Dead Woods

by Raylan Kane

  “Better than leaving it to the animals,” Tessa said.

  “Like we did with Sal,” Bill added.

  Marsh nodded, acknowledging what they were saying. “Fire it is,” she said. “Help me gather some branches, would you?”

  “How long's this going to take?” Lindsay said.

  “Long as needed,” Marsh said, “I don't wanna waste any more time here than you do. But, we gotta do something with him, and I hate the idea of leaving him to be eaten. You know?”

  “You mean like Sal,” Bill said. “You all were perfectly fine with leaving him to rot.”

  Marsh glared at the man, though the darkness mostly hid her face from the man.

  “Now is not the time, Bill,” Lindsay said. “Hurry up and gather some wood.”

  Breaking branches away from their respective tree trunks proved less difficult than they'd expected. Most of the forest around the group was torched black and the trees snapped apart with relative ease in their weakened state. In an hour, guided only by flashlight beams, they had enough of a pile built up that Marsh felt confident she could send Winters off properly and not leave too many of his remains, however morbid she thought the idea might have been as it scrolled through her mind.

  Everyone stood back from the bonfire, no one wanting to look at Winters body as the orange flames finally penetrated the stack and burned through the FBI Agent. For a long time they stood by in silence, watching as a thick column of black and gray smoke rose high over the canyon.

  Lindsay was the first to turn her back on the pyre. She put a hand on Marsh's shoulder. “We should go,” she said. “We've drawn more attention here than I'd wanted to already.”

  “Agreed.”

  Marsh nodded and once the others saw she and Lindsay prepping the canoes for the paddle out, they too turned away from the fire and retrieved their packs.

  With the boats packed and sitting on the edge of the Ryback, ready to depart. Lindsay used a length of rope from her bag and looped it through the end of the yellow canoe and the front of the green one. “This'll hold,” she said. “Gonna need a strong paddler at the front. Bill, you're probably most experienced with that, no?”

  “Probably.” He then picked up a long, thick branch he'd found an hour earlier when everyone was gathering material for the bonfire. “Wanted to show you guys this.” He stood the branch on end and it was a few inches taller than he was.

  “What do you want that for?” Marsh said.

  “Well, we've only got the one paddle, might make sense to use this. Dig it into the river bed. For direction.”

  “Like the gondolas in Venice,” Wally said.

  “Exactly.”

  “The Ryback might be a little too deep for that,” Marsh said.

  “I know this river too, thanks,” Bill said. “If I'd thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn't have mentioned it.”

  “Well, you're welcome to try,” Marsh said, “suppose it can't hurt.”

  “Thing is,” said Bill, “Lindsay's saying I'm in the lead canoe doing the paddling. This would be for the canoe that has no paddle.”

  “It was just a suggestion, Bill,” Lindsay said. “You don't have to be in the lead if you don't want to.”

  “I'll do the paddling,” Tessa said.

  “That isn't what I said,” Bill replied.

  “No, it's fine,” Tessa said. “Got quite a bit experience with it actually. Lots of times with my boss when he'd have clients out an' stuff. I'm good with it.”

  “Good,” Lindsay said. “Alright, Bill, you can sit in the one behind, see if that stick of yours makes any difference.”

  With that, the group stepped aboard the canoes. Marsh's stomach felt jittery as she thought about the fiberglass patches, unsure if they could handle the pressure as the weight of everyone and everything pushed the hulls down into the black current.

  “Whatever you do,” Marsh said, “don't run these aground. If you see rocks or you think it's shallow, steer well clear. I'm not super-confident in our patch job.”

  “Got it,” Tessa said. “Y'all can help with your hands and stuff too, if you can. Water's pretty cold though.”

  They'd packed most of the bags in the rear canoe believing the lighter load at the front would give the lead more maneuverability. Though this was offset somewhat by putting three people in the front canoe and two in the follower. Tessa sat at the head, Wally behind her, and Marsh at the rear. In the following canoe, Lindsay sat at the front with Bill at the back testing the depth of the water with his long branch.

