Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  “I don’t think those are gonna do much besides roll on by,” Steve said, the hard edge of authority in his voice.

  Tim nodded, accepting the salve. “I appreciate your optimism.”

  Brad clapped his hands together. “Let’s talk about our lovebirds.”

  This was it. The part Tim hated. He could hear the line that would come next—its general tone anyway—and sure enough, Steve delivered it as if reading from a script.

  “They couldn’t have just gone to Paris,” he said, a grin altering the arrangement of lines on his face.

  “Much more romantic to get eaten by black flies and drown,” said Brad.

  “It’s late July,” Tim pointed out. “They knew enough to avoid black-fly season.”

  Brad had the grace to look chastened, but Steve simply narrowed his eyes. Then again, Steve had seen injuries and deaths no civilian could imagine.

  “Let’s get some facts down besides their marital status,” Steve said, tugging at the brim on his USMC cap as the sun started its climb. “Timeline?”

  “Today will be the third day past expected,” Tim said, glancing upward again. Steve had been right, at least for now—the clouds were gone, any weather on hold for now, and the morning sky looked gentle. “They were supposed to finish paddling on the sixteenth, then take a day to get back home, returning in the afternoon or evening. That would’ve been the day before yesterday.”

  “So we’re now at the start of day four post-paddle?” Steve clarified.

  “That’s right,” Tim said. He rubbed his chin. He’d left too early for a shave, and the bristles itched.

  “Who sounded the alert?” Brad asked.

  “Wife’s sister,” Tim replied. He walked over to the Rogue, fingering a hank of rope on the roof that had secured the canoe. He leaned down and peered through a rear window. “No gear left behind.”

  Steve and Brad both nodded.

  Tim studied the view across the pond. He wasn’t any sort of boater himself, and didn’t know the waterways except as they came up on the job. “Tell me about this route.”

  Brad spoke up. “Other than one nice spot—an island I can see newlyweds enjoying—putting-out here basically guarantees they came through a lot of petering-out creeks, one brief stretch of lowly rapids, and some pretty brutal carries. There aren’t a lot of good, open stretches of water up this way.”

  “Which could explain why they’re taking longer than planned,” Steve noted. “Now, if you weren’t paddling, you’ve got some incredible backcountry hiking. Crucifer Chasm is in there—so-called jewel of the Adirondacks, which hardly anyone gets to see because it’s so remote. But would our pair just abandon their canoe?”

  They all reached the same conclusion at once.

  “Won’t see much by air,” Tim said. “Leaf cover is too thick right now.”

  Steve agreed. “Not worth sending a helo up.”

  Brad clapped his hands together again. “A two-man kayak is lying around our field office in Gumption,” he said. “Steve, want to assemble some supplies and paddle after the happy couple?”

  Steve doffed his cap, holding it out in front of him like a bouquet of flowers as he took the lead across the lot. “I do,” he said, and Brad guffawed.

  Tim left them to it.

  • • •

  Freedom Pass was the shortest way back to Wedeskyull, so Tim took it again, although its roadbed had proved a little gnarly, even for the Mountaineer. Winter ate at asphalt and gravel, sunk its teeth in and chewed, but the DOT had enough repairs to make on the paved thoroughfares and rural routes. These lesser roads seldom got any attention.

  Tim was leaving the search for the newlyweds in good hands, and given the potential weather still set to come in over the mountain, he needed to return his attention to the Scouts.

  Weather. The least predictable of the three Ws. In the Adirondacks, balmy could be swapped for dangerous as if a switch had been flicked.

  This Scout leader was experienced—six years with the same troop—but nothing could prepare a person for every eventuality he might encounter in the wild. Civilization was a jealous mistress, constantly demanding you value her rewards. Even though the leader had chosen a well-traveled route and was staying away from trouble spots—

  Tim braked, hard and sudden. He stared through the windshield, a shaft of sunlight glaring off the glass, although that wasn’t what had made him stop.

