Dead Woods

by Raylan Kane

  “I don't know, buddy,” Marsh said, her sad eyes cast upon Sully, who sat next to them wagging his tail. “I just don't know.”

  In spite of her fears, the deputy did manage to fall asleep once again, and with her right arm clinging so tightly to Lindsay that she knew if the woman tried to get up and drown herself once again, she'd wake up before she ever had the chance.

  A few hours later, Marsh's eyes popped open and she felt as vulnerable as she'd ever had in the past few days. An engine. A low rumbling vehicle engine. Even through the fizziness she could hear it. She could feel its vibration moving through her. The hairs on her arms stood up. Someone's here, she thought. She felt as much fear about encountering another soul out in the woods as she did coming across another one of those mutant bears.

  Lindsay was still with her. Sully laid not too far off as well, though he'd perked his head up at the noise. Still, on that patch of grass they were completely out in the open next to the Ryback. Exposed. Marsh couldn't be sure, but she thought she'd heard what sounded like a male voice. Maybe a couple of them. The engine's noise changed, what sounded like revving or high revolutions before had lowered into more of an idle. They've stopped, Marsh figured. Not too far from here. Found the ATV, I bet. Please don't move, she tried to say telepathically to the dog. He'd give us away in a heartbeat. What to do? What to do?

  “Stay, Sully,” Marsh said in a low voice. “Stay, boy. Okay?”

  What are you going to do with her though? Marsh looked at Lindsay and knew that if she left her, she could very well get up again and walk into the river, never to be seen again. Maybe that'd be the most merciful thing, given all that's happened. Marsh could scarcely believe the thought occurred to her as soon as it flashed into her mind. How could you? She scolded herself. Never. Don't even think such a thing.

  So, what to do?

  She had to check out what was happening on the road, and she felt the urgent need to get hidden. But, she knew she couldn't trust that Lindsay would stay put.

  “I'm sorry, Lindsay,” Marsh mumbled. “I've got to do this. Just for now.”

  Using every ounce of strength she could muster. Marsh flexed her right arm and leaned back and dragged Lindsay from the patch of grass, back into the trees away from the river but towards the road. From there she pulled her into an area where the brush wasn't overly thick, but was definitely thicker than anywhere else in the immediate area. Once there, it was then she realized she had heard two male voices. And she could just make out through the trees what looked to be a green colored jeep. Before she could investigate further though, she had to make sure Lindsay wouldn't run off. Luckily, the woman was still passed out. She took advantage of the situation and she pulled Lindsay's pants down enough that she'd had enough pant leg to tie her legs together in a tight knot that she figured in the woman's delusional state she wouldn't be able to undo. Maybe her arms too? She thought. Then she went ahead and tied Lindsay's arms behind her. I've basically just hog-tied you, Marsh said to herself. Sorry about that, had to be done. Please stay quiet.

  Then she turned behind her to figure out where Sully might've gone. No sign of him. The jeep remained parked in the center of the road, Marsh could tell that much through the thick cover of trees. Two male occupants, she said to herself. What do they want? She stepped softly across the forest floor, moving in for a closer look. That's when she saw both men more clearly, both dressed in Army paraphernalia and carrying assault rifles. A moment of sheer panic gripped her, and she slowly drew her service weapon from its holster.

  37

  Marsh clutched the pistol hard enough that her knuckles went white. She clambered through tiny, low branches that pulled at her right sleeve and with every step she felt the dull ache of her broken left arm penetrating through her wrist to the elbow and on up into her shoulder. The deputy crouched as she sneaked closer to the road. The men's voices became more clearer and she could see the jeep was painted in green camouflage and featured black stenciled lettering on the back just above the license plate that she couldn't quite read. Army for sure, she told herself.

  Once she'd moved within thirty yards of them, she took a knee while partially shielded by two thin spruce trunks. She watched the men standing next to the idling jeep. Both were dressed in Army green cargos, wearing tactical belts and Army green T-shirts mostly covered by Kevlar vests. Great, Marsh thought. Just what we need.

