Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  “Go slowly now,” Kurt cautioned.

  Natalie held the rim of the cup to her husband’s lips and helped him to drink.

  Life seemed to seep back into Doug along with the soup. He finished one portion before downing another.

  “Enough,” Kurt said. “We have to be sure that stays down.”

  “My stomach feels like a rock,” Doug said, thumping it with one fist. “It’s a miracle. What did you give me?”

  “Berberine,” Kurt said. “It grows in the vicinity. Without it, I don’t know if you would’ve survived. I had to make use of the same plant myself when I first came here and drank from the stream as you did.”

  Doug shook his head, his expression creasing. “That was lunacy, I know. I was just so goddamned thirsty.” He gave Natalie a look of remorse, and she shook her head. “You weren’t acting rationally, honey. Neither of us was.”

  “You managed not to drink,” Doug said.

  “I nearly died,” she replied.

  He touched her arm, as if making sure she was really there. “Me too. And my death would’ve been a whole lot grosser.”

  Natalie laughed out loud. She couldn’t believe she had her husband back, joking around, referring to both their mortal ends. Gallows humor after a brush—no, not a brush, more than a nodding acquaintance—with the dark side.

  She nearly forgot Kurt was there, so caught up was she by Doug’s gaze and the warmth of his body next to hers. She looked around in the darkness.

  Kurt’s eyes glowed as he gazed at them, like some creature of the night. He was observing their exchange, his head turning back and forth.

  Natalie took her husband’s hand and squeezed it. “Honey. Meet Kurt Pierson. The man who saved our lives.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Kurt waited until Doug and Natalie had both fallen back asleep to rise from his spot on the ground. Theirs was the deadened rest of recovery, a sleep that said its participants had nearly entered the state past this one and been stationed there for good. It was lucky both slept so deeply because Kurt had a lot to do.

  Still, he took a moment to look down at the couple. Higher in the mountains it must have started to rain, for the creek rushed by at a roar, droplets escaping their banks and dappling the sleeping bag Natalie and Doug shared. Kurt felt curiosity curdle his features, an expression he’d often seen on his parents’ faces when they watched him. Passing a mirror one day, he’d been stunned to catch an identical glimpse of the look on his own visage.

  Kurt was nothing like his parents. He understood people, knew what made them tick, in a way that his parents couldn’t begin to approximate. And they’d both been psychiatrists! But that was the crux of the difference. His parents had accrued book knowledge, medical degrees, and clinical hours, while Kurt zeroed in instinctively on people’s most hidden parts, taking out their secret, bloodied guts and examining them, holding them up to the light. Making them part of himself. Take Natalie, for instance.

  She had aped surprise upon realizing that she’d spent the entire night talking about herself instead of Kurt. But most people chose to talk about themselves upon finding a listening ear. Natalie had little interest in Kurt, and every desire to prattle on about her own wounded parts and raw places, going over them repeatedly, like a tongue pressing a sore spot on the gum.

  She’d lost someone when she was young. Her father almost certainly. The loss of a parent imprinted itself upon a child—one of the few carried into adulthood with little of its emotion discharged—and in Natalie’s case, the willingness to follow her new husband into these woods made the pattern seem obvious. She was looking for a male to cleave to and had unconsciously placed a second unreliable man in that role. Doug had been involved in helping a friend with something disreputable or possibly illegal; Natalie’s father had become undependable by dint of his death. It might’ve been the mother who died, but because women tended to marry dear old dad, Kurt’s bet was on the father.

  He could’ve debated the two possibilities for endless, joyful hours. Happiness at having people to ponder and peruse suffused him, flushed his skin, made his nerve endings stand up. It was a pleasure more intense and satisfying than sex. Kurt would sooner have had someone whose depths he could probe with his mind than a series of luscious concubines to bed. Even now, with both Doug and Natalie in a state of repose, capable of no confidence nor revelation, Kurt had trouble drawing his gaze away from the pair.

