Ever Onward

by Wayne Mee

  Sloan moved closer. “What’s there?”

  Rotten teeth showed through a gash of a mouth. “A parking lot. Backpackers ‘n hunters use it. Most folks don’t know its there, but I’m betting these bastards do.”

  “Why?”

  Hec scratched his stubbled chin. “’Cause this lot’s damned smart, that’s why. They’ve given us the slip twice now and already taken out four of your boys.”

  “But you can find them?” Tiny’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  Hec glanced at the big man. “If you do things my way I can.”

  Tiny was about to say something, but Sloan cut him off. “Enough! My boys will do whatever you say, just find these bastards!”

  Hec spit again. “What I said goes for you too, Boss. There aint no fancy chauffeurs out here. You’ll have to pull your own weight like everyone else. That means jump when I say jump ‘n squat when I say squat. That okay by you?”

  It took Sloan several long moments to manage a nod, during which he contemplated the ways he was going to kill this bag of cowshit when this was over!

  Tiny grunted out a laugh. “So what do we do first, Kemosloppy? Send up smoke signals?”

  Hec fixed him with his hunter’s eyes. “We’ll try the radio first. The one in the Ranger’s bedroom. Tell your boys back at Lake Placid to get a map ‘n haul there asses up to the Garden. Better yet, once there have them follow the trail up to John’s Brook Lodge. We’ll meet them there in two or three days.”

  Sloan nodded to Tiny. While the large Asian stomped off to find the short-wave, Sloan stepped closer to Hec. His voice was low and dangerous. “Let’s get a few things straight, Hayseed. You may be the big shit out here in the boonies, but I still have the final say. You find me these motherfuckers and you can write your own ticket. Try to jerk me off and I’ll rip your heart out.”

  Hec held Sloan’s cold gaze for several heartbeats before speaking. “Look. I’m good. Damned good! But there’s a hell of a lot of wilderness out there ‘n at least one of these buggers knows his ass from a hole in the ground. He’s at home in the woods, knows what gear to use. He also knows the lay of the land ‘n how to make it work for him. If it is just one of them, the others may get sloppy. If not, some of us won’t be coming out.”

  Hec paused to let his words sink in, then continued. “What you got to do now, Boss, is make up your mind. Do you want these guys bad enough to go through a world of pain, ‘cause once we hit the high country, turning back is just as hard as going on. If you’ve got the balls for that, I’m your man. If not, say so now.”

  Sloan’s anger threatened to choke him. No-one spoke to him like that! No-one! Not since his father years ago. He’d been fourteen at the time. The old man had gotten drunk and beat the living shit out of him. A baseball bat alongside the old bastard’s head had put an end to that. Sloan hadn’t taken any lip since. Now, here was this sack of country shit standing there attracting flies and telling HIM how it was going to be! Well, he’d soon fix that! But not now. Now he needed this pompous hillbilly. But later! Ol’ Hayseed Hector was going to get a lasting lesson in manners. Count on it!

  “I want them!”, Sloan managed to croak.

  Hec nodded. “Me too. For different reasons, but me too.”

  Flame stood on the lip of the narrow, open trail, her green eyes wide with wonder. Before her stretched a view that took her breath away. An arm length in front of her the world fell away in a dizzying spiral of blue. A thousand feet below lay the glacial waters of Avalanche Lake. Three miles long and so deep as to be practically bottomless, the cold, azure waters filled the wide gap between two sheer cliffs. In the windblown gulf between, fluffy white clouds floated. Soaring on the thermal updrafts, a hawk, wild and fierce, cried out its boundless joy. Flame’s heart answered in kind.

  Twice before she had felt thus. The first time had been with Snake and his gang, chasing Josh’s group along the Franconia Ridge. The second time was when Josh himself had taken her to the top of Mount Washington. Both times above treeline she had felt her pulse racing, her eyes drinking in the beauty all around her.

  Now, halfway up the sheer wall of Mount Avalanche, the thrill was the same; the sweeping vistas, the endless sky, the feeling that you could reach out and touch the very centre of the Creation.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?”, Trina said, climbing up to stand beside her. The taller red-head grinned and pointed to the hawk. Together they stood watching the feathered creature soar through the heavens.

