by David Boyle
Charlie came out of his seat. “Mark is dead!? I pin my fuckin’ paddle… and Mark ends up—”
“That’s his opinion, Bull. And that’s all it is, okay? Hayden doesn’t believe it, and neither do I.” Tony took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “You were wondering where everybody is? They’re downriver, all except Wheajo. Hayden and Ron left before dawn to see if they could find Mark.”
Charlie had his head in his hands. “He asked if I was ready, and maybe… maybe I did say yes. And I felt the boat start to move. And I’m yankin’… and nothin’ man, I mean nothin’… the paddle’s still stuck. And the canoe starts to drifting—”
“Stop it Charlie. This is not your fault!” Tony’s voice trailed off. “It’s not yours, or Mark’s. It’s not anybody’s…,” he nearly whimpered, glancing about the campsite. “It’s this place, don’t you see? It could have happened to any of us. It just happened to be Mark.” Tony saw the tear trickling down his friend’s cheek. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me. And listen carefully. We’re concerned about you. All of us… and that includes McClure. This is a really bad thing that’s happened, but you’ve got to get a hold of yourself.”
“He is qite right,” said a voice that startled them both.
“Wheajo, you—”
“I have attempted these past days to come to some level of understanding of you as a species, and found that I am unable to do so. You in particular,” he said, focusing on Charlie, “have reacted in an exceptionally illogical manner.”
Charlie was back on his feet. “You sayin’ I’m stupid?” he boomed, towering over the alien. “Who are you to talk anyway? I don’t owe you shit!”
“I point out that your actions yesterday may have resulted—”
“What Wheajo is trying to say,” Tony said, glaring, “is that you needed to be more careful getting out of the canoe yesterday.”
“That is incorrect,” Wheajo said flatly. “Your actions yesterday had the unfortunate effect of eliciting behavior on your friend’s part that may well have jeopardized our survival. Your attempt to retrieve sustenance was but a trivial endeavor, while the dangers clearly were not. The situation you encountered was indeed perilous. It was not, however, sufficient cause for you to react in so irrational a manner as was demonstrated.”
Charlie protested. “But….”
“All our lives are in jeopardy here.” Slit pupils eyed them both. “It is probable that we may all encounter tasks that place us at risk. Perhaps extreme risk. And yet the task will remain.” Wheajo waited for the implication to sink in. “Have I made myself clear?”
Charlie bridled at his tone. “Big talk, Wheajo. But who made you the boss?”
“As concerns the clearly absent position of leadership, I have appointed myself,” he answered matter-of-factly. “You are totally dependent upon my equipment to return to the time from which we came. It is therefore logical that the responsibility for achieving that end be mine.”
Tony had no trouble with his logic. “It’s his ball, so we play by his rules.”
“Precisely,” said Wheajo.
“Uh huh, and no way are you gettin’ outta here alone. You need us just as much as we need you!”
“Which is precisely why I entered this conversation.” The alien walked away, Charlie left to stare at his back.
“He does need us, Bull. All of us. And that includes you.”
Charlie stood blinking. “I… I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.” He clenched his jaw, nodding as if to himself. “Okay, so that part I can go along with. But not the other. Him and McClure can believe what the fuck ever they want. But my money’s on Bennett. You wait and see. He’s alive.”
“I think so too.” Tony did a double take when he noticed the pan. “And I hope you’re hungry,” he said, lifting a charred strip of dinosaur with the fork.
“Sure,” Charlie said. “Crunchy is my favorite.”
*****
The upstream journey met their every expectation. Crossing the river whenever the opposite side held slower water, Hayden and Ron held fast to the shorelines, eddy hopping where possible and all the while searching for the landing they had somehow missed. The birds their constant companions, they had covered better than four miles in the first hour, and were well into their second when a V shot from under the boat, followed an instant later by another.
