Snow Stalker

by M K Dymock

  After another hour of driving, they came to an open field with untouched snow for at least an acre. At the opposite edge perched a forest with trees far too thick to ride through. Once they hit the open field, the other snowmobiles, driven by Sean’s brother and cousin, abandoned the single-file line to be side by side.

  Sean revved his engine, its vibration running through Ryan. The others revved up as well.

  He settled into his seat and yelled out to his guide. “If you’re going to do this, win it!”

  The helmet nodded, and before Ryan could draw his last breath, they were off.

  The wind screamed past them. Phillip managed to wave from the back of his snowmobile as it passed them. Michael, however, hugged his driver so hard the man had to slow down to detach himself from the spider.

  Sean let his brother and Phillip edge past them. As they moved far enough ahead, Sean and Ryan were in their blind spot; Sean gunned it at the last minute and passed some invisible finish line. He cut the engine next to the edge of the woods and ripped off his helmet, waving it in triumph.

  Phillip and the brother came to a stop with a large amount of cursing from under the helmet.

  “You’ll never beat your older brother, Dane,” Sean said.

  “I’ve beat you plenty.”

  “Not today. It’s only the last race that matters.”

  Phillip gasped for breath after removing his own helmet. “Think I left my lungs at the start. That was awesome.”

  The snowmobile with Michael slid in behind them; it pulled a sled with supplies and film equipment and ran slower. Once it stopped, a snow-covered Michael slipped off the side and lay in the snow.

  The driver removed his own helmet, and Ryan recognized him as Patrick, one of the rescuers who’d pulled them out of the canyon. He’d also seen him talking to Mina in a familiar way that bothered Ryan.

  Phillip stared at Michael. “Did you fall off?”

  The prostrate figure couldn’t answer; Patrick filled in. “Guy flipped out when I gunned it and about knocked me off the sled. I had to stop. Tried to tell him we wasn’t racing because of the tow, but he said he’d walk in before he rode another minute.”

  “Thought he was going to walk across the lake through several feet of snow?” Sean scoffed.

  Ryan hadn’t realized the open field they raced across was a snow-covered lake.

  Sean faced Michael. “You paid me to guide you in, but you also paid me to keep you safe. You endangered yourself and my man.”

  Michael tried to stand in the snow in an attempt to defend his dignity but only succeeded in falling back down. “He’s a crazy driver. Could’ve killed me.”

  “He’s my most cautious. You pull anything like that again, and I’ll drive you straight down and hold onto the deposit.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” Michael muttered as he dug himself out of the snow.

  Sean stared him down until the TV personality finally muttered an apology. Sean, not one to linger, moved on. “Strap on your snowshoes. The camp is about a quarter mile through the trees. It’s a lot more protected area, but we have to drag in our supplies.”

  Ryan’s boot heaters and the walk kept the circulation going in his feet. Sean walked beside him, matching Ryan’s shortened stride. “Heard you got frostbite.” Despite the early afternoon sun, the shadows grew dark in the woods.

  “Yeah, on my toes.”

  “I lost my pinky toe three winters ago. The circulation never is quite the same.”

  “That’s heartening.”

  He laughed. “Figured I’d give it to you straight. You boys really think you’re going to find Bigfoot?”

  Ryan resisted the urge to bend over to increase the temps on his boot heaters. “Probably not.” He nodded toward the men following them at a growing distance. “Phil wouldn’t know what to do if we did. It’s the mystery of it, the chase for him. Michael would probably piss himself. He likes his sightings faked. Don’t let him convince you to be on camera. A fool loves to make others look foolish.”

  “Thanks for advice. What about you? What are you looking for?”

  Ryan always had a pat answer about the scientific curiosity of it all, but he sensed in this man a sincerity lacking in others. “I’ve seen some things, some stuff I can’t put words to. I’m just trying to figure it all out.”

  Sean pointed through the pines to a patch of aspens. “There’s bog in there where water comes up from the ground. I’ve got a hunting stand to watch the game come for a drink.”