  Something had been tugging at him like an insistent child ever since Steve and Brad began discussing the perils of the honeymooners’ route. A hunch, nothing more, made up of sense and vapor. Gut instinct, hard to pin down, even harder to trust. But Tim knew from personal experience what could happen if you didn’t trust your instincts.

  When he got back to the barracks, he felt dazed, as if he’d been caught sleepwalking. It was a condition that often descended just before he put two parts together, started viewing things from a whole different angle. Pieces from an unsolved case a year ago were starting to come back, as if magnetically drawn to the situation they were up against now with the honeymooners. Was this going to turn out to be a search-and-rescue op—sadly standard for these parts—or something else altogether?

  Dorothy Weathers—dispatcher and general point person for the department—delivered the news that the Scouts had been located, having gotten turned around after being confronted by an uncharacteristically friendly black bear.

  Even this notice failed to fully penetrate Tim’s haze. “Thank God,” he said, valiantly trying to hide his state. “Tell everybody to go home and get some rest. They were up most of the night, and I may need ’em again.”

  “Chief?” Dorothy asked. She was an older woman, the wife of the prior police chief, and little fazed her.

  This would, though, Tim had a feeling. If he was right. Dorothy had taken the lack of resolution in that other case almost as hard as Tim and his men.

  “I’ll explain if I need you to call anybody in,” Tim told her. “But first things first. Have all the parents of the Scouts been notified?”

  Dorothy offered a rare smile. “No one was out of range or in the woods searching themselves. More brains them,” she added. “Everybody knew within minutes.”

  “Good work,” Tim said. “Hey, Dot, think you can do something for me?”

  Dorothy nodded her head with its thinning white hair and cotton ball of bun. “I just might could,” she said, sending him a wry look.

  “I need everything we’ve got on Theresa Valero,” Tim said.

  A momentary wince caused Dorothy’s forehead to crease. Tim recognized it. This particular unsolved had pained them even more than most. There had never been a lick of hope to it, a time when they thought they were getting somewhere.

  The older woman began striking keys on her keyboard.

  “That form mention the location where she went missing?” Tim asked, leaning over Dorothy’s thin, humped shoulder. “I want to make sure I’m remembering right.” He knew he was remembering right. But he wanted to hear his dispatcher—the person he trusted in some ways even above his own men—say it.

  Dorothy adjusted her glasses and bent over the screen. “Turtle Ridge,” she read out loud. “We never got a single lead on that case.” She clucked. “It was like that poor woman disappeared into thin air.”

  “You’re right,” Tim said. His focus had returned; he felt like a ship or a jet plane being steered by something, set on course. “It was.”

  Late last summer, a female hiker had disappeared from the Turtle Ridge Wilderness Area. No trace of her had been found, neither her body nor her belongings. The incomprehensibility of so complete a vanishing had given rise to all sorts of wacky conjectures. Abduction by space aliens. Turtle Ridge was an Adirondack version of the Bermuda Triangle. The land was haunted by the ghosts of all the outdoorsmen who had perished in the challenging terrain
. Superstitious hikers started to stay away.

  Experts claimed that Turtle Ridge was suited only to the most fit and accomplished backpackers, and guides began to refuse to organize trips there unless their clients could demonstrate fitness and prove experience, not trusting such rough land, miles from any outlet, to novices. In a few more years, the area would be the subject of local lore, scary stories passed on by old-timers, seen as sinister and malign.

  The tract of wilderness was a fair shake from the honeymooners’ intended put-out spot at Crosch Pond. But if the two had gotten tangled up in the territory Steve had mentioned, they could have wound up over there. In fact, given the nearly impassable chasm that dominated the land, shunting hikers toward its narrowest end, Turtle Ridge might even be viewed as their most likely position.

  What if something besides the three Ws was at work in the region?

  Amidst a host of other bad contingencies, it would mean that Steve and Brad were setting off to look in the wrong place.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  “Up and at ’em, you two,” Kurt called. “Are you decent?” Daylight shone into the hut so that Kurt appeared to enter via a shaft of sun. “I made breakfast.”

