Breaking Point jp-13

by C. J. Box

  “Yup.”

  “Thank God.”

  Joe said, “There’s still the ‘getting down’ part.”

  As if to highlight his statement, the wind whirled around them and resumed blowing south and the flames roared toward them, advancing by jumps from tree to tree.

  Within five minutes, the toe of Joe’s boot thumped against the rock he’d been looking for. It had been completely obscured by the juniper bush. Edging toward the abyss, Joe parted the brush until he could locate the two-foot ledge just over the rim. He recalled Stewie standing on the ledge after he’d tripped on the rock.

  Only half the ledge was there-a one-foot-by-two-foot outcropping. The other half had fallen away. That would make it difficult to lower themselves down the face of the wall to where the trail actually began.

  “Oh, man,” Joe said.

  “Hurry, hurry,” McLanahan cried in full panic.

  Joe looked back and saw why. The fire was less than ten feet behind them, and tendrils of it were shooting across the ground toward them, igniting pine needles and tufts of dried grass.

  “Listen to me,” he said, trying to stay calm. Three sets of bloodshot eyes bored into him from masked, soot-blackened faces.

  “There’s a flat rock down here no bigger than the top of a stepladder. You’ll need to use it to lower yourself off the edge to the trail below. Stay tight to the side of the wall, because the trail isn’t any wider than a foot or so. Drop down to that trail and keep your balance. Got that?”

  Nods. Scared-but-frantic nods.

  “I’ll go first,” Joe said. “I’ll try to steady each of you when you lower yourself down. Don’t panic, and don’t start thrashing around or you might take both of us over. Okay?”

  “Just fucking hurry,” McLanahan said through his mask. Joe could tell his teeth were clenched as he said it.

  “How far is the drop to the trail?” Butch asked.

  “Seven feet or so, if I remember,” Joe said. “But it will seem farther when you’re dropping through the air.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Farkus moaned.

  Joe grimaced as he lowered himself on the shelf to grasp the ledge. His legs and back weren’t as flexible as they’d been ten years before. Even if he dropped safely to the trail cut into the canyon wall, he had no idea if stretches of it-like the ledge itself-had dropped away. He tried to not even think of what it would be like for the four of them to be isolated on the trail itself with no way to get down, their only other choice being to try and work their way back to the top and burn to death.

  He turned to face the wall and reached down on either side to grasp the sharp edge of the rock, and backed off until he dropped and was suspended. While he hung in the air, he looked down his shirtfront to confirm the trail was still there below him. It was. Joe said a prayer and let go.

  The soles of his boots hit the surface of the trail with a heavy thump, and his knees screamed from the impact. He didn’t remember that from ten years before. Far below, he heard something smack against the rocks, and he realized the phone had fallen out of his jeans from the jump. He wouldn’t be able to call Marybeth for a while, and he cursed.

  “Hurry!” McLanahan shouted.

  “Okay,” he shouted up. Because of his angle, he couldn’t see the other three above him. “You can come on. The trail is here, and I’m standing on it. Come one at a time so I can help steady you and guide you down when you let go.”

  A few seconds later, Joe recognized Farkus’s Vibram-soled work boots dangling above him. Even though the fire was roaring and snapping on top, Joe could hear Farkus mewling with fear.

  “It’s okay,” Joe said, reaching up until he could grasp the back of Farkus’s belt. “You can let go.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Farkus cried, still hanging.

  “Let go,” Joe shouted.

  Farkus dropped and landed clumsily on the trail, and Joe kept a grip on the belt so the man wouldn’t lose his balance and plunge into the canyon.

  With Farkus now standing and hugging the wall, Joe shinnied carefully around him. He could feel Farkus trembling.

  “Move a few feet down the trail so I have some room to work,” Joe said to him. Then to McLanahan and Butch: “Next!”

  “We’re burning up here,” Butch’s voice croaked.

  “Then hurry,” Joe replied.