  Josh and Eddy, a dozen yards further back down the trail, were kneeling by a narrow catwalk. The dog, Princess, watched them with her head cocked to one side. A graying, weathered plank spanned a narrow but deep crevasse. They’d been traversing a giant talus heap of large boulders and monolithic slabs for over an hour now, and this was the third wooden catwalk they’d crossed. Using the rock-hammer he’d brought from the Ranger’s cabin, Josh had smashed the bolts holding the wood to the rock on all three. Anyone following was going to have a hell of a surprise once they attempted to cross.

  Watching the last rusted pin snap under the blow from the two pound hammer, Eddy had an idea. “What if we dump this one down the crevasse? If they get this far, they’ll already know we’ve buggered the pins. They’ll simply have someone hold it steady while the others cross. But if there is no bridge ---”

  Josh beamed back at his curly headed friend. Together they heaved the heavy plank into the yawning gap. It was a long time hitting the water.

  “What are you two grinning about?”, Trina asked as the men joined them. “Or is it one of those ‘male things’?” The three pain pills she’d taken back at the Ranger station had worn down the pain in her arm and left her a little giddy.

  Josh winked at Eddy, then reached down to scratch Princess behind her neck. “Oh, just that two heads are better than one, and that four are even better. Who’s hungry?”

  They sat together quietly, making a quick meal out of cold tortillas, cheese, pepperoni, washed down with peach juice. Princess had a whole pepperoni to herself. As they sat, the shadows lengthened, while across the narrow lake, the sheer granite cliff-face burned in the westering sun.

  Flame leaned back against Josh, her red hair a strangely heady mixture of sweat and pine. “You think they’re still coming, don’t you?”

  Josh was silent for several moments. Just before climbing into The Pass, he had caught a glimpse of six men winding their way up the trail. They were a good hour behind them, but still coming. The false trails he had left and the two traps he’d set had gained them a little time, but that was all. Whoever was leading them seemed to know his business.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “They’re still coming.”

  “And you don’t think fooling with the catwalks will stop them?”

  He shook his head.

  Flame sighed. “Then we should make a stand here in the rocks and take them when they’re in the open.”

  “No.” His tone was final, not open to negotiation.

  She stiffened, turning to face him. “Why the hell not? I know you’re not afraid!”

  Josh placed an arm around her and pulled her to him. “Damned right I’m afraid! There’s six of them, most with automatic weapons!”

  Flame fixed him with her sea-green eyes. “You faced them back at the van.”

  “And nearly got us killed!”, he added.

  “Well, what then? We can’t outrun them and we can’t lose them. What’s left?”

  Josh pulled over the pack from the Ranger station. Coils of braided climber’s rope stuck out of the top. “We outsmart them.”

  He called Eddy and Trina and began to tell them his plan.

  Sloan felt like screaming. If he wasn’t so bloody tired he would have. As it was, he sank to his knees, his heart pounding, his lungs on fire. Tiny and Nuts Wilson were in equally bad shape. Even the kid, Donny the Geek, was winded. Only Hec seemed normal. Sitting casually on the lip of the twisting goat’s path, the scruffy woodsman was calmly
rolling a smoke.

  ‘Bastard!’, Sloan cursed inwardly, wishing he had the strength to shove the arrogant sack-of-shit off the cliff. That made him think of Tim Shingle, which brought the rage full circle. ‘Who the hell would have thought they would have knocked out the fucking pins?!’ Sloan’s mind replayed the man’s fall over and over again. The sudden flailing of arms; the desperate, panic-stricken look; the ear-piercing, blood-curdling scream as Tim fell into the dark crevasse.

  ‘Our fucking guide should have, that’s who!’

  They’d crossed the second catwalk on their hands and knees. Crawling like a bunch of shit-pants kids! All but Hec. That bastard had sauntered across!

  And now this! The third catwalk wasn’t even there! They’d tossed the fucking thing down! Down like Tim had gone. End over end. Screaming all the way!

  Something touched his shoulder and Sloan jumped, his hand scrambling for the Rugger P-85 at his hip. Tiny’s slanted eyes swam into view.

