by Ike Hamill
“I’d say three people were here,” Jayden said. He studied the ground like he was reading a book. “One didn’t move as much as the others. Could have been injured.”
“What’s this?” Scarlett asked, pointing down to the shallow grave.
“No idea,” Andrew said.
Jayden was walking the perimeter of the disturbed area. “This is where they left.” He pointed down at the northern edge of the area.
“I could have said that,” Wyatt said. “Of course they went north. They’re moving away from town.”
“Then let’s go,” Amelia said. She herded everyone back into a group.
# # # # #
“Wyatt!” Amelia said. He had disappeared again. She turned to Scarlett. “Is there any way you could keep your brother in control?”
Scarlett shook her head. “None that I know of.”
Amelia turned to Andrew and Jayden, their expert trackers. “We have to move faster. If Wyatt catches up to those guys before we get there, he’ll be outnumbered.”
“We’re going as fast as we can,” Jayden said. “Do you want fast, or do you want us to follow the actual trail? I don’t know what Wyatt thinks he’s following, but the trail goes this way. Wyatt went that way.”
As far as Amelia could tell, Jayden had pointed the same direction both times.
Andrew studied Amelia. “I thought we were just trying to find Ryan to ask him some questions. What are you thinking they’re going to do to Wyatt?”
Harper stepped into the conversation. “We just want to find him, okay?”
Amelia was starting to get nervous. When they had talking about going out to hunt down Ryan, she had imagined a giant search party with fifty people. As it turned out, they hadn’t found very much support. Logan, Wyatt, and Scarlett had returned with only three new additions to their search team.
Scarlett’s group had enlisted Andrew and Jayden for their tracking abilities.
Logan’s group had picked up Isaac. Then, the two groups had split to take the different trails that led away from Building Three. Now with Wyatt roaming ahead to prove his expertise, they were dividing up even more. Scarlett seemed unconcerned and it was driving Amelia crazy.
“Listen,” Amelia said. “Let’s just catch up with Wyatt. You can easily see his trail, right? Let’s get back into a group before anything goes wrong.”
Scarlett seemed ambivalent to the idea.
Harper was on the same page.
“Can you catch us up to Wyatt?” Harper asked Jayden.
He shrugged. When he started forward again, he had a faster pace. They followed.
Chapter 10
{Trio}
RYAN PUT UP HIS hand.
The three stopped.
Physically, he was the weakest of their group, but he was a natural leader. Niren and Caleb automatically deferred.
Ryan gestured for them to sink down. They had been leading the group away from town for an hour. The goal was to find an opportunity to circle back around while convincing the search party that they had continued up into the mountains. So far, they hadn’t found the chance.
Caleb saw Ryan and Niren turn their heads to track something through the woods. He didn’t hear the sound until a few seconds later. Compared to earlier, this person was moving at a fairly reckless speed. They wouldn’t be able to outpace someone moving that fast.
Ryan pointed at Niren and Caleb. He circled his finger in the air and pointed northwest.
Caleb and Niren looked at each other. They both understood—there was no need to speak. They would continue to create a trail for the search party to follow. Ryan would contend with the person who was catching up.
Caleb let Niren go first. Niren moved like a ghost and Caleb felt more comfortable following in the younger man’s footsteps. They slipped into the brush. Every now and then, Niren would pause to leave a sign for the search party to follow. He would flip a clump of leaves, press a fresh print into the soil, or bend a fern over the wrong way.
It would be easy enough to slip away without a trace, but that wasn’t the goal. They wanted the searchers to follow.
Caleb glanced back. He heard something back there. When he turned forward, he realized that Niren was waiting for him. Niren waved him forward and pointed. He put his lips close to Caleb’s ear before he whispered.
“When we get to the rocks up ahead, you turn south and follow the riverbed back. I’ll meet you where the old bridge was.”
Caleb nodded. He understood the plan, but not why he was going alone.
He followed Niren faithfully.
When Caleb reached the edge of the rocks, he realized that Niren had vanished. He stood confused for a second. He could smell Niren, but had no idea which direction he had gone. After a full minute, he turned left. He had his instructions.
It was simple to move along the rocks without leaving a trail. As long as he avoided the sand, he wouldn’t be followed by the search party.
Niren could probably follow him though. His nose had become incredibly acute in recent days. Caleb understood, to a degree. His own nose had gotten pretty good, but it was nothing compared to Niren’s ability. Caleb had seen him track down a rabbit warren at night, using nothing but his nose. When Caleb had slipped and scraped his ankle, Niren had noticed the injury just from the scent of Caleb’s blood in the air. If Caleb allowed himself to think about it, he had to admit that Niren was growing a little spooky.
Caleb ducked behind a rock. He sensed movements over near the trees. It might have just been an animal, but there was no sense in risking it. He was close to the dry riverbed. Once he got there, he would be able to move down the valley without a trace.
He peeked up over the edge of the rock and saw a pair of eyes. It was just a cougar. It might have made a decent meal, but he was on the run. He didn’t slow down until he got to the riverbed. Once he dropped down into the rocks and dirt where the river had run, it was harder to navigate. Hard packed sand looked like rock until he stepped on it. Then he had to take a moment and disguise his footprint. Caleb wasn’t making very good time.