Not the first, and no doubt not the last, the sudden disturbances had a disquieting effect on Hayden. Wishing he had stayed in back where he belonged, he wiped his brow with a sigh as the latest whatever zoomed away. He noticed a tiny blob drifting towards them. A leaf maybe, or a flower. Whatever it was, his eyes couldn’t leave it alone, and he turned the canoe to intercept it.
“Would you watch what you’re doing?” Ron said, correcting course… Hayden just as quickly turning back again.
“I am watching. I just want to see what that is,” he said, pointing with his paddle, his face brightening as the canoe closed the gap. “It’s a shaving!” Hayden waited, then snatched the curl from the water. “This wasn’t made by an animal.” He looked upriver. “There’s another one. And look there… two more.” Hayden started paddling. “However we managed it, we passed him, Ron.”
“I’ll give you it’s a shaving, but you can’t be sure who cut it. Hell, it could have come all the way from camp.”
“No way. Look… these are from Mark.” There were more shavings coming into view, and now a length of roughly trimmed twig. “Convinced?”
Ron kept paddling. “I’d say yes if I knew what the hell he was carving.”
Hayden shrugged. “An umbrella maybe? Or a back for his seat?” he said, picking up the pace. “We’ll ask when we catch him.”
It was flatwater racing all over again, the flashy and sometimes ornery onlookers a marked departure from the folks lounging along various sections of the Fox during the Memorial Day race. The Fox River Canoe Race nearly always managed a column in the local papers, and if it happened to be a slow news day, a slot on the big time Chicago late night news programs. It was twenty two grueling miles; had hundreds of canoes, many of which were manned by weekend paddlers that didn’t know which end of the paddle to hold; and had seven back-wrenching portages around low-water dams. A race where late starters could count on a head wind that could make twenty two miles feel like fifty.
They’d never tried to win the Memorial Day race, and ran it primarily to enjoy each other’s company and hopefully make it across the finish line with a respectable time. Rivalries were inevitable, and race-hardened teams were seldom broken. Hayden and Mark were a team, as were Ron and Wayne Paxton, a flatwater acquaintance too dumb to know any better. Point was, they were never a team. Even so, it took only minutes to find the best combination of speed and effort. Hayden set the switch points, barking “Hup!” every four to six strokes, paddles switching sides at the mark. A fast and elegant means of avoiding fatigue, switching sides was the masochist’s way of balancing pain.
They drove steadily upstream, heads bowed save for the infrequent glance ahead. The trees, the shorelines, even the animals passed with little cognition. A corner clipped too close brought them within yards of four heavily armored dinosaurs, their speed such that they were already moving away by the time the beasts even noticed.
The shavings gave out within half an hour, an occurrence interpreted as a good sign: whatever task Mark had undertaken was apparently finished. It also signaled caution. Their pace balanced by the need to again search the shorelines, the next miles were covered discussing what the place the shavings came from might look like. Ron was certain the curls wouldn’t have entered the water by accident, which by that reckoning meant the place would likely be obvious.
Ron’s suspicions were borne out within the next two miles. It started as a glimmer of color, but even at a distance it was clearly manmade. They stroked ahead, and well before they understood the significance of the rocks realized they were staring at a loop of surveyor’s tape. Less obv
ious was how they could possibly have missed it.
There were logs jammed along the upstream side of the rocks. “Good call, McClure. This is where he was working alright.” There were shavings scattered in little piles, and here and there the remains of small trees. They grounded the boat, and Hayden jumped out. “Had to be the dinosaurs.”
“What are you mumbling about? What dinosaurs?”
“The splotchy ones. The ones with the sails? They were here when we were,” Hayden said, marching toward the forest. “Either we weren’t looking, or the dinosaurs were blocking our view.”
Ron unbuckled the rifle, nodding after a moment’s reflection. “Bastards… We could have saved ourselves a hell of a lot of work if we’d have paid closer attention. If you’re looking for a way out of the river, hell, this one’s a natural.” Hayden was standing just off in the forest and nodded. “See anything?”
“Yeah, but I don’t understand it. Come on up.”
Hayden was shuffling through a swath of broken ferns and branches.
