by Ike Hamill
Brad had seen enough. He turned and ran as fast as he could.
Chapter 60: Ashley
Ashley’s first instinct was to help Lisa, but there was nothing she could do but stand on the bank and wait. She turned back up the hill. There was a line of bent grass where Penny had run through. The trail would disappear soon as the wind brushed away the evidence. With one more nervous glance back at Lisa, Ashley ran through the grass, chasing after Penny. At the edge of the field, she caught a break. There was no clear sign of the dog in the woods, but when Penny began to bark, Ashley locked in on her direction.
Ashley ran up the hill. It was a clutter of rocks, leaves, and fallen trees. Her legs ground through it all, exploding with pent up energy as she climbed. Ashley veered left to follow the sound of the frantic barking. Quickly, the forest thinned out. The trail of the dog was visible in the churned up pine needles.
Ashley stopped to listen, taking three panting breaths and then holding herself still while her lungs begged for fresh oxygen. The dog was silent now. There was a sound down from the river that could have been a shout or a scream. It was so quick that Ashley couldn’t be sure. It might have been just the call of a bird.
When she allowed herself to breathe again, Ashley had something new to worry about—the faint smell of smoke was on the air.
Indecision gripped her for a moment and then she turned back down hill. It was a lot slower going back down. Each foot had to be placed carefully so she didn’t roll an ankle, or worse. When Ashley got back to the grass, she was downriver of where she had climbed. Still, she turned right and ran, trying to guess how far Lisa had drifted since she had left.
She spotted the raft. It was closer to shore and Lisa had given up on trying to propel herself against the current. She was only pushing to cross the river, and she was making good time. Ashley splashed into the shallows. When the water was up to her thighs, she could already feel the current pulling at her. Ashley waded down stream.
“Throw the rope,” she called.
Lisa put down the pole and tossed the rope. Ashley snatched it before it could drift away and she jerked it toward shore. Her feet dug at the mud and she turned around to lean into the rope as she grunted and pulled. The rope bit into her shoulder, but she didn’t stop until she was back on the bank and could loop the rope around a small tree. It bent as Ashley used it for leverage. Ashley didn’t relent until she heard Lisa’s feet splash into the water. Then, Lisa was by her side, helping her drag the raft to safety.
Once the raft was tied off, Ashley turned and Lisa pulled her into a quick hug.
“I started to come across and Penny followed me and then I couldn’t get back and I didn’t have a way…”
“It’s fine,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “I figured it out. It’s fine. We’re better off on this side anyway.”
“But Penny is gone now. She ran up the hill.”
“Let’s go find her.”
With Lisa behind her, picking her way carefully thought he brush, Ashley moved much slower the second time. Whenever she started to pull away from Lisa, Ashley would stop and take a moment to listen. Once, she thought she heard the dog bark again. The sound was so distant that it could have been anything.
“The woods change up here to mostly pine. It’s a lot easier going.”
“Thank heaven,” Lisa said. She was breathing hard. “All of our hiking has been flat. This hill is killing me.”
“I smelled smoke up here. Do you think that Tim could have started a fire to signal us?”
“It’s possible. Only one way to find out, right?” Lisa said.
“I think that’s what he did,” Ashley said.
As she climbed, she tried to break off any sticks so they wouldn’t slap back and hit Lisa. When they reached the part where the leaves and brush subsided, Ashley was relieved to spot the tracks of the dog in the pine needles again. She had feared that she wouldn’t be able to find them. Ashley turned and put out a hand to help Lisa up over a rock, but Lisa waved her away.
“I smell the smoke,” Lisa said.
Ashley took a deep breath in through her nose and nodded.
“This is where Penny went,” Ashley said.
“Run ahead,” Lisa said. “I can follow. You run ahead and call for Penny. She’ll bark if she hears you calling.”
Ashley stood there, not wanting to obey.
“Go. You know where to find me. Go see what she’s after.”
Ashley shook her head. “No. I think we should stick together. What if…”
She couldn’t put a finger on exactly what was bothering her, but she was certain that splitting up was a bad idea.
“Keep moving then,” Lisa said. “I’ll try to speed up the best I can.”
“Yeah,” Ashley agreed, turning. She did venture ahead a little. Keeping an eye over her shoulder to make sure that she didn’t lose contact with Lisa, Ashley ranged ahead, making sure that they were on the right track. There were a couple of places where the dog’s trail was hard to spot, but Ashley was able to lock back in when she saw a trampled fern or an overturned rock. Penny had been moving fast, tearing up the hill. Her claws had left ample clues along the way.
The smell of smoke grew stronger as they climbed.
In one spot, the dog’s tracks petered out at the vertical face of a line of rocks. Ashley stood there for a moment, trying to think like a dog—which way would get by this obstacle? The tracks were no help. The litter of pebbles and sand below the rocks gave no clue.
Ashley went to the right and was rewarded at the top with a smeared paw print in the dirt. She turned to wave Lisa around and saw the woman taking a break, leaning against the rocks.
“You need to rest,” Ashley said.
“No. Keep moving.”
