by Harper Lin
But he’d be waiting there. I had been hoping we’d find a place to avoid him, some path we could take that he wouldn’t expect, but he had corralled us all too well.
I looked around. The only choices were up the ridge in front of us, up the side of the valley all the way to the top—something I couldn’t do before and certainly couldn’t do now—or cut to the right along Miller’s Ridge, scrambling above that swollen creek.
None of those options held much promise.
“Cool,” Martin whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
He gestured at where the creek turned, forming an oval body of water like a swelling in the creek.
“There must be a cave or something that’s letting some of the water through. Remember that little waterfall we saw coming up? That’s on the other side of the ridge. I don’t know why I was thinking about it. I told you it was stupid.”
I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Not at all, Martin. You just showed us how to get out of here!”
My grandson blinked. “I did?”
Quinten snapped his fingers. “I get it. If the waterfall we saw is only part of the stream, then the rest of the river goes along a side valley. It’s all downhill, and it will get us out of the park.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And if I remember right, the county road that we took to get here parallels the edge of the state park. I recall I went over a bridge. This stream must go under that bridge. So if we follow it, we’ll end up at the county road.”
Martin’s eyes lit up. “I see. The killer guy is expecting us to go over this ridge.”
Butch snickered. “Hump this ridge, like Ms. Chipper said.”
“Such a charming young man, aren’t you? Indeed, you’re right. He’s thinking we’ll go over the ridge to get back onto the path and is no doubt waiting for us somewhere along there. But we’ll trick him by taking another way out of the park, one that’s every bit as clear as the path.”
Martin’s face clouded. “Can you make it, Grandma?”
I studied the steep slope with its loose, wet rocks. My legs were exhausted. My back throbbed. My range of motion was limited.
“I have to.”
We set off. Every step was torture, and I could tell I was slowing them down.
I wasn’t the only one who was tired. All of us were. The rain pattered down incessantly. Martin’s stomach growled. We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.
“How much food do we have?” I asked. “I have a small bag of raisins and nuts, just a few handfuls, and an orange.”
Martin shrugged. “Some gummy bears. That’s it.”
“I have a two apples and a bag of sesame seeds,” Quinten said, “plus a bag of cornmeal I was carrying for Ms. Chipper. We were going to make corn cakes for breakfast this morning.”
I shook my head. We’d have to cook that with water, and that meant a fire. That meant signaling where we were.
“I have a couple of power bars,” Butch said.
“Pull them out,” I said.
We each took half of one and munched them as we walked.
The food situation gave me something else to worry about. Lunchtime had come and gone, and while everyone was too nervous to complain about hunger, the rigorous hike we’d been doing was beginning to tire us, and we still had a long way to walk.
The killer, we could be sure, had plenty of food and energy.
“How’s everyone’s water supply?” I asked.
Everyone reported that they were almost out.
“It’s not hot,” Martin said.
“Gotta keep hydrated, man,” Butch said. “That’s what Coach always tells us.”
“You’re quite correct,” I said, pulling an iodine tablet out of the hilt of my survival knife. “Butch, I saw you had a big plastic bottle for water.”
“Yeah. It’s empty.”
“Put this tablet in it and fill it in the stream. Then shake it up. The iodine will kill any germs.”
“It also helps you pass radiation through your system,” Quinten said.
“I don’t think it’s likely the killer is armed with a nuclear weapon,” I replied.
“Or pythons,” Quinten said with a smile.
“Radioactive pythons,” Butch said. He went down to the stream edge and filled the bottle. If he shook it for a minute, the iodine dissolved and turned the water reddish. “No murderer is gonna nuke us!”
Martin gave his friend a thumbs-up. Not for the first time since the murder, I was amazed at how quickly young people could bounce back from trouble. I could tell they were scared and hungry, but they still managed to make jokes.
Once we got started again, Martin said, “Hey, you know, there might have been a fight between Mr. Cardiff and someone on the staff.”
“Really? Who?”
“Orrin. The janitor.”
“What’s his last name?” I asked.
Martin shrugged. “Just Orrin.”
“You call the janitors by their first names?” I didn’t like that. Just because they had a humble job didn’t mean they didn’t deserve respect.
“Yeah. Everybody does.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing I saw. Orrin got fired three weeks ago. Nobody knows why. He seemed cool. Kinda quiet, but he never snapped at us for making a mess like the other janitors do. One day, we were in the photo lab working on stuff, and someone said they hadn’t seen Orrin in a while. We all got to wondering what had happened to him, and Mr. Cardiff got this really nasty grin on his face, like a vampire or something.”
“More like an evil clown,” Butch said.
“Definitely like an evil clown,” Martin agreed. “Then he said, ‘You’re never going to see him around here anymore. That’s all been taken care of.’ It was pretty weird, like he was bragging he got Orrin fired or something.”
“Are you sure this janitor was fired?” I asked.
