by Lisa Stowe
8
Ramon walked down the logging road, following the path the truck had cleared earlier. The soft mist and low clouds diffused any light, and the coming night stole even more. Long twilight shadows lengthened around him and he knew he should turn around. Knew he didn’t want to be out here alone in the dark. His jaw, his fists, were clenched so tight both ached. It was hard to breathe past the even deeper ache in his chest.
Family was everything. The only thing. It was the whole reason he’d walked away from his life in Mexico. Uprooted, left it all behind, in order to come here and keep his family together. He’d thought his brother would see reason, stop his affairs. Keep the family intact. Then when the quake hit, everything tilted toward keeping his nieces safe.
And now Alegria was…what? Gone? This new, damaged, dangerous world shifted reality around him and his whole body ached with deep grief. He’d lost his niece but didn’t even know if that meant she was dead and he was mourning her, or if she’d changed somehow and was simply lost. Was there any part of his little girl left in that young woman who moved through the trees as if part of them?
He had failed at keeping them safe. What kind of man was he, that he couldn’t protect them, couldn’t fix whatever the hell this was? He hadn’t even been able to save Marie when that thing attacked them. That had all been on Alegria and the boy with her. And their pets.
Some pets.
If it hadn’t been for those wild creatures, Marie, Ben, all of them, would be dead right now.
So what could he do? Stay here to find Alegria, get her back somehow? Or leave her to keep Marie safe?
Something moved through the trees off to his left. He froze, breath hitching in his chest.
The deep shadows in the damaged forest shifted and he saw the silver wolf, his fur so pale it was like moonlight. Ramon took a step back. That animal had killed a monster. No way was it a real wolf. His mind couldn’t wrap around what his eyes told him. He stepped back again and stumbled over a large shattered branch, coming down hard on his butt.
The wolf paced out onto the logging road and stood there, amber eyes on him, fur glistening with beads of mist. Its sides moved as it breathed.
It sure as hell looked real.
Ramon scrambled to his feet, heart racing.
The wolf turned its head to look over its shoulder.
And there was Alegria, one hand on the gnarled trunk of a yew tree, her eyes as deeply amber as the wolf’s. She moved out of the night-shadows, her fingers trailing across the bark of the tree as if reluctant to leave.
“Alegria?” Ramon said, his voice gruff. “Are you my niece?”
She reached fingers up to her face and traced softly down her jaw, as if checking. “Of course.”
Her voice was the same, and yet not, rough as if unused, smooth as if aged.
Ramon stepped forward. “Please, tell me what’s going on. I don’t understand. Where’s my little girl?”
A tear pearled up and rolled down her cheek. “I died, Tío. Maybe.”
“You’re not dead, baby. You’re right here.” Ramon took another step.
“The Matlose, the thing that came after you, was going to kill me. The boy and his guardian saved me. But to save me I had to die. To become. I’m within the trees now. I’m part of them. And oh, my Tío, it’s beautiful.” She raised her face, eyes closed, long fingers trailing through the needles of a cedar tree next to her.
Ramon shook his head. He didn’t understand, couldn’t grasp what she said.
Alegria came forward and stood next to the wolf, one hand on its massive shoulders. “Tío, look at me.”
Ramon shook his head again, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Look at me!”
He did.
She moved closer to the cedar tree, and closer, until she seemed to meld inside it. She was there, and yet not, surrounded by a deep luminescent red-gold, the heartwood of the tree. She held there a moment and he saw the fissured bark of the tree shimmer as she pulled away. When she stood fully before him, the red-gold held as a halo. And then behind her, light fractured and a darker red glow moved from the yew tree, forming the shape of the boy.
And behind the boy, coming through the trees, was the massive grizzly bear.
Ramon managed to hold his ground but his heart hammered in his chest and terror turned his blood to ice.
“Things older than this world have been released,” Alegria said. “You will need to find the man from the hole.”
The boy and his grizzly drew even with Alegria. “Keep the dying woman with you,” he said. “She must die, but not yet, so watch her.”
