by Noah Mann
“I’m just saying his reason for fighting is valid to him,” Neil explained. “And he’ll fight like hell. I can promise you that.”
“So will we,” I said.
Neil nodded and we both looked down toward the convoy again. It was still stopped at the rubbled facility along the highway, a careful search being carried out. The professionalism we were witnessing from a distance was unsettling. Particularly when we saw a small unit split from the main force and move southwest across the open fields, their flashlights arcing back and forth across the darkness. Searching.
“Damn,” I said.
Hardly a second after my explanation the searchers stopped. A moment later more fighters from the main force moved quickly toward them. They’d found something.
Our trail.
“How the hell did they know to look out there?” I wondered aloud.
“We left traces,” Neil said. “And they’re motivated.”
We could only be so careful in our flight from captivity. When one was on the run they couldn’t brush away every track they’d left behind. And we clearly hadn’t.
“They’re going to be coming,” I said.
Neil stood next to the tree where we’d taken cover.
“Let’s not wait for them,” he said.
We turned and moved back through the dead trees to the RV campground. I’d hoped there would be time to scavenge from the few cabins on site, and the long-abandoned trailers and motorhomes. That wasn’t to be.
“What’s our move here?” Neil asked.
I didn’t have to think long on his question as we hurried past the small campground store and toward the area where the rustic cabins had been sited.
“Keep moving in the direction of the lake,” I said. “But we stay south of the road heading up there. In the trees if we can.”
“Right on,” Neil agreed.
If we could follow that plan, that course, it would, hopefully, hide any tracks we left from easy observation, from either the ground or the air. That didn’t take into consideration our need for water, and my friend’s still weakened state.
None of that mattered, though. Not now. We simply had to put distance between us and Earl Perkins until we were convinced it was safe to focus our energy on getting home. As it was now, we were running for our lives.
Nineteen
It took us three hours to cover four miles, heading almost due south before we swung west into a grey forest that the road to Medicine Lake cut through. Almost as soon as we entered the woods we heard it.
Water.
It came from a point in the darkness off to our left, even further from the winding road that we’d avoided. Navigating the sloping terrain to reach the source of the sound sent each of us falling several times. One such stumble smashed my wounded hand against the snapped stump of a fallen fir.
“Ahhh...”
I didn’t scream, but I couldn’t completely staunch the reaction to the pain.
“You all right?”
Neil stopped and came to me, backtracking a few yards to where I’d come to sit against the remnants of the tree. I clutched my left hand against my chest, making a fist that felt sickeningly incomplete with a missing finger.
“Let me see,” Neil said.
He took my hand and unwrapped the shemagh which had served as a makeshift bandage since our firefight in Tulelake. In the forested darkness it was nearly impossible to see, even close up, but my friend only took a few seconds to examine my hand before wrapping it again, tighter this time.
“It’s bleeding again,” he said.
“I can tell,” I told him. “And...”
He stood and held his weapon in one hand, holding the other down to help me up.
“A nice little infection starting,” he said.
I took his hand and stood with help, planting my feet carefully on the uneven slope. The sound of water was close, coming from maybe fifty feet distant. We both needed to hydrate. Badly. Dealing with my hand would have to wait.
“I’ll clean it off after we tank up,” I said.
Neil gave me a solid slap on the shoulder and turned, heading out with me on his heels. In two minutes we came around a bulge in the easing terrain and saw what we’d come for.
A stream.
“Spring or runoff?” Neil wondered aloud.
“Does it matter?”
He shook his head. In a perfect situation we’d boil any water we came upon that wasn’t released by an underground spring in the vicinity. Runoff could contain any number of nasty particles, though worrying about things like giardia had gone out with the last wild animal who might take a dump and contaminate lakes and rivers. Rotting bodies had, for a time, been a concern. But those times were mostly past.
“I think it’s runoff,” I said.
“Makes sense if there’s a lake up there,” he agreed.
We shed our gear and lay our AKs on the ground then crouched next to the stream and cupped drinks from the dark water in our hands and drank. And drank. After a few minutes Neil filled the few water containers we had in the pack and the shoulder bag while I unwrapped my hand and plunged it into the cold water, the contact stinging initially before shifting toward a comfortable numbness. It was odd looking down at the shadowy appendage and seeing a part missing. I could just make out an area of redness which did, as my friend suggested, look like the beginnings of an infection, as well as bruising and swelling of the adjacent fingers.
“It’s gonna look weird when you flip someone off,” Neil commented.
I lifted my right hand momentarily and gave him the middle finger.
“Good thing you have a spare,” he said.
Finished with caring for my wound I bandaged it again and sat back against a large rock near the stream. Aside from the gentle babbling of the waters, it was silent. Even through that hushed trickle distant sounds would be apparent.
But we heard none.
“There’s been nothing on the road,” I said.
“No vehicles, you mean,” Neil corrected me.