  He looked up in time to catch a small rock that bounced off his cheekbone from the shelf above. Then, more quickly than he could react, the entire bulk of Kyle McLanahan flew silently by and vanished into the canyon below.

  Joe had seen just a flash of the ex-sheriff’s face as the man plunged past him feetfirst. McLanahan’s expression wasn’t terror-he simply looked annoyed that he’d lost his footing. It happened so quickly Joe hadn’t even had the chance to reach out for him, although if he had, the weight and momentum of the body would have likely taken him down with it.

  As he processed what he’d just seen, Joe heard a heavy impact far below that sounded like a bag of ice being dropped on a sidewalk.

  “What just happened?” he yelled up at Butch.

  “The stupid son of a bitch missed the shelf when he stepped down,” Butch said. “I tried to grab him, but he was gone.”

  Joe shook his head to clear it, then said, “Okay, now you, Butch.”

  “Here I come.”

  Joe tapped on Butch’s ankles to assure him he was there. The fabric of Butch’s clothing was smoking from heat. Then, like he’d done with Farkus, Joe grasped Butch by the belt and steadied him down to the trail. Joe noted that Butch had left his rifle behind, although he still had a pistol shoved into his waistband.

  Joe again had Farkus mash himself against the cliff wall while he shouldered around behind him.

  “Is he dead?” Farkus asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Too many damned donuts,” Farkus said, shaking his head.

  Hugging the wall, Joe sidestepped down along the narrow trail, calling out hazards such as a break in the trail or loose rocks. Farkus followed, then Butch.

  After the first switchback, the trail widened and they were able to square their shoulders and hike down it slowly. Joe kept one hand on the canyon wall at all times. In case he slipped on loose earth, he wanted to fall into the wall and not plunge into the canyon like McLanahan had.

  As they descended, the roar of the fire muted, but the sky above was still smudged with smoke. Joe could see no glimpse of blue in it. The light filtering through the smoke cast everything with a dirty yellow tint.

  He had never gotten along with McLanahan from the beginning, but Joe felt no sense of relief from what had just happened. He doubted he would ever forget that look of utter annoyance on the ex-sheriff’s face as he flew by.

  Joe measured their progress by studying the opposite wall of the canyon as they descended. They were barely halfway down after twenty minutes of trekking. He could make out the trail on the other side as it switchbacked up the wall, although lengths of it looked overgrown by brush.

  “I’m looking forward to getting into that cold water,” Butch said with a tight mouth. He was obviously in pain because of the intense heat he’d endured waiting on top for Farkus and McLanahan to lower themselves to the trail. Heat blisters rose everywhere his skin had been exposed.

  Joe grunted. He was pleased the trail wasn’t broken, but there was still a long way to go.

  They found McLanahan’s body plastered facedown on an outstretched boulder just below the trail. He was absolutely dead. His arms and legs were splayed out as if he were trying to make a snow angel, but his body was oddly misshapen. There was very little blood, but Joe didn’t doubt that most of his bones had been broken on impact. The ex-sheriff’s head sagged toward the downhill side of the boulder like a water balloon propped on a sloping table.

  “At least it was quick,” Joe said, removing his hat for a moment. Butch did the same.

  “Just for the record,” Butch said, “I didn’t push him, in case anyone was wonderin
g.”

  “I wasn’t,” Joe said.

  “Not that I’d blame you,” Farkus said. “After all, he did come up here to kill you.”

  “If I wanted to kill him, he’d already have been dead,” Butch said.

  “Poor fat idiot,” said Farkus. “He should have stayed back in West Virginia.”

  Joe hated to leave McLanahan’s body splayed out like that. It wouldn’t take long for the local scavengers-rodents, ravens, even the bald eagles that nested in the canyon-to locate and feed on the remains.

  “We’ve got to try and take the body with us,” Joe said.

  “How?” Butch asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Leave it, I say,” Farkus said flatly.

  Instead, Joe and Butch flattened out on the narrow trail and reached down to the body, each grasping an ankle.

