in which Jan expresses empathy for his worries that he might be left behind or forgotten. They encounter more houses along the shoreline, all of which show evidence of destruction. Neither Jess nor Storey knows whether the destruction was caused by secessionists or unionists. The most surprising detail is the lack of life, from both combatants and people trying to rescue civilians. If the insurrection was limited to north-central Maine, then it’d be enormous news in the rest of the country. However, they see no evidence that anyone from outside the area understands what’s happening.

The friends come up on Randall, which bears the same destruction as the other towns. As they explore, they break into boats along the shore to search for more food. They also grab a wagon to transport their supplies, rigging it to withstand the bumping over dirt roads as they continue along the edge of the lake. The friends make a huge dinner, as they’re starving. Afterward, they lean against their packs and fall asleep.

Jess dreams of Jan and of lights on the water. He’s awakened by a scream from the direction of the water. Jess and Storey sit up and see a rowboat on the lake, which had cast off from a larger boat further out. A young woman shouts at them as she rows toward the docks.

Just then, two Black Hawk helicopters rise over the tree line at the far side of the lake and shoot straight over the water toward them. They bank low over the water and fire their machine guns, killing the young woman and destroying the boat she was on. Disturbed, Jess and Storey wonder who the woman was and which side the helicopters were from, as they had no markings. Jess can’t get the image of the woman and the boat out of his head, as it brings up other memories of Jan leaving him and his life falling apart in the months before the war started.

The friends pack up their supplies and set off north, continuing along the edge of the lake, but far enough in the trees so they can’t be seen from shore. Storey feels depressed and scared, and he explains to Jess that the helicopters indicate that the war is not limited to Maine, which means that his wife and daughters might be in more danger than anticipated. They decide to start heading southwest, toward Burlington, Vermont. Before they turn that direction, they plan to head to the village to the north, where they hope to find people who can explain what is happening.

Jess reminisces about his divorce, which was primarily due to his cheating on Jan during a work trip, during which he caught chlamydia. Jess also had a habit of spending too much of the year alone, fishing, hiking, and hunting away from Jan. Restless, Jess gets up from his sleeping bag to go to the bathroom. An explosion from the north suddenly lights up the night sky, followed by the distant pop of firearms.

Jess and Storey arise in the morning and continue on their march. They come across a clearing at the shore of the lake with some houses and “a quaint miniature lighthouse standing sentinel over a town dock. Not miniature, scaled down: a painted clapboard tower, blazoned white in the long light of the early sun” (90-91). Storey scans the town and tower through the scope of his rifle, counting the number of burned bodies he sees. They circle the town to see if they can spot anybody living amid the wreckage.

They cautiously walk through the town. As Storey steps around the edge of a porch, a shot rings out. Storey collapses, and a splinter slices Jess’s cheek, which drips with blood. Storey stands back up, uninjured. Storey makes a white flag and waves it where the shooter can see. However, another shot slams into the porch. They decide to retreat to the woods, but an explosion rocks the ground: The bridge into town has been blown up.

Now trapped, the friends decide to fight back. They sneak through the town to find a line of sight on the lighthouse, where the shots are coming from. They try to flank but are interrupted by shots from the other direction, indicating that there are more shooters. Pinned down by a house, they fire in the direction of the lighthouse to force the shooter to take cover, then take off in the other direction, hoping the other shooters won’t see them.

They take cover behind an overturned boat and get pinned down by the other shooters, who spot them behind it. They decide to hide behind the boat until dark, when they can hopefully sneak away. Jess wonders whether the people firing at them are soldiers or merely fishermen trying to defend their homes.

A couple hours later, Storey hears the sounds of the shooters sneaking up on them. In tandem, Jess and Storey stand over the lip of the boat and fire at their attackers, hitting both of them. They kill one attacker outright and wound the other. Jess and Storey approach the wounded attacker and find that he is a boy of 12 or 13, with three bullets in his torso. Without any hesitation, Storey shoots the boy in the head. Jess doubles over in nausea.

Searching the bodies, they find that both have a patch with a symbol containing the number 49 on their arms. Jess assumes that the patch indicates the 50 states of the US, minus Maine, indicating that the war was started by secessionists. A boat suddenly revs its engine and speeds away from the dock. Jess and Storey run to the boats in hot pursuit.

Heading to the docks, Jess is reminded of working on fishing boats off the coast. Though Jess wants to head back for their food, Storey forces the two of them to pursue the fleeing boat immediately. Jess feels annoyed at Storey for being reckless and guns it into the bay.