This time the silence was longer, and then he heard movement. When Rachel spoke again her voice was clearer, and he could tell she was standing up. “Okay, I’m coming.”
Shit.
“No,” Jake said. “Don’t move.”
He heard the scrabble of feet on rock, the voice now close by. “Who is that? Jake?”
“It’s me,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “Don’t move.”
“You have to help us,” she said. “It has Cameron in a choke hold and I can’t”—she grunted, and the chopping sound came again—“I can’t get him free. He’s not breathing, and Jaimie’s out there somewhere and she sounds hurt—”
“Listen,” Jake said. “Whatever has a hold on Cameron has Jaimie, too. It wants all of us.”
A strained breath, another chop. “If I could just—”
“Rachel.” His voice was not much more than a whisper, but firm. “Move to high ground—now. Trust me.”
“High . . . high ground?”
“The tallest rock you can climb.”
“What about Cameron?”
“I’ll take care of him.”
A pause. “I’ll help.”
“Rachel—”
“I’m not leaving him. His face . . . purple.”
Jake picked his way forward, moving through the stones, many as tall as he was. The ground between them kept changing from hard to soft, sometimes from one step to the next. It was like wading the Hellshair Creek for brook trout, never knowing what the next step would bring—gravel, sand, or simply a crevice between two rocks, all of it hidden by the frothing, swirling water. One misstep and you were stuck in the freezing water, pinched between two boulders or mired in quicksand. He always fished the Hellshair alone, and there was nobody to help free him if he became trapped. Well. They were very big trout.
C’mon Jake, concentrate.
“What?” Rachel said.
He had not realized he’d spoken aloud. He looked up from his careful surveying of his path and saw her outline ahead of him. Her head was steaming from exertion, and she held a rock the size of an ax-head in her right hand. All around her were more man-sized boulders, the jagged peaks like crude teeth encircling her. There was a human shape huddled at her feet, one foot twitching. One of the tallest rocks also had the flattest pitch, ending in a rounded point. There was a small ledge halfway up, and he motioned her toward it, unsure if she could see him. It was the only haven he could see.
“Get up on that rock while I cut him free.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Get up there,” he said. “It’s going to do something when I cut it. It’s going to react, and you need to be out of the way.”
She stared down at Cameron for a second, made as though to toss the rock she held, and instead kept it in her grip. She turned and scrambled up the side of the boulder, coming to a rest with her feet on the small ledge, her arms wrapped around the peak. The sanctuary would be of little help if one of the tendrils—some of which seemed to be hundreds of feet long—decided to reach up and pluck her off of her perch, but it was better than standing on top of them.
Jake stepped, heel-to-toe, over to Cameron. Cameron’s face was dark purple, his teeth bright in the starlight as he fought for breath. Somehow, he still wore his glasses, although the frames were bent and mangled, and one earpiece hung down his cheek. The lenses were intact, however, and behind them his eyes were very wide. The tendrils had him at the throat and the ankles, but nowhere else that Jake could see, the coil around his neck just loose enough so that Cameron could draw in meager breath. This tendril was dented and bruised, but the places where Rachel had struck it seemed to have scabbed over, the gray mold he had noticed before filling in over the damaged tissue. Jake knelt down. Feet or throat first? He thought of Greer as he lay under the burning drill rig, the way the tendrils had crushed him when Jake had tried to take their prize away. They seemed to be growing stronger, and their ability to drag a full-grown man hundreds of yards spoke to their size and power. It would only take one contraction and the powerful tendril would snap Cameron’s neck. The length around his feet was even thicker, leading off into the darkness. It flexed and loosened, as though it were taunting Jake, or waiting for him to make his decision.
“You son of a bitch,” Jake breathed.
The tendril around Cameron’s throat constricted again, harder this time, and Cameron’s eyes bugged out in pain. Jake brought the knife down, severing the tendril wrapped around his neck. It fell away, and Cameron managed one deep inhalation before he was jerked, screaming, out of the rock circle by the tendril around his ankles.
