by Bobby Akart
However, it was the gruesome discovery that sent chills up and down his spine.
Chapter 4
Northwest Ontario
Canada
Levi had seen death, but only after hunting animals. This was the first time he’d seen a human being dead. When his grandpa died, he was only a child, and Sarah had shielded him from the open-casket funeral that Grandpa Chapman had requested in his will. Even then, after the mortician had worked his magic, his grandfather appeared to be in a restful sleep. This kind of death was far different.
The French-Canadian pilot had been mangled and pummeled by the forest. As the aircraft crashed through the trees, limbs and trunks battered the man’s body beyond recognition. His horribly twisted body hung in his seat harness, but his head had been ripped open by a tree branch that still protruded from his neck.
Levi stopped and immediately dropped to his knees, retching. His stomach convulsed as it emptied into the snow. Every attempt he made to control it was overridden by the sight of the pilot’s mutilated corpse, which would forever be embedded in Levi’s mind.
“Levi! You all right?”
Karl Tate’s shouts came from deeper into the wreckage, but only thirty feet away. The blowing snow prevented the two friends from seeing one another.
Levi continued to cough, but his stomach had been emptied. He scooped up two handfuls of snow and frantically shoved them into his mouth, hoping the wet substance would clean out the vomit. He swished the water around in his cheeks before spitting it out. Levi would give anything for a bottle of Scope mouthwash at the moment.
“Yeah. The pilot’s dead,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“Shit! Are you sure?” asked Karl.
Levi didn’t bother to look again. The man’s corpse left little doubt. Without answering, he moved through the blizzard toward Karl’s voice.
The entire row of seats behind the cockpit had been ripped from the airplane’s floor and thrown clear of the fuselage. The fact that all three of the guys survived was a miracle. Levi slowly approached Karl and patted him on the back.
“Are you in one piece?”
“By the grace of God,” he replied. “Eddie’s kinda banged up. I think he’s got a broken arm, and he’s lost a few teeth.”
Levi walked around Karl and knelt in front of Eddie Cramer, who was doubled over in pain, clutching his left arm. “Did you clip a wing?”
Eddie chuckled, spitting out bloody sputum as he did. “Very funny, asshole. When the wing clipped the tree, the tree clipped me. I’m pretty sure it’s broken.”
Levi looked over at Karl. He always used humor to diffuse a tense situation, even though sometimes it was snarkier than others.
“I don’t know, Karl. He ain’t cryin’. If it was broken, he’d be squallin’ like a baby, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Karl with a chuckle. He played along. “Maybe you should give it a squeeze to make sure?”
Eddie immediately protested and pulled away from his friends. “Screw the both of ya! Nobody’s squeezin’ my dang arm!”
Blood trickled down Eddie’s forehead and over the bridge of his nose. More blood trickled out of the side of his mouth, where he’d been smacked hard enough to lose his two front teeth.
Levi struggled to see his friend in the dark, but he had to find a way to assess his head wounds. The broken arm could wait. He turned to Karl for assistance.
“We gotta find our gear.”
“I know, but the shit could be anywhere. I can’t see ten feet in front of me.”
“You gotta try, Karl. Listen. Don’t wander far. Go straight out and straight back. Use your footprints to guide you back. Seriously, if you get lost, we’re screwed.”
“Got it. What about Eddie?”
“I’m gonna try to check him out, and I need to get him warm. The loss of blood could lead to shock, especially in this dang snowstorm. Man, you gotta hurry.”
“I’m on it,” said Karl as he walked off into the darkness.
Levi turned his attention to Eddie. “Okay, buddy. We’re gonna get you fixed up. The first thing I need to do is keep you warm. I told you the weather could change up here.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Eddie apologetically. “Levi, you’re always right about this stuff. I should’ve listened.”
Levi stood to remove his jacket and immediately felt the chill. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t bleeding profusely like his friend.