  Natalie scrubbed grit from her eyes. Beneath the cover of the sleeping bag, Doug felt for her hand, and their middle-of-the-night plans came back to her. She had to look away, pretend to be searching for her shoes, in order to hide her expression from Kurt.

  Kurt served berries boiled down to a sauce, which he ladled over some kind of flatbread made out of pounded acorns. It didn’t taste half bad, in a paleo kind of way. Once they had all finished eating, Natalie proposed her idea.

  “A tour?” Kurt said stiffly.

  Natalie combated his tone with an easy one of her own. “Well, yeah,” she said. “If we’re going to live here, we should get to know the place, right?” She dipped her face in what she hoped was an appealing, coquettish gesture, even though she had the feeling that Kurt was impervious to female charms. “And I would guess that you’ve done a lot more with it than we’ve had a chance to see yet.”

  Doug nodded enthusiastically. “It’s pretty amazing really.”

  Natalie gave his hand a grateful squeeze.

  Kurt did seem to be responding to their ploy, his eyes keen, intent on them as he considered. “All right,” he said slowly. “I suppose we can put off building your door. Let me just go get something out of my hut first.”

  When he reappeared, he had a broad, steel blade strapped to his belt, and Natalie felt momentarily struck still, as if she’d been sliced by it.

  “A machete,” Doug said faintly.

  Natalie hoped Kurt would miss her husband’s tone. She was finding it hard to speak herself, the sight of that lethal blade obliterating everything else.

  “It’ll help with breaking trail,” Kurt explained.

  Natalie and Doug fell into step behind him as they entered the woods.

  As they wended their way through the trees, Kurt offered repeated reminders to follow in his tracks. He whacked at branches with the machete and tested the ground with the tip of the blade. The maneuvers put Natalie’s senses, already heightened by the thought of tomorrow’s escape, on alert. She cast her gaze around, tilting her head to listen, detecting faint odors in the air. Then she noticed an irregularity in the landscape.

  It was a mere dip, a marshy spot, to her left. Scarcely noticeable, appearing amidst scattered leaves like a blemish on a perfectly made-up face, and yet something in the sight caused Natalie to swerve abruptly, overcorrecting before she veered right again and wound up, breathing hard, just behind Kurt.

  His arm shot out to grab her. Doug stepped forward, about to intervene, but Kurt yanked him close as well.

  “I told you to stay by me!” Kurt said. He was breathing hard.

  Natalie and Doug looked down at the ground.

  Kurt stooped and picked up a rock, seemingly too big and bulky for one man to lift. An icy tentacle of feeling reminded Natalie of Kurt’s strength.

  He dropped the stone onto the slight sag in the land.

  It vanished.

  Along with a cascade of leaves and dust, the ground ate the enormous rock.

  It fell for long enough that they had time to wait before hearing the thud. Natalie’s mouth felt as dry as the dirt disappearing into the man-made sinkhole, like sand through an hourglass.

  Doug braced his shoulders. “That must’ve been quite a feat, digging that.”

  Kurt eyed him. “I live here alone,” he said. “Without benefit of conventional weapons, a gun or the like. I need some means to keep people out, wouldn’t you agree? From stealing what it’s taken me such pains to create?”

  Natalie continued to study the gaping hole in the ground. If somebody stepped on it with both feet, he or she would drop grave-deep. And stepping with only one foot might be even worse. His or her legs would splay out, drawing and halving the victim.

  She emitted a dry husk of a laugh, caustic and angry, which fortunately Kurt didn’t appear to hear. These traps didn’t keep anyone out. They only kept people in.

  The three of them continued to walk through the densely packed forest. Stands of brush grew in thick knots, impossible to untangle or push through, the only choice being to weave around the clumps. A heavy canopy of green enclosed them from above. The wilderness felt both endless and constricting, as vast as it was inescapable.

  A circle of trees that had been severed at the stump, all their branches and leaves removed, appeared before them. The amputated trunks looked like a giant’s set of checkers. They surrounded a beehive-shaped cone of rocks, which stood as tall as a person.