Jake raced after him, shouting at Rachel to stay where she was. Cameron was only a few feet in front of him, turned on his side, his hands reaching out for Jake. His body was sluicing through the mud, slaloming off boulders as he careened through the narrow openings. He started to pull away and Jake leapt for him, his left hand extended. His fingers slipped over Cameron’s chest, grazing over his shoulders and neck, then down one trailing arm as Cameron was pulled out from underneath him—
Cameron’s hand encircled Jake’s wrist. They went skidding along the wet, hard ground together, the pace never slowing despite Jake’s added weight and friction. They hit a low rock and Cameron grunted with pain, and a second later Jake collided with it and felt a searing pain along his ribs. Cameron’s grip held but Jake could already feel it weakening; there was no way he could maintain his hold, and Jake would never catch him again. He couldn’t get close to Cameron’s ankles to cut him free, and there were only a few seconds left before his grip would fail—and another moment after that before Cameron would be dragged, alone, into the darkness.
Jake brought his knife hand up and over, rotating the grip slightly as he positioned it over Cameron. He tapped Cameron’s chest with the flat side of the blade.
“Take it.”
Cameron’s free hand closed over the hilt. A second later they hit another boulder and Cameron’s grip loosened, his fingers breaking contact with Jake’s fingers one by one. They were hooked, index finger to index finger, for a moment. Jake’s tendon felt like it might pop. Then the last connection broke and Jake fell onto the wet ground.
Cameron, no longer screaming, disappeared into the night, Jake’s knife held tightly in his hand.
YESTERDAY’S WARRIORS
Chapter 7
They found him by the river, and right away Billy knew they shouldn’t have come. Darius was sitting cross-legged on the ground, looking out over the water with his back to them. There was a low smudge fire going in front of him, a small pile of balsam boughs over a bed of coals. Darius was wearing jeans but no shirt, and other than his bare torso the only thing different about him, at least from outward appearances, was the absence of his cell phone. His knife was stuck in a stump next to him, and Billy could see the blood on the hilt even from where he and Garney paused, twenty yards away.
Garney stepped down hard on a dead branch, the noise like a small firecracker under his boot. Darius didn’t turn around. Garney looked at Billy, eyebrow raised. He was sweating heavily, the rivulets of sweat running down his broad face and soaking into the collar of his shirt.
Beyond Darius, the Little Glutton River swirled around the granite rocks, the river very high for the late summer. Garney circled wide around Darius and looked out over the swollen river, his shirt back with a V of sweat running all the way from his broad shoulders to his equally broad waist. Billy joined him, grateful for the fire’s smoke after the long, buggy walk to the river. The deerflies were thick, and he swatted several off his arms even standing directly downwind of the smudge fire. After a little while, because he couldn’t not look, he looked.
The largest cut ran from Darius’s left shoulder diagonally down his chest, ending just under his right nipple. Two scars were above it, running in parallel like a scratch from a bear. His belly was covered in blood, and it had soaked into the waistband of his jeans. Billy looked at Da
rius’s face, expecting his eyes to have the faraway, dreamy look he associated with holy men and their visions—the look also of crazy men and their visions. But Darius’s eyes were hard and focused, looking out over the river as though some enemy were wading toward them.
Billy followed his gaze. The water was stained brown from the heavy rains that had swollen the wetlands. In a normal year, most of the base flow was from groundwater, cool and untainted by the touch of the land. Now it was just tea-colored water, nothing out there to glare about that Billy could see. Then again, Darius saw a lot of things to be angry about. Sometimes it took the rest of them a little time to catch up.
“We got news,” Garney said.