  He needed to get moving however.

  Only the thought of what might happen if he didn’t check on his stations, shore up the ranks, forced him to turn and head off into the deeper stretches of the woods. He needed everything in tiptop shape around here, especially with guests just arrived. He also wanted to see what his holes might contain in the way of future meals—Doug’s appetite would be returning, while Natalie’s was already enormous—and he had to make sure that weather and topographical shifts hadn’t caused any damage to the traps.

  Normally Kurt enjoyed these tasks, but tonight his thoughts were focused only on the couple and the burgeoning relationship between the three of them.

  Kurt had told the truth when he recounted being afflicted with the same malady that had beset Doug. During his first winter here, the wilderness had gradually unfrozen—a patch of bony brown here, a dripping icicle there—and vanishing snows revealed what seemed a great boon. A sign that Kurt had wound up in the Panglossian best of all possible places, the perfect spot to make his homestead. There was a brook at the end of a winding path, crystalline and seemingly pure. Kurt would have access to fresh water three seasons out of the year!

  But the bounty had turned on him. He’d lapped up a melting trickle that ran between two remaining tracts of ice and immediately become ill. He could still feel the dangerous slipperiness of his innards, how not even the tiniest morsel would stay down. Lying prostrate on the ground, hardly able to move, he’d recalled a remedy. Crawling like a worm through snow and exposed earth, Kurt had made his way past numerous shrubs and bushes until he found a thatch of berberine.

  It took weeks to fully regain his health, and Kurt had never again drunk a drop from the stream without boiling it first. Creek water made a better biological weapon than any that the armed forces currently possessed.

  It had nearly killed Doug; Natalie’s fear had been a natural one. Kurt hadn’t planned to mislead her, although he did detect the moment she’d jumped to her conclusion and hadn’t chosen to disabuse her of it. It had intrigued Kurt to see Natalie’s grief start to take form, to imagine what keeping her here as a widow would be like. There was more interest and material to be gleaned with the two together however.

  As the sound of the creek began to retreat, Kurt made sure to tread carefully, his eyes on the ground, examining every step he took. He changed the locations of his traps frequently enough that it was difficult to internalize a map of precisely where he’d placed each one. Whenever he reset a trap, its position always altered, however minutely. This was an ongoing process because Kurt had to continually hone wood, replenish poisons, and harvest the animals that fell into the holes he had dug.

  Since the idea first came to him, Kurt had fitted out the woods with various armaments he took joy in producing, laboring over each one with a lover’s intimate attentions. Sticks whose tips he’d whittled into spikes were thrust deep into the forest floor, poised to penetrate the sole of the thickest boot, and then the foot inside. Swaths of brush lay over deep pits impossible for any creature—even one as big as a man, or a bear, or the deer Kurt had recently butchered—to escape. A tincture distilled from stinging nettles, then boiled until it was hundreds of times stronger, painted various patches of greenery. One swipe against such a plant, and the victim’s skin would burn as if roasting over a thousand-degree fire, requiring repeated dunks in the creek. If contact with the distillation took place on the leg, walking with any speed would become impossible. There wer
e also lengths of wire-thin vine strung between tree trunks, low enough not to be seen, sharp enough to slice open a shin.

  If anyone came to these woods, Kurt would know about it.

  And if anybody tried to leave them, they would be stopped.

  • • •

  Kurt repositioned a run of sharpened sticks, placing them in an array that seemed suited to catching two people walking side by side, as he suspected this couple would do. Even with Doug not yet able to stand upright, he and Natalie were pawing at each other like a couple of horny teenagers. Which, Kurt supposed, they weren’t far from being. He wondered how old they were, how they had met and decided to marry. So many nuggets of connection, of a more personal knowing, lay before Kurt. He felt himself shudder with anticipation. He had to place his knife on the ground, lest his trembling hand miss the tip of the stick he was honing and nick his own flesh.