  They appeared to be discussing something with some amount of energy and she couldn't be certain, but thought they might have been disagreeing on whatever it was they were out there for. Could be us, she surmised. It could be they'd been assigned to pick up the other two she and the others had encountered in the ravine. I wonder if they have any idea that those two soldiers are dead? No, how would they know? If anything they'd have tried to contact them and when they didn't receive word they would've sent these two out here. Or maybe it's just further clean up. Back up for the other two, to cleanse the canyon of anyone deemed expendable. But why would anyone be considered a target for such a thing? Why were those soldiers trying to take us out in the first place? The questions swam around in her head while she observed the two men waving their arms while they spoke. It would be great to get hold of that jeep. Commandeer it, get the hell back to town. Then she thought of the soldiers they'd killed and how she wished those bears hadn't happened upon the scene when they'd found their bodies. Maybe she could've extracted enough information from their corpses to figure out why they'd shot at them in the first place. Maybe she could've found their two-way radios that they'd assuredly had and used them to communicate, get a rescue team out there, something...anything.

  All of a bunch of maybes, Marsh thought. A lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda. I was an idiot for ever agreeing to come out here. No. She stopped herself. That's hindsight talking.

  Her full-blown internal turmoil was cut short when Sully showed himself on the opposite side of the road. He appeared happy, panting, in a playful mood as his head stuck out through tall green grass at the base of an uncustomarily fat spruce tree. The dog was looking right at her, and to Marsh's horror had that expression she recognized in her own dog, Reese, that look on his face right at the point that he was about to bark. His upper lip curled slightly and his eye contact grew more intense. Marsh tried to wave him off, gun in hand. Do. Not. Bark. But, that only caused him to tilt his head slightly as he struggled to understand what it was this silly human was trying to communicate to him.

  No, Marsh said, as though willing the dog to remain silent. Don't you do it.

  Too late.

  Sully exposed his teeth and let out a healthy woof. Barking again and again. Each one louder than the last. The dog's noises caused the two men to turn away from each other and they watched as this dog, clearly someone's pet as his wearing a collar indicated, then bounced joyfully across the road over to someone or something that had caused him to pause there intensely sniffing and wagging his tail. Marsh tried to whisper yell at Sully to get away, but her attempts to keep silent in doing so failed as one of the men heard her as he walked from the rear of the jeep in her direction. He was no more than twenty-five yards out when he shouted to her.

  “Come out of there! I see you!”

  “Put your gun down,” Marsh said. “Then we'll talk.”

  The man kept intensely focused on the area where Marsh's voice had come from, though he still couldn't quite see her. Sully kept standing there in the man's full view sniffing at her leg. “Listen,” the man said, while his partner slowly walked over to join him, “we don't want to hurt you, okay? Why don't you come out and we can talk.” The man held up a fist to indicate to his partner to stop advancing.

  “Is that what your friends were out here to do?” Marsh said. “To talk?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about, or who you're referring to.”

  “Well, you should know, they're dead.”

  The comment gave the man pause and he raised his assault rifle in a manner in which Marsh realize
d he was more than ready to engage. He'd decided to change tactic conversationally as well. “I'm sorry to hear that,” he said. “What happened?”

  “I killed them is what happened.”

  The man who'd been speaking glanced at his partner who gave him a nod.

  “Put your guns down, now!” Marsh yelled.

  The front man squeezed the trigger and a burst of rounds nailed the tree directly in front of Marsh showering sap and splinters onto her face. As soon as he did it, his partner swung left in a flanking maneuver.

  Her training took over and the deputy calmly plugged two rounds center mass on the man who'd fired the shots at her. His Kevlar absorbed the hits, but they still stung a bit and he cursed the way someone might if they'd hit their thumb with a hammer. Then Marsh swung right and locked eyes with the other soldier just as he'd locked eyes on her. Sully for his part had jolted at the first sound of gunfire and he was well away off in the woods somewhere, hiding.

