"I think I see a way down," said Sean. "Over there is a rock fall."
"I'll go with you," said Ben.
The others left an unconscious Frank, after moving him into shade away from the cliff, and scouted the area for signs of Clete, while Ben and Sean worked their way over the tumbled rocks to get to Sophie—a task that had seemed easier from a distance. After a few slips and numerous bruises, the two men made it to the bottom, faced with the gruesome task of dealing with the body of Sophie. She was most definitely dead, her head turned at an unnatural angle.
"Think she slipped and fell?" asked Ben.
"Do you?"
"No. I was just hoping it was something simple like that."
As hard as it was, Sean was attempting to examine Sophie.
"Not much blood for such a long fall," he said. "Almost none. And look at this."
Even with all the death Ben had seen over the years, it was hard for him to look, but he forced himself. They were going to have to carry the body up the slope, so he was eventually going to have to get up close and personal.
"Look at the bruise on the side of her head."
"From the fall?"
"I don't think so," said Sean. "When she fell, she landed on the right side of her head." He grimaced as he lifted her head slightly off the ground. "Although you'd think there'd be a lot of blood…"
"Unless she was already dead?"
"Yeah. Dead bodies don't bleed. The bruise on her left temple is ugly and it's pretty fresh. But I think it happened before the fall."
"So she was dead and Clete threw her over?"
"That would be my assumption. Of course, we haven't located Clete yet."
They started the gruesome task of carrying Sophie's body up the dangerous slope. They made it up with only a few more bruises, then set Sophie down on one half of a blanket Aaron had laid out. They draped the other half of the blanket over Sophie. Just in time, as Frank was now sitting up and looking over at them.
"I want to see her," he said in a soft voice.
"Do you think that's a good idea?" asked Ben.
"I want to see her."
He stood up and shakily made his way over to the blankets. He sat down next to the body and lifted up a corner of the blanket. The tears came again in a rush and he began sobbing again, this time quietly. The other men gave him his space. Nick motioned for Ben to join him up the trail.
"We found Clete's trail," he said. "He continued on in the same direction. I don't know where he's headed—frankly, I doubt he does either. At this point he is probably just wanting to get as far away as possible."
"We'll leave as soon as we bury Sophie," said Ben.
"Frank won't be happy with burying Sophie way out in the middle of nowhere," said Nick.
He wasn't. When he had regained his composure, Ben suggested that they find a spot to bury Sophie near there.
"No. I'm taking her back to Yellowstone. I'm taking her home."
"Frank, I don't want to get too graphic here," said Aaron, "but you're dealing with a decomposing body. Yellowstone is many days' ride from here, in the heat…" He left the rest unsaid.
"I'm not leaving my daughter out here in the middle of nowhere. She deserves to be home." More tears rolled down his cheeks. "I don't care about Clete anymore. I know he killed my daughter, but I can't do it any longer. I don't have it in me. If you want to go after him, you can. I just want to get my Sophie home. I'm taking her home."
The other men looked at each other. They knew they had to keep going, at least a little bit longer.
"Okay," said Sean. "We won't stop you, but here's what I suggest: stop in Butte City and search the houses and that bar for a plastic tarp. Cover her with it, find some rope, and tie the tarp as tightly as possible. Even that's not going to be enough—you remember what people looked like after the event, right? I'm just being realistic here. Find a shovel and take it with you. You might have to bury her somewhere along the way, but if you do, at least it will be closer to home."
Frank nodded absently and bent down to gently pick up his daughter. The others helped Frank secure Sophie's body on the back of his horse. When he was in the saddle, he looked down at his friends. For a moment he couldn't say anything.
"Thank you," he finally said. "Thank you for understanding my need to go home. You are the best friends a person could have. Hopefully I can repay you someday." He faltered, then turned his horse. "I have to go."
They watched him ride off, a man who survived the greatest catastrophe in human history and the difficult years that followed; a man who raised a daughter under the most difficult of circumstances and saw her take a road that all parents in the history of the world have always feared for their children. And now he was going home a broken man, broken not by the world events, but by a wayward daughter and a misguided young man. The world was cruel.
"How long do we follow him?" asked Ben.
"I say we give it a day," said Sean. "He's stupid and he has no wilderness skills. He'll die."
"And if we do catch him?" asked Jason.
Quiet.
"I guess we deal with it when the time comes," Aaron finally said.
*****
As it turned out, they didn't need the whole day. A couple of hours later they rounded a bend and stopped suddenly. Nick jumped off his horse and threw up in the brush by the side of the trail. Jason got off his horse and joined his partner, rubbing Nick's back. Ben, Aaron, and Sean pulled out their rifles and got off their horses, looking to the rocks and hills around them. Finally determining that they were alone, they lowered their guns and focused on the scene before them.
"Holy shit," said Aaron.
Nick and Jason joined them, Nick wiping his mouth.
"Sorry," he said. "With everything we've witnessed over the years, I thought I was immune to scenes like this."
