She looked toward the mountains but she could barely make them out. The haze, or miasma as the old people called it, was opaque.
Then the hail came. At first it was sleet-like raindrops that made a pecking sound, but a couple of minutes later she could see white bits of ice falling. It didn’t look large enough to dent anything, but it was big enough to make a racket.
When the wind began to shriek and howl, she got up and moved to stand with her back against the wall of the store. The gusts of wind were propelling the rain in sheets that burst and subsided like waves. Thunder boomed and echoed off the mountainsides and the cracks of lightning were interspersed with the cracks of trees breaking.
When the wind got to full speed branches would be sent flying, then whole trees. Even now it was bad enough that Phoebe half expected Dorothy’s house to land in the middle of the road. Time to go inside.
This kind of a storm delivered a one-two punch. First the steep slopes would get saturated with rain, then the wind would roar through knocking the trees over. Roots in shallow wet soil simply didn’t have enough purchase to withstand sixty to ninety mile an hour winds.
It was worse at the higher elevations.
***
As Henry returned to consciousness, all he was aware of was agonizing head pain. He was lying in the floor. He remembered he’d been talking to Professor Whittington, but he was a little foggy about the rest. He struggled to a sitting position and looked around the room.
It was dark outside and no house lights were on. Then Henry remembered the fight. He marveled that the man had been mean enough to beat him in a fight and stupid enough to leave him alive. When he could stand, he hobbled slowly around the living room, then made his way to the lab area, and checked the rest of the building.
It wasn’t a big place. Soon it was obvious that Whittington was nowhere to be found. Henry thought to look into the driveway and saw the Geländewagen was gone and the back of his Explorer was standing open.
That was not good. He reached for his phone. It was gone, too. That was even worse. He picked up one of the house phones and it was dead. Of course it was.
He checked his watch. He’d been out for over an hour. He limped out to his SUV. The driver’s door was ajar, the key was missing, and the radio was a mangled mess. He looked into the rear cargo area. The case containing the rifle and ammunition was missing. That was extremely bad news.
But the case with the tranquilizer gun was still there. He opened it and removed the rifle. He clumsily filled three darts, put them into a protective plastic box which he tucked inside his shirt, then slung the rifle diagonally across his back.
The night vision headset was still there, too. He picked it up. Again the Professor demonstrated that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Some people never learn. He shouldn’t have left that. Without night vision, Henry would never have been able to attempt what he was going to do next. Whittington had a habit of causing people big problems and walking away without any repercussions to himself, but this time he’d messed with the wrong guy.
Henry walked down a rutted gravel path toward an old barn, went in and looked around with the aid of his bionic eye. He ripped away a dusty canvas tarpaulin, revealing a red dirt bike. The rangers used it for their jaunts to check on the webcam and radio repeater tower. The key was in the ignition.
He straddled the bike and kicked started it. The engine fired right up. He backed the motorcycle out of the barn and pointed it toward the woods. He prayed the kids in the Student Conservation Association who’d lived in the house during the summer had cleared the blowdowns on the nearby trail like they were supposed to. If they hadn’t he’d never make it.
Henry had been a backcountry ranger for more than half his life, otherwise he would never have tried to travel through the wilderness in a long cross country shortcut, certainly not at night, with bad weather on the way. But he knew the park very well. He knew the hiking trails, the ones on and off the books, and he knew the ancient game trails. He could navigate the area better than any man alive.
He had to make it. If he failed, people were going to die. With the aid of electronically enhanced sight, he headed for a place at the edge of the woods that was intentionally allowed to grow up with tall grass for the purpose of hiding the trailhead.
If anyone had been watching the speed at which Henry entered the tall grass, they would’ve thought they were hallucinating. Then, a split second after he whizzed into the trees, he disappeared from view.
***
Phoebe sat with Jill in the cozy sewing studio while Doc read and kept an eye on Ivy. After a particularly violent crack of thunder that made the women flinch, Doc quoted, We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. ….
Phoebe smiled and hoped he was right.
***
To anyone else it would be the least of their worries, but what nagged at Henry during his wild ride was knowing that the Park Service would fire him for sure when they found out what he’d done. Riding a motorcycle on a hiking trail was strictly forbidden.
Henry didn’t want to get fired from the only job he’d ever had. He loved his job. But he couldn’t let the Professor hurt anybody else. The man had done more than enough damage already.
As soon as Henry passed through a few yards of brush, he was on an old dirt road. The weather was terrible, but it wasn’t raining here yet and the worst of the wind was blocked by the adjoining ridges and the dense forest. Even when the rain came, it would take a while for it to soak through the canopy and the understory to reach the forest floor.
He made good time along the road, but had to slow down when it petered out and became a hiking trail. Nobody but Henry would have been able to find their way in the dark. Luckily he had a lot of experience navigating the trails at night with mechanically enhanced vision, although he was certainly not accustomed to moving at this speed. It might’ve been fun if he hadn’t been so scared for the people at Hamilton’s.