  “Put it down!” Marsh hollered at the soldier. “Do it now! I swear to God I will drill you! Both of you!” Marsh glanced left for a split second to check the other man's positioning. “Either of you move and I'll end you!”

  The man in front of her didn't seem to believe her, he took another step and Marsh planted a bullet in his femur. He fell to the ground in agony. Blood flowing from his leg in a constant river. He raised his weapon to fire back and Marsh fired twice into his vest and then again directly to his head. He fell back, dead.

  “What the hell did you just do, lady?”

  “What I had to. Now put it down!”

  “I don't think so. This won't go unanswered.”

  Marsh shook her head and kept her pistol trained on the man, ready to take a shot outside of his Kevlar if it came to that. “Nothing has to be answered right now. You get that right?” She said. “Now, put your gun down and we can talk about this. With or without your boss.”

  “You bitch,” the man said and he spit on the ground. “You're gonna die for this.” He ducked right and pulled the trigger. The shots ricocheted off another tree.

  Marsh predicted the move. She figured he'd try to peel off to the right, opposite from where his buddy had gone. As soon as he did she fired three times. The first bullet missed, but bullets two and three wound up tightly together threw the man's cheek. His face was mangled, but he was alive. He fired again while sitting on his backside near the center of the road. Marsh missed with her follow-up, but then nailed him in the forehead with her next. The man collapsed backward, dead. His rifle fell from his limp arms.

  “You stupid, stupid sons-a-bitches!” She screamed aloud. Why did you make me do that? Was the first thought that went through her head. It didn't have to be like this.

  She holstered her weapon and walked out from her hiding place. The deputy grabbed both assault rifles and placed them in the jeep. As upset as she was, and with the adrenaline high still pumping through her, she realized her good fortune in that the jeep was still running and the fuel tank was more than half-full. That'll be plenty to get back to Branson. Then she eyed one of the two-way radios sitting on the backseat. Don't do it, she thought. They'll only send more out to deal with you. Which led her to question what she might be running back to in town. What the hell was this? Forget seek and destroy these damned giant grizzlies, it appeared some rogue element of the military was out to seek and destroy whomever might've been in the canyon.

  Marsh scanned the area that surrounded the road. She searched the woods for a sign of any other person who might be in the area. She knew it might've been some form of paranoia born from everything she'd gone through, but she couldn't help but feel eyes upon her, even if there was a strong chance there was no one around. We need to move, she told herself. Get Lindsay. Find Sully. That damned dog. She couldn't help but feel some of what had just occurred was his fault. Go easy. He's just a dog.

  The deputy found Lindsay in the same spot she'd left her. She was still passed out and hadn't moved at all. Marsh untied her and began to drag her through the woods towards the road. Doing it with one arm proved a near impossible task. The damn jeep's gonna run outta gas by the time you get her there. After forty minutes of struggling to drag the woman over rocks and tree stumps and ruts in the ground, she came to. Her face was still clammy and gray.

  “What are you? What are you? Hold on,” Lindsay said. And she spoke in such a way that Deputy Marsh thought for a moment perhaps the woman had regained coherence. “He always does that. He's always talking like it's a time at the beach, you know? But it never is.”

  Nope, Marsh thought. She's still out of it.

  “Lindsay,” she said to her, “Lindsay, I need you to help me.”

  Lindsay laughed. “He's always like that.”

  “Lindsay, you gotta help me okay. Get on your feet. Let's walk.”

  As incoherent as the woman was, she did stand as though by instinct when Marsh made the effort to lift her. From there it was a simple matter of getting her to continue stepping forward until they finally reached the jeep. Marsh pressed down on Lindsay's shoulder with her right hand and she slid down into the passenger seat. Marsh belted her in and then turned back to the forest.