  Tessa pushed on the shoreline with the half-charred paddle and Marsh grimaced, feeling the bottom of the boat scrape a little in the shallows as they moved out onto the river. Bill followed suit, pushing hard until both canoes were floating in four feet of water. Tessa paddled hard and Bill pushed until they were at the center of the Ryback, and they could feel the strength of the current grab them and it started them down the river with little effort required on their part.

  “Here we go,” Marsh said, apprehension in her voice, “everyone hold on.”

  20

  The two attached canoes bobbed on the slight rapids that fed onto a watery ridge. Marsh threw a beam from her flashlight and could see small rock outcroppings ringed by white water. Then the canoe dropped a foot suddenly as it dipped over the ridge and sped up on the quickening current. Her stomach had dropped with it. There was a knocking noise and couple of groans as the follow-up canoe dropped over the ridge in kind. Are we still afloat? She asked herself, afraid and frustrated at the slowness of the sun's rise, now only a faint glow off to her left.

  “Everyone alright?” Marsh asked, her words echoing off into the dark. “Still floating?”

  “We're good,” Lindsay said. “Keep pushing.”

  “I don't recall that drop,” Bill said. “I don't recognize where we are.”

  “Thought you said you know this river,” Lindsay said.

  “I do.”

  “Would help if it wasn't so dark,” Tessa said.

  “Just keep paddling,” Lindsay said, “we're doing fine.”

  “I've been up and down the Ryback plenty,” Bill said, “I don't recall that spot.”

  “You're going to remember every rapids by feel?” Lindsay said.

  “More than you'd think.”

  “I'm with Bill on this one,” Marsh said. “That felt foreign to me too.”

  Lindsay shook her head, secure in the knowledge no one could see her admonishment in the dark. She looked off into the blackness ahead of her. “You okay, Wally?” She said, “you've been pretty quiet.”

  “I'm okay,” the older man said, “my knee's a bit wet though.”

  The words caused Marsh's neck hairs to stand on end. “Your knee?” The deputy said, focusing her flashlight to the hull of the canoe near where Wally sat.

  “Yeah.”

  To her horror, water gushed in around the patch in their canoe. “Dammit!”

  “That a leak?” Lindsay said from behind her.

  “Yep.”

  “For real?” Tessa said, and she stopped paddling.

  “Keep going,” Lindsay said.

  “No,” Marsh said, “I don't know. We're taking on a lot of water here.”

  “Bill,” Lindsay said, shoving her flashlight into his chest. “Check ours.”

  “What should we do?” Tessa said.

  “I think we should go ashore,” Marsh said. “Quick. Before we all end up in the river. That'd be a whole new set of problems.”

  “Yep,” Bill said, alarm in his voice, “we're in trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Lindsay looked back to where Bill held the light on the patch that had almost completely washed away. “Honest to god,” Lindsay said. “Unbelievable.”

  “We're hooped if we don't get to shore right now,” Bill said.

  “Tessa,” Marsh said, “think you can pull us over? To the right?”

  “Current's
hella strong right now,” Tessa said. “I can try.”

  “Bill, use that branch if you can.”

  “Can't,” Bill said, “too deep out here.”

  The two canoes floated fast on the current.

  “We really seem to be moving.”

  “Noticed that,” Marsh said. “I wish I could see. This section of river seems unfamiliar.”

  “I don't like it,” Bill said.

  Then, without wanting to acknowledge it was actually registering in her ears, Marsh noted the fizzy sound accompanied by that low bass you could feel down to the pit of your stomach. She swallowed and furrowed her brow concentrating on the deepness of it that turned into a rolling rumble, then a vibration that conducted through her. It's just nerves, right? She told herself, in denial.

  “Tell me I'm not hearing what I'm hearing,” Bill said.

  “What?” Lindsay said.

  “I hear it too,” Marsh said, “not good. Tessa, are you paddling?”

  “I'm doing my best, but this is too strong.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Lindsay said.

  “You don't hear that?”