  He had hoped to keep the couple separate for longer, the better to get to know each of them well. Isolation had a way of encouraging revelation, made secrets come out. But the woman had proven remarkably strong-willed when it came to her husband.

  It didn’t matter. Strong-willed or weak, both types were equally fascinating to Kurt. And nobody had might or perspicacity enough to best him. He would revel in the complexities of this couple, their confused love for each other. It could play out in different ways depending upon the conditions Kurt set. Such occupation would keep him busy for years. Living in isolation all this time, Kurt felt as if a banquet had been laid out before him.

  The bond Doug had to Natalie seemed as strong as hers to him, Kurt mused. It was true, as he’d told Natalie, that her husband kept saying her name while caught in the throes of delirium. What Kurt hadn’t chosen to reveal was that Doug had gone on to offer countless other mutterings and vows, delivering a fertile bed of speculation for Kurt.

  Don’t hate me, please don’t hate me.

  I can’t bear to lose you, Natalie.

  The going will be free and clear from now on.

  There’s no price to pay, Nat, I can make it up to you.

  And best of all—

  I never meant to put him over us.

  The friend Natalie had mentioned, whom Doug tried to help? Kurt wondered deliciously. What fun it would be to make use of that particular tidbit.

  Kurt saw to each one of his installations, checking the tilt and angle of daggered sticks, laying fresh thatches of leaves over pits, painting swaths of foliage with blistering tincture. He walked in concentric rings around his camp, starting from the huts and moving outward until he came to land far enough away that no intruder or escapee could avoid encountering one of his traps. Then Kurt turned and headed back toward the creek, his jaunty whistle lost beneath the wind. A storm was picking up, making its way down the mountain like a great coiling snake, ready to wrap itself around Kurt and his guests.

  He shivered, more from delight than from the falling temperatures.

  What deepening wells of intimacy awaited him today?

  Perhaps Doug would open up as Natalie had been so eager to do. It’d been vanishingly simple to effect: just a word of false praise, and the woman’s lips parted like petals, exposing her deepest wounds. Natalie and Doug were the opposite of outdoorspeople, wasting away with an abundance of nourishment around, stumbling in circles instead of making use of natural landmarks, committing every beginner’s mistake in the woods. To her credit, Natalie had rebutted the compliment, sending it in Doug’s direction—who deserved it little more than she—just as she always gave him the prowess and control.

  Kurt sensed that Doug might not be quite as easy a mark, although he did have access to one weak spot in the man. Doug felt guilty about something, the issue Natalie had referenced surely. Depending on the exact nature of the situation, might Doug have the impulse to flee or escape, either himself or whatever sort of reckoning awaited him back home? Kurt could use such a need against him. Perhaps offering up a secret of his own would allow him to coax further revelations from the male half of the couple.

  The notion was tantalizing—to hear more of Doug’s truths, while also laying bare his own.

  Confession was akin to cleansing, and Kurt ached to wash himself in the waters of this couple’s understanding. How he’d come to these woods with a small band of people, and when one of them behaved in a way to threaten the whole, inviting someone in who hoped to see their society destroyed, Kurt had no choice but to dispatch the intruder. The fact that said intruder happened to be the mother of the utopia’s youngest member didn’t matter to Kurt. He had to get rid of the mother lest she convince her daughter to leave with her. Kurt didn’t want to lose one single object of study.

  He had killed once already as a younger man—the time he’d spent incarcerated had produced his fierce fear of solitary confinement—although that crime had been accidental. This had been a deliberate undertaking, designed to preserve the sanctity of their group. He’d expected to win the approbation of every member—after all, he had acted to save them—but instead they had turned on Kurt. He was cornered, had no choice but to flee. He’d leapt into a river whose current dragged him away.

  If Natalie and Doug heard this tale, surely they would view Kurt as a worthy protector, someone who could safeguard their needs and interests as well.