  “Chill out, Sloan. It’s me!”

  “I know its you, Butt-Head! What the fuck do you want!?”

  “To get off this fucking mountain!”, Tiny growled. “I feel like a god-damned fly crawling across the nose of a skull! Christ! A fucking goat couldn’t live up here!”

  “Hec can.” Sloan’s words promised a symphony of pain.

  “Ya!”, the large Asian grunted. “But not once we get back down.” The two men grinned like crows contemplating a corpse.

  Hec, as though sensing their mood, glanced over at the pair, then up the steep slope. The sun, now far to the west, left this eastern side of the mountain in deep shadow. The crevasse that split the narrow trail was about a dozen feet across but only went back as far as the sheer wall. Several yards up the slope a large, dead pine hung over the trail. An idea began to form in Hec’s crafty mind. If they could get up there and push it down, they might be able to get across the gap. He called Donny the Geek over. The kid was crazy enough to try anything. Together they both scrambled up the slope.

  Josh and his group were now high above the southern end of Lake Colden, over a mile further along from the last catwalk. The trail had dipped down several hundred feet, then climbed even higher. The lake, now far below them, looked like a giant, kidney-shaped pool. A multicolored rope ran through a pulley hammered into the rock wall behind them.

  Josh, pointing to the map, showed where a steep trail at the southern end of the lake led up the eastern cliff to a place called Lake Tear of the Clouds. From there a multitude of trails branched off in all directions, several of them ending up at The Garden. The trail they were on now wound slowly around and down to the same place, but if they could use the ropes to get down the steep cliff, they’d be hours ahead of those following them. All but Eddy jumped at the idea.

  “What about Trina? With that arm...” Eddy left the rest unsaid.

  Josh dug out a contraption made from nylon straps. “A Climber’s Sling. Flame goes down first, then we lower Trina in the sling.”

  “Ya. A real piece of cake,” Eddy said, unable to hide his apprehension.

  “I’ll be fine, Eddy,” Trina put in. “I’ve taken a lot of climbing courses in Ranger School.”

  “Ya? With a broken arm?”

  She held up the aluminum Climb-Along, a hand-grip that allowed the rope to slide through but gripped tight when squeezed. “Like you said, its ‘a piece of cake’!”

  Eddy shook his head. “You’re both bloody crazy. It must be four or five hundrd feet straight down, and we’ve only got a couple of hundred feet of rope!”

  “No sweat,” Flame put in. We’ve got a bag of pullies and shit, plus there’s plenty of ledges on the way down. We’ll just leap-frog it down.”

  “Swell!”, Eddy said, nodding towards Princess. “How about the pouch? I suppose she goes down in the sling as well?”

  Flame, already in a harness and hooked to one end of the rope, winked at the worried carpenter. “Hey Eddy, do you want to live forever?”

  It was a game they had played since leaving Mount Hawthorn. ‘Corny Quotes’. Someone said a famous line from a movie and the rest tried to guess which one. Eddy was good on the John Wayne ones, but not so hot with the rest.

  “’Conon the Slayer’!”, Trina beamed. “What’s-her-name, ah... Valaria!, said that to him just before they climbed the Serpent Temple!”

  Flame gave her a thumbs-up sign, then swung over the side. Princess barked and Eddy groaned, feeling his stomach heave. Josh belayed the rope through the pulley the way Trina had told him. Several minutes later the rope went slack and Flames distant voice floated up to them.

  “Send down the packs. Then the dog!”

  Eddy gave another little groan.

  “They WHAT?!” A vein in Sloan’s neck looked as though it was going to burst. He drew his semi-automatic and pointed it at Hec. “I should blow your bloody head off!”

  Hec fingered the pulley hammered into the rock-wall, then turned to face Sloan. A sly smile creased his stubbled features. “Go ahead. But without me none of you’ll get out of here alive, let alone catch those bastards.”

  Tiny shoved his bulk forward, in his anger coming dangerously close to the edge. Over a thousand feet below, Lake Colden waited patiently in the shadows. “You think you’re so god-damned smart! All we have to do is turn around and follow the trail back!”

  Hec’s grin became a broad smile. “You want to try crossing those crevices in the dark? There aint no streetlights out here, boys. Once the suns gone its blacker than a Nigger’s asshole.”