  “Good spot.”

  “As long as my freezer is mostly full, I don’t shoot—only watch. My wife thinks I’m a much worse hunter than I actually am. Sometimes it’s easier to get out in the mountains if you have a reason, even if it ain’t a good one.”

  The snow creaked beneath them with each step. Ryan’s muscles tightened in protest, still recovering from their hike through the canyon. “One summer, I sat in a tree stand for two days straight. Only came down to pee,” Ryan said. “Saw a mama wolf walk by with three pups. In that moment, I don’t know if I would’ve traded seeing Bigfoot over them.”

  Sean stared over his shoulder to the patch of trees where his stand lay. “One night I was half asleep, or mostly, I guess. It was coming on dawn.” He paused.

  Ryan didn’t fill the space with words; he knew what would come—the stories. Many of these mountain people had a story, one they hadn’t told fully to anyone. Too afraid of being mocked or seen as less than. In his travels, he’d learned not to pry or prod. The story would come when the person was ready.

  “Wasn’t sure what woke me, but I came to as if someone had jabbed me with a cattle prod.” Sean started walking again, and Ryan followed. “Then I heard the scream. Wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before, and I’ve been in these woods for forty years. Not a scream like in terror; more like a war cry. They do that?”

  It took Ryan a second to realize he’d asked him a question. “Bigfoot? Yeah, they do.” He thought back to that night in the rain when he’d heard that cry for the first time.

  “Heard a thumping. Wasn’t rhythmic like footsteps, but like…”

  Ryan resisted the urge to fill in the blanks for him. Too many searchers did that until a person couldn’t tell what the original story had been and what was provided.

  “I don’t know…maybe something heavy falling. Then it stopped. I told myself it was an injured animal, but the next day, I… Hey, you won’t tell nobody, will you?”

  Ryan halted his steps so he could look the man right in his eye. “No, I won’t. Not even the others.”

  Sean nodded. “Good.” They picked up their pace, and it was a good five minutes before he spoke again. “I found tracks later than morning. To anybody else, they would’ve looked like indentations in the mud, but there was a pattern to them. A few looked like they had toes and a heel.”

  “Take a picture?”

  “Nah. It wouldn’t have come out that well in a photo, and most people would’ve thought I read too much into it. But I tell you what: I didn’t go out hunting again that season. Wife thought I was dying, tried to get me to go to a doctor.”

  “How long ago was it?”

  “Two years last fall. Whatever it was, I never heard anything like it since.”

  They set up camp before dark, which was no easy feat, considering how quickly night found its way this far north of the equator. The stars came out so thick and bright, it looked like they’d been spread across the Milky Way like butter on bread.

  The O’Briens and Patrick sat at the campfire with Ryan and Phil. Michael, cold and complaining, had already escaped to one of the tents and the relative warmth of a sleeping bag.

  Dane and Sean teased each other until turning their attention to Patrick. “Heard you’re finally in love, Patrick. Who’s the unlucky girl?” Dane said.

  Patrick jerked up from where he’d been staring into the fire. “What? I’m not seeing anyone.”

  Even Ryan, who barely knew the man, co
uld read the defensiveness in his tone. The O’Briens had found a sensitive spot and were going to poke it.

  “That’s not the family rumor. Is it that Mina girl you brought around last year?”

  Now it was Ryan’s turn to jerk up, but nobody paid him any attention. “You mean Mina Park?” he asked.

  “You know her?” Sean grabbed a log from a stack and tossed it on the fire, spreading sparks.

  “No…barely.” He turned the attention back to Patrick. “You dating her?”

  Ryan didn’t need the light of day to feel Patrick’s glare on him.

  “Didn’t she break up with him?” Sean asked. “She always seemed too smart to fall for him.”

  For some reason Ryan refused to examine, he really wanted that to be true.

  “It’s not Mina; it’s not anyone,” Patrick growled. He stomped off to the trees, ending the conversation.