“Okay, I’ve gotta wrap this around you, but I don’t wanna move your arm. It’s gonna hurt enough just jostling you around.”
“I can deal with the pain, but I gotta tell you my neck really hurts, too. I got whipped around pretty bad, you know?”
Levi gently pulled Eddie forward in his seat and slipped his hunting jacket behind him. Eddie let out a groan as Levi wrapped him in the coat.
“Where’s the pilot?” he asked Levi.
“Deader than dead. But we’re not, and I intend to keep it that way.”
More blood poured down his forehead, prompting Levi to focus his attention on Eddie’s scalp.
“Dude, I’m really sleepy. How ’bout I rest my eyes for a bit until they rescue us.”
Eddie’s words were slurred, and his eyes began to flutter open and closed. Levi knew that he had to keep him awake, so he came up with a solution that might draw Eddie’s ire, but it would be effective.
He created a pancake of snow to use as an icy cold washcloth. Without warning, he wiped the blood off Eddie’s forehead. The act immediately snapped the injured man out of his stupor.
“What the hell, Levi? A little warning would’ve been nice!”
“Oh, sorry about that. I missed that class in nursing school.”
“You mean torture school. You’re really sick, dude.”
“Yeah, I know. Hold still for a minute.”
Levi began to examine Eddie’s scalp. A small strip of metal was embedded near the crown of his head, slicing into the scalp. Steady gushes of blood were coming out of the wound.
Levi sat back on his heels and considered his options. He needed to remove the sliver of metal, but he also needed to have something to put pressure on the wound to control the bleeding. He also needed to be honest with his friend.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You’ve got a piece of the airplane stuck in your head, and you’re losing a lot of blood.”
Eddie reached up to feel for the wound as if to confirm the diagnosis for himself. Levi quickly, but gently, pulled his good arm back down.
“Don’t do that,” he ordered. “I think I can easily remove the metal, but I’ve gotta find something sterile to stop the bleeding until we can find our bags or a first aid kit or something.”
Eddie was slipping out of consciousness again. “What are you gonna do?”
Levi took a deep breath and exhaled. He was about to become the second Boone to drop his drawers out in the open in the last week.
He quickly kicked off his sneakers and unbuckled the leather belt holding up his jeans.
“No, dude! No way!” protested Eddie, who was suddenly fully aware of what was happening.
“Just relax, Eddie. They were clean when I put ’em on this morning.”
“Dude, did you shit yourself when we crashed?”
“No, idiot.”
“Are you sure? Did you check yourself?”
“Yes. Will you calm down? Your gonna make your head bleed more.”
Levi undressed, quickly pulling down his Fruit-of-the-Loom white cotton briefs and mooning his friend in the process.
“Get that out of my face!”
“Would you rather I turn around?”
“Dude, I hate you right now,” Eddie lamented.
Levi was as anxious to get his pants back on as Eddie was. A man’s parts don’t fare well when being exposed to a blizzard.
He folded his underwear to allow for a large section of white cotton to be used as a compress. Now he had to remove the metal and keep Eddie from s
quirming.
“Ready?” Levi asked.
“For what?”
“I’m gonna remove the metal and then cover your wound with this compress. Don’t jerk around, or it’ll make it worse.”
“Jeez. Shouldn’t we wait until we get to a hospital or somethin’?”
“Eddie, I think we’re miles off course. Plus, it’s been at least an hour and I haven’t heard any type of aircraft in this mess. They’re not looking for us. Heck, they may not even know we’re missing.”
Eddie sighed and hugged his broken arm a little tighter. “All right, make it quick.”
Levi stood over his friend and found his scalp in the dark. He gently traced his fingers through Eddie’s hair to make sure this was the only wound. Other than a knot that was growing near the crown of his scalp, the protruding metal was the only point of bleeding.
“Eddie, are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“On three, okay?”
“Do it,” he replied, his body tensing for the pain that was likely to come with the extraction.