“Whatcha got?”
“He brought the canoe through here,” Hayden said, pointing. “There’s the drag marks from the keel.”
The forest might as well have been hit by a tornado, with broken vegetation scattered everywhere. Ron followed the furrow to where the boat had obviously been sitting. “Why so far from the river? And why’s the place so fucked over? I don’t get it.”
“Does answer the tape around the tree.” They walked the area, eventually tracing the drag marks back to the river where twigs and trimmed branches lay scattered about the cobbles. “Got the part about the whittling beside the river right, Holmes. Now how about filling in the why?”
“He needed the perfect toothpick?” A splotch of red caught his eye. Ron went to a knee and checked it with a finger. “Blood.” Hayden’s expression asked the obvious. “Could be he nicked himself. Whatever, it’s barely crusted over, so it can’t be too old. An hour maybe. Two at the outside.”
The Discovery was on the water and streaking upriver not many minutes later. “Dumbass is alive,” Hayden said, stroking with renewed vigor. “That’s all I care about.”
“Yeah. Now to make sure he stays that way.”
23
The forest echoed with the murmur of water gurgling around the bow. The ‘Hups!’ had long since gone from infrequent to none, paddles now switching sides when arms screamed for a change. There was no escape from the midday sun, and even the birds had gone silent. Heads bowed to the stifling heat, they paddled simply by force of habit.
Drenched and sticky, Hayden stripped off his shirt. “What happened to the breeze?” he asked, wiping his face, then reaching for the canteen.
“Simple, you stopped paddling. And save some for me.” Hayden finished and flipped Ron the canteen. He unscrewed the cap, took a gulp. “I told you to keep this under your seat. Stuff sucks when it’s hot.”
The river was still dropping, though maybe not as fast as before, the wetted band creeping slowly down the banks. The current was a pain regardless, not a foot gained without the expenditure of effort, and they held to shore to avoid as much of it as possible. Of all the landmarks along the river, the big deadfall was the most prominent, and a solid reminder of the many long miles they’d paddled.
Hayden straightened on his seat. “Take a look at the trees ahead and tell me what you see.”
Ron took a stroke, then another. “I don’t…. Wait a minute.” He craned up. “Is that smoke?”
“Good. You see it too. For a second there I thought it was my eyes.”
“For all the snide comments about Charlie’s boat, he can really paddle that thing.”
“I think Mark does that mostly to hear himself talk.” Hayden studied the upcoming bank. “We’ve been burning the miles pretty good, and I don’t remember ever hearing him, so he’s already been here for a while.”
“Man on a mission,” Ron remarked. “You ready to head over?”
“Sure,” Hayden said, and with a flick of his paddle angled the Discovery toward the reeds lining the far shore. “And I don’t know about you, but my arms are ready for a break.”
The bank where the Rockfinder was tied was a near vertical drop, a terrible landing except for the deadfall in the river and the big oaks shading the shoreline. With roots providing hand holds, the site had apparently proven an irresistible stop, a pale of smoke drifting lazily out over the river.
“You on the bank… come out with your hands up!” Ron yelled when they stroked within thirty yards of the canoe. They closed on the deadfalls. “Bennett! What, you asleep in there?” Mark came skipping through the trees, then craned out and stared upriver. “Behind you, turkey!”
Mark turned with a double take. “Where the hell did you come from?” he asked in bewildered surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re rescuing you, ya dope!” Ron said. “I would’ve thought that was obvious.”
“Yeah well, I guess that makes sense. Except that you’re coming from the wrong direction. How the hell did you do that anyway? Didn’t you see the ribbon?”
“We got what you might call distracted,” Hayden said, searching for a route to shore. “You know… you could have picked a better take out.”
“So sue me,” Mark shrugged. “It’s got a decent eddy, besides which I had to dump my boat. And watch out when you pull in. There’s something just under the surface. And those guys too,” he said, pointing along the bank. “After the rain last night the bark, or whatever that is, is really slick.”
“Like I said. You could have found a better spot.”