  The rumble's intensity increased and loomed like a thunderstorm on the horizon.

  “Rushing water,” Lindsay said, “that's what I hear. It's all we've been hearing.”

  “Rushing towards something,” Bill said. “We need to get to shore. Start paddling with your hands people.”

  “You all need to stop panicking,” Lindsay said. “Holes or not, we're not sinking just yet.”

  “Lady,” Bill said, “that's a damned waterfall we're coming up on. A big one.”

  Lindsay scoffed. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “I thought you two said you know this river?”

  “Obviously not this part,” Marsh said. “Tessa, keep trying.”

  “I am!”

  The two vessels bounced up over a bulge near the center of the Ryback and then slammed back down. Water sprayed up and slapped them like shards of ice on their faces. The boats seemed to speed up and the low rumble and sounds of fizzy soda morphed into a dull roar that raged in the blackness ahead of them. The futility of the moment washed over Marsh as her hands ached from the freezing water, trying in vain to guide the boat to the river bank. The dull roar changed again as they bounced along, it sounded as though they were on a conveyor belt, headed into the side of a locomotive.

  “Is this really happening?” Bill said, giving everyone a chill with the pure emotion and dread in his voice.

  The roar in front of them filled all of their ears. Deputy Marsh had to shout to be heard. “Hold onto something,” she said, not even really understanding why she said it. There was no use, anything now would be futile. Then she heard Tessa scream and the front of her canoe dipped as though it'd been grabbed and pulled downward by a giant's hand.

  “Hold on!”

  21

  A coldness splashed against Marsh's legs and for a moment she had a flash of weightlessness. Then something grazed her arm and all went black. A loud bellow cried out somewhere behind. Then nothing.

  When Marsh opened her eyes, she could see brown mud, then a line of green grass and then black spruce in the distance with pale blue sky tinged with a yellow glow. It took a second for her to register her cheek was laying against pebbles and her entire body was soaked. Then the ache near her forehead. She could taste blood where she'd bitten her tongue. I'm alive, she said to herself, amazed, delighted. Too out of it to feel any sense of danger. She tried to press her palms into the ground to raise herself off the river bank, but her arms were sapped of all strength.

  A dark figure laid on the mud twenty feet in front of her. Woozy as she was she thought it might be Wally.

  She tried to call out to him, but couldn't speak. Or maybe she could, but the use of her voice wasn't registering. Marsh couldn't be sure. All she could hear was the roar of the falls somewhere behind her. And then, darkness again.

  The next time Marsh opened her eyes she could scarcely believe what she saw. The length of the football field away. A hulking animal, cinnamon brown. One of the giant grizzlies. The stuff of her nightmares. The massive creature pawed at something in the grass. The figure she'd seen laying near her before was gone. If it was Wally he was nowhere in sight. Marsh was too scared to move for about thirty seconds as she watched the grizzly scratch a deep trench into the ground next to the river.

  Swallowing hard, she tried to collect her thoughts. Gun. That was what flashed into her mind. She raised her cheek slightly from the small stones and was immediately gripped by a pounding headache. Her eyes widened to the size of silver dollars when she noticed a second giant bear straight ahead of her, fifty yards off standing where it had flattened a section of forest. The two beasts seemed to pay her no mind.

  Play dead? Maybe they thought she already was. She'd laid unconscious for a long time. How long have they been here? Marsh thought. Adrenaline pushed her headache to the background. Looking ahead of her, at the edge of the muddy bank where it gave way to tall grasses, laid a soaked duffel bag. If I could just get to it. A rifle. Moving as non-deliberately as she could, she raised a knee and dug into the dirt slightly with the toe of her boot and slid along the ground forward towards the bag, hoping the slow movements wouldn't be detected by the bears that appeared distracted by other things. Fifteen feet, Marsh judged the distance. For a second, she looked behind at her feet as she pulled each slowly away from the shallow water. Then she noticed a black lump on the opposite side of the river. Looks like Bill's jacket, she thought. She could see he wasn't moving. For his sake I hope he stays unconscious, she thought.

