One second.
Nothing happened.
Erica sprang and flew at the woman with the gun, roaring and grazing her with her strong shoulder and easily bowling her off her feet. She landed and looked only for an instant at the bundle of green on the ground. Then she turned and melted into the darkness.
Chapter 17
“You’re here,” Jones said when Kerry entered the station. His breathing was unsteady and his face was washed out as he leaned against the wall. His tone was subdued, strangely free of its typical snide sarcasm. In all he looked like a man that had just come to shocking terms with his mortality via the most intense stress test of his life.
Kerry only nodded in reply.
“We should cover this window, before the whole place freezes,” he said. The words were rushed and nervous but spoken softly. “Last thing we need is the pipes to burst.”
She looked beyond him, past the front desk and down the hall. The buck from his office wall lay on the floor, nose down with the antlers supporting its weight. Closer by, an empty donut box. The refrigerator door was closed. No sign of being mauled and ransacked by a powerful bear. The donut box wasn’t shredded from teeth and claws.
So what the hell did I just see?
“Help me,” Jones said. “There’s plastic in the garage. We can cover the window and save the place for now. Come on.”
“What … just … happened?” she asked.
Jones made a face. A wince. He shook his head. He had never been so frightened in his life and never so close to heart failure. His body was flooded with nervous energy and his mind, struggling to make sense and keep up with that energy, was unable to cope, let alone form anything like a satisfying answer.
“What?” Kerry said. “What was that, Robert? What just happened?”
He didn’t answer. He had no understanding. No explanation. Nothing. So he just turned away and paced slowly down the hall and pushed through the garage door. After a minute he reappeared carrying a folded green tarp that crackled in the silent space. He moved to the window without a word and began unfolding the heavy plastic, holding it out as if to make some calculation in his head.
Finally Kerry moved. Somewhat dazed and rigid, moving automatically, she went to the utility room as if on autopilot and found a roll of duct tape and brought it out front and began tearing off strips to hold the tarp in place.
Neither of them spoke as they worked, and when the tarp was secure they both stood back and admired their patchwork as if they’d met some great objective. Simple work, keeping their bodies occupied while their minds whirled and lagged. The outcome was a fine example of redneck ingenuity.
Next Jones dug around in the utility room and returned with a space heater to supplement the laboring furnace. The inside of the station didn’t feel much warmer than the night outside.
He had just plugged the heater in and fired it up when Dorothy burst through the doorway, frigid cold swirling in around her feet as she closed the door and looked around. Her eyes fell first to the donut box on the floor, now kicked out of the way to the side of the room. She saw the broken glass swept into the corner, then looked at the two silent wardens. First Jones, then Kerry.
“Looks like you two could use some coffee,” she finally said.
“Yes,” Jones exhaled. “Coffee would be good.”
Kerry said nothing. For some reason her unsettled mind had dredged up the memory of a very strange story. Something she’d seen on Reddit. Someone at school had shown it to her and sneeringly asked if she was sure she wanted a career spent largely alone in the woods. She’d read it, admitting that it was indeed creepy, but had maintained that nothing could dissuade her from her dream job. But she’d never gone near any of those weird wilderness stories again. She didn’t need them interfering with reality.
The story was told in first person by a search and rescue rookie, somewhere out west, being trained by a senior forestry worker. The two were walking and talking, passing through dense woods on some important search, when they came upon the strangest sight the rookie had ever seen.
A stairway. In the middle of nowhere. Elaborate stairs from some fancy house, in perfect condition, with no other corresponding traces of a human structure. Not a nail or a board or a crumbling foundation. Just stairs, out of place, leading to nothing and nowhere.
Stranger even than the presence of the stairs was the senior searcher’s response to them. It was flat, unaffected. Apparently it was entirely normal to find such anomalies in the wilderness. Make no fuss and stick to the task at hand. Someone is lost and needs to be found. Forget the weird stuff and get on with the search.
Now Kerry glanced at Jones. In some strange way she was hoping for him, almost four decades her senior, to act like nothing unusual had happened. No problem. Just another evening at the office. But his symptoms of shock hadn’t changed. Perhaps he was even deeper in shock than she was. He’d had more years in which to construct illusions to be shattered.
She said nothing and sidled down the hall. Her office door was just ajar. She pushed it open. Flicked the light and went in and glanced around. No staircase, no anomalies. Nothing appeared disturbed. The screensaver of her computer was a photo of Mt. Katahdin surrounded by a sea of autumn leaves. Seeing it made her feel happy, for a few seconds.
All was as it should be, so she turned and looked across the way into Jones’ office. She saw the damaged wall where the buck had been torn down and then saw the body bag in the chair. Not quite stairs in the woods, but definitely weird and out of place.
The wall near the utility room had a gunshot in it, down low near the floor. She stepped into the room and saw the exit wound in the drywall. So much for the Hollywood theory of hiding behind drywall during a shootout. At a glance she couldn’t see where the bullet had gone from there. Maybe it had left the building and headed into town. She wasn’t about to drag huge shelves from the walls and start hunting.