It took him forever to reach the old bridge. The thing had collapsed years and years before. He settled next to a big slab of concrete and rested. The rest of his group caught up to him in no time.
Ryan’s clothes were stained with blood. Niren was clean, but even Caleb could smell the blood and meat on Niren’s breath.
Ryan reached into his bag and pulled out a bloody hunk of liver.
“Eat that,” he said, handing it to Caleb. “Good energy.”
Caleb sniffed it and raised his eyebrows.
“I scared a bear away from a freshly killed moose calf,” Ryan said. “I got the liver and brain. That’s your share.”
It didn’t smell like moose. It was missing the dark-brown musk that moose meat always had. Then again, Caleb had never eaten a moose calf. He had no way of knowing if the calves possessed a different flavor. And he was too hungry to strongly object to the handout. He ate.
“They’re going to assume we kept on into the mountains,” Ryan said. “I left them a trail all the way across the rocks and up into the scrub.”
“And I left a trail that turned east. That should confuse them even more,” Niren said.
“So what’s the plan?” Caleb asked between bites. His face was already sticky from blood.
“Now that they’re after us, they’re not going to stop until they find us. We have to go on the offensive. There’s no other way,” Ryan said.
“Is that true?” Caleb asked. “I mean, with so much empty space, couldn’t we just move away from here and forget about Fairbanks?”
Niren and Ryan exchanged a glance.
“Give him time,” Niren said to Ryan.
Ryan shook his head.
“What?” Caleb demanded. He spoke too loudly for someone on the run. If he spoke like that again, all the false trails that Niren and Ryan had left might be completely useless.
Niren was the one who e
xplained. He pointed south, towards Fairbanks. “Those people down there are a virus, Caleb. You know that as well as I do. They do nothing but expand and consume. They don’t have any regard for their impact. They won’t stop growing and eating and destroying until they’ve used up every resource. We can’t think like that. We need to think in much longer terms.”
“I’m not stupid,” Caleb said. “I have thought about this. But you know as well as I do that Fairbanks is holding on by a thread. They’re one accident away from wiping themselves out. The population has done nothing but dwindle in my whole lifetime. I have no reason to think that they will rebound.”
Ryan took up the argument. “We created one safe harbor. I didn’t realize it was a mistake until too late. They will reproduce that experiment, if we let them. And if I hadn’t redirected you two, you might have been instrumental in removing the threat of the Hunters once and for all. If you could figure it out, then so could others. We can’t take that chance.”
Caleb came to an understanding and began to nod. He didn’t precisely agree with them, but he needed to nod his head anyway. Regardless of his own opinions, Caleb realized that he needed Ryan and Niren to believe that he agreed with them. The way they were talking, anyone who didn’t agree with them might be considered an enemy. And Caleb was pretty sure that he didn’t want to be their enemy.
“Okay,” Caleb said. “We go on the offensive.”
Chapter 11
{Search}
THEY ROLLED TO A stop.
“I don’t understand,” Jacob said. “It doesn’t work like a regular vehicle.”
“That’s what I said,” Logan said. “Move out of the way.”
Jacob slid between the seats and extracted his legs so that Logan could take his place. In a second, they were starting to move forward again. Jacob leaned between the seats, crowding Isaac.
“What did you do?” Jacob asked.
“It has something to do with intentions or something. It’s up here,” Logan said, pointing to his head. “I’m not getting this steering though.”
“That’s the easy part,” Jacob said. “It’s like the dump truck. You’ve driven that, haven’t you?”
Logan glanced back and shook his head. “I cut things down. I don’t drive.”
They were headed for the side of the road. Where the asphalt ended, the hill spilled down towards trees below. It would be a short trip if Logan didn’t correct their path.
“Go to the left,” Isaac said.
He jerked the steering wheel and slammed them back over to the other side of the road.
“Hey!” Brook said from the cargo area. She sat up, rubbing her head.
Jacob pulled himself between the seats again and took the passenger’s seat. Logan kept them moving forward but let Jacob steer. Together, they did a decent job of keeping the vehicle on the road.
“I think I found the device to keep the Hunters away,” Brook said. “It has a range dial, a spectrum setting, and a bunch of readouts. Should I try it?”
“Hold on,” Logan said. He took his eyes off of the road and found a way to lower his window. Once it was down, he stuck his head out and let himself be buffeted by the wind. “I don’t… Wait. Yes.” He pulled his head back in and turned. Jacob steered around a patch of broken pavement and Logan gripped the seat to stay upright.
“I see them on the display,” Brook said.
“Hunters to the west?” Logan asked.
“Exactly,” Brook said.
“Turn on the machine then,” Isaac said. He looked through the vehicle’s window, as if he could see the approaching threat.
“You’re sure it’s the right machine?” Logan asked.
“Of course not,” Brook said. “You said there’s a machine to ward off the Hunters, and I’m saying that if that’s true, then this is the mostly likely machine to do it. I can’t tell for sure what it’s going to do. It’s not like there’s an instruction manual.”