“Yeah, totally,” Butch said. “Someone asked our coach about it, and he said Orrin got canned. He looked really uncomfortable about it and wouldn’t say what happened.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
“Orrin… Orrin… that name rings a bell,” Quinten said to himself. “It’s an unusual name. I’ve heard it somewhere before, though.” After a minute, he snapped his fingers. “I know! A woman came in a few months back to do some genealogy. Cathy or Carol or something. Common name. She said she wanted to research her family, so I helped her out. I remember she mentioned her brother’s name was Orrin. That stuck with me because it was so unusual.”
“Do you remember what the last name was?”
“Yes, because it’s one of the older families here in Cheerville. It comes up a lot. The name is Hitt.”
I thought of the blazing H we had seen on the hillside that first night and Thomas Cardiff’s reaction to it.
“Was this janitor young and well built?” I asked the boys.
“Yeah, he’s totally buff,” Butch said. “The coach had him help out sometimes. That guy could run and hit like a pro.”
“What does he look like?”
“About six foot, short blond hair. Old but not too old, you know? Like maybe thirty.”
“That’s not old.”
“Yeah, like old but not ancient.”
Wonderful.
Martin looked at me. “You think he’s the murderer? Because of that fire that looked like an H.”
“It’s certainly a possibility—ow!”
I had twisted my ankle again on the slope, sending a jab of pain up my back. The others gathered around as I leaned against a tree, face contorted in agony.
For a long minute, I stood there, motionless. Then I gingerly tested my ankle. It was a bit sore, but like the last time, I hadn’t sprained it. The real problem was my back. Slowly, I took a couple cautious little steps. Each one was torture.
“You okay, Grandma?” Martin asked.
; “I’ll be fine in a minute,” I whispered.
No I won’t. I’m not going to make it.
TWELVE
The next mile or so took an excruciatingly long time. I hobbled forward, twisted like some old crone and using my spear as a crutch. I had to watch every step. Another twist like that and I’d be down for the count.
At last, we came to where the end of the ridge sloped down to the river and the water made a tight turn around it. We picked our way carefully around the turn and saw the river flowing down an unfamiliar valley, parallel to the one we had been hiking in all this time.
“We made it,” Quinten said with a relieved smile. “He won’t look for us here.”
“I hope not,” I replied, popping more aspirin. “It would be best if we kept going as quickly as possible.”
I checked my watch, and my heart sank. Sunset was in less than three hours. We wouldn’t make it to the county road before dark.
It didn’t matter. Even in the dark, it would be easy enough to follow the stream and see the road and bridge. I would have to walk with even more care, though. If worse came to worst, I could make them leave me. In the dark, if I were hidden in the forest, the killer would not be able to find me, and they could get to the road and find help.
The late hour was a problem but not a big one.
A much bigger problem came half a mile down the valley.
The side of the valley, already steeper than what we had crossed before, was blocked by an outcropping of rock that formed a ten-foot-high wall in front of us, jutting out into the water and forcing the stream to make a little loop. Some previous hikers must have passed this point, because three logs had been set across the stream as a crude bridge.
“I guess we’ll have to cross,” Quinten said, squinting through the fog of his glasses. “It makes no difference if we’re on one side of the river or the other.”
Martin looked at me. “Can you make it, Grandma?”
“I’ll have to,” I said with a sigh. “Give me a minute to rest.”
“We have to keep moving,” Butch urged.
“He doesn’t expect us to be here,” his father said. “We can afford a few minutes.”
The others sat down. I did not, not trusting myself to be able to get up again. Instead, I walked slowly back and forth, trying to limber up my back. It had gotten a bit better. The pain had become bearable, and I had a bit more range of motion. I was still far from okay, though.
Quinten used his Swiss Army knife, which he had been gripping the entire time, to divide up his two apples. We ate them greedily.
“We should go,” I said.
“I’ll go with you, Grandma. We’re both light. The logs will hold us.”
I smiled and tried to tousle his hair, which I couldn’t, since he was wearing his hood. I only succeeded in making my hand wet.
“You’re being very brave and helpful. Your parents will be very proud when I tell them.”
The look he gave me horrified me—disbelief coupled with a smile, as if he was humoring me. Did he think I wasn’t going to make it? Did he think none of us would? The determined young man I had seen in him hours before had vanished, replaced by a tired, hungry, and scared boy who had to help his slow-moving grandmother across a log spanning a cold, deep stream.
I looked him in the eye. “We’re going to make it.”
“Sure we will, Grandma.”
Butch came up to us. “Let me test it before you guys go. I’m the heaviest.”
Butch walked across it with no problem. His father followed. The librarian had just about made it across when the log on the left side slipped a little. He let out a yelp, arms cartwheeling.
He didn’t make it. He half fell, half jumped into the stream. Because his fall was somewhat controlled, he managed to leap for most of the rest of the distance, landing knee deep with a loud splash. Quinten stumbled, ending up waist deep before managing to control himself and stagger back out.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said. Fortunately, he hadn’t lost his glasses, not that they did him much good.