Out in the garage she found the pair of discarded socks on the floor. She bent to pick them up but then caught herself and left them. They lay there partially bunched up, as if they’d been worn and carelessly discarded on someone’s bedroom floor. Small, harmless socks. Not as in-your-face as a random stairway. But they were certainly out of place.
She didn’t like the idea her imagination was inadvertently constructing. It gave her the feeling of being off-kilter. Off balance.
Out front Dorothy poured three mugs of coffee and they all stood about the counter, stirring, adding cream and more sweetener than usual. A few dashes of cinnamon. Anything to keep from making eye contact or a serious attempt at conversation.
“Dear me,” Dorothy sighed.
“Huh,” Jones grunted.
“It’s always something.”
Jones made the classic Maine farmer “Uh-yea” sound. Translation: Yes, I agree.
“Okay,” Kerry said.
The other two looked at her.
“Okay with what?” Jones asked.
“Someone has to say something.”
They stared at her.
“What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” Dorothy said honestly.
Jones wouldn’t even do that much. He just cleared his throat. Stirred his coffee again and then took a long sip.
“I think I saw a bear,” Kerry said.
“Oh dear,” Dorothy sighed.
“Bear,” Jones said under his breath. Not a question. Just repeating the word, like he was learning a language.
“On my way back today on the snowmobile,” Kerry resumed. “Something crossed the trail in front of me. Then, just now, something jumped out the window. It was all black. And huge. And …”
“Bears ought to be fast asleep,” Dorothy said. “Hadn’t they?”
“It’s almost January,” Jones muttered.
“Well, I saw it,” Kerry said. “Twice now. I know it’s odd, but I saw it.”
“Who ate the donuts?” Dorothy asked.
“Someon
e drank the milk,” Jones said.
Dorothy made a face, as if she’d been struck. Like reality had hit her all at once. She turned and looked full at Jones and said, “What exactly did you see in here, Robert?”
The truth was that he didn’t see much of anything. Only evidence that he had not been alone, followed by the instantaneous awareness of something charging him and bowling him over as if he were a lightweight. A small boy.
“Gotta get someone in here to fix that window,” he mumbled. “First thing in the morning.”
“What did you see?” Kerry asked him.
“Can’t say,” he admitted after a pause.
“What happened?”
He shook his head.
“Robert …”
“I … came in and cleared the rooms,” he said. “Went out back to the garage. Got pushed over …”
“How did your buck end up in the hallway?”
He shook his head. He didn’t like recalling the way the antlers had rushed at him and pressed hard into his gut, and how the cold, dark, reflecting button eyes had been so close to his own bulging eyes.
“My, my,” Dorothy sighed.
Kerry took a sip of coffee and then set it down and buttoned her parka up to the top and pulled over the heavy hood. She found the flashlight in one pocket and went out the door.
The spotlight over the front door was little help. The bulk of its power was focused on the walkway and parking lot. Two shovels leaned against the outside wall, as usual. There was nothing else in sight capable of breaking a double window. No rocks or heavy tree limbs. Could there be finger prints on the aluminum shovel’s handle? Unlikely. Who would have bare hands in this weather anyway?
She noticed disturbances in the snow but not in great detail. She flicked on the flashlight and bent down, running the beam of light from the base of the broken window to the snowbank along the walkway. There were deep impressions here and there but few clear prints. The surface of the snow was light and powdery above the packed banking, and even now the wind was disturbing the powdery surface.
She stood and followed the path of impressions. Crossed the walkway where she had been struck and then raised the beam of light. A brief, widespread trackway led to the packed section of snowmobile tracks. She followed it and tried to distinguish the prints. Were they bear or canine? Then she stopped upon reaching the snowmobile trail. It went off into the woods ahead and was packed too firmly to reveal anything other than the lines of the carbide ski runners and the mealy path left from spiked snowmobile tracks. In all, the tracking conditions were far from ideal.
Now she scanned the flashlight beam along the tree line. The reflection of animal eyes would at least set her mind partially at ease. It would be a small comfort to know for certain they were only looking for a hungry four-legged thief. Maybe a young bear that was sick or had failed to fatten up properly. Nothing more sly or menacing.
But something felt wrong. How exactly, she couldn’t rationalize. It almost felt like an elaborate prank was being carried out. Maybe any second a bright light would be flipped on and the prankster would start laughing and then friends and family would all appear laughing.
Probably not.
She might have been happier had she passed the flashlight beam over a random set of stairs out there in the woods. At least that wasn’t completely foreign territory. And stairs didn’t break and enter. Open and close doors. Eat donuts and drink milk. Try on socks. Leap like Olympians and then vanish like ghosts.
The temperature was still dropping.
All that was clear was that it was shaping up to be a very long night.