***
Leon sat in the living room of his snug cabin in front of a cheerful fire, playing banjo. A lot of people would’ve paid big money to hear the performance he was putting on, but these days he’d only play during a storm when he knew no one would be able to hear him.
He was halfway through a rousing version of Rollin in My Sweet Baby’s Arms when a feeling came over him that caused him to stop playing and set the banjo aside. He quieted himself inside and sat listening for a few moments. Then he leapt up from the couch and ran out into the tempest without bothering to get a jacket.
He drove as far as he could, then got out of his truck and raced up the mountainside on foot. His feet seemed to barely touch the ground. There was had no time to spare. As he ran, trees were splintering, nearly exploding from the force of the winds. Exhausted, he dropped to his knees where he was, in the middle of the tempest, and prayed out loud, “Jesus Christ, Lord of the Elements, please help us.” But the ferocity of the storm tore at his words and carried them away.
***
Henry slowed after passing a huge poplar with a scar from a lightning strike that spiraled the length of the tree, wrapping around the trunk like a vine. He knew the tree was near the turnoff to a manway that connected the hiking trail he was on to an old game trail. The track was called a manway because it was something less than a trail, but not impenetrable.
He jounced along through tall grass, low shrubs, and spindly young trees. The occasional briars were tearing at his uniform and not doing his hide any favors either. The manway eventually dead-ended into the game trail and he came to a abrupt stop.
He awkwardly walked the motorcycle around to make a ninety degree right turn onto what was basically a single rut, worn deep by thousands of sharp hoofs. He had to be very careful from here on out. His speed dropped considerably. The game trail had been used by all manner of critters before men ever came to these mountains. It was a path b
etween a water supply and a salt lick. The first settlers had benefited from the animals’ wisdom and used it for the same purpose.
This last bit of the ride was the toughest, and Henry was genuinely worried he’d miss the final turn. In the brief snatches of sky he was able to glimpse, he noticed the clouds were reflecting no artificial glow. That meant the storm had knocked out the power in White Oak.
That made it much harder to find the turnoff to the store. Henry tried to take comfort in the fact that a blackout would make it harder for the Professor to find his way too. Suddenly Henry saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. It nearly startled the life out of him. He thought for a moment he’d seen somebody standing at the edge of the trail, pointing. Then he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
Leon stepped out of the trees and onto the narrow rut.
Henry turned the motorcycle around and backtracked to where Leon was standing, soaked to the skin and out of breath. It was the entrance to a narrow path that would take him down to the road near Hamilton’s. Henry smiled to himself, not sure of Leon was real or if he was letting his imagination get away with him. But he had a head injury after all and could be forgiven for seeing things.
Leon hopped on behind Henry and five minutes later, Henry turned off the engine and dropped the motorcycle in the trail, for fear of the noise giving him away. He explained his fears to Leon and they ran to the edge of the woods and stopped just before they might be seen. They might need stealth to make it the rest of the way to the store.
The two men presented a terrifying appearance. Henry’s head and face were covered in blood from the gashes caused by the hiking staff and the stone hearth. His clothes were ripped and he was bleeding from his forehead to his ankles from dozens of superficial scratches and scrapes caused by branches and briars during his ride through the woods. Leon’s clothes and hair were plastered to him and he was covered with mud and bits of leaves. In short, they looked like hell.
They felt like it too.
Chapter 39
The Hamilton’s Store building was so old, the inner structure was made of massive chestnut logs. A couple of generations after the original trading post was built, after the park was established and life got a little easier, the logs were covered on the outside with clapboards to make the place look more refined. But the building had survived over a hundred years of storms, so everyone taking shelter inside the store was as safe as they could be.
Phoebe watched as Jill worked by lantern light, piecing a long coat from swatches of cashmere.
“This fabric is really nice,” said Phoebe. “It looks brand new. I can’t believe people sent sweaters like this to Goodwill.”
“They didn’t. Somebody left a box of em on the front porch a coupla days ago.”
Phoebe looked up at Jill, smiling. “Gotta be one of the three Robin Hoodlums. Those rascals do all sorts of good deeds, but they won’t do it unless they can figure a way of doin somethin illegal at the same time.”
“Wonder who they stole the sweaters from?”
“No tellin,” said Phoebe.
“Well, the rest of the rich people’s sweaters are safe tonight. No one’s goin anywhere in this storm.”
The women laughed, not realizing how wrong they were.
Phoebe joked to Jill that the effect of the storm on White Oak was like a game of musical chairs. Wherever you were when the trees starting falling, it was best to sit down and wait.
The bad weather would isolate White Oak from any influences from the outside, either to help or to harm. But it would also prevent anyone who was in White Oak from being able to escape. Phoebe shuddered at the thought. She remembered Nerve’s prediction and hoped if any evil was headed their way it would be held at bay by the storm and not trapped amongst them.
***
Professor Whittington didn’t know how to handle himself in the mountains. For all his outdoor experience studying plants, he was still a city dweller. And, like most of the people who lived among gently rolling hills and flat lands, he had no clue what went on in the mountains during a storm.