“Do you have a dry pair of pants?” I asked.
“No. My other pair got wet yesterday.”
From the look on his face, I could tell he understood the problem. With the temperature cooling and no sign of the rain letting up, he was at risk for hypothermia.
“Can you borrow a pair from Butch?”
He shook his head. “His spare pair got wet too.”
“My other pants are mostly dry,” Martin chimed in.
“They won’t fit me,” Quinten said.
So there was nothing we could do. We would have to forge on and hope for the best.
Butch and Quinten secured the log that had slipped as well as they could, and Martin hopped onto the crude bridge. He held out a hand for me, and I painfully stepped on. The logs were smooth and slick from the rain. If my back had been all right, I would have gotten on my hands and knees and crawled. That wasn’t an option. If I tried that, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up again.
Slowly, we picked our way across, me using my spear to steady myself as best I could while dear little Martin took much of my weight. The boy and the Stone Age weapon made an odd pair of crutches. At least they got me across.
There was no trail on the opposite bank, but at least it was more or less level. We walked along, slumped and tired, Quinten squishing with every step. The woods to our right began to thin, and I could discern a gap in them before another line of trees took up the near distance. The gap drew closer as we walked, and I got a sinking feeling.
That feeling was confirmed a half mile downstream when another stream to our right angled in and joined the stream we had been following, bringing us to a halt on a spit of land.
“Now what do we do?” Martin cried.
Butch clutched his father, who sneezed.
Darn good question. My first thought was to go back and retrieve the logs and use them to make a bridge over this new barrier. That would add nearly a mile to our walk. At our level of fatigue, that wasn’t a good idea. I studied the wooded landscape as much as I could in the poor visibility. We stood in a valley, broader than the one we had hiked up. There was no guarantee that we wouldn’t come across another tributary to the main stream that would once again block our passage.
The other options were to go upstream, hoping to find a ford—unlikely with all this rain—or go back the way we came and try to find some other way out.
Martin cursed and sat on a rock. Butch kicked a stick into the river. Quinten was beginning to shiver. I glanced at my watch. It would be dark soon.
To my surprise, the librarian showed the most resolve.
“Why don’t we go upstream and find some logs? We can make another bridge.”
“What if we don’t find any?” his son asked.
“We can check the opposite bank too. This other stream doesn’t look any wider than the last one. Since I’m already wet anyway, I can wade across.”
“All right, let’s go upstream a bit,” I said.
It took a minute to get the boys moving again. Both their stomachs had been growling for some time.
“Have a gummy bear each,” I told them. “You need the sugar. But only one.”
Just saying this depressed me. We were down to rationing gummy bears?
We moved upstream, all of us slower than before and moving directly opposite the way we should have been. I was beginning to wonder if we would even make it to the bridge at all.
I was also worried about Quinten. He kept sneezing. The great blasts sent birds flapping out of trees and startled squirrels scurrying away into the underbrush. He had obviously caught a cold the day before, and now that he was soaking wet with no way to dry off, he would only get worse.
Despite this, he didn’t slow down or complain; he just kept walking and looking for a place to cross.
We trudged along for a good half hour before he suddenly stopped.
“There,” he s
aid, pointing across the stream.
Erosion had undercut a couple of smaller trees. They lay next to an older log that looked pretty rotten. The three of them together might make a halfway-decent bridge.
Maybe.
Except they were on the opposite bank.
“I’ll wade across,” Quinten said.
“You’ll get soaked,” I objected.
“I’m already soaked. The stream is less than ten feet wide. I won’t be in the water for long.”
“No, but you’ll get even colder than you are now.”
He shook his head. “No choice.”
He was right. There was no choice.
The librarian began to wade out into the stream, letting out a great sneeze that sent ripples across the water. This stream turned out to be deeper than the other one, and the water rose past his waist, forcing him to pull off his coat and hike up his sweater and shirt so they wouldn’t get wet.
When he got across, he laid his coat under a tree and dragged one of the newly fallen trees across to us. As we secured the end to our side of the stream, sticking it into the mud and weighing it down with a couple of rocks, he went back for the next one. A third trip brought back the rotted old log. The waterlogged, dead wood felt like putty in my hands.
“I think this will break under our weight,” I said.
“Walk on the smaller logs and only use the old one to steady yourself,” Quinten said.
I examined the smaller trees. Small and with slick bark. It would be quite a balancing act, and with my back, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
But, as Quinten had pointed out, we had no choice.
“I’ll help steady you,” Quinten said. His voice came out dull, listless.
“No, you’re shivering. Get to the far bank and put your raincoat back on.”
His hair and sweater were already getting wet from the rain. Quinten hesitated for a second then nodded and waded back across the stream. I noticed his hands fumbled his coat as he tried to put it back on.