Chapter 18
Many miles north and east, Abel caught the distinct scents of three wolves. Two had recently passed on their border patrol and moved away. Perhaps within the hour. One was still nearby.
He halted and slowed his breathing, then scented the air with focused intent. He did not often encounter loners away from the solace of the village. Those on border patrol always moved in pairs at least, and those out simply enjoying the nights often kept to larger groups.
This loner seemed strange to him. No precise sense of an individual was immediately coming to mind, as was usual. He wondered if his fixation on his brother was blunting his senses. Yet there was no sense of strife or discontent of an intruder present. Rather the opposite he detected the mirth of a careless young wolf, now rapidly approaching.
One of the new children, he thought. Out getting their first taste of freedom.
Stepping from the flat logging road, he climbed the huge snowbank and lowered himself over the crest, the bulk of his frame obscured from the road behind the bank, his head and forepaws perched atop the snow like some black-as-night monument out of Egypt. He held perfectly still, his eyes half closed.
Being too often without good humor and cheer in the eyes of the pack, he would now give this young loner privileged insight into his own particular brand of humor.
Of course the lone silver-white wolf was by now completely lost. Maine was a venerable paradise to the wolf, a maze of nothingness to the human mind. Teaming with life great and small. Innumerable trees that even when dormant in the cold felt more alive than any city of dead matter, crude buildings and ugly pavement. With near unending potential for exploration, the landscape was crisscrossed with logging roads and a labyrinth of trails that each begged to be followed, and she was no idle spirit to turn down such a challenge. If she had been truly concerned she could have simply employed her nose and followed her own course in reverse. But she was having too much fun, and as long as her energy held steady, she was perfectly willing to keep running and exploring until the others should find her.
The very last thing she expected was the sudden dark eruption from the snowbank that was Abel, in all his brute size and power, leaping out at her from the dark with a snarl that could frighten the dead.
In a terrified second she became momentarily like a passenger rather than the navigator of her own glorious body, and somehow skidded forward, the brake pedal stomped to the floor, and jumped straight up and then back, all four feet leaving the ground. All this with a high yelp of absolute fright that rang off into the night like the blip of a siren in a city.
Something like a smile stretched the corners of the old Snow’s snout. He circled the trembling youngster with a soft rattling of laughter rising from his belly. His glaring eyes dimmed with merriment.
As for Evie, she slowly felt control returning to her legs and stood up straight. Her flanks were heaving, both from effort and fright.
“You must always be aware, young one,” he said, circling her slowly.
“Yes.”
“I ask more than agreement. Had I been some enemy of yours, tell me, what would become of you this moment?”
“Am I not on pack land?” she returned, still catching her breath and turning with him, her face slightly down.
“You are.”
“Then, am I not safe?”
“You are. Because you are not far behind the recent patrollers who ensure safety, hour by hour.”
“I saw no one,” she said.
“My point is made. Now, answer me, child.”
“You got me,” she said. “I do not deny.”
“Better you do not. Now, settle. You have done no wrong. I only say that to work muscles and hone strength bodes well, while to exercise the senses will serve you better yet.”
“Yes,” she said with a respectful nod.
The old one stopped his pacing and sat on his haunches with his fluffy tail curled round his feet. After a moment Evie did the same.
“My brother has brought you to play or to learn?”
“Both.”
“He is with the other elders now.”
“Yes. They miss his company.”
“Yes. Human concerns stretch him thin. Do they not?”
“At times,” she admitted.
“You cannot hide your favor. Spare me the game. As for my brother, he was
tes greatness on behalf of ungrateful creatures. So he goes on being missed here.”
Evie said nothing. She knew very well that she’d sprout wings and fly before she could begin to sway the old wolf’s view of humanity.
How she reminds me of him, Abel thought, staring steadily, reading her. Believing she may actually have and hold the best of both worlds. Walk that thin line.
He stood and began walking west without a word. Evie watched him for a moment, perplexed, and then skipped to catch up and walked easily at his side.
He said nothing.
“Where is my cousin?” she finally asked.
“Am I her father, that I must watch her?”
“I only hoped to see her.”
“Perhaps you will, if she comes north again. Or you may sharpen your senses, and find her by your own skill.”
“There is no light talk with you,” she said.
He grunted a deep, quick laugh and said, “Only as I please.”
“But you are not above a mocking ambush,” she said
“It was as I pleased. Where is my deception?”
“None.”
“Small talk,” he said. “Never was my game.”
Evie kept quiet, walking and trying to think of some oblique way of approaching him. Or should she just go off on her own again?
“Has your tongue frozen?” he asked at length.
“No,” she said absently. After the thrill of running, she had forgotten all troubles. But now they were creeping back in on her mind.
The old wolf suddenly turned sharply, blocking her way. She halted instantly and kept her head low.
“What?” he said. “I have the precise sensation of being kept off. What is this?”
“I was only thinking,” she answered aloud. You should know, you’re the king of being aloof.
North Woods Law (The Great North Woods Pack Book 5) Page 8
