First there were stubs of wall, stone or brick, in among the tree trunks on both sides of the road, then a couple of collapsed wooden buildings, crumpled down to a third of their original height, and then, ahead on the right, the railroad station, squat and long, roofless, with narrow tall window sockets and remnants of a concrete skirt around its base. Maple and cherry trees had grown up inside the station, some taller than the roofline. The woods on this slope were so thick that only narrow angles of sunlight reached the ground, like spotlights that had lost the performer they were supposed to follow.
Whatever level parking area had once existed around the station was long overgrown. Lindahl simply stopped on the rutted road in front of the building, and all three got out. Thiemann carried his rifle, a bolt-action Winchester 70 in .30-06, while Lindahl opened the left rear door and took out both of the other rifles. Parker walked around the front of the Ford, held his hand out, and after a second, Lindahl, with a strong and mistrustful frown, gave him the Marlin.
Vines covered part of the building, including hanging down over the doorless front entrance. “You want to be careful with that,” Thiemann said, pointing toward the doorway. “That’s poison ivy.”
“There’s probably wider doors around back,” Lindahl said, “for freight.”
They walked around the building, and there was really nothing at all any more to say what it had originally been, no platforms, no railbed, no rotting luggage carts. The place might have started, long before, as a temple in the jungle.
One of the doorways on this side was broad, and clear of vines. They stepped through, and Thiemann pointed to the left, saying, “That’s where I hunkered down that time, waiting for the storm to go away.” Then he peered more closely at that corner and said, “What’s that?”
They moved into the building, toward the left corner, and a little stack of old cloth had been piled there, ragged old blankets and towels. It looked like a mouse nest, but it had been put together by a man.
“You’re not the only one got out of the storm here,” Lindahl said. Looking up, he said, “It’s the best protected spot, I guess, with those tree branches.”
Bracing himself with his rifle butt against the root and dirt floor, Thiemann squatted down and felt the pile of cloth with his left palm. Solemn, wide eyed, he looked up and mouthed, just barely loud enough to be heard, “Warm.”
Lindahl stared at Parker. His hands were clenched tight on his rifle, the way they’d been the first time Parker had seen him, on the hill ahead of the dogs.
Parker said, “Heard the car coming.”
Thiemann stood. “He’s nearby, then.” He was excited, almost giddy, but trying hard to hide it, to seem mature and professional.
Lindahl, speaking mostly to Parker, said, “Do you guess he’s armed?”
“Not if he was trying to get through roadblocks.”
“If he’s holed up in here,” Thiemann said, “he isn’t getting through any roadblocks.”
Parker knew this wouldn’t be McWhitney they’d found, but had no reason to say so. “Could be somebody else,” he said.
Thiemann scoffed at that. “Way the hell up in here?”
“Could be you, once.”
Thiemann shook his head, getting irritated at having his fantasy poked at. Pointing at the pile of cloth, he said, “I didn’t make myself a bunk, and”—finger pointing skyward—“there’s no thunderstorm. So let’s take a look at what we got up here.”
They left the station, Thiemann going first at a half-crouch, rifle ready in both hands in front of himself. Outside, he stopped and looked across the space where the tracks would have been, and into the woods. He had become very still, all eyes and ears, studying that wild land over there, sloped steeply down to the right, clogged with low shrubs in among the narrow trunks of the second-growth forest.
Parker and Lindahl waited, a pace behind Thiemann, and after a long minute Thiemann took a backward step toward them, without looking away from the woods. “You see where I’m looking.”
Ahead, and just to the right. Parker and Lindahl looked there, too. Parker didn’t know if Lindahl saw anything, but he didn’t; just more shrubs and more trees.
“Little branches broken on that multiflora there,” Thiemann murmured. “That stuff’s miserable to get through. See how he forced his way?”
“You know, I do,” Lindahl said. “Very good, Fred.”
“Not that different from hunting a deer.” Thiemann nodded at the woods. “You two flank me left and right, I’ll go through where he went through.”
They set off slowly, Lindahl giving Parker one quick worried look behind Thiemann’ s back, but then concentrating on the terrain ahead.
The land was broken, tilted, full of rocks; very slow going. There was no way to be quiet about it, their feet crunching on old leaves and fallen branches, their bodies shoving branches out of the way. They moved about ten yards forward, and when Parker looked back, the lower part of the station building was already obscured by the undergrowth, only the uneven roofline still visible. It wouldn’t take long to get lost in here.
“Freeze!”
That was Thiemann, a dim uncertain shape through the woods to Parker’s left.
A sudden loud rustle and clatter ahead of them was someone running, running desperately through the unforgiving forest.
“Fred, hold it!” That was Lindahl, invisible beyond Thiemann, sounding panicky.
“Halt, goddammit!” Thiemann again.