We were just under a mile from the strip of asphalt winding up into the mountains toward Medicine Lake. In these conditions, at that distance, we should have heard the rumble of the convoy’s trucks and cars pursuing us, but we hadn’t.
“They’ll be coming,” Neil assured me. “They found our tracks. They know we’re close. Perkins can smell us. He can taste it, you know.”
I did know. Now that his plan had shifted from exploiting us to killing us, he would be imagining the satisfaction of that very end result. He’d be picturing the moment in his mind.
“You think they’re on foot?” I asked my friend.
“We’re on foot,” he reminded me.
It was possible Perkins had ordered his people to leave the vehicles behind so as not to alert us. Or they could just be waiting where they’d found our tracks.
Or, or, or...
We were in the dark literally and figuratively. One of those we could at least use to our advantage for the time being.
“We should rest here,” I said.
Neil surveyed the dim spot we’d stopped for a much-needed drink. It was as isolated as any location we’d passed and was shielded from view from all sides. The rocky ground we’d crossed to reach the stream would not show any tracks we might have left, though both of us had been more aware of doing so since realizing how easily we’d been located near the campground.
“So we’re moving in daylight now,” he said, only half accepting of the implication of stopping for the night.
“If we stay in the woods it’s good cover,” I said.
He considered that for a moment then nodded. We slipped back into a routine that was both distant and familiar at the same time, one of us taking the first shift awake while the other slept. In places far different than this we had adopted the same security procedures to avoid being ambushed, and we had survived, as we were now. Neil settled in on the ground behind a pile of boulders and drifted off to sl
eep within minutes. His body needed recharging more than mine, and in the dark, cool stillness I sat, silent, listening.
I heard nothing but the stream babbling down the mountain that, in the morning, we would begin climbing again.
Twenty
Six hours after we woke and began moving west again, I heard something.
“That’s just the water,” Neil told me when I’d directed his attention to the sound.
He could have been right in some respects. The stream still ran off to our left, trickling down from the still distant lake. But I did not hear water babbling along.
“I heard splashing, Neil,” I said.
We stopped and spread out, each of us taking a knee a dozen yards apart in the old grey woods. The terrain had flattened out, plateauing at the elevation where Medicine Lake was likely situated somewhere ahead. Without a map we had no sure way of knowing its exact location, relying instead on the stream to guide us there so that the road could be avoided.
After a few minutes of listening Neil looked to me and shook his head. I nodded and we rose again, coming back together to continue our way forward.
“I don’t know what it was,” I told my friend, my voice hushed.
“A piece of deadfall falling into the water,” he suggested.
That was possible. It made more sense than any of the nefarious scenarios I could imagine, where Perkins’ people would have found a way to get ahead of us and were, as we pressed on, surrounding us near the stream.
Twenty minutes later, though, there was no sign of any pursuer. No sign of any danger at all.
Until there was.
The sound this time was not some nebulous sloshing of water. It was the straining rumble of a diesel engine off to our right in the direction of the road. A vehicle was chugging its way up the mountain. It was climbing slowly but wasn’t stopping.
“Just one,” I said as Neil and I both shifted to full cover behind a pair of trees.
“Where are the rest?” he wondered aloud.
“We need to see what it is,” I said.
It was a risk, closing the distance we’d kept from the road, but without doing so we would be advancing in the blind. For all we knew the creeping vehicle could be dropping groups of fighters as it continued on. Groups that could be setting up to swarm us once we were spotted.
“All right,” Neil agreed, no fervor about him. “But we stay well clear of being exposed.”
I nodded and we started moving again, shifting course to the northwest, aiming at a point which, were we to continue on our chosen heading, would intersect the road a quarter mile away. Traversing rises and falls in the terrain we finally reached a point just past the crest of a hill bulging from the mountain’s east slope. From that vantage point, as we went to ground and shielded ourselves behind a dense knot of fallen trees, we were able to see the road maybe forty yards through the woods.
“Still coming,” Neil said.
The vehicle, sounding more like a truck now that we’d closed the distance, hadn’t yet reached the sliver of the road we could see. But it was close. I brought my AK up and kept it at the ready. From the prone position we could unleash a first volley of fire unimpeded, if that became necessary.
I hoped it wouldn’t.
“There,” I said.
Neil tracked my gaze to the right, the nose of the flatbed just coming into view. We immediately realized why it was moving so slowly, more than just the incline responsible. On its back, in the chair bolted to the cargo bed, Perkins sat, surveying the landscape as a dozen of his fighters walked alongside.
“Twelve on each side,” Neil said quietly.
Two dozen enemy to deal with if all hell broke loose. But it was more than what we saw pacing the truck. Sheryl Quincy sat next to Perkins, cross-legged on the flatbed, facing backward, a SAW resting on her lap. The squad automatic weapon, if brought to bear, could rain a steady stream of lead hell upon us, the box magazine attached to it holding at least a hundred rounds. That one weapon alone outgunned us, and when combined with armada Perkins had brought with him...