Levi found the best place to grip the metal and the proper angle to pull it out without creating further damage. Then he began the countdown, stretching the words out for effect.
“One. Two.”
He quickly pulled the metal out and immediately pressed his cotton underwear over the wound. Changing the countdown to two was the oldest trick in the book, but effective.
Eddie grumbled, but he didn’t shout in pain. “Asshole. I knew you were illiterate.”
Levi smiled. His friend would survive the injuries if they could stop the bleeding and keep him from going into shock.
He heard the sound of feet shuffling through the snow, and he inwardly hoped that Karl had found their gear.
That was when the wolves began to howl.
Chapter 5
Riverfront Farms
Southeast Indiana
The Boone family came to America to escape religious persecution in England during the mid-seventeenth century. In the 1600s, the Society of Friends, or Quakers as they were better known, flocked to the New World, settling mostly in the colony of Pennsylvania founded by William Penn. Known for their inventive minds, they played a central role in forging the Industrial Revolution in America.
Squire Boone was the first of his family name to arrive, and he married fellow Quaker Sarah Morgan in 1720. They had eleven children, including Daniel and Squire Jr. Daniel and Squire Jr. became pioneers and trailblazers, establishing the Wilderness Road through Kentucky, Tennessee, and beyond to the Mississippi River. The family survived Indian attacks, became involved in local and state politics, and created homes for thousands of settlers in Kentucky and Indiana.
For two hundred fifty years, the Boone family lived off the land, and Squire was proud to have carried forward that legacy. Riverfront Farms paid homage both to his heritage as a Boone, and Sarah’s as a Chapman, by combining a farming operation with extensive apple orchards.
Moreover, Squire and Sarah had assisted families in getting settled in Southeast Indiana along the Ohio River, where they worked at Riverfront Farms, worshiped in churches built by the Boone family in the past, and taught their kids in a historic schoolhouse built by Squire’s grandfather.
Squire was an extremely proud man and was generous to a fault. Pride made him stubborn, and his generosity pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy. Still, he slept at night without worry. He’d adopted a means by which he lived his life in the way of his pioneer ancestors—do and deal. Sometimes, he’d said to Sarah, you just have to do what’s necessary and deal with the consequences of your actions later.
It was not an excessive-risk, living-on-the-edge approach to life. Rather, it was a take-things-as-they-come mindset drawing upon personal experiences and genetics to problem-solve.
So when Chapman rang the warning bells, Squire shrugged them off. He’d called Chapman’s theories wild-eyed. As he’d told Sarah, the Boones and Chapmans had lived without power back in the day just fine. They could do it again.
Sarah had been adamant, chastising him for potentially putting the family at risk all because he was ignoring their son’s warning. He didn’t agree with her totally, but he certainly wasn’t going to stand in her way if she wanted to pick up a few extra things at the grocery store.
Squire, who hated watching the news on television, nonetheless surfed through the channels to learn more about Chapman’s pole-shift theory. Coincidentally, at least in Squire’s mind, there was a massive power outage in parts of Europe, but none of the newspeople said anything about pole shifts or the sun’s radiation.
Sarah rushed through the living room, carrying an armful of cookbooks. “Have you heard anything new?”
Squire watched her frantically scurry about as she gathered notepads, pens, and books to spread out on the dining table. “Sarah, I think you need to relax. There’s nothing on the TV remotely related to some kind of pole reversal or magnetic field weakening.”
“What about the power outage? And did it effect Paris where Chapman was?”
“They say the power did go out, but it was probably caused by the heat wave they’re havin’, and they hope to restore it shortly. I don’t know about Paris, but I’ll check. Say, why don’t you take a break and sit with me? We’ll watch together.”