  Joe said, “One-two-three. .” and they heaved.

  McLanahan’s body was heavy, though, and severely broken. Joe realized to his horror he was pulling on the leg but it was elongating and narrowing as he did so because the bones were broken inside and the trunk of the body wasn’t lifting. Joe grunted and pulled and so did Butch, but all they managed to do was upset the equilibrium of the body until it slipped over the side of the boulder toward the river below.

  “Let go!” Joe shouted, so they wouldn’t be carried down with it.

  The body thumped against another rock outcropping on the way down, and cartwheeled into the river with a booming splash.

  Joe gathered himself up. He was winded and couldn’t shake the sensation he’d had when the leg stretched.

  “That probably wasn’t my best idea,” he said.

  Butch simply nodded in agreement.

  “Oh, no,” Butch said in a whisper a few minutes after they’d dropped McLanahan’s body. Joe turned to him to find out the source of his concern.

  Butch stood rigid on the trail, looking straight up.

  Joe followed his gaze.

  Twists of orange flame-fire whirls-could be seen darting over the rim of the canyon where the trailhead began. Like snake’s tongues, they shot out into the opening and snapped back.

  “The wind must really be whipping up there,” Joe said.

  As he spoke, flaming embers crossed the slice of sky above them from the south rim to the north. A moment later, the brush on the northern rim ignited with a flash.

  “It jumped the canyon,” Joe said.

  “How are we gonna get out of here?” Farkus wondered aloud.

  33

  The core of his body was so hot from the fire that when he lowered himself to his chest in the Middle Fork of the Twelve Sleep River, Joe expected the water to sizzle and steam to rise, but it didn’t. Clamping his hat on tight so it wouldn’t float away, he slipped beneath the surface. It was instantly quiet, and the water was clear and cold. Joe opened his eyes to see the multicolored riverbed of smooth potato-sized rocks, and three fat cutthroat trout finning in the current near an undercut bank. The fish just held there with a minimum of effort, something Joe wished he could do.

  He lowered his boots to the riverbed and stood up. When he broke the surface the sounds came back: the well-muscled flow of the river, the roar of the fire hundreds of feet above. Joe let the cool water chill and soothe him.

  “Oh, God,” Butch said after resurfacing, “it feels so good.”

  Joe looked over to see Butch standing with his eyes closed and a smile of sweet relief on his face. He imagined how wonderful the cold water must feel on the open blisters and burned skin.

  Farkus entered slowly, tentatively, cautious step by cautious step, until he was in to his knees.

  “Come on in,” Joe said. “It’s great.”

  “I can’t swim.”

  “It isn’t deep enough to drown. We’re both standing.”

  Farkus winced. “Any water is deep enough to drown.” With that, he stepped forward, slipped on a river rock, and flailed his arms and went under. He came up sputtering and cursing several feet downstream.

  The three of them stood in the river without speaking after that, each with his own thoughts. Joe let his body cool until he had goose bumps on his flesh. He looked straight up at the narrow opening of the canyon as if at another world. It was hell up there.

  Although it was mid-morning, the sky was dark and mottled. Tongues of flame slashed out from both sides of the canyon. Despite how far away they were from the top, ash fell softly around them to be carried downstream.

  Finally, Farkus said, “How long do we stay here before we climb out?”

  “We’re not climbing out,” Joe said. “That fire will be burning all around us for a long time.”

  “Then what do we do?” he said, a high note of panic in his voice. “Do we build a tepee and stay down here?”

  “We could borrow those poles up there,” Butch said as a joke, but Farkus didn’t smile. Joe noted that Butch’s mood had improved markedly since they’d found the water.

  Joe said, “The only thing we can do is go down the river.”

  “Have you ever been down it?” Farkus asked.

  Joe shook his head. The Twelve Sleep Wilderness Area had been so designated because the canyon and the river were nearly impenetrable. There were no roads in and very few trails. It was wild and steep and ancient and not navigable except by adventurers in kayaks in the early runoff season.

