“Green trees?” Jack said.
Weezy shook her head. “Litter. There’s no litter. Firefighters always leave coffee cups, candy wrappers, Coke cans, Gatorade bottles, al sorts of stuff.
But not here. Ergo …”
Jack knew from his father that
He checked the ground again. Not even a gum wrapper. Weezy didn’t miss a trick.
As they fol owed her into the burned-out area, Jack noticed how the pine trunks had been charred coal black. The remaining needles high up were a
dead brown, and the usual spindly little branches sticking out here and there lower down the trunks had been burned off. But the trees weren’t dead. Every
single trunk was sprouting new little branchlets, pushing them through the scorched crust of the bark and sporting baby needles of bright green. Everyone
had heard of the Sears DieHard battery. These were nature’s die-hard trees.
As she’d done al day, Weezy led the way, winding through the blackened trunks until she came to a break in the trees.
“Here’s where the mound begins.”
“Mound?” Eddie said. “Where?”
But Jack saw what she meant. They stood at the tip of where two linear mounds, each a couple of feet high and maybe a yard wide, converged to a
point. Both ran off at angles between the blackened trees.
“Like some giant gopher,” Eddie said.
Weezy shook her head. “Except look how smooth they are. And how straight. Nobody knows it’s here, and I never would have noticed it if the fire hadn’t
cleared al the undergrowth. I haven’t explored the whole thing, so I—”
“You were out here alone?” Jack said.
She nodded. “You know me. I like to explore. Who else is going to come along? You?”
His two part-time jobs didn’t leave Jack much time to explore the Barrens, especial y not to the extent Weezy did. She’d spend hours digging for
arrowheads or other artifacts. The only reason he was out here today was because Mr. Rosen closed his store on Mondays.
He smiled and shrugged. “Beautiful teenage girl alone in the woods … might meet a Big Bad Wolf.”
She grinned and punched him on the shoulder. “Get out! Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Maybe a little, but you’ve got to be careful, Weez.”
She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. But they’ve got to find me first.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I got a little spooked here before I could explore the rest of the
mound, so that’s—”
“You? Spooked?” Eddie laughed. “You
“Wel , this place does.” She pointed along the lengths of the two ridges to where they faded into the trees. “See how nothing grows on the mounds? I
mean, isn’t that weird?”
Jack saw what she meant. Low-lying scrub—most of it scorched and blackened—crowded around the trees and spread across every square inch of
sand between them. Everywhere except on the mounds.
Yeah. Weird, al right. Sand was sand. What made the mounds different?
Or was it a single mound, angling in different directions?
“Feel it,” she said, patting the surface. “It’s stil sand, but it’s hard. Like it hasn’t been disturbed for so long it’s formed some kind of crust.”
Jack ran his fingers along the surface, then pressed. The sand wouldn’t yield. But something else … an unpleasant tingle in his fingertips. He pul ed
them away and looked at them. The tingling stopped. He glanced at Weezy and found her staring at him.
“So it isn’t just me. You feel it too.”
“Feel what?” Eddie said, rubbing his hands over the hard surface. “I don’t feel anything.”
Weezy was stil staring at Jack. “Now you know what spooked me.”
She reached around to a rear pocket and pul ed out the smal spiral notebook and pencil she never went anywhere without.
“I’l bet somebody designed this in a special shape. Let’s see if we can figure it out.”