  The prospect of being seen for who he really was lit a fire inside Kurt.

  Nobody ever wanted to know the true Kurt.

  Not the folks with whom he had journeyed to these woods, or the first hiker he’d tried to keep here, his son who’d been pulling away, his wife who had decided to leave him, or his parents, who’d sought only to confirm the things they read in books.

  But now Kurt had a fresh start. A whole new opportunity.

  He intended to make full use of it, to hold no part of himself back even as he mined the couple until there was nothing of them left.

  He sensed something amiss before he got back to the creek. This was his home, and he knew every inch of the land, could perceive its slightest change. A flurry of movement, shifting air currents, disturbances in the dirt, all invisible to less probing eyes, were to Kurt no different than a door pushed open in a house, furniture overturned.

  He had strayed too far in his efforts to batten down the hatches, roaming over acres of weaponry and traps. The remainder of the night had slipped away, and now it was dawn. He’d been silly to have gone to such lengths, since the couple was in no condition to cover anywhere near the terrain Kurt just had.

  Although clearly they were regaining strength faster than Kurt had expected.

  He’d underestimated them, and the misjudgment enraged him nearly as much as the prospect of having to hunt them down all over again.

  He swore inwardly, striking his thigh with a rocklike fist till he felt the flesh turn pulpy and begin to bruise. Then he picked up his stride, breaking through a barricade of branches with an arm impervious to the clap of wood, his gaze sweeping the ground for signs of passage as he broke into a run.

  He was sweating and panting by the time he arrived at the sleeping bag, neatly folded on a spot beside the creek. Fear rigidified Kurt’s body. He began to stalk, Frankenstein-like, in the direction of camp.

  Natalie and Doug were nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Fifty

  Doug pushed the sleeping bag aside and got shakily to his feet while Natalie watched. She offered a hand for balance, and he took it.

  They stood beside the creek together, water darting and laughing over rocks, drops glinting like crystals in the moonlight.

  “Just like old times, huh?” Doug said wryly, squeezing her hand.

  Natalie’s mouth lifted in a brief smile.

  “Your cheek,” Doug said. He started to reach out, but stopped himself.

  Natalie swallowed. “Bad?”

  “The cut is nearly closed,” Doug said, a partial answer at
best. “Does it hurt?”

  Natalie shrugged, then shook her head. “How about your arm?”

  Doug didn’t answer that; he seemed preoccupied. “Think we’ll ever be the same, Nat? How we were in the beginning?” His voice was filled with loss. “This land seemed so different then.”

  Natalie thought about what Doug had come here expecting to get—salvation for his friend, a start for the two of them—and all that the place had instead taken away.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “We can’t be. We know what’s important in a way that we didn’t before. And we know how easily those things can be lost.”

  The temperature was dropping, and the banks of the creek lay bleakly beneath a cold and inhospitable moon. She and Doug were different, and the woods were changing too. Wind electric through the trees, leaves jangling, nocturnal birds chittering out alerts to their brethren. She recalled the moments she and Kurt had shared earlier, when all of the outdoors came to life. How wondrous it had been, like Dorothy waking up in Oz. But the flood of sensory input had taken on a menacing hue.

  “Let me show you where I’ve been staying,” Natalie suggested. She had the urge to get away from this spot. “We can go inside and warm up.”

  Doug raised his eyebrows. “Inside?”

  “Don’t expect the Taj Mahal,” Natalie said, and led the way between the trees.

  The huts appeared before them in a patch of ivory light just before the moon was blotted out by a field of clouds.

  “This one is mine,” Natalie said, surprised to hear in her statement a feeling of ownership. She ducked through the smaller hut’s opening, turning around when Doug didn’t follow.

  He had crouched beside the row of slim branches that made up the outside wall of the hut and was touching each one, a frown on his face.

  “I think he built this by hand,” Doug said.

  “I told you it wasn’t the Taj Mahal,” Natalie replied.