Bones ik-7

by Jan Burke

  The rain made it harder to hear Parrish, but from the sounds of pans clattering, I guessed that he was emptying the backpacks.

  He could take what he wants, I thought. He could destroy the rest and leave me here in the woods, in the mountains to die with this dog.

  Stop it.

  My muscles were cramping, more from tension than the strain of staying still, and I was cold.

  Too bad. It could be worse. These are signs of life, after all. You could have been lifting that body from that grave.

  Knife in one hand, dog in the other.

  Bingle’s head came up. He was clearly listening to something. He had stopped trembling. I heard the sound of someone moving through the woods. Toward me.

  “Quieto,” I whispered again to Bingle. He looked into my face, then lowered his head. He was still listening, though, ears flicking. I was praying.

  The footsteps paused somewhere in front of me. Bingle tensed.

  Don’t growl, Bingle, please don’t growl.

  The footsteps moved on.

  Eventually I could see him; he was moving toward the ridge. He was carrying a backpack — and Duke’s rifle. He was hiking at a fast pace, not much less than a run. There was a little more distance between us now, and I was still hidden by the trees, so I moved to a more comfortable position. Bingle wanted to go out into the meadow; I did, too — harboring some slim-to-none hope that someone else might have survived, worried that someone might need my help. But we would easily be seen by Parrish if he turned back to survey his handiwork, and I was certain he would do so.

  He didn’t disappoint me. I lost sight of him for a time, then caught a glimpse of him raising his fists in victory again, at the top of the ridge. Despite my heartfelt wishes, no lightning struck him.

  Soon he moved over the ridge and out of sight.

  Bingle and I set out together, hurrying through the rain toward the grave. Nothing but carnage awaited us there. The grave itself was now a larger, deeper, blackened hole. Bingle did no more than to peer nervously into it, then shied away. What sort of explosive device Parrish had planted there, I had no idea, except that lifting the weight of the body was apparently all that was needed to trigger it.

  A quick look around the site confirmed what I had already suspected. The others were dead; there wasn’t much to find of those who had been bending over the grave. Bingle was whining now, anxiously moving from fragment to fragment. Later, perhaps, some forensic anthropologist would come to the scene, would study these fragments and be able to tell what had once been whom. I was only sure of one, a boot with the remnants of a foot in it, because Bingle began whining more loudly when he found it, then lay down next to it, head on paws, and wouldn’t leave.

  I didn’t argue with him; I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to stand there. Some part of my mind had shut down — I knew what I was seeing, but at the same time refused to know it. I dropped his leash and kept walking, careful where I stepped, but still feeling the soles of my boots grow slippery. I moved mechanically, waiting to see something that could be comprehended.

  A short distance away, I almost found it. I came across the bodies of Manton and Merrick, who had not been killed by the blast. Parrish had fired several bullets into each of their faces.

  I must have made a sound when I saw them, because Bingle came over to me. With horror, I realized that he was carrying David’s boot.

  “¡Déjala!” I said sharply. “Leave it!”

  He looked up at me rebelliously and held on.

  “¡Déjala!” I repeated.

  Gently, he set it down, but hovered over it.

  “Bien, muy bien.”

  He watched me warily, as if I might want to take it from him. When he seemed ready to pick it up again, I said, “¿Dónde está Ben, Bingle?”

  He looked up at me, cocking his head to one side.

  “Where’s Ben? Come on, show me. ¿Dónde está Ben, Bingle?”

  The question wasn’t as easy to answer as it might seem. I wasn’t sure where Ben had fallen. The grasses and flowers of the meadow were tall enough to hide his body.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but it would still make it hard for Bingle to pick up any scent in the air. It didn’t deter him; he came with me when I started to weave a path between where Merrick and Manton lay and the place where Ben had run out of the forest.

  We had only covered a few yards when Bingle took off, then ran back to me, barking.