They had found Clete, or what was left of him. He was lying on his back in the middle of the trail. He was completely naked, covered by ants and bugs feeding on his blood. His limbs had been cut off and piled next to his body. Most of his organs had been removed. There was very little left of what had once been Clete.
Written in blood on his chest were the words Our land.
"I guess this answers the question of whether or not there is anyone west of Yellowstone," said Ben, his mouth suddenly dry.
"Who would do this?" asked Nick.
"People we don't want to mess with," said Sean. "I say it's time to turn back. No sense in fighting a battle we don't need to fight."
"I guess burying Clete is out of the question," said Jason.
"You want to do it?" asked Aaron.
"Hell, no. He got what he deserved. And frankly, I'm more than a little spooked."
While they talked, Sean examined the body more carefully. Ben stayed on guard, looking into the hills around them. He suddenly saw a flash of light from high up in the rocks. Sun reflecting off a gun barrel? There was movement off to the left. A face was peering over a rock, studying them. It was an older man with long dirty hair. The man's face had the leathery look that reminded Ben of his horse's saddle—a face that had spent many years exposed to the sun. He didn't seem to care that Ben saw him. In fact, Ben wondered if that was the purpose.
"Time to go," he said urgently. "They're out there watching us."
They quickly mounted up and headed back down the trail, looking over their shoulders as they rode. Ben turned back for a moment and raised his hand in the direction of the man he saw, hoping they'd get the message: We're gone and we're not going to bother you.
*****
They rode in silence, each man deep in his own thoughts. None of them had seen anything so chilling in a long time.
"I saw one of them," Ben finally said. "He was older, but had a wild look to him. He's been out here a long time." He described more fully what he'd seen of the man.
"These people, and there were a number of them based on the foot prints—barefoot prints, I might add—almost seemed to enjoy
what they were doing," said Sean. "And based on Clete's expression, he was awake for some of it." He let that sink in before he continued. "We've all seen a lot of different types of people and groups in our travels, but I don't think we've encountered anyone like these people. Based on what we saw of Clete's body and Ben's description of the guy he saw, I think we're dealing with a group that took a whole different direction—a step backward, so to speak. They went primitive. They probably have very little memory of who they might have once been."
"A group to steer clear of, for sure," said Aaron.
"Do you think they pose a threat to Yellowstone?" asked Jason.
"I doubt it," said Sean. "We're far enough away that I doubt they even know our community exists. And by saying 'Our land', they are probably very territorial."
They lapsed back into silence, all looking over their shoulders on a regular basis until they felt they were far enough away.
*****
When they reached Butte City, they encountered yet another blow in a very sad trip. Frank’s horse was tied in front of one of the houses. Frank was nowhere to be seen.
“Did he take our advice and decide to bury Sophie here?” asked Jason.
“Frank?” called out Aaron.
No reply.
Ben's stomach turned. He had a bad feeling.
Behind the house was a grove of trees. Footprints in the dust indicated that Frank had headed in that direction. They approached the trees slowly. It was deadly quiet. Aaron and Sean pulled out their guns and looked around.
When the group reached the trees, they stopped and stared.
"Oh God," said Ben quietly.
Frank was leaning up against a rock with his arm around Sophie. A pistol was lying in the dirt next to Frank, and blood was all over the rock and the ground behind him. He had shot himself. In his lap, speckled with blood, was a piece of paper with the words: I can't do it anymore.
*****
I somehow thought that anyone who had lived this long after the catastrophe of so long ago had learned to accept the world they now lived in. Not everyone had totally embraced it, but I assumed they had accepted it. Maybe the only thing keeping Frank going was the responsibility of being a parent. With Sophie gone, maybe he realized that there was nothing left for him. He was just tired and it was time to end it. How many others were in the same position? Could it be that there were a lot more than I imagined? Had people not embraced the new world as much as I thought they had?
They buried Frank and Sophie together, the way Frank would have wanted it. When they were done, they stood over the grave and said a few words. Frank and Sophie were far from home, but did it really matter? It was just their bodies. Ben hoped that if an afterlife did exist, they had found something better. Their pain was gone now. Telling Brenda that her husband and daughter were dead was going to be the final step in this long and brutal trip.
The burial done, the men got on their horses and began the long journey back home.
Chapter 10
The year Cat turned fourteen she met Simon. Yellowstone had seen very little growth from outside sources for a number of years. The largest influx had been from the ex-Paradise residents a few years before. It was assumed that by this time most people had stopped wandering and had finally settled down in one of the couple dozen communities across the country. The occasional family or lone straggler still showed up from time to time, usually from one of the Midwestern towns, tired of the endless plains and harsh winters, and succumbing to the lure of the mountains.
Simon's family was different. They had made the long trek from an Upstate New York community to Yellowstone because they needed "a change." They never offered up more information than that. However, the board liked them instantly and approved their relocation to Yellowstone. They found a secluded plot of land a couple of miles from Ben and Lila and, as was the tradition, had their house built in a couple of weeks with the help of many neighbors. Being summer, school wasn't in session, so little was seen of Simon.