  Ryan settled into his sleeping bag by nine after taking a rare pain pill. As the opioid relaxed his body and settled the burning pain in his foot, he contemplated the craziness of this adventure. Despite everything, it was a good decision to come to Lost Gorge.

  The soft smile he went to sleep with disappeared when the scream awoke him.

  30

  Mina yawned as she blew on her coffee. Why she bothered drinking it, she didn’t know. It took hours for caffeine to kick in to her body.

  The early morning at the office was no accident, as she wanted some time before their meeting and the responsibilities of the day to go over their John Doe report again. She clicked through the images on the desk computer twice before one caught her eye.

  It was a close-up on the hand, the hand that had first signaled to her the presence of a body. She zoomed in on the left finger, where a soft pale circle indicated where a wedding ring had been. Considering how intact she’d found the hand, Mina doubted it had come off in the attack.

  A lot of the men in Lost Gorge didn’t wear wedding rings consistently, but then again, many of the women didn’t either. Most of the married instructors had lost at least one ring from the constant taking on and off gloves. The farmers worried about losing a finger in a thresher.

  She thought about the married people she knew and had never noticed a tan line as strong as the one on the dead man’s hand. He had worn his ring very regularly, until he didn’t. A cheater, or a man recently separated? Nobody called to tell them they’d lost a husband. Maybe a divorced guy on a trip alone?

  Sol came out of his office. “We’ve got a problem,” he said before she could offer her new insight. “An SOS call came in from Sean O’Brien’s GPS. Said he needs a medical helicopter for a man with severe injuries.”

  Her finger hovered over the mouse. “Who?”

  “He didn’t say, but I have the coordinates.”

  Mina swallowed the plethora of words and panic that wanted to spill out. Who was it? Were they all right? Not only did she feel like she didn’t have the right to ask the question, she knew there wouldn’t be much of an answer. Not yet.

  Sol moved to stand in front of a giant topographical map of the county pinned to the wall. She joined him as his fingers ran down the coordinates until stopping where the contour lines marking elevation ran the closest.

  Whatever had happened, it had been in one of the most remote and rugged places in the county. “BLM land?” she asked.

  “No, Forest Service.” Which meant a combined rescue with federal employees, always a more complicated operation. The phone rang, and Sol went to answer it while Mina stood on her tiptoes for a better view.

  She ran her finger along one of the lines before stopping at a small body of water she had backpacked to a few times in previous summers. The trappers, in all their creativity, had named the water Spring Lake. What location had Ryan said they’d be going to? She glanced back to her phone lying on her desk but knew texting him would be worthless.

  Sol returned to the room. “It’s the Squatcher group,” he said as if reading her mind. “That was Emma O’Brien. She got a text message from the GPS unit to send help. There’s an injured man.” Some GPS units came with a service plan that allowed for simple text messages to be sent.

  “What now?” she finally asked.

  “We’re sending in a chopper.” They shared a rescue chopper with two other counties. “In the meantime, you’re going up with an EMT on snowmobiles. Sean’s oldest is eighteen, and she knows the way. I’ll come in on the chopper. That way one of us takes the fastest way in.”

  Min debated asking if she could fly in, but the chopper would take a few hours before it even arrived in Lost Gorge and seating would be limited. Hard to say which route would be the quickest.

  In less than an hour, Mina stood at the trailhead outfitted in her best layers and carrying a helmet. She could drive a snowmobile as good as the next guy, but this trip required an advanced level better than that guy. The SAR guy rode one machine with a sled behind it that could double as a stretcher, complete with a first-aid kit.

  Sean O’Brien’s daughter, Kylie, a girl with equal parts freckles and pimples, shook Mina’s hand as she approached. Mina couldn’t tell if it was fear or nature for her to act the part of the grown-up, but Kylie’s voice broke as she mentioned the text.

  “If it had been your dad or your uncle hurt, they would’ve mentioned that in the text,” she said. “They’re too experienced for it to be them.”