  “Bien, bien — cállate, Bingle,” I said, afraid that Parrish might hear him. “¿Dónde está Ben?” I asked again, and he took off once more — stopping every few feet this time, to look back at me.

  I had no doubt that I was being asked to hurry up.

  I praised him, even as I dreaded taking a closer look at another body.

  Ben Sheridan’s motionless form lay faceup near a large rock. His face was covered in blood. His left pant leg was also soaked in blood.

  Bingle started licking him. There was no response.

  Suddenly something David had said about Bingle came back to me. Bingle won’t lick a dead body.

  I knelt next to Ben, placed my fingers on his neck and felt for his pulse.

  “Bingle,” I said, struggling not to weep. “¡Qué inteligente eres!”

  Ben Sheridan was alive.

  I was determined he would stay that way, come hell or high water.

  We got both.

  18

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 18

  Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

  First things first. It’s a bitch when you can’t just call 911. When simply being conscious makes you the closest thing to a doctor in the house, rule number one is the toughest rule of all: don’t panic.

  Two problems made it hard not to panic. The first was that it looked as if the only thing between “Ben Sheridan” and “dead” were the words “not yet.” The second was that Parrish could come back over that ridge at any moment, and if I hadn’t managed to get Ben Sheridan out of the middle of the meadow by then, I was certain we would become two more ducks in his shooting gallery.

  So I forgot about the smell of death all around me, forgot about the fact that I had just seen seven good men slaughtered mercilessly, forgot about the rain — and forced myself to concentrate on first things first.

  First aid lessons came back to me.

  I leaned my cheek close to his mouth. I felt his breath. One relief after another. He was breathing, he had a pulse.

  I called his name several times. He didn’t respond. Bingle barked at him. He moaned — softly, weakly. I waited. Nothing. I commanded Bingle to sit and stay. The dog obeyed. Ben stirred, almost as if he thought the command was for him. This brought to mind something a first aid instructor had once said to me — that consciousness wasn’t an ON/OFF switch. An unconscious person may respond to pain, or to commands. So I gave it another try.

  “Ben, open your eyes!”

  Nothing.

  Get on with it, I told myself. Check for bleeding.

  The wound on his head had clotted; it didn’t seem to be a deep cut, but there was a good-sized knot beneath it. The other obvious wound was the one on his leg.

  I suddenly remembered a time when I had watched Pete, my husband’s partner, work frantically to stop a victim’s head from bleeding — only to later realize that her lungs had been filling with blood — a bullet had made a much smaller wound through her back.

  I checked Ben as best I could for less apparent injuries. I wasn’t able to discover any, but I did find a pair of unused latex gloves in one of his shirt pockets. I put them on, got my knife out again and cut the pant leg away.

  Under other circumstances, the damage to his lower left leg might have horrified me. After all I had seen just a few minutes before, it had no power to shock me. It was a through-and-through bullet wound, a shot that had entered sideways, from the inside front of his leg between his knee and ankle, and exited on the other side — the messier side. It seemed to have
broken at least one of his lower leg bones. The wound had bled profusely — at least, to my inexperienced eye, there seemed to be a lot of blood — but there was very little bleeding from it now.

  The few first aid items I carried in my daypack were not intended for treating shooting victims, but there was enough clean gauze and tape to make a pressure bandage for the leg wound.

  He moaned. I moved nearer his face and called his name again. Say the injured person’s name often — I remembered that this was one of the rules. He opened his eyes, stared up at me.

  “Ben? Can you understand me?”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Ben!”

  He looked up at me. Bingle barked. Ben slowly turned his head toward the dog, groaned, and closed his eyes again. “Raining,” he said thickly, hardly more than a whisper.

  “No,” I said. “It was raining, but it has stopped now.”

  He made no response.

  “Ben! Ben!”

  “Go away.”

  “Ben. Wake up!”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Ben Sheridan, listen to me — I don’t want to get shot just because I’m out here with you. So wake up!”