All Cat knew of Simon, from having met him twice, both times briefly, was that he was her age—a child of the new world—and seemed nice, but shy. He was also scrawny for his age, which was unusual. Most children had developed strong bodies early in life from all of the time spent outdoors. Cat was surprised at the lack of muscles in his upper body. It looked as if he had done very little labor in his life. His parents, on the other hand, looked like they belonged in the world. Simon's father, Mike, was a massive man—6'4" and at least 250 pounds, most of it muscle. Simon's mother, Linnea, a tall attractive woman a few years older than Cat's parents, was also muscular and capable. Both of Simon's parents seemed kind and were working hard to fit into the Yellowstone way of life, but, while friendly, were also overly mindful of their privacy. Cat's parents planned to have them over for a day, but one thing or another always seemed to get in the way of their plans. As a result, Cat still knew little about them.
Not that they were ignored. Nick and Jason in particular—loners themselves—felt a kinship with the new family and spent a lot of time helping them get settled. Cat figured she could wait until school started to get to know Simon.
*****
It was a beautiful summer day, warm but with a breeze that cooled the air considerably. Cat was riding Scooby along a trail she had found the summer before. She assumed it was an old animal trail, but one still used regularly, judging by the scat. It meandered through a forest, across a barren hilltop, and down into a narrow gorge. She loved the gorge for its rock formations and craters. She often wondered if it had been volcanic at some point in the distant past.
Like everyone else, she was well-armed whenever she went out. A .44 caliber lever-action Winchester rode beside her in its scabbard, and a 9 mm revolver hugged her hip. While her parents preferred semi-automatics, Cat liked the simplicity and feel of the revolver.
Despite her almost lifelong skill with guns, she rarely used them. She carried them for protection only. When she hunted, she used her crossbow—now a full-sized model—because she hated the sound of the guns and how they disturbed her connection with nature.
But today wasn't a hunting trip. Today was a thinking trip. She had been having feelings of late that she wasn't used to. Feelings of desire. She had had enough discussions with her mom to understand the feelings from a mental standpoint, but understanding them and actually feeling them were very different. She remembered Sophie and her relationship with Clete just a year earlier. At the time she could only understand it intellectually. Now it had a new meaning.
There were some boys in the community she was attracted to physically. The problem was, there was nothing else about them she wanted anything to do with. Yes, they were friends. One couldn't help but to be friends with practically everyone in a settlement this small, but they all had different outlooks than she did. They didn't feel the same kinship with nature. They lived in nature every day, but somehow had never learned to embrace the deeper parts of their relationship with it.
Many of the girls her age and even younger already had boyfriends, but not Cat. It made her sad to some extent, but at the same time she didn't know where a boyfriend could possibly fit into her life. There was one boy, Zack, who was three years older than Cat and had shown a lot of interest in her. He was nice enough, and certainly handsome—already almost the size of her dad and pretty capable—but just not someone she wanted to spend time with. She would much rather ride out alone, as she was doing today, than to spend time with Zack doing … well, she wasn't exactly sure what.
She skirted a large rock that had been violently pulled from the ground—probably in the earthquake that Nick and Jason had often told her about that had happened in the west about a year before she was born. The east coast earthquake—the third of the massive quakes to hit the country—had occurred when she was just a few months old. Her parents had told her many stories about what they were doing in that earthquake. They had been apart and had seen it in different places and from diff
erent viewpoints.
But both quakes had completely changed the landscape of the country, forming craters and creating mountains where there weren't any before. She had trouble picturing what the country had looked like before. She saw the pictures in books, but it didn't help. That world seemed unreal and ugly. She couldn't imagine anything as beautiful as what she saw every day.
As she rounded the enormous boulder she saw a horse at the base of a cliff—a saddled horse. It was a mixture of light and dark gray, with some white on its nose. She knew many of the horses owned by the Yellowstone people, and this one didn't look familiar. She stopped and surveyed the scene. These were the times she missed Ralph. Her best friend and companion all her life had died earlier that year. He was old and hadn't traveled with her in a couple of years, but she remembered his younger days when the two of them would explore the countryside together. If any danger was close by, Ralph would be the first to notice it and would warn her. She had cried when he died—one of the few times in her life she had cried.
But he wasn't here now, so it was up to her to scope out the potential danger. She pulled out her rifle and laid it across her saddle. Better safe than sorry. She approached the horse slowly, looking in all directions as she went. When she got close, she dismounted and walked up to the horse. It had a cut on its left flank. Nothing serious, but the nature of the cut told her that the horse had fallen recently. She saw scratches on the glass-like rock caused by the horse's hooves. It fell here, on the smooth surface.
The horse was standing near a crevasse—more like a hole than a crevasse, as it only extended twenty feet in any direction. She looked over the edge. Sitting on the floor of the hole, fifteen feet below, was Simon, gingerly holding his left arm to his body. His faced was masked in pain. Sweat was dripping down his face and had soaked his shirt. He looked up to see Cat peering over the side.
Eden's Legacy (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