  “I’ve always wanted to see it, though,” Joe said.

  “There’s something wrong with you,” Farkus replied.

  Joe grinned. Marybeth had often said the same thing.

  With Farkus and Butch clinging to a dry pileup of debris, Joe scouted downriver.

  There wasn’t enough water in the river to swim freely, and the canyon walls were so sheer they couldn’t walk more than a few feet on the dry bank. Going downstream was their only option, but there didn’t seem to be an easy or practical way to do it. Because of the pitch of the riverbed, Joe assumed the river conditions changed around every bend. There would be long, deep pools leading to furious rapids to stretches where it looked like a boulder field that just happened to have a river going through it.

  He stood knee-deep in an eddy with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

  When he returned to the others and told them what he could see downriver, he stopped in mid-sentence.

  “What?” Farkus said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Joe said, studying the debris pileup. For years, trees that had been dislodged upriver had been washed down during flood years and runoff months. The pile they were on was dense with interlocked driftwood that had been washed smooth and was pale white in color. It looked like some kind of boneyard. But simply because the pile was wood, Joe knew, didn’t mean it would float. Most of the lengths, he guessed, were fatally waterlogged.

  Butch seemed to read his mind and swiveled where he sat. He pointed at a broken tree trunk near the top of the pile that was eighteen inches in circumference and eight or nine feet long. It was high enough on the pile, Joe thought, that it might be a recent addition and wouldn’t be heavy with water. It looked stout enough to hold them all, and there were enough nubs on it where branches had once been that could serve as handgrips.

  “That just might be our boat,” Joe said.

  It took nearly a half-hour to free the log from the pile because it was so entangled in the debris, but they finally were able to free it and roll it down the river. The log bobbed in the water and didn’t submerge, and Butch held it in place while Joe and Farkus reached around it and found places to hang on.

  The surface of the log was smooth and slick, the bark blasted off by scouring water, but it was dry and buoyant. On the count of three, they lifted their feet off the riverbed and pushed it out into the deepest part of the river.

  It floated.

  “This might just work if we can keep it pointed downriver,” Joe said. “If we let the back end swing around, we might get hung up on rocks or more debris. That would be
bad.”

  They found their grips and balance on the log-Joe was on the left side of the log with his right arm draped over the top, Butch was on the right a few feet behind, and Farkus switched between the left and right side around the stump of the log depending on which way it drifted.

  “Are you guys about ready?” Joe asked.

  Before either could answer, there was a large explosion on the surface of the water between the log and the bank, and the splash slapped across their faces.

  Joe’s first thought was that rocks were being dislodged from the canyon walls and dropping down into the river. But when he squeezed the water out of his eyes, he looked up to see the silhouette of a large mule deer, the antlers in velvet, dropping through the sky right toward them. It was trailing a stream of smoke like a shot-up fighter plane about to crash.

  “Duck-it’s coming right at us. .” he shouted, before letting go of the log and submerging.

  A herd of deer had been trapped, he guessed. They’d retreated as far as they could to the rim of the canyon, but there was no way to outflank the fire. They’d bunched on the rim as the flames burnt their hides until they actually tried in vain to jump the canyon.

  The buck deer hit the log with a concussive impact that boomed through the water. Joe looked up to see thrashing arms, legs, and hooves in a cloud of white bubbles and swirls of blood. The end of the log itself was driven down in front of his vision by the weight of the buck-before rolling out from beneath it and righting itself.

  When he came to the surface, he looked into the frightened eyes of Butch Roberson, who was standing a couple of feet away. Their boat-log was floating slowly downriver, just out of reach.

  And there was no sign of Dave Farkus.

  “You get the log,” Joe said to Butch. “I’ll look for Farkus.”

  Joe took a deep breath and again dropped beneath the surface.

  He could see two still bodies a few feet downstream, tumbling in lazy slow motion along the river rocks. One was the buck-its back broken, ribbons of blood streaming out from its snout, its hide horribly burned-and the other was Farkus.