Timberlands: Blood and Prey

by J.J. Mainor

  Chapter 5

  Whether it was the crappy cereal, or Reese’s cooking, something left Kimberly feeling queasy after breakfast. She argued to remain at camp, assuring the guys she would only slow down their search. They needed no further convincing after she entered into graphic detail of how she might have to puke or perform some other unpleasant bodily function.

  Though leaving them as three in number, Gunner felt they could cover more ground splitting up. Both of his friends offered to go with him, but in reality, splitting up was an excuse to get away from them. While grateful for their help, Gunner imagined he would rather be alone if he were the one to find the body.

  Gunner knew these woods to be a mix. Acres of pines and firs edged acres more of dense maple and birch thickets. Pockets of meadows like the one they used for the campsite could be found where the trees had been unable to reclaim their territory.

  While movement was generally free through the wilderness, they tried to follow the hints of trails snaking between the trees. Perhaps they were remnants of lesser, forgotten roads or merely corridors used by the deer, moose, and other animals occupying these woods. Or perhaps they were merely illusions, a pattern existing only because they wanted it to. Even if they imagined it, the trails existed to them.

  Gunner wondered how many of these trails he would have to search. He figured the obvious first choice was the trail heading to that shack or shed, and so he took that path for himself. The dirt road they had parked off of would have been another obvious choice, but with Raymond travelling that to find his logging camp, the old man was already searching that, albeit unwittingly.

  The next choice would have been one of chance. He decided to assign Reese and Zach one trail heading a bit northwest from his own. It was less familiar to all of them, but it would keep them somewhat close should they need to meet up.

  To that end, Gunner had radios for each of them. The battery life was not infinite, so he warned them to keep chatter to a minimum in case the search dragged on for a second or third day. Still, they could alert each other if the search were to come to a quick conclusion.

  Gunner slung a pack of food and water on his back, wished his mates luck, and started down his path. His first priority was to find a downed branch, something still fresh and strong, not yet rotted. He stripped the leaves and offshoots to create himself a walking stick, a tool that would come in handy for poking through the firs and any thick brush piles that could hide a body.

  Previous treks to this shack had taken him and Greg less than an hour, back when they carried themselves at a brisk pace with no cares hanging over them other than lunch. This search could not be rushed. Gunner was prepared to spend several hours overturning this forest.

  He had never told Greg, but he had always looked up to his older brother. It had been Greg’s involvement in soccer that drove Gunner’s interest. He remembered a weekend after his brother entered the sixth grade. It was right after tryouts for the school soccer team. Greg was in the yard setting out some orange cones to mark a goal at which he would take practice kicks.

  Gunner had gone out to see what his brother was up to. Instead of shooing him away as a nuisance, Greg showed him how to kick the ball and let him take some shots at the goal. Those first shots either missed wildly, or fell short. With a lot of patience, Greg eventually helped him to kick it straight.

  As the season went on, Greg took his brother out there every free moment he had, teaching his young apprentice how to play the game. Eventually, Gunner had enough of a grasp for his brother to mark out a full field and stage one-on-one matches. Gunner didn’t realize it at the time, but Greg would hold himself back to make it a fair match up.

  When his own turn came to enter junior high, Gunner didn’t hesitate to join the team himself. For one year, he got to play with his hero. And for that year, Greg did not have to hold back from his brother. They played competitively with each other, and yet that competitiveness strengthened the team and made them formidable in the league.

  When Greg moved on to play in high school, Gunner followed this new stage of his brother’s career. He went to every game, cheering his brother on through every minute.

  Greg in turn, let his brother tag along with the team when they would go out to celebrate their victories, or commiserate in their defeats. Since it was certain Gunner would join when his time came, Greg introduced him to the friends he would eventually make. In fact it was during these tag-a-longs where he met Zach.

  When his time finally came, Gunner got to play with his brother for two years before the older brother graduated. And strangely enough, the graduation party was where Greg and his friends introduced Gunner to camping. The older friends had been to this spot a couple times before. Though Gunner had tried to go with them then, something else always came up and he was never able to.

  But that first trip marked his introduction to Reese. Gunner already knew of the guy as one of the football players. Though he wasn’t much of a fan, it was hard not to know who the players were. And Reese had always struck him as a jerk with a hint of arrogance. Meeting him in person and talking with him shattered that perception. Gunner understood the loyalty and sincerity that kept him and Zach bound together as friends over the years.

  It was also on that trip where Gunner had his first beer. The way his brother talked it up, he expected it to be the greatest thing he ever tasted. On the contrary, he found it disgusting, spitting it out to everyone’s amusement. The laughing and the ridicule only encouraged him to give it another try, and another, and another. By the end of the night, Gunner was as blitzed as everyone else.

  Though he hadn’t been drinking on this trip, Gunner suddenly had to pee as though he had been. He looked around half expecting someone might be around to see him. Of course that was an absurd thought.

  He stepped off the trail to find a suitable spot. There needed to be enough clearance around. It wouldn’t do to have too many leaves hovering around that might reflect the stream back onto him; or a cluster of ferns to catch the water and redirect it onto his shoe. That would be embarrassing and disgusting. Problem was, he seem to pick the part of the forest with the thickest growth.

  Then he noticed the perfect spot with a break in the vegetation. He headed into it, but stopped short. Things didn’t look right to him. The dead leaves were piled too high in one spot. They might have been covering a rock, but they were too loose. The dead leaves everywhere else in the forest were packed tight to the ground, being nine months had passed since last year’s shedding.

  He knelt down to check it out. Something told him not to get too close, so he used his stick to poke around. It hit upon something solid. He began moving the leaves away. Then the stick snagged as the teeth from a bear trap lurched up, snapping the end off.

  Gunner jumped to his feet, searching around him nervously. That could have been his leg had he not been so aware. And there was no way of knowing how many more hid in the forest. Had the killer set this as a trap for them, or had it been forgotten by a careless poacher? It didn’t matter. The trap was there and he needed to warn his friends.