He was headed for Hamilton’s Store driving his hideously expensive four wheel drive vehicle like a madman. He winced as it jounced to the full limit of its shocks and bottomed out repeatedly on the rutted roads. Although the car had been made for off-road travel, Whittington had no experience driving it in such conditions. The machine had never been subjected to indignities such as driving on a road strewn with tree limbs.
The wind was tossing tree branches across the road horizontally, like trash. They gouged and scraped the car’s glossy paint. But to Whittington, it no longer mattered. Good riddance, he thought. The behemoth got terrible mileage. It was going to be repossessed as soon as the finance company could find it. He was getting desperately low on gas, but hadn’t seen a gas station in nearly an hour.
But then his luck changed and he saw the sign. He didn’t realize Esso was still in business, but he wasn’t in any position to be brand sensitive so he pulled in and stopped next to the pumps.
He got out to put gas in his car and that’s when he saw the station was closed. He should’ve realized it because the lights were off. He sighed and got back in his car. He hated these people.
***
Lester fired up his chainsaw and set it against the side of a tree trunk. He’d selected this tree because of its size, too big for one man to move, and for its strategic location in the middle of a blind curve on a steep hill. Only a fool or a crazy person would round a curve on a hill, driving fast on a night like this, but, from what he’d heard, that Professor fellow was one or the other, maybe both. So this was just the place to teach him a lesson.
The chainsaw roared, the tree cracked and popped, then fell across the road. Its trunk and wide limbs spanned both lanes and made a roadblock twelve feet high. Lester would love to wait and shoot the eejit if he came this way, but he knew that wasn’t what Doc wanted.
Fate was felling a tree a couple of miles down the road on the other side of Hamilton’s. They’d decided this was the easiest way to prevent unwanted visitors without having to stand guard all night. The weather was terrible, so this tactic wouldn’t inconvenience the locals much because they’d stay at home, expecting trees to be down. In a few minutes he and Fate could go to their own houses and get comfortable knowing the store would be well protected tonight.
***
The Professor drove for as long as he could, which was for only couple more minutes. Lester had anticipated events perfectly. Whittington encountered the tree at 45 miles an hour before Lester had even packed his gear to leave. There was more than enough impact to deploy the car’s airbag and knock the heck out of the Professor. Lester laughed. He’d gotten in a good punch by proxy.
Whittington was shaken by the collision, but determined. The impact had killed the motor, so he tried to restart the engine. The powerful beast cranked half-heartedly, but wouldn’t start, so he got out. The wind-driven rain was ferocious. It peppered him like buckshot, stinging his exposed face and hands as he walked around his car, trying to assess the situation.
His discombobulation and frustration transmuted into a rage so powerful it broke something in him. He actually felt something snap. Whatever vestiges of humanity had been left in the man were there no longer. There was no longer any sense of proportion and no compassion.
He didn’t think the store was very far, so he decided to continue the rest of the way on foot. First though he’d have to find a way around the fallen tree. He’d walked only a few yards away from the wreck when he heard a gunshot. He looked down at himself, startled, expecting to see blood erupt from his chest, but there wasn’t any. Then he smelled gas, but before he could connect the dots the Mercedes exploded in a huge fireball.
The explosion picked Whittington up and hurled him into the branches of the felled tree. He hung draped across a limb, bent double, gasping for air. It knocked the breath out of him. He had to concentrate in order to resume normal b
reathing.
He tried to climb down, but managed only to fall and land on his feet for just long enough to twist an ankle, then he hit on his rear end, driving the sharp end of a broken stick at least two inches into the meat of his gluteus maximus.
Lester lowered his rifle and watched the Professor’s escalating misfortune with great amusement. This good guy stuff was more fun than he’d realized. He could torment a jerk to his heart’s content and no one would fault him for it. In fact, they’d thank him!
Whittington rolled onto his side, reached behind himself, and jerked the stick out of his butt, howling like a banshee at the pain.
***
Whittington stared at the bloody stick in his hand. He tossed it away and staggered about in a daze looking for a way around the wall of debris which now included pieces of his car. His eyes lit on the rifle case laying amid broken glass and other shrapnel from the wreckage. The case was scuffed and dented, but intact. He knelt and opened it. The rife was undamaged. He removed the gun and one of the boxes of shells and walked away leaving the flickering, smoking, sizzling mess behind him.
Lester was content to end the show with the big fireworks display, so he bent over to gather up his gear. He glanced up just in time to see Whittington disappear into the woods with a rifle. He stood for a second, staring open-mouthed in disbelief, then he took off running after him. He berated himself for trying to be a good guy. This was why it was better to just go ahead and kill some people.
***
Lester ran toward the gap in the trees where he’d seen the Professor go. He intended to catch him and put one in his head this time. The next thing he knew his feet went out from under him and he was swept through the air through no will of his own. When the motion arrested, found himself snared in a tangle of slender nylon-coated cables. It was a bear snare. He’d stumbled into a dad-blasted poacher’s snare.
Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb Page 17
