Deadfall

by Robert Liparulo

  Had the cabin been more of what he thought it would be, they would have been able to rest out of the weather and safe from Declan, at least for the night. Now he didn’t know. How could they stay there, and how could they venture away? He and Phil were injured and exhausted. Darkness was coming on, and with it a numbing cold. Fires were out of the question. He wasn’t sure he could handle a night in the wilderness; how could Dillon?

  Dillon.

  The disappointment of the cabin had distracted him from the most important part of it.

  “Please, God, let him be here,” he said and started for the cabin.

  Phil looked overhead. “I don’t like the idea of that thing being up there. I can’t see it, but it can see me.When you were a kid, you ever fry ants with a magnifying glass?”

  “Shhh,” Hutch said. “Come on.”

  A railless porch, made of wooden planks and roughly five feet wide, ran the length of the facade. It creaked and cracked as Hutch stepped onto it. A locking door handle latched a hinged slab of wood to the entry threshold. Right away, he saw that the jamb at the latch had been splintered. Scuff marks—dried mud, the peanut butter color of the earth around the porch—marred the door between the handle and the bottom edge.

  He pushed on it. The door moved a half inch and stopped. An unseen object on the inside held it shut. He pushed harder, and something heavy slid against the floor. The door opened two inches. He stuck his face into the opening. He could see the window that faced the meadow, and below it, a picnic table and two bench seats. Just enough litter was scattered on the table to make him think someone had eaten a single meal there.

  “Dillon,” he called. “It’s me, Hutch.”

  He turned his ear to the crack. Nothing.

  “Dillon?”

  Hutch wondered if Declan’s men could be waiting for him inside.

  Maybe one of them held his hand over Dillon’s mouth . . . or had they done something worse to the boy? He should have looked in the window near the door. Hesitating would not change the situation awaiting him. He hit the door with his shoulder. Whatever was holding it pushed away. He stepped in.

  The room was lighted by only the two murky windows. On his left was the dining setup. An old woodburning stove sat in a corner to his right. In the opposite corner, along the back wall, was a bunk bed.The mattresses were bare. Folded blankets, linens, and a pillow were stacked at the foot of each mattress. On the same wall, near the beds and closer to the door, was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. One shelf was lined with paperback books, their broken, tattered spines evidence of long nights spent in the cabin. A deck of cards, loose poker chips, and a Sorry board game sat on another shelf. Magazines, coffee cups, a half dozen worn shoe boxes—probably the cabin’s tools, first aid kit, and other necessities—occupied the remaining shelves. Two overstuffed chairs draped with heavy woolen blankets faced each other in front of the bookcase.

  Someone, probably Laura, had tried to temper the cabin’s inherent maleness with wilderness-themed decorations: bear salt and pepper shakers on the table, a metal moose silhouette paper towel holder, a carved wood plaque with evergreens and the words Home Sweet Cabin. On the floor between the chairs lay a round rug with the big, amiable face of a bear woven into it.

  The rest of the floor—a tile puzzle of plywood sheets—was thick with dust. Most of it resembled ash. Hutch figured the charred landscape kicked up in the wind and some of it found its way inside. Guests would be dusting the stuff for years to come; it coated every surface. As though distributed for his benefit, it was proof of Dillon’s having been there: handprints on the table, rump-print on the bench seat, tiny sneaker prints all over the floor, facing every which way like a dance-step diagram.

  A three-foot-square box of stove-length firewood had been positioned behind the door. He could see where it had been dragged across the floor from its normal spot near the stove.

  Evidence of the boy . . . but no boy himself. It made all the signs of his presence seem intentional and cruel.

  “Dillon!” Hutch said again. “If you’re hiding, it’s okay to come out. It’s me, Hutch.”

  His eyes came back to the box of firewood. It had been used to hold the door closed, since the splintered jamb gave the latch nothing to cling to. The only other exits were the windows. The dust on the wood lengths that acted as sills showed only a few finger- and handprints; it did not appear that anyone had left the room through one of them. Dillon had to be inside.