Darius stood. He was built as solidly as any man Billy had ever seen, including his football teammates at the community college in Regina. Darius had never lifted weights that Billy knew of, but he was well-muscled, especially his shoulders and back. He wasn’t defined—he liked his beer, and he never ran or did anything aerobic—but there was nothing soft about him either. His eyes were still very hard, and Billy looked away. After a moment, Darius eased himself down the bank of the river and waded out to wash the blood off his chest.
Garney paced the riverbank. Billy stood next to the stump, watching Darius ladle water over his chest, wondering if this was the man he wanted to follow. Wondering if there was anywhere Darius could lead them that Billy couldn’t get to himself. The river water washed away the blood, and more welled to the surface, running down his stomach. Darius stared at the water, which was turning pink as he cleaned himself.
Go ahead, Billy thought. Get mad at the water; see if it helps your mood.
Garney moved next to Billy, breathing through his mouth. “We shoulda waited.”
Billy didn’t say anything. Garney was right, but he was also wrong. There was no right time; had they waited, Darius would have been equally furious. Billy walked over and carefully kicked the smudge fire apart. With the woods this green, the chances of wildfire were low, but it was something to do besides watch their great leader standing in the river in the middle of the woods, staring at his own blood spreading in the water.
After a few minutes, Darius climbed back onto the bank and pulled his shirt on. The cotton clung to his skin and turned red.
“We didn’t know if we should bother you,” Garney said.
“I’m guessing it’s important.”
Billy looked to Garney, who was still standing there mouth-breathing, wiping mosquitos off his forearms. “His brother was out hunting,” Billy said, “a few miles north of the Braids. He saw a plume of smoke, not far from where the chopper was going earlier this summer.”
Darius frowned, rubbing at the pink scar above his eyebrow. “Wildfire?”
“No,” Garney said. “Russel said it was black and thick, like a tire burning or something. Right up near Asiskiwiw.”
“Resurrection Valley,” Darius said. “He didn’t go look, eh?”
“No,” Garney said. “He was a good three or four miles out when he saw it, up on top of that big hill this side of the Braids. He didn’t want to cross the river by himself.”
“He’s sure it wasn’t from a brush fire?”
“Not sure,” Garney said. “But you told all of us to watch out for anything different, and Russel said the smoke looked man-made. If it was a brush fire, somebody threw a tire in there, too.”
“Asiskiwiw,” Darius said.
He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. His nostrils flared, and after a moment a line of sweat appeared on his brow. The low rumble of a passing logging truck came from the provincial road, three miles away. Billy watched as a mosquito landed on Darius’s eyelid, its abdomen swelling with blood. After thirty seconds it lumbered back into the air, her belly filled with enough fuel to make another thousand just like her. More mosquitoes landed and drank their fill, stepping delicately around the drops of sweat rolling down Darius’s face, landing on his shirt where the blood was seeping through the cotton. Another logging truck went by, the metal stakes rattling in the bed sockets.
Finally Darius opened his eyes, and Billy saw a bit of something in those dark brown orbs he hadn’t seen before. Not fear, exactly, but a close cousin.
“Okay,” Darius said. “We have to go see her.”
* * *
They dropped Garney off at his girlfriend’s house and headed west out of Highbanks. The gravel road was muddy and rough, beaten into uneven lanes by the logging trucks. They passed the meadow that housed the annual powwow and First Dance ceremonies, a huge pile of tamarack and balsam logs drying out over the summer for the big fire. Billy smiled, thinking about all the babies, ranging from a few weeks old to a year, crawling and spitting and crying and giggling in their little ceremonial dresses. There was supposed to be a bumper crop of First Dancers this year, a couple dozen babies from all the surrounding area.
They passed an active timber cut a few miles down the road, a hundred-acre clearing filled with mud-splattered brush. A clam-bunk skidder was perched on the near edge of the clear-cut, arranging the long aspen trunks for the forwarder. Billy craned his head to watch as he and Darius drove past, trying to make out the operator behind the mesh-covered glass.
“I think that was Weasel’s cousin.”