“We’ve had worse,” Ron said, studying the bank. “Paddle up a bit. Looks like there’s a way in along the side of that log.”
Hayden eased the boat forward. “You hungry? We should have a Snickers or two left, or some granola.”
“That and thirsty. Which is partially why I stopped. You’ll never guess what I’ve got back by the fire….”
Ron was only half listening, scanning the shoreline and occasionally catching whiffs from the fire. It couldn’t have been that long that he’d been here, and already the guy had a fire going. How he did that always struck him as kind of amazing. Finding the wood and dry tinder had to have taken at least a few minutes, and another couple to get it started.
A movement, a sound. Something. Ron stretched up on his seat.
“…gotta be kidding,” Hayden said, a crunch sounding off near the fire. “This I have to see. Hang lose while we find a way through this and—”
“Shit!” Ron threw down his paddle, the odd patch of darkness seen for what it was. “Bennett, get out of there!” he yelled, reaching for the rifle. “Prentler, turn here and hold the boat!” Mark slipped behind the nearest trunk, and flinched when he spotted the dinosaur. The canoe started turning, Ron focused on the trees while Hayden cleared his field of fire. “What are you waiting for, Bennett? Get down here already!”
The big head turned, a gurgle burbling in the dinosaur’s throat.
Mark leaned out. “Down what? These?” There were plenty of roots, way enough to get tangled in, his search expanding to the logs clogging the eddy where McClure was taking a bead.
The dinosaur lowered its head, jaws agape, and charged.
“Jump, damn it! You’re out of time!”
The dinosaur humped through the trees, a snarl fluttering its throat when Mark darted from behind an oak and leaped feet-first off the bank….
The rifle roared, the kick rocking the boat. A lightning quick click click… Kablam! and the canoe shuddered again, bone spraying like shrapnel from the predator’s forearm. Ron chambered another round, and with two tons of snarling theropod showing no signs of stopping, fired again.
The dinosaur snarled around, the big tail slapping the trees as the wounded predator chased the spurts shooting from the hole in its side. The wash of Mark’s entry sloshed along the hull, Hayden shaking his head, blinking, his paddle out to steady the boat.
Ron glanced at Mark, his finger poised on the trigger. “Get us out of here, Prentler!” The dinosaur snarled circles in the trees, Hayden yet steadfast in holding the Discovery against the log. He yelled again, “Hayden…!” then realized his partner either wasn’t listening, or couldn’t. He looked from the dinosaur to his paddle, then reached with his foot to drag the thing over when the dinosaur, like a clock spinning down, teetered and slumped onto its belly, pink foam oozing from its nostrils. The head wobbled, the dinosaur using its good arm to help push itself onto its feet. The animal wasn’t going down easy.
It stumbled past an opening in the trees, Ron holding on a spot below the arm and watching how the tail flopped side to side, blood spurting periodically as the animal moved slowly through the trees. “You okay?” he asked, tracking the rapidly failing predator. Mark mumbled something and nodded, an arm draped over a log. The legs buckled and the dinosaur crashed onto its side, an arm and a leg jerking spasmodically. A gurgled hiss… and the flailing stopped.
Ron propped the rifle across his lap, then got his paddle and poked Hayden with it. “That way,” he said. “Bennett, can you make it here on your own?”
Mark waved him forward. “I’m good.”
Stroking to start, then poling, Ron and Hayden soon had the Discovery wedged between a pair of weather-grayed trunks extending from the bank. Ron checked his footing, then hustled along the bigger of the two to shore. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, reaching in his pocket and reloading. He looked to the forest, then draped the rifle across his back and scaled the roots and odd timbers to the top of the bank. A moment’s look, and he disappeared into the forest.
Hayden was holding his left ear when Mark hauled himself from the water and flopped panting on the trunk. “How long until it stops?”
“The ringing?” said Mark, verifying that his hunting knife was still in its sheath. “The worst should be gone in an hour or two, but the tinny part can last for days. You’re not bleeding are you?”