  “It’s like my dad to say he’s okay when he’s not.” The fear and the freckles made her look twelve, and Mina wanted to hug her. “He wouldn’t want us to worry. And my dad says it doesn’t matter how prepared and experienced you are; Mother Nature can be a bitch.”

  Another time and she would’ve laughed, especially after their trek through the canyon. “Focus on getting there. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  Mina mounted a machine behind Kylie as she led them up a trail only a true Lost Gorge native would ever consider passable and only an O’Brien would attempt. Another day, it would’ve been one fun trip.

  Once they climbed the cliffs, the snowmobile whipped across the white expanse. If she’d been able to peer over her driver’s shoulder, she wouldn’t be surprised to see 60 mph on the odometer. Definitely would’ve been a fun day under different circumstances.

  At around noon, they slowed the machines and killed the engines. Kylie jumped off her snowmobile before it stopped completely as she launched herself into the arms of a man who stood waiting. Mina couldn’t tell if it was her father or uncle, but either way, something was wrong.

  She knew the area well enough to know there was no way to land a helicopter or get a snowmobile in to the campsite. Yet no sign of the injured man existed. She’d expected they would’ve dragged him out this far on a sled for pickup. That meant he was far too injured to move or already dead.

  “What happened, Dad?” Kylie asked. “Everyone okay?”

  Sean glanced at his tall but still so young daughter. Mina understood that look: How do I protect her from this? They could postpone the inevitable, but they couldn’t hide from it.

  With that understanding, she reached out to shake Sean’s hand with her mittens. “How bad is it?”

  Sean gave one last look at a girl who may no longer be young by the end of the day. “He died a few hours ago.”

  Mina’s breath caught. No, she thought, I didn’t get him out of that canyon to die a week later. “Who?” she whispered.

  “His name is Phillip.” Both she and the girl gasped, but for opposite reasons—Kylie because she didn’t know the dead, and Mina because she did. “I already messaged Sol so he knows not to bother with the helicopter.”

  “What happened?” A list of causes ran through Mina’s mind, from heart attack to buried in the snow.

  “Kylie, unhook the sled and unload it. We need to drag it back to camp.”

  The girl didn’t argue; maybe she’d had enough time being an adult.

  “Get your snowshoes on, and we’ll walk in,” he said to Mina. �
�Why don’t you stay here with Kylie?” he called out to the member of SAR she rode in with. Why not? she thought bitterly. No one left to rescue.

  She followed Sean into the woods. After they made it about twenty yards, she spoke. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want them with us?”

  He glanced behind them to make sure they walked alone. “You’re a deputy, right? Least you were in the summer.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you armed?”

  Mina took a breath. “Yes.”

  “You better come see.”

  31

  Their location was far too remote to radio to Sol. Mina instead used Sean’s GPS to send a message that the chopper would no longer be needed. Sol’s return message was equally to the point. Hold the scene; I’m on my way.

  “Where is the body?” She handed the GPS unit back to Sean.

  “The camp is about a quarter mile through the trees.”

  She followed him on a pair of snowshoes. “What happened?” He opened his mouth and closed it again, the right words not coming. “How’d he die?” she asked, trying to jump-start the conversation.

  “I don’t know, but something ripped into him in the middle of the night. Something I can’t…”

  Now it was her turn to lose the words. She stopped and hunched over a bit, trying to force out the memories that always pried their way in. You can’t freak out, not now. She straightened up. “Like before?”

  He didn’t have to ask what she meant. There had been no other topic of conversation for the last few weeks. Everyone knew the details despite Sol’s best efforts to hold on to them. “Maybe, but he wasn’t…his body was sort of intact.”

  “Sort of?” The words tasted bitter on her tongue.

  “His limbs weren’t torn off. Just his insides, like gutting.” Sean locked his jaw. His hands shook as he tucked the GPS into a pocket.

  Mina didn’t need any more evidence of what waited for her. This was a man who feared God and nothing else. “I know.” And she did. “Anyone else hurt? Your family okay?”