Ramon shook his head so hard he saw stars. “I’m dreaming. Or I’m unconscious. Or I’m the one dead.”
“No!” Alegria said, her voice sharp. “Listen to me. As long as you are near the trees, we may be able to help you. But you need to find the others who are ahead of you. They are coming down from the mountains. You need to trust Marie. Follow her. See what she sees.”
The boy held his hand out. Resting in his palm was a small piece of a yew branch. “Give this to my mother. Tell her when she goes home, I will be there.”
“Your mother? Who is your mother? I don’t understand.” Frustration rose through the fear and the flush of it heated his skin. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you both.”
“Tío, I love you.” Alegria looked over his shoulder. “And I love my sister. Tell her. And remember what we’ve said.”
And then they were gone. Boy and bear, girl and wolf. The drizzle pattered down around him, seeping down the neck of his jacket, dripping from his hair into his eyes. Twilight had deepened and it was almost too dark to see.
“Tío?”
Alegria. Behind him. He whipped around, opening his mouth to call her, but it was Marie who stood in the middle of the logging road. She held a flashlight in one hand, the pale beam pointed at the muddy track. Rain had soaked her long unruly curls and she shivered.
“Come back to the fire,” she said softly.
Ramon drew in a deep breath. Marie was there before him, real and solid. No hallucination. Her eyes were steady and clear, more lucid than she had been in days. He drew in another breath as understanding came to him. He was the one who’d had the head injury. Not Marie. He was the one seeing things that weren’t there. He joined his niece and let her shine the light forward on the trail back to camp.
They’d only gone a few feet though, when Marie held her hand out and spoke in her soft voice. “This is yours. Don’t lose it.”
The tip of a yew tree branch rested across her hand. Ramon stared at it then wordlessly pocketed it. She squeezed his arm as if to reassure him.
The man from a hole. A dying woman. His niece part of a tree. Monsters.
The world had gone insane.
Or else he was.
Back at the camp, a large fire burned in a ring of stone. Sharon sat alone in the shadows but the others huddled around the flames. Ramon followed Marie and she lowered herself next to Artair on a small log someone had rolled up to the fire for a bench. Ramon watched the young man hand her a bowl of something and tug the hood of her coat up over her drenched hair.
He stood, not ready to give up, not ready to admit there was nothing left he could do. The light from the flames played over Marie’s face as she spooned up something from the bowl. His throat was thick with pain. Alegria should have been next to her.
June took up most of the space on another small log, sitting under a small fold-up umbrella she’d found somewhere. Ben was crammed in next to her, barely clinging to the last scant inches of seating space, the collar of his wool coat pulled up and a fluorescent green stocking cap pulled down over his ears.
June pointed across the fire and Ramon saw a stump with a bowl on it. Defeated, with no answers, no solutions, and no ideas what to do next, Ramon crossed the rough ground to pick up the warm bowl and sit on the stump. There was canned beef stew and he scooped some up with a spoon, swallowing withou
t tasting. Warmth tracked its way down to his stomach and he shivered.
“We should post guards tonight,” Ben said. “Whoever does it should have a gun. And they need to keep the fires going.”
“You really think fire will stop more of those things?” Ramon asked. “We were attacked in daylight.”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know, son. None of this makes sense. I don’t even know if a gun will help. But if not, we have fire and can always try burning them.”
“And we need to rest,” June said. “The children are exhausted from the shock of today.”
“Plus we can’t travel at night,” Artair said. “The logging road might be wiped out and we’d never see it. But I think we should leave early. Get to Index as fast as we can.”
Marie put her bowl on the ground and leaned her head on Artair’s shoulder, closing her eyes. Ramon wondered briefly if she was tired, or simply tired of seeing things in the shadows.
“So we push hard tomorrow,” he said. Something in his heart twisted in pain. He wished it were a heart attack. Something that could be fixed. Not something irreparably breaking at the thought of leaving Alegria.