Squire was concerned about his wife’s mental state. She was prone to bouts of anxiety and was secretly seeing a doctor about it. She tried to hide a medication called buspirone from him, but he’d stumbled across it in the bathroom vanity one day. When he saw the name of the doctor who’d prescribed it, he assumed she must be taking it to calm her nerves. At the moment, in her overexcited state, he doubted the medicine was working.
“Squire, there’s no time for television. We’ve got to get ready like Chapman suggested. Now, I’ve already called Carly, and she’s on her way over with the kids.”
Squire muted the television and turned to his wife. The distraction caused him to miss the representative from NASA, who was responding to questions about a possible solar flare.
“Sarah, why do you have to drag Carly into this nonsense? Doesn’t she have enough on her plate handling the kids while Levi is gone?”
Sarah stopped and took a deep breath before responding, “This is not nonsense. I feel it in my gut, Squire. The signs are all there.”
“Honey, it’s just, um, I think maybe your anxiety is getting the best of you. You know, causing you to overreact. Maybe you just need to relax a little.”
Sarah gritted her teeth and stuck out her jaw. She removed her apron and slammed it on top of the dining table. “First off, anxiety is not a choice, so don’t tell me to relax as if that will make it go away. Second, this is not about being anxious. It’s about having a sense of urgency. You heard that in Chapman’s voice, right? He’s not making this up.”
Before Squire could address her statement, the front door opened and their grandkids hopped through the foyer, each choosing a grandparent to hug first.
Carly Boone followed close behind. “Hey, guys. Everything okay? I mean, I could hear y’all from outside.”
Carly had married Levi almost ten years ago, and they’d hoped to have a big family. However, complications during her second pregnancy with daughter Rachel forced them to accept the realization that any future pregnancy would put her in grave danger.
Life went on happily for the young couple. Seven-year-old Rachel was growing up to be as feisty as her mother and grandmother, while eight-year-old Jesse was a chip off the old block, as he developed into a mini-me of his father.
“Yes, honey, everything’s fine. Squire’s being stubborn.”
Carly laughed and gave her father-in-law a hug together with a kiss on his razor-stubbled cheek. “Hi, Dad. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Well, maybe she’s just partly right,” he mumbled, still salty over being dressed down by Sarah.
Carly, a petite brunette who could roar like a lion and fight like a t
iger, was a member of the Boone family by marriage but fit in like she was blood. Her relationship with Squire and Sarah was better than the one she had with her own parents, who’d divorced and moved to different parts of the country soon after she married Levi. Sarah had taken Levi’s bride under her wing, and the two Boone women had become best friends.
Sarah hugged Jesse and then reached for Carly’s hand. “He’s an awnry old cuss sometimes, but I still love him with all my heart. Now, come on. You and I have some work to do.”
“Awesome!” exclaimed Jesse. “They’ll work and we’ll play, right, Grandpa?”
“You betcha, young man.”
Sarah and Carly smiled as the two grandkids copped a squat on both sides of their beloved grandfather on the sofa. He switched the television monitor input to reveal the latest video game download for PlayStation. Each of the kids grabbed a controller and the games began.
“Carly, let’s slip outside and talk on the front porch. I have a voicemail message from Chapman you need to hear.”
Chapter 6
Riverfront Farms
Southeast Indiana
Carly listened closely to Chapman’s voicemail message. She pursed her lips and shook her head from side to side as she took in every word. When the message ended, she walked a few paces away and looked out across the farm.
“That sounds like the old Chapman, you know, from the tornado-chasin’ days.”
“I agree,” said Sarah as she motioned for Carly to take a seat on the white swing that was suspended from the wraparound-style porch. Sarah would never want Squire to catch her taking a moment to relax, as she knew he was right when he made the statement. She needed to calm her nerves in order to think rationally about the task at hand.
“Whadya think we should do?” asked Carly.
“Chapman said get ready, so I think we should. I’ve got a few ideas, but I need your help. Squire’s attitude isn’t very helpful, and you’re very organized. We’ll need that to get prepared for whatever might happen.”