  “Sully!” She called. “Sully, come here boy! Come on, buddy! Here Sully!”

  Mason wasn't wrong about the dog, she thought. He'll follow you to the ends of the Earth. The dog came running from fifty yards away. She could see as he got closer that his underbelly was wet. As annoyed as she'd been with him, seeing him run up so playfully and affectionately soothed her heart a little. “Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”

  The dog hopped up into the jeep in a way that indicated he was used to doing so. Marsh walked around to the driver's side and she adjusted the seat as soon as she sat. When she adjusted the mirror it sank in that she was behind the wheel of a vehicle and the excitement of that really hit home. We're actually getting out of here, she thought. And, I don't care what's in this road up ahead. I'm not stopping for anything. Cue the sound of raging thunder that sounded like a bombing raid off to her right. Then a hulking grizzly rampaged into view, knocking trees aside like bowling pins.

  “Oh, you've got to be kidding me!”

  Marsh stomped on the gas and the jeep kicked up a pile of dirt and grass as she sped off towards town.

  38

  “Unbelievable,” Marsh said out loud. “Just unbelievable.”

  Lindsay kept mumbling to herself in the passenger seat while Sully whimpered as he laid down in the back.

  The deputy kept her focus on the mirror that had been completely filled with the specter of a titanic beast hell-bent on catching the jeep.

  Probably that same stupid bear from before, Marsh thought. It just refuses to give up just like it refuses to die. Twice she had bottomed out the vehicle on the rough road's more serious bumpy patches. She didn't care. Sure, she knew it might've been more practical to back off the gas a little in hopes of not killing the thing altogether, but this was a race she was determined to win. I don't really care what this thing looks like after the fact, she figured. I'll total this thing if I have to in order to get back to town. She didn't have the pedal right to the floor either. She was saving a little bit of extra speed for flatter areas of road she was hoping were still to come. If I push this thing to over a hundred, she thought, I might actually crash it altogether. Still, she was managing to do 85 and the giant bear didn't appear to be gaining any ground.

  “That's right!” Marsh shouted at the creature. “You can't catch us now, can you?”

  Her cockiness didn't last long and under normal circumstances she never allowed herself moments like that out of her cynical fear that it would lead to some form of comeuppance. And it came in the form of an indicator light on her dash that blinked orange after a particularly hard impact from a sharp boulder half-exposed between the road's two wheel ruts.

  “What the hell is that?” She cursed at the display. “Please don't tell me.”

  Then the engine
made a sickening noise as though it was gearing down. Marsh could feel the butterflies dance in her stomach. The jeep kept up its speed for a few seconds after, but then no matter how hard she pressed the gas the vehicle simply refused to respond. She shifted it into 'neutral' then back again into 'drive' and when she pushed her foot down it sped up just to twenty miles an hour, but no faster.

  “No, no, no, no!” She hollered. “Come on!”

  She pumped her leg up and down and hit the gas pedal harder and harder. The jeep was dying. This is it, she thought, and she threw her hands up in anticipation of being slammed by the massive grizzly bear thundering towards her.

  Then an orange glow brightened the passenger side mirror. A stream of flames so bright it nearly blinded her as she turned and looked back at the road. Then another stream. Two soldiers held flamethrowers and sprayed fire across the road and up onto the spruce trees in front of them as the bear ran up. Once he'd gotten near the burning trees he reared up and stopped, inspecting the scene standing on his hind legs.

  What the hell is this? Marsh thought, barely believing what she was seeing. The soldiers kept the steady stream of flames going for as long as the bear stood there. The forest caught fire quite easily and the trees burned on either side of the road in the biggest bonfire Deputy Marsh had ever seen, save for maybe the forest fire she'd encountered the last time she'd been in the canyon.

  The enormous grizzly bear wanted no part of it. The wounded animal turned tail and ran in the opposite direction, and just to be sure the soldiers continued lighting trees on fire for a good thirty seconds after.