  Nothing.

  “Bingle needs you, all right? What would David say if he knew you didn’t take care of his dog?”

  “David,” he said miserably, but opened his eyes.

  “Are you hurt anywhere besides your head and leg?”

  He frowned. “Don’t know. Can’t think.” He lifted his head, tried to move. “Dizzy,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “Does your neck or back hurt?”

  “No — my head. My leg — broken, I think.”

  I picked up his right hand. “Squeeze my hand.”

  He did. Weak, but a grasp. I tried the same thing with the left.

  “You passed test number one with flying colors.” I moved to his boots. “Try moving your right foot, Ben.”

  He moved it.

  “Your left.”

  Nothing, but the attempt made him cry out.

  “Can’t,” he whispered. “Can’t.”

  “Don’t worry about that now. We need to get out of this field, then you can sleep if you want to — but not now. Stay awake.”

  “Okay,” he said, then added, “for Bingle.”

  “Suit yourself, asshole. Just stay awake.”

  I saw a small, fleeting smile. I had to admire that — in the amount of pain he must have been in, I don’t know many people who could have managed it.

  “I can’t leave you in this field,” I said. “Parrish may be back.”

  He rolled to his right side, as if he was going to try to move to his feet, and promptly threw up.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “It’s probably because you hit your head,” I said, taking my neckcloth off and wiping his face. I helped him rinse his mouth. “At the very least, you’ve probably got a concussion. And if you’re going to be sick, it’s much better for you to be lying on your side. Dangerous to be lying on your back.”

  I helped him lift his head a little, to offer him water. He seemed thirsty, but soon closed his eyes. “Go away.”

  “Stay awake, Ben.”

  “Go away.”

  “Bingle, remember?”

  “Damned dog,” he said, but opened his eyes again.

  I tried to make him comfortable, to do what I could to keep him from going into shock. But nothing I needed was at hand, and more than anything, I wanted to get us the hell out of that meadow.

  I kept looking back at the ridge. No sign of Parrish. Not yet.

  “Bingle,” I said, “¡Cuídalo!”

  The dog moved closer to Ben.

  “What?” Ben said groggily. “What did you say?”

  “I said it to Bingle. I told him to watch over you. It was an experiment, really, but he seems to know the command.”

  “What?” Ben said again.

  “Stay awake.”

  I hurried to make another search of the area near the grave, concentrating on objects, locking my mind away from thoughts of the dead scattered all around me.

  In my haste, I didn’t move as carefully as I had before, and something made a cracking sound beneath my right foot — a small piece of bone.

  Steady — keep going. Just ignore it. It can’t hurt you.

  I kept moving, but now my fear of Parrish’s return began to reassert itself. It found its way to my knees and ankles — my steps grew clumsy and slow.

  Stop thinking about him! For God’s sake, get a move on! You’ve got to help Ben.

  I found one of the duffel bags that held the anthropologists’ equipment, largely unscathed. The same was true of Bingle’s equipment. I hoisted both bags and brought them closer to Ben. I praised Bingle, and could not help thinking that he seemed happy to have something to do.

  I used the support pieces from the sieves that had been used to sift dirt and a roll of duct tape I found in the bag to splint Ben’s left leg. I also took a few small items that looked as if they might be useful later on, including a small tarp, and put them in my daypack.

  Ben had lost consciousness again, but when I shouted his name, he came around. He wouldn’t talk to me, but when I asked him to help me move him to a half-sitting position, he did.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  He swallowed, nodded slightly.

  I held my water bottle up to his mouth. He managed to drink a little more this time.

  “I’m going to have to do something that is going to hurt like hell, Ben. But we have to get out of the meadow, and in among the trees. From there, I’m probably going to have to move you again, but I promise I won’t do that more than I have to, okay? But I need you to help me as much as you can.”

