Chapter Fourteen
The brook waters ran cold from the northernmost edge of Coombs’ Gulch through the center of the valley, growing in size and force as it flowed south into Pasternak. It was the same flow of water they had seen twisting around the dead town, the same snakelike stream beside which they had buried the boy with the star-shaped hole for an eye.
They had traveled too far north and backtracked along the brook where the dense undergrowth gave way to grassy tuffets and the rocky riverbed. The trees retreated far back in this section of the stream, leaving a long, low flatland of scrub brush and tall grasses turned gold in their autumn dying. The lowland area stretched a quarter mile before disappearing into the spruce forest again. It was quiet and brown and seemingly untouched by life in the bright sun. It was a place where the wildlife would gather to drink from the stream and nip at the fruit-bearing shrubs. It was here Jonathan had bagged his first buck of their trip ten years ago. The brook seemed to talk. It drowned out their silence.
They followed the stream now, unsure of their location, unsure of where they had been that night they buried the boy. They wandered, frustrated, feeling lost, their packs heavy, shovels and pickaxe awkward, their energy draining before they even began the most arduous part of the journey.
Toward the southern edge of the lowlands, turning a bend in the stream, they saw a small rise at the edge of the trees – the hillock from which they saw those yellow eyes glowing bright and alien in the darkness at the very edge of the spotlight’s range. They all remembered the giant northern raisin bush where they found the boy and buried his body. Michael eyed the hillock and traced an imaginary trajectory with his finger to a dense patch of shrubs. They saw it there – the raisin bush, grown large as an explosion, heavy with leaves, the ground before it overgrown with grass and weeds. They walked to it and stood momentarily in silence before putting their gear to the side. Michael took the pickaxe, swung it high over his head and buried the blade into the rocky soil. A wild scream went up from somewhere in the distance, high-pitched and awful, like a woman dying. It seemed neither animal nor human.
They stopped and waited. Sweat brushed their brows.
“Fisher-cat?” Conner said. “Didn’t sound right. Too long and drawn out.”
“Vixens,” Michael said. “Bobcats. They make that kind of sound.”
Jonathan raised his Remington to his shoulder and sighted in the edge of the trees one hundred yards away with his scope. He ran it along the tree line. The forest was dark with shade. A slight breeze came from the north.
“It sounded far away,” Conner said.
Jonathan watched for a time, letting his breath out slowly, finger resting on the trigger guard. He glassed the lowlands to the north of them. The scream went up again, the unworldly sound an animal can make in the throes of death or sex. He lowered the rifle to take in the whole area.
“Anything?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“With the damn echo of this place, it could be a mile off or right next to us,” Conner said.
“We wouldn’t see it anyway,” Jonathan said.
“Fire a shot. Scare it off,” Michael said. “Last thing we need is some big cat following us.”
Jonathan hadn’t fired a shot in ten years. He pointed the barrel in the air, turned his head down and to the side and squeezed the heavy trigger until a blast roared over the valley and the gun bucked in his hand. They waited a moment while the high-pitched ringing in their ears died down and the echo rolled off the mirror image mountains to the east and west.
Jonathan brought the scope to his eye once again and scanned the limits of the lowland grasses. The reeds shifted in the morning breeze; amber waves of grain ran through his mind. He saw nothing, but he felt something, a presence in the lonely solitude of that place.
“Anything?” Michael said.
He shook his head silently. Michael raised the pickaxe and plunged it again into the dirt.
They dug three feet down until Jonathan’s spade finally struck the makeshift coffin, and he leaned down to brush away the earth. The black, heavy-duty plastic case suddenly revealed itself, and he recoiled, his heart racing, the guilt and terror overwhelming. He stepped back, away from the dig and into the surrounding brush. He wanted to melt back into the forest. Conner and Michael dug around the edges until they could find the handles to grasp it and pull it up from the ground and into the light.
The case was two feet by five and two feet deep, made of military-grade high-impact polymer – the very kind of equipment on which survivalists, hunters and those who venerate high-impact military gear would drop a small fortune. Conner purchased it as a much younger man, free from family and mortgage, and when too much testosterone pumped through his veins. Everything he owned for his hunting adventures had to be the best – military grade. It was airtight, waterproof, designed for long-term outdoor conditions and overseas transport, and able to withstand being dropped out of a plane. Nothing – air nor moisture – went in or out when it was completely sealed.
It looked no different from when they buried it ten years ago other than being coated in a layer of dirt. It sat on the ground before them, and for all its tactical grooves and ridges it sat absurdly plain and simple. For a moment they collectively marveled how a plastic box – dumb and meaningless – could cost so much, could hold so much. Like the rifle slung from Jonathan’s shoulder, its reality was so small compared to its consequences. They stood in a semicircle around the case, staring at it. It looked