  Hutch scanned the room. Few hiding places.The space behind the stove and most of the area under the bed were visible. That left only a cabinet under a countertop, against the wall between the bed and the stove. Set into the right side of the countertop, nearest the stove, was a small, wet bar–style sink. He had seen fixtures like this before. The faucet handle acted as a pump, which brought water from a reservoir in the cabinet. On the left side of the countertop was a freestanding propane griddle. The space under this side of the counter would be large enough for a limber nine-year-old boy.

  He knelt and opened the cupboard door. Cans of hash, dried beef, and boxes of military MREs, a staple among hunters and survivalists, were the only items inside. Hutch’s heart sank.Was it possible to position the woodbox against the door and leave? He supposed a smart boy could lay a belt on the floor by the door, put the woodbox on it, slip through a partially closed door, then pull the belt under the door, sliding the woodbox against it. But why? Perhaps to trick people into believing someone was inside. He shook his head. That didn’t make sense either.

  Hutch closed his eyes. All of this felt like overthinking. He was growing panicky about Dillon and grasping at explanations for why he wasn’t there. He shut the cabinet and again looked around the room.The ceiling followed the line of the roof.There was no attic or loft. He supposed a crawl space lay between the floor and the ground. As long as it was tall enough, it would make a fine hiding place. If Dillon got into it from inside the cabin, there must be either loose floorboards or an actual hatch in the floor. His eyes swept the floor for anything obvious. He got on all fours to look under the bed. Nothing.

  “Hutch,” came a whisper, soft as the wind in the trees. His heart accelerated.

  “Dillon?”

  “Hutch!”

  The shadows in the corner under the bed unfolded to reveal a boy. The weakening daylight caught his eyes first. For just a second, Hutch feared this moving lack of light—black and gray, facelessly blinking at him—was the product of his panic. Then the eyes moved closer, and a smiling mouth appeared: it was familiar, with big front teeth. Then the whole boy. He slid out to where the light embraced him.

  Hutch reached in, pulled him out by the arms, and did his own embracing.

  “I knew you’d come,” Dillon said. “I didn’t know it was you. All I saw were boots.”

  “That’s okay, Dillon. You did the right thing. You made it here. Have you seen . . .”

  He did not finish the thought. Of course Laura had not yet arrived.

  Once she found Dillon, she would never again leave him. If she set out to forage food, find help, investigate a noise or some other curiosity, she would absolutely have taken her son. Besides, hadn’t Terry been with her? He would be here as well.

  Hutch grasped the boy’s biceps and held him at arm’s length: he wanted to see. Dillon’s hair was a mess, stringy with clumps of dirt and a powdering of dust. All but one of the butterfly bandages had come off—and this one had turned from flesh tone to black. The cut itself had developed a healthy scab. Hutch remembered thinking at the mine how the rain had made Dillon appear freshly laundered. No more. If the boy informed him that he had traveled through the forest and fields on his hands and knees, occasionally rolling for fun, Hutch would have believed him. The exposed flesh on his face, neck, and hands bore new cuts and bruises, but overall he seemed healthy and uninjured.

  Dillon let Hutch examine him, as certainly his parents had when he came home late from playing in the woods or generally looking as he
did now, if he ever had. Hutch wished he had something to give him. Weren’t the movies filled with reunions in which the parent presented a souvenir or candy or something? That Hutch was not Dillon’s father edged into his consciousness, and he pushed the thought away. He felt parental toward this boy. If that was one of the things that kept them both going to ultimately survive this challenge, then so be it. When this was all said and done, if he could not claim Dillon as his child, he would call him his friend.

  Dillon looked anxiously toward the door. “Are they . . . Do we have to go?”

  Hutch thought about it. He did not think they had been followed. If Declan was still after them, if killing his uncle hadn’t changed his plans, how long would it take for him to find the cabin? Where would Hutch, Dillon, and Phil go from here? He needed to examine the topo again, to formulate a plan. At the very minimum, they needed to give Laura and Terry time to get there.

  “No,” he answered. “I think we have some time.”

  “Are you hungry?” Dillon asked. “There’re some boxes of food under the cabinet.” He made a face. “Really gross, but Mom and Dad said they last forever.You can eat them and not get sick.”