“Marvin?” Darius said. He shook his head. “He’s up in Potowatik. Sixty days. Couldn’t come up with the fine money after he punched that constable.”
The drive got smoother as they passed the logging operation, and the road closed back in on them. After another couple of miles, the gravel turned to something closer to dirt, and mud splattered against the bottom of Darius’s truck as they headed north. The aspen forest turned to black spruce, the deep ditches full of brown water.
“You going to log with Garney and them this winter?” Darius asked.
Billy took awhile to answer him, a good half mile of corduroy road passing under them, graded into a series of bumps. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe.”
“You don’t think it bothers me, do you?”
“Why would it bother you?”
Darius cranked his window down and spat into the slipstream of air. He turned to look at Billy. “There’s folks around here think I’m against everything.”
Billy opened his own window and cocked his elbow outside, studying the black spruce forest. There was a market for these scraggly trees, too, mostly for their pulp. Logging was one of the few professions around Highbanks that allowed a man to make a decent wage, and it was the only way Billy had been able to overwinter himself the past couple years. He didn’t mind the work, and the money was good. Christ knew they had enough trees to go around.
He glanced over at Darius. “You think calling the Blacksky crew a bunch of earth-rapers could have possibly had anything to do with that?”
“That was different,” Darius said, “and you know it.”
“Okay.”
“They were using wheeled rigs in early May,” Darius said. “The frost was barely out. You walk out there you can still see the ruts. If old man Blacksky had used his tracked rigs instead—”
“I get it.” Billy put his hand outside the window, palm flat, and moved it up and down on the air currents, banking left and right. He thought it must be how a hawk felt when it soared on the thermals. Darius turned down a rutted track, and the trees closed in again. They rattled up a steep hill, the shelves of bedrock like giant, tilted stairs. The truck’s frame scraped against the rocks as Darius eased it up the hillside. “How come Garney couldn’t come with?”
“He ate today.” Darius downshifted into low gear. “You haven’t.”
“Serious?”
“She thinks it matters. And don’t even think about coming out here with liquor on your breath.”
“How’d you know Garney had eaten and I hadn’t?”
“Because you never eat breakfast,” Darius said, “and Garney smells like he took a bath in maple syrup.”
Billy laughed. “He al
ways smells that way.”
“Listen,” Darius said, pulling to a stop in front of a tarpaper shack. “I wanted you with me, not Garney and not Weasel. Never Weasel. You got your doubts about me. It don’t take any touch, any sight, to know that. But I don’t have any doubts about you.”
They got out of the truck and started toward the house. There was no lawn, and tall grass and brush grew right up to the walls. Close to the house, the grass had turned yellow and the brush was dead, denuded of leaves. Billy supposed it had been sprayed with some sort of herbicide, or maybe salted. The house was small, twenty feet by sixteen feet, not much more than a shack covered with peeling tar paper, the asphalt shingles cracked and curled. The south and west walls were faded gray by sunshine. The tar paper on the east and north walls was still black under a crust of grayish-green lichen. There were two small windows, curtains drawn on the inside. The grass was matted down along the western side of the shack, and small bones were strewn in a pile in the middle of the clearing. There was still flesh on some of the bones.
Just rabbit bones, Billy thought. Or maybe grouse.
And on the heels of that thought, another: Why in the hell haven’t the bones been scattered by predators?
He turned to Darius. “You come out here alone?”
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Darius said, absentmindedly. He stepped on the pallet in front of the door, his normally rough voice meek. “Elsie?”
There was a low yowl from inside the shack, and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Billy saw the curtain flutter slightly and scrambled back, his heart rising up in his throat. He caught himself before he turned and ran for the truck. The pale yellow eyes he’d seen belonged to a cat, poking its enormous black head through the curtains to inspect the visitors. It withdrew slowly, its eyes never leaving Billy’s face until the curtain fell back across the window.
“You okay?” Darius asked.
“That’s one big fucking cat,” Billy said. “Ready to go?”
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