  Natalie frowned in Doug’s direction, but he shook his head, just as unwitting.

  Mere pinpricks of sunshine made it through the parasol of leaves overhead, staining the whole world green, like the windows of a cathedral. The place had a confessional feel, and Kurt spoke in a hushed tone. “This is my smokehouse. You could call it a storehouse too. It’s where the venison will go, after we’ve eaten our fill.”

  He prodded at a stone, lifting it out of the structure and setting it on the ground. A thick, meaty smell emerged, and despite everything, Natalie felt a clawing in her belly. Perhaps another deer had taken up residence inside; surely they must get killed often enough, stepping into one of Kurt’s pits.

  Kurt continued removing rocks until he’d formed a large enough opening for Natalie and Doug to peer through.

  “Go on,” he urged. “Look.” The expression on his face posed a challenge.

  Natalie took a peek, and her stomach gave a slow, heaving roll; she tasted bitter bile. She put the back of her hand to her mouth, stifling a scream. Doug grabbed her before she could spin away, jerking his chin toward the ground, then up to the green umbrella of leaves, and the reality of their situation slammed back at Natalie, full force.

  Every step held danger out here, and its nature was worse than anything she had feared.

  That was no deer in the smokehouse.

  Within the stone walls hung lengths of meat, flattened out and preserved. Too big to belong to any animal except a bear or a buck, only these weren’t the right shape for either creature. Instead, they were clearly of another shape, one whose form had been altered as the flesh was turned into…jerky. Yes, that was jerky, like you’d find in cellophane-wrapped sticks at a convenience store, only different from those, of course, naked and unpackaged, yet still terribly, horrifically recognizable. Like a poster from biology class, the musculature of Homo sapiens splayed out, its meat and fat and sinew exposed.

  Natalie swayed, and Doug caught her. They stumbled away from the cone of stones, keeping to the tracks their shoes had already pressed into the dirt. Natalie couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She was going to hyperventilate. Her gaze went wheeling about the woods.

  Kurt strode to her and
held her steady. “Breathe,” he commanded.

  His arms formed a straitjacket; she had no idea how she’d ever found this man remotely appealing. He was flesh devoid of feeling, his hands like slabs of meat, his muscular form mummified and dead.

  Natalie jerked free as Doug stepped between the two of them.

  She hid her face against her husband’s chest, her words emerging muffled. “The hiker…whose things you took…” Natalie forced herself to look up. “You…you…”

  “Killed her,” Kurt finished calmly. “Yes.”

  Doug clenched and unclenched a fist.

  “Terry was her name,” Kurt noted. “A stout, practical girl, like a farm woman or a pioneer. She would’ve done wonderfully here,” he added. “I didn’t want to do what I did.” Kurt paused as if reflecting. “But Terry resisted me with every strong muscle in her body. I couldn’t get her to spend a civil hour in conversation without attempting to flee.”

  Doug made a sudden lunge for Kurt, and Natalie hurled herself sideways into her husband’s arms, where she huddled close, waiting for both their heart rates to slow.

  “But that wasn’t the only reason I dispatched her,” Kurt went on without a hitch. “And you both should understand this. Because you remember, I think, the terrible grip of hunger. No, I didn’t kill Terry simply because she opposed me.”

  Motionless now, holding on to each other, Natalie and Doug both watched Kurt.

  “I did it out of necessity,” Kurt informed them. “Survival of the fittest; nature is red in tooth and claw.” His voice had remained steady and level throughout his whole confession, but it began to waver under the intensity of his vow. “I will not starve during another winter out here. And neither will either of you.”

  Part Four

  Saved

  Chapter Sixty

  Natalie and Doug made their way out of the woods in a straggling, beaten line. Following Kurt’s lead, their shoulders hunched, vigilantly regarding the ground at their feet. In low murmurs, Natalie voiced the need for them to speak alone in private; returning on an even quieter note, Doug suggested they ask to take a nap.