  While this little tidbit sank in, Hec glanced up at the sky. The shadows were lengthening, and the light had dimmed in the valley. Hec decided to drive home his point. “Be dark soon, and cold. Any of you boys bring supper? I thought not.” He leaned towards Sloan, ignoring the gun in the man’s hand. “There’s a lean-to beside a trout stream not far from here. In less than an hour we can be safe and warn and stuffing ourselves with fresh caught fish.”

  “What about them?!”, Sloan demanded, pointing down to Lake Colden.

  Hec began to roll a cigarette. “I know where their headed. They’ll have to camp soon. Come morning they’ll head up over Mount Colden and on to Tear Lake Shelter. At dawn I’ll take us up a side-trail not marked on any map. Its harder to climb that a Nun’s thigh, but it’ll get us where we want to go in half the time.”

  “Oh?”, Tiny sneered. “And just where the fuck is that?”

  “Tear Lake Shelter,” Hec beamed. “There’s a trail from there that leads down to The Garden. With any luck, we should get to the shelter ahead of them.” Hec struck a wooden match with the end of his thumbnail and lit his cigarette. “Should have them in the bag by tomorrow night.”

  Chapter 32: ‘TEAR LAKE’

  The Adirondacks

  New York August 18

  Josh called a halt beside a rushing stream. Tossing down his pack, he thrust his head into the foaming water, the cold helping to wash away his fatigue. The other three gladly did the same. Princess was already up to her belly, noisily drinking her fill. Flame, kicking off her boots, shorts and tank-top, joined the hound, laying down and letting the icy water flow over her. The others were too hot and tired to notice. Besides, Flame was after all, Flame. Mindful of her sling, Trina bathed her face with a wet bandana. The second lot of pills Eddy had given her since breakfast were already wearing off, leaving her features drawn and pale.

  “How much further?”, Eddy asked. Water poured off him, plastering his blond curls to his head.

  Josh dug out his map and traced a finger along the trail they had been following since sunrise. It passed up and over the summit of Mount Colden, down and around its eastern side, then up a stream along a series of open ledges to their present position.

  “This must be Feldspar Brook. The shelter should be just beyond these ridges.”

  Eddy frowned. “’Should be’? Christ, Josh! Haven’t you been here before?”

  Josh shook his head. “Not on this trail. Oh, I’v
e been to the shelter, but I came in from The Garden on my way up Mount Marcy.”

  Flame rejoined them, her shorts back on, her tank-top still in her hand. She caught Trina’s frown, smiled wickedly, and turned around to finish dressing. Eddy had been about to say something, but the sight of the statuesque red-head drove the thought out of his head. Trina tried to salvage the situation by asking Josh how high Marcy was.

  “Almost fifty-four hundred feet. Highest peak in the Adirondacks.”

  She smiled, hearing the pride in his voice. Having grown up in New Hapshire’s White Mountains, she could understand his love for high places. “How many times have you been up it?”

  Josh pulled out some dried jerky and offered it around. “To the top? Twice. On two other occasions the weather drove us back half way up. It’s not easy to reach, being nearly eight miles from Keene Valley and twelve from where we left the van.”

  “How far have we come, Lover?” Flame knelt beside him, her skimpy top now molded to her wet body, was at least in place.

  Josh continued to chew the dry beef. “Around twenty. We didn’t exactly take the most direct route.”

  Trina moved closer to the map. With her good hand she traced the trail from the Tear Lake Shelter, up and over Marcy and down to a fork on the eastern slope. “Which way to that parking lot?”

  Josh shrugged. “We’ve got several choices. The easiest way is down past Slant Rock to the John’s Brook Lodge. From there its a flat three miles to The Garden.”

  “And we can pick up a car there?”

  Josh nodded, thinking back on that terrible day nearly two months ago when he and Jessie had walked out of these same mountains, only to find a world gone mad. The image of his brother-in-law’s dried up body passed before his eyes. He shivered, thinking of that lonely grave on the slopes of Mount Haystack.

  “Josh?” Flame’s voice pushed away the dark past, snapping him back to the equally dark present.