“Let’s give them a wider berth,” I said.
“Much,” Neil said.
We crawled slowly backward once the truck and its phalanx of fighters had passed, reversing until we were on the other side of the low crest, fully shielded from view now.
“That’s not all of them,” Neil said once we were in the clear. “There were at least four sets of headlights on the highway last night.”
I nodded. Perkins had divided his force into smaller, yet still formidable units, spreading out from the tracks we’d left behind. How many were in our immediate vicinity was impossible to know.
“You still think that splash was a branch falling into the water?” I asked my friend.
He didn’t have an answer, and neither did I. Worse still, though, was the reality we faced—we had to move. And somewhere out there we could find ourselves in an ambush like the one we’d sprung on Perkins’ people at the warehouses.
“There’s every chance it was just that,” Neil said. “But we act like it wasn’t.”
For five minutes we held our position, listening until the sound of the truck was no more. Then we waited ten minutes more, hearing nothing but the stream rustling softly to the south.
“I’ll take the lead,” I said.
We stood and began moving, Neil positioning himself ten yards behind me as I set our course to the west, maneuvering us around terrain obstacles and stopping short of old logging roads which cut across our path. We would hold position and survey those before quickly crossing, checking for signs that the truck we’d seen, or any vehicle, had recently passed. There were none.
We pressed forward, keeping the stream off to our left, taking brief breaks as the afternoon crept toward evening, the lake somewhere ahead of us through the crumbling woods.
splash...splash...splash
I stepped behind a tree and froze, looking back to Neil, who’d taken a similar position and gave me a quick nod. He’d heard it, too, this time. And it was no branch falling. It was the sound of running through water.
But as soon as it was there, the sound was gone. Again. Neil moved up, setting himself off to my left, closer to the stream.
“It sounded like it was moving away from us,” he said. “Upstream.”
I agreed. Whoever had sloshed through the babbling water was moving in the same direction we were, roughly toward the lake which was almost certainly the source of the flow.
“It’s not a well-set ambush,” I said.
“Maybe because it’s not that,” Neil said. “But it could be drawing us into one.”
“Bait,” I said.
Perkins had used the tactic before, luring Dave Arndt and me to land and check out a patch of green woods that were as fake and dead as those that surrounded them. A similar approach could be in play here.
But something told me that suspicion was off base.
“Why not just wait for us ahead if they know enough to bait us?” I asked. “The sound could just as easily drive us off.”
Neil considered that for a moment, nodding agreement.
“Then who is it?”
“One way to know,” I said.
We stepped from behind the trees and resumed our push west, the slope easing as the wooded land around us flattened out. I shifted our course closer to the stream as it cut a depression in the terrain, seeking its uneven banks as a source of cover. Once we reached it one of the questions we’d had about the splashing was answered.
“Tracks,” I said.
Neil moved cautiously forward and crouched next to me, looking to where I was pointing.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said.
But there was no mistaking what we were seeing.
“There’s a dog out here,” I said.
Twenty One
We’d both grown up around enough wildlife, both domesticated and otherwise, to recognize what we were seeing and differentiat
e it from natural, if unlikely, alternatives.
“Not coyote,” Neil said. “They died out long ago.”
The scavenging predators had seen their place on the food chain wiped out soon after the last bit of carrion, beast or human, had been devoured. Their presence was not an option.
“If there’s a dog,” I said.
“Then there are people keeping it alive,” I completed his thought.
Neil scanned the stream ahead, the narrow waterway deep in shadow. We had a couple hours of light left at best. There’d been no repeat appearance by the truck or any other vehicle, and though we wanted to assume that meant Perkins and his fighters were not nearby, we could take no such assurance from the absence of signs.
Mixed among that reality, though, was another worry.
“We heard whosever dog this is twice now,” I reminded my friend. “Miles apart.”
“You think they’re tracking us?”
“I think we have more company than just Perkins,” I said.
* * *
We heard no more splashing but did see an abundance of paw prints along the damp bank of the stream. The animal was a good size and was definitely moving west, seemingly just ahead of us.
Shortly we believed we understood why that was.
“Building,” I said.
Neil came forward again where I’d stopped along the crest of the stream bank and looked at what I had spotted. It was a cabin, situated in the dense woods, the dead trees nearest the structure having been obviously cut down to prevent deadfall from crushing the modest structure. The stream passed to the south of the almost quaint home, some thirty yards away, and beyond the log structure an outhouse sat, a path worn in the earth between it and the main building.
“That looks maintained,” Neil observed.
“Someone lives there,” I agreed.
It was not abandoned. Just the opposite, in fact. The windows were intact, shades behind each drawn, no light bleeding out. There was a chimney, but no smoke curled skyward from it. Yes, someone was in there, but they were taking pains to be unseen.