Isaac pressed his ear against his window. “I hear them too. Just turn it on.”
Brook shrugged. “Okay.”
When she flipped the switch, the whole vehicle began to throb with a deep hum. Logan and Isaac kept their eyes locked onto Brook. Even Jacob stole a couple of glances back. She looked down at the device.
She put up her hands and shrugged. “I guess it’s okay. The power levels aren’t flying off the scale, and the display doesn’t show any incoming entities. I mean, I don’t know what it’s calibrated to show, but I’m assuming that’s a good thing.”
Logan stuck his head through the window again.
“Nothing.”
Isaac raised his eyebrows.
Logan smiled. “I think we’re clear! We’ve got ourselves a mobile Hunter-free zone.”
“Focus on your speed, please,” Jacob said. “It won’t do us any good if you’re going so fast that I can’t keep us on the road.”
Logan turned forward and nodded.
They drove in silence for a bit. When Logan paid attention to the road ahead, he tended to keep the vehicle to a much slower pace. Jacob’s job of steering became that much easier. In the back seat, Isaac alternated between staring through the window and pressing his ear against it. He wasn’t quite convinced that the threat of the Hunters had been dispelled.
In the cargo area, Brook tried to puzzle out all the controls on the device.
When she finally made a breakthrough in her understanding of the display, she yelled.
“Wait, wait!” she said. “Hold on.”
“What?” Logan asked. The vehicle automatically slowed in response to his distraction.
“Is there a road to the left anywhere? Can you get to high ground?” Brook asked.
Logan and Jacob consulted and then collaborated on navigating the vehicle. They found a service road on the left. Logan guided the vehicle to a stop and they studied the road through the window.
“It looks like it goes,” Logan said.
“Forget it,” Isaac said. “That road could be garbage right over that hill. What if a tree has fallen across it, or a section has washed out? It might not even be passable.”
“In that case, we turn around,” Logan said. “What’s the harm?”
“We’re supposed to be out here hunting for Ryan. That’s what you told me,” Isaac said. “I believed in that mission. I never trusted that guy and I fully believe that he might be doing something harmful to our community. I didn’t sign up to come wander around the outer hills in a dead man’s vehicle for no reason.”
“This could be really important,” Brook said. “Look.” She pointed at her display.
Isaac leaned over the seat and watched as she showed him what she was looking at.
“Yeah, okay,” Isaac said after a second.
Jacob and Logan glanced at each other and then turned back to navigation. The vehicle began to ascend the steep road.
# # # # #
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Brook said.
“I have,” Logan said. They all turned to him. “I got lost up in the mountains over there.” He pointed. “Weeks ago. It looked exactly the same then as it does now. I figured it was just a weird way that the wind was holding back the smoke from the bonfire.” He shook his head.
“Maybe it is,” Isaac said.
They were standing on top of the vehicle so they could have a better view. At the top of the hill, they had a decent view over the trees. They saw a triangular wedge of clouds perched just outside their city. Inside the invisible confines, the clouds rolled and boiled. They looked ready to move.
“There’s no way that something like that is natural,” Jacob said. “Besides, we’re not even running the west fire right now. Even if that was just smoke, it would have no business being all the way over there.”
They stood there, watching the strange clouds.
“That’s near Kappa Three,” Jacob said.
Brook nodded.
“Let’s get back,” she said.
“Yeah,” Logan said.
They climbed down from the roof of the vehicle.
# # # # #
As Andrew and Jayden conferred, Scarlett grew antsy. They told her to hold still, so she wouldn’t disturb any potential tracks. Holding still wasn’t her strong suit.
“I’m going to yell for him,” Scarlett said. “We’ve been here so long, anything we’re chasing is long gone anyway.”
“Don’t yell,” Harper said. “Let these guys do what they do.”
“They’ve been standing there for minutes,” Scarlett said. “They have no idea where he went. I’m going to yell.”
Harper looked to Amelia for help.
“Everyone,” Amelia said, waving her arms. “Let’s all spread out and find where the trail picks up. We all know what we’re looking for, right? Just come together here and we’ll all go different directions and find some sign to go on.”
“You’re going to create a false trail,” Andrew said.
Amelia turned on him. “You had your chance. Just admit that you lost the trail so we can start moving again.”
“Fine,” Jayden said before Andrew could argue again.
They each picked their direction. Nobody went back the way they came, so the five of them split up the rest of the circle and moved out. Amelia was headed roughly east and saw nothing that struck her as any kind of tracks. Then again, she wasn’t trained to track. She could recognize signs when someone else pointed them out, but she wasn’t accustomed to finding them on her own.
She stopped dead when Scarlett yelled. It wasn’t so much a scream, but a muffled, anguished roar. The sound of running filled the woods. Amelia ran to join the others.
She stopped again when she saw the blood. It was splashed on leaves and up the trunk of a nearby tree. Scarlett knelt in the center of the bloody mess and held a mangled shape. Amelia didn’t want to get any closer, but she moved forward anyway. They were all gathering around Scarlett, and kneeling as if to pray.