Tessa leaned toward the fire and dished more stew into her and Connor’s bowls. “Thanks for dinner. We haven’t had warm food since the quake.”
“Yeah, man. Just cold burgers.” Connor grimaced. “When this is over I’m going to deliver pizza or something. No more burger joints.”
Ramon managed a smile, but he doubted this world would ever go back to normal. Pizza delivery. They’d need roads first.
“So we have kind of a problem,” Connor said, glancing at Tessa as if for confirmation.
She nodded. “Sharon’s kind of, like, sick. We thought she was going to pass out earlier. Like, maybe she’s running a fever or something.”
“Sharon?” Ramon asked, his brain momentarily unable to move past bears and grizzlies and trees.
Connor gestured toward the edges of firelight, to the woman sitting alone in shadows. “We picked her up in Sultan when the dam burst. She’s helped us out, but she’s got the flu or something.”
“So we were wondering if you might have antibiotics?” Tessa looked at June.
June put her bowl down and wiped her hands on her ample thighs. “Help me up, Father. I’ll go talk to her.”
Ben stood, gripped June’s hands, braced himself from old habit, and heaved his wife up. June wheezed as she left their fire and moved to where Sharon sat alone with a blanket around her shoulders, staring into the blackness of forest.
“You kids doing okay otherwise?” Ben asked. “No one else getting sick?”
“We’re good,” Connor said. “Scared shitless, to be honest. The world’s a crazy place right now and it don’t make sense. But hey, it’s not much crazier than a drive-up window on a Friday night.” He managed a chuckle, but it came out forced.
Ramon appreciated the kid’s effort to ease their fear and managed a smile that felt just as false. Connor grinned back and Ramon saw the banked fear in the kid’s eyes. Ramon wasn’t the only one suffering here. He wondered if their families were alive. If not, what would happen to them? What would happen to any of them? He ran a hand over his face and drew in a breath. “Want to share watch during the night? We probably shouldn’t do guard duty alone.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Connor said, glancing at Tessa.
Ramon could almost see the kid’s chest puff up. “We’ll need to keep the fires going. And do you know how to shoot?”
“No,” Connor said. “But if something like that monster shows up I bet I can learn fast.”
“I bet you can,” Ramon said, and this time his grin felt more natural.
June came back to the fire and lowered herself down with a grunt. Once settled, she shook her head. “Sharon doesn’t have the flu. She’s got breast cancer and I don’t have anything that can help her with that. Maybe some pain meds, but I don’t think Tylenol will be strong enough for what she’s facing. And I don’t think she’d take them anyway.”
Ramon froze in the act of placing a piece of wood on the fire. Across from him, Marie’s eyes flew open and she straightened to stare back at him. He heard Alegria’s words in his mind.
The dying woman.
9
They stood outside in the early gray morning light. Ethan held his handgun and Anya her rifle. The others clustered close and stared at the outhouse.
A thick spray of blood fanned over the door. Drying clots clung to the rough wood boards. Blood-filled drag marks led into the woods.
Anya studied the tree line but saw no movement. She jacked a shell, rested her finger near the trigger, and called to Bird. When the dog was at her side, she walked the drag marks. No one followed. At the tree line, she glanced back. Ethan nodded to her and she knew he would keep watch.
She had no intention of going far by herself, but she wanted to at least enter the tree line and see if the tracks continued on or not. And if they did, what direction they went.
A soft, cold breeze rustled tree branches. Water from yesterday’s rain still dripped under the forest canopy. Salal, ferns, Oregon grape, and bracken were flattened where something had been dragged. Where Zack had been dragged.
Anya swallowed against the ache in her throat. He was just a kid. She thought about all the blood in the tracks and wondered if he could have survived. She walked a few feet further into the woods. Maybe he was out there, injured. Blood always looked like a lot when spread like that, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
She came to a downed cedar, the huge trunk split its length by the fall. Shards of wood impaled the ground where they’d landed. Great strips of bark had been peeled as the tree came down against others. Blood pooled and dripped across the destruction.