Ashley opened her mouth to argue and then shut it again. Lisa wasn’t as consistently stubborn as Romie, but when she made up her mind there was little anyone could do to change it. Ashley continued on, just more slowly. They walked together, keeping a slow upward march. Ashley paused to listen again.
“There,” Lisa’s hand rose to point the way.
“I don’t see…”
“Listen.”
For a moment, Ashley didn’t hear anything except the sounds of the woods. Wind made the top of the pines creak. A bird sang some message to the world. Then, Ashley heard it. The rhythmic sound was like a slow drum beat from up ahead.
“Penny!” Ashley called, cupping her hands around her mouth. Her throat was ragged from shouting.
There was no bark, but she heard some kind of rustling in response.
“Penny!”
At the very end of the call, Ashley thought she heard a bark.
“Go,” Lisa commanded. “There’s something up there. Go.”
When Ashley spotted the movement ahead, she sprinted up the mountain. She worried that it might be a bear or some other big predator. Lisa was moving so slowly that she would never be able to get away. Maybe, Ashley thought, she could distract it and Lisa would have time to run.
“Penny!” Lisa called from behind. “Tim?”
The voice called out from up ahead and Ashley was so stunned that she nearly lost her balance. Grabbing onto a tree, she locked in on the voice and movement and she ran again.
“Lisa?” Tim called.
Ashley rounded a tree and saw him. With a pause to take in the new reality of him, Ashley sprinted toward him. Penny was at his feet, her tongue hanging from the side of her mouth in a happy grin. He was gaunt and white as a ghost. His clothes hung from his frame, and they weren’t all the same clothes that she had last seen him wearing. He had a strange shirt pulled over his long sleeve hiking shirt, and a fur hat. Tim was propped up on a handmade crutch and had a compression bandage around his ankle.
“Tim!” she managed to yell as she ran to him.
“Ashley? Is Lisa with you?”
She ran to him and grabbed him into a hug. He smelled even more like smoke, but his was old smoke. A dam
p smoke was infused in his clothing.
“She’s right down there,” Ashley said. Panic flooded through her at that moment. She was suddenly sure that now that she had found Tim and Penny, Lisa would be gone.
“Lisa!” Ashley practically screamed.
Just then, Lisa came from between the trees. Ashley had to turn to make sure that Tim and Penny were still real and present. She exhaled with her relief. They were all back together.
“How did you find me?” Tim asked.
“Penny,” Ashley said. “I think she smelled the smoke before we did.”
Lisa closed the distance, hiking steadily. Tim’s face was pulled tight by his emotions. He reached down and pet Penny as she smiled up at him. He shook his head.
“Let’s get back to the raft,” Ashley said. “We dried out the stuff in your bag and you can change out of those clothes. You smell like a campfire.”
“Wait,” Lisa said. “I need a break first.”
“Me too,” Tim said. He took a step and leaned on his crutch so he could lift his wrapped foot off the ground.
They found a relatively flat spot on soft pine needles. Ashley helped each of them until they were safely sitting on the ground. Tim began to unwrap his ankle so he could inspect it and wrap it again.
“I honestly had no hope that I would ever see you guys again,” Tim said. “It has been so long.”
Lisa nodded. “It was a long night, that’s for sure,” she said. “Ashley and I got split up by the river and I had to wait until morning to chance the crossing.”
“And that’s right when Penny took off, up the hill. I was just thinking yesterday that we should have trained her to track you. I mean, she did back when you went into the jungle, but it would have been nice to formalize that training, you know? Then, today, she just took off.”
“What did you guys do the rest of the time?” Tim asked.
Ashley and Lisa looked at each other, sensing that there was something deeper to the question. Ashley’s mind went back to when they had first found Tim in the jungle. He had been convinced that he had been wandering around for weeks and weeks, even though it had only been days.
Tim’s eyebrows went up—he seemed to realize that something similar was happening.
“Wait—how long do you guys think it has been since I was washed off the raft?”
Ashley studied Tim’s face while she let Lisa answer.
“It was yesterday,” Lisa said. “Yesterday morning.”
Tim took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“And you,” Ashley said. “Your beard is longer. Your hair is longer. You’re wearing different clothes and it looks like you’ve lost at least five pounds. You’re going to tell us that you’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. Am I right?”
Tim nodded before he looked down and said, “Yeah.”
Lisa carried the crutch and Tim’s fishing pole. He leaned on Ashley to make the descent. They established a good rhythm that was only broken when Penny wanted to be close to Tim and accidentally knocked him off balance. At first, while they walked back to the river, Tim told them what he had discovered up on the hill. He grew too winded and Ashley was left with an incomplete story. It sounded like he had discovered evidence of life out in the jungle, although to his point, it wasn’t fair to call it that anymore. The landscape had changed. They were in a forest now. It reminded Ashley of a place in western Massachusetts. The tall pines kept down most of the undergrowth. Clumps of ferns were scattered, lending a little green. Most of the view consisted of thick trunks and brittle old limbs. She could see for quite a distance between the trees, and it felt a little unsettling. If she could see that far, then someone in the distance could be watching them.
They stopped at the edge of the thick brush for Tim to catch his breath.