  Maybe lay still, Marsh told herself, thinking maybe she should take her own advice. Looking again to her right, a firework exploded in her belly. The bear that had been pawing at the ground had stopped and it stared right at her. Get the gun. Get it now. Her eyes locked with the grizzly. The thing was as tall as an apartment building. A great mass of brown muscle and fat. It was keenly focused on her. She could hear the other bear in front of her, each of its breaths so loud it pushed away the sound of the falls.

  There's no playing dead now. Marsh knew what was about to happen. She could read the signs. She knew what to look for. That bear, a football field away, if that, was about to charge. It won't be a false charge, she told herself. These ones don't do that. And why would they? Nothing could threaten these creatures.

  Get the gun.

  A high-pitched scream bit against the morning air. A woman's scream. It came from the opposite river bank. Both bears were distracted by the suddenness of it, and Marsh flashed a look across the Ryback and could see Tessa flailing her arms, her upper body rising up and down in obvious agony. She wanted to holler across to her and tell the young woman to keep quiet, but fear and strange sense of pragmatism in the face of ridiculous peril stopped her. Instead, she seized the moment to surge towards the duffel bag and she shoved her pruny hands inside until she came up against the hard outline of a weapon.

  The giant bear down river glared in Tessa's direction as she flailed and screamed. Marsh figured the young woman had only just regained consciousness and obviously was dealing with some kind of injury. She might not have even noticed the presence of the enormous grizzlies as yet. Marsh pulled the gun from the bag. A shotgun. Her hands, jittery, nearly numb and bloodless, fumbled with the waterproof container where she'd found the shells. Slugs. Good, she thought. They had power. She reminded herself to expect the kick. Whenever she used a shotgun, she was taken back to her time at the Academy when she underestimated the power of the slug and the time she forgot to tuck the butt of the weapon in tight to her shoulder to allow her Kevlar vest to absorb the kick. She had a bruise on her upper arm for more than a week.

  The bear in front of her was distracted by the screaming woman on the opposite side of the river as well. Marsh gripped the shotgun and laid on her back. She wasn't going to bring the fight to either of the humongous animals. S
he was going to let them come to her and use the gun as a last ditch effort to stay alive. If I go on the offensive here, she thought to herself, I'm just inviting death. The best offense is a good defense, her father used to say. Mind you, he was talking about football whenever he said it. The thought caused Marsh to smile slightly. Why are you smiling? She asked herself. Sometimes the dread was too much. In times where her fear was at its highest, it was like her brain sought refuge in the ridiculous.

  Sure enough, the bear down river took a step towards Tessa. No, Marsh thought to herself. Tessa, you've got to stop screaming. The sound of thunder crashed overhead, behind her. Without moving her body too much, she pressed the back of her head into the mud and tilted to look with an upside-down view of the forest and she could see the other bear, disinterested as it loped farther away into the forest, crunching hapless trees under its paws, each of them the size of an SUV.

  The other bear stood in the middle of the Ryback and made the wide, raging river look like a trickling stream. It stopped for a moment and kept eyeing Tessa, who had not stopped wailing since she came to.

  Isn't this odd behavior for a grizzly? Marsh thought. She didn't like how close it was coming to Tessa. Emboldened by the increased distance between her and the other grizzly that had walked off farther into the woods, Marsh pressed down any reservations she might have had and decided to distract the bear in the river.

  “Hey!” Marsh yelled at the thing. “Hey! Over here!”

  The huge bear turned its gargantuan head and stared at her. Marsh sat up and she glanced over her shoulder and noticed the other bear turn and amble back her way.

  “Hey!” She yelled again. “Here!”

  What are you doing? She questioned herself, but kept pushing things anyway. Have to keep that thing away from Tessa.

  “Hey! Bear!”

  The grizzly swiped one of its paws across the surface of the water but managed to dig up stones from the river bed in doing so. The bear sprayed a wall of water aside and big rocks cascaded off into the trees.

  “Hey!”