  He did. I supplied most of the lifting power, but he managed to move to a standing position. We soon found that he was unable to put any weight on his left leg. He leaned heavily on me and tried hopping. He gave a shout of pain and passed out again. I barely managed to lower him to the ground without dropping him.

  Don’t panic, I told myself, but I envisioned Parrish sighting the rifle on my head as I pulled out the tarp. Could he hit me from this distance? I didn’t think so, but I crouched lower in the tall grass.

  Ben came to, and though his wakefulness was helpful while I was putting him on the tarp, knowing what lay ahead, I wished he had stayed unconscious.

  I lifted the corner of the tarp near his head, and began dragging him over the bumpy ground.

  “Bingle,” he called, making a weak gesture with his hand.

  The dog hesitated, looking back toward David’s boot, then followed us.

  I stood, nervously giving up concealment for speed, but it was still slow going. Ben made no protests, but he grimaced in pain. By the time we reached the trees, tears streaked their way through the dirt and bloodstains on his face. I stopped, and he wiped the tears away, embarrassed.

  But my thoughts were elsewhere. Panting with exertion, I looked up at the ridge.

  Where are you, Parrish?

  Had he come back? For all I knew, he could be hiding in the trees ahead, waiting to attack us. I listened, and heard a hundred sounds that might have been made by him. I looked back at the meadow. Not an option.

  Something hit the ground behind me and I jumped away with a yelp. I was moving to shield Ben when he said, “Pinecone. Fell from the tree.”

  “Oh. I thought it might be—”

  “Watch Bingle,” he gritted out, closing his eyes against a fresh wave of pain.

  I studied the dog. He was calmly studying me. I realized what Ben meant, then. Parrish wasn’t nearby. Bingle would have reacted.

  I took Ben as far as I could into the forest, where eventually there were too many obstacles to allow me to continue dragging him. I brought him to his feet again. I moved in front of him, took his arms and pulled them over my shoulders, rolled him up on my back, and half-carried, half-dragged him through the woods. I’m not in bad shape, but carrying him was
awkward and exhausting. The ground was too uneven to make this a smooth trip. Occasionally, despite Ben’s efforts to hide his torment, sharp cries escaped him. Bingle began whining in sympathy.

  When we came to ground with fewer rocks, bushes, and branches on it, I set him down. He had passed out again. I took a few minutes to catch my breath. Then I unfolded the tarp again, placed Ben on it, and pulled him deeper into the trees.

  We reached the stream. I told Bingle to stay — the water was deep enough to make me worry that he wouldn’t be able to swim it if he fell in. I scouted ahead and found a relatively narrow place to cross. There was no way to make it if I dragged Ben after me, though, so I cut the tarp and bundled it around his legs, taping it on to him like a bizarre form of waders, to help keep him dry if I fell. I managed to rouse him long enough to help me get him on my back again. Slowly and carefully, I stepped from flat rock to flat rock. I only lost my balance once, misstepping into chilly, knee-deep water midstream and nearly dumping him in.

  We made it across. I had jostled Ben badly, though, and by the time I laid him down among the trees on the other side, he was unconscious again. This whole endeavor had cost us hours, and I wondered how much blood he’d lost. I moved him onto his side, into a position that would ensure that he could breathe and would not choke on his own vomit, should he get sick again. I cut the tarp-waders off, and was pleased to see that at least one of us had stayed fairly dry.

  Bingle whimpered anxiously, perhaps afraid we were leaving him behind. I went back for him as soon as I could. It took much less time to cross without Ben on my back, and soon I had fitted Bingle in a harness and returned with him. He nimbly made it to the other bank without incident.

  I did some quick scouting and found a place that seemed to be fairly safe, out of view of the meadow and stream. I dragged Ben there.

  My next concern was keeping Ben from going into shock. In part, that would require warmth. I took off my jacket and what layers of warm clothing I thought I could safely spare. Then, remembering my first night in the mountains, said to Bingle, “Duerme con él.” Sleep with him.