Movement caught her eye where something blue fluttered from one of the long, shattered ribs of wood. She brought the rifle up. Moved her finger to the trigger. Bird stared fixedly at the same spot, hackles up, but he stayed close to her side instead of investigating. She took a reluctant step forward, and then another. She tripped over roots torn up from the earth and caught her balance on a branch. The flat needles of the cedar brushed her palm and bits of rough bark bit into her skin as she gripped the branch, unable to let go.
It was a long strip of jeans material caught on a spar of raw wood.
And a few feet away, the mangled remains of a leg, the knee joint and long bones, were easily recognizable. There was nothing else above the knee. Skin and muscle were gone from what would have been the calf of the leg, but enough remained to identify it. The foot was still attached, a hiking boot still in place, but canted backwards in a position so alien to anatomy that it was almost unrecognizable as real.
Anya gagged and pressed the back of a hand tight to her mouth. Grief filled her like a heavy weight and she dropped to her knees, hot tears washing over her cold hand. Another child gone. She folded over, sinking to the wet earth, digging her fingers into dirt and roots. The sharp resin scent of the destroyed woods filled her senses but couldn’t disguise the smell of blood.
When she her sobs eased, when her shaking slowed, when the deep, deep sorrow pulled back into her heart, she wiped her eyes and nose on her coat sleeve and stood on shaky legs. Bird held guard beside her, watching the woods. He whimpered once, softly.
“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We’re going back.”
At the clearing, Ethan and Spike were the only ones outside, waiting on the old wooden deck. Smoke curled up out of the chimney and it was almost surreal to see the cabin sitting there cozy and inviting.
They watched her cross the clearing. She shivered, the rifle cold and heavy across her arm. Her fingers, around the rifle stock, were blue-tinged. When she reached the cabin, they didn’t ask if she’d found anything. They didn’t ask if there was any chance Zack was alive. She knew the answer was written in her face.
“Fuck,” Spike said under his breath. He turned and shoved open the cabin door.
&nb
sp; Bird followed him.
Ethan waited until Anya had climbed the few steps to the deck beside him then reached out to take the rifle from her. He took her hand in his and the warm touch was so startling, so alien, she almost yanked her hand away.
“We pack up what we can,” Ethan said. “We get the hell out of these fucking woods now. I’m not losing any more of my kids. And you’re going with us.”
Anya simply nodded and walked past him. It was too hard to speak around the painful knot of anger and heartache lodged in her throat. Inside the cabin, she silently pulled her frame backpack from where it hung on a wall. Her emergency gear was already inside. Bird sat by the wood stove, ears up and eyes alert, watching her. She pulled in a ragged breath.
“Go through the shelves,” she told the others. “Pack what food you can carry.”
“But what happened?” Lucy asked.
Jennifer, face streaked with tears, stood against the wall, arms tightly crossed over her breasts, fingers gripping the shoulders of her shirt. “I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Zack said he’d walk me out. Then he decided to use the outhouse, too. I was too scared to stand out there by myself.”
“But not too scared to walk back by yourself,” Michael said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Spike grabbed the back of Michael’s neck and jerked him backward. “How about we just haul you out into the woods? How about that?”
“Stop it!” Anya yelled. “Pack your gear.”
“Zack said it was okay,” Jennifer said, gulping back sobs. Her whole body shook. “It was cold so I got back in my bag. I fell asleep!”
Nathaniel crossed the room and pulled her into a hug. She dropped her head to his shoulder, sobbing.
“We all would have done the same thing, sweetie,” Nathaniel said, rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades.
“No,” she said, shaking her head against him. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“It’s done,” Ethan said, putting the rifle on the table. “Jennifer, take a minute, pull yourself together. Then gather your gear. We’re getting out of here.”
Anya tied her bedroll to her pack and hefted it up, sliding her arms through the straps. She picked up her rifle and walked back outside. She crossed the clearing to the young yew tree and stood there, her hand on the red bark.