Lisa brushed damp leaves from a rock and they sat back to back in a triangle. It had only been a day since they had separated. Ashley was certain that the timeline was correct. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Tim was right too—it felt like weeks since they had all sat together.
“There is a book in that bindle,” Tim said. “I got it from the cabin. I didn’t recognize the writing.”
“And you burned it down?” Lisa asked. He had skipped quickly through the end of the story in broken fragments of sentences. Tim seemed almost frightened to tell them about it.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but I had to. It was the only way I could escape the…”
“The what?”
“I don’t know—maybe escape the confusion? I was trapped there. I was seeing myself. Hell, as far as I know, I was always the only one there.”
Ashley wanted him to explain it better. She figured it wouldn’t help to press him now. Tim needed time to process whatever experience he was remembering. The jungle had done strange things to their minds. It was possible that the forest was a similar experience. In time, he might be able to make sense of it.
“The raft is only a little farther,” Ashley said. “If we press on, we can get underway again.”
“We need food, Ashley,” Lisa said. “We barely have anything at the raft—everything got wet.”
“I have some stuff wrapped up,” Tim said. “I smoked some fish and found some cheese and jerky that’s edible. It has kept me going for…”
He didn’t finish his thought. When he unwrapped the cloth that was tied to the end of his pole and handed around the strange rations, Ashley cocked her head. The meat and cheese looked familiar, but she hadn’t seen anything like it since she was a kid. Lisa sniffed at a hunk of orange cheese. Penny sniffed at the piece that Tim was holding out toward her.
“You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Sure? No. But, like I said, I’ve been eating it,” Tim said.
“You also said that you were seeing yourself apart from yourself,” Ashley said.
Tim shrugged. He bit into a piece and gave the rest to the dog. Penny let it drop to the ground but then ate it after sniffing it once more.
“Oh well,” Lisa said, eating her portion.
Ashley pocketed hers for later. She ate the smoke fish that Tim passed around. It looked recent and her belly rumbled when she smelled it. Once they had eaten, Ashley stood first and helped Tim to his feet. It was slow going through the brush and then the tall grass. There wasn’t enough room to walk side by side, so Tim returned to using his crutch. Ashley followed close behind him and caught him when he slipped and almost fell.
“Honestly, it’s doing much better now,” Tim said. “I just don’t want to re-injure it.”
“That’s smart,” Ashley said. “Take it easy.”
When they heard the river, Penny ran ahead. They found her drinking at the bank near where the raft was tied.
“You found all of our stuff?” Tim asked.
“Didn’t have to find it. Most of it was lashed to the raft,” Lisa said.
“Oh. Right,” Tim said. He turned his gaze upriver, trying to see around the bend. “How far down are we?”
Ashley turned up her hands. “From where we lost you? I’m not sure. We went through a couple of rough sections and then a pretty big waterfall. It’s hard to say exactly how far we floated.”
“We’re past the big set of falls though, right? The one on the photographs?”
“I would say we have to be,” Ashley said.
“Then why hasn’t the river widened out?” Tim asked. “I thought we would barely be able to see across when we got to the wide place.”
“Oh,” Ashley said. She had been so focused on survival and getting everyone back together that she had forgotten the geography of the overhead shots. He had a point—what they were seeing didn’t match what they expected.
“Flood,” Lisa said. “Right? The photos must have been taken after a flood? Look at the grass we just crossed. That couldn’t have been here for long. I would say that this whole section was underwater until recently—that’s why that whole plain there is marsh grass.”
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br /> “Could be,” Tim said.
He didn’t sound sure.
Ashley didn’t feel sure either.
Once they were on the raft, everyone took their normal places. Ashley and Tim worked the poles and kept them in the current. After a couple of bends, the river widened out and slowed down. They had to push to keep going at a decent speed. Lisa took over for Tim, so he could try the fishing pole in the calmer water.
They all turned to watch when his reel buzzed with a strike. His pole was bent over as he worked the fish. Just as it flashed below the surface, the fish got free from the hook.
“Damn,” Tim whispered, reeling in his line to check the lure.
“It’s a good sign,” Ashley said. “It wasn’t one of the monster fish, as far as I could tell. Maybe things are a bit more normal down here.”
“I hope so,” Tim said. “You should have seen the fish I was catching at the cabin. Every day, I was pulling in more than I could eat. There was a drop-off where they fed.”
His reel started to buzz again.
That evening, when the sun went down over the river, Ashley realized that she finally had a decent chance of figuring out their position. She wound up the mechanical clock from her pack. It hadn’t kept time in the jungle, but it seemed to be ticking off the seconds just fine now. At the very least, she thought that it would work long enough for the stars to come out. When they did, she worked to measure the angles the best that she could.
“We don’t know the date though,” Tim said. “Isn’t that going to mess everything up?”
“I can get close enough from the positions of the planets and the phase of the moon, like you said before,” she said. Her own paper was still damp, so she was scribbling notes in the back of the strange book that Tim had brought down from the cabin. Ashley sharpened her pencil with her knife.
Once she had a number, she flipped through the photographs.
“Here,” she said, tilting the photo toward the firelight so they could see. Even Penny came around and seemed to be looking at what Ashley pointed to.