  Hutch smiled. “I’m starving. I have a friend outside. Is there enough for all of us?”

  Dillon nodded enthusiastically.

  Hutch considered asking why he had left the mine, but it would have been just something to say; he knew Dillon’s motives. Instead he said, “How long have you been here?”

  “Uh . . . a little while. An hour?”

  Hutch realized that he and Phil had started out for the cabin no more than a couple hours after Dillon probably had. The total time Dillon had been out of his sight had been only four or five hours. It felt like days.

  “I couldn’t find the key,” Dillon continued. “It’s usually on a nail under the porch.” He shook his head. “I kicked and kicked. Finally it opened.”

  “Good job.” Hutch took in the cabin’s interior. “So this is—”

  Clattering footsteps on the front porch. Phil ducked in behind the door, crouching.

  “Hutch! They’re here!”

  Hutch started to rise. Phil held his hand out to stop him. “Stay down.They’ll see you through the window.” Phil pointed at the panes set in the narrow side of the cabin. “They’re coming through the woods not far from where we came out.”

  “On foot?”

  “They got a truck or something.”

  Hutch nodded.That patch of woods across the meadow stretched south another couple of miles. If Declan’s gang was trying to follow them or catch up to them, cutting through the woods made sense—especially if they knew the location of the cabin. They would know cutting through would get them there quicker. In addition, coming up the long open meadow would give anyone in the cabin a healthy heads-up of their approach, whereas popping out of the woods put them only a couple hundred yards away.

  Phil duck-walked to the window and peered over the sill, squinting. “They’re not quite through the trees,” he reported. “I think they’re stuck.”

  So maybe they had five or six minutes. Hutch pictured the surrounding terrain. No trees in three directions for miles. The fire had burned . . . what had their pilot said? Five thousand acres. It had consumed several entire areas of forest, including the one this cabin had abutted. The only trees in sight were the ones across the meadow, from which their pursuers were emerging. He knew from looking for Dillon that the cabin offered no place to hide. The crawl space, maybe. He thought about it: he did not know how much of a crawl space there was, nor how they would access it. Besides . . . he checked his watch. Declan’s satellite would come online any minute now, if it hadn’t already. He had no doubt that upon finding the cabin empty, Declan would suspect a hidey-hole and blast the whole thing into splinters. If his imagination stopped short of hidey-hole possibilities, he would most likely destroy the cabin anyway, just for kicks. No matter how he looked at it, they could not stay here. Yet there was no place to run.Truly, Hutch was clueless.

  Dillon seemed to sense Hutch’s deliberation, at least part of it. He said, “I hid under the bed.You didn’t see me.” He glanced at Phil, then back at Hutch, his face expressing both hope and doubt.“Maybe we can all fit.”

  Hutch smiled at the boy’s naiveté. It was sweet and . . .

  And it gave Hutch an idea.

  66

  The satellite came online.

  Speeding north as fast as the ruts and bumps and boulders would allow, Declan heard the chime and reached for the glove compartment. Without slowing, he held the remote and maneuvered the controls with the same hand. He glanced at the monitor, fiddled with the thumb control, glanced again. He held it closer to his face.

  He growled, frustrated. He set the control in his lap and retrieved the walkie-talkie from the center console and keyed it. “Bad! Kyrill! Where are you? I don’t see you.”

  Bad answered. “We’re just coming through the woods into a meadow.We see the cabin.”

  “That meadow is part of a valley that stretches almost to town. We’re in it, coming up to you. About ten minutes away. Don’t wait for me.” He looked down at the monitor in his lap. Into the walkie-talkie he said, “I see them. Can you hear me? I see them.”

  Bad: “I don’t see anything. I see the cabin, but—”

  “They just stepped out onto the front porch.They’re keeping close to the front of the cabin. Okay, I can see you now, your hood.They’re just out of your sight. Drive around to the front and you got ’em.”

  Bad: “We’re almost out of the woods. Kyrill’s trying to drive over some big tree that fell. Idiot.”

  “Go! Go!”

  He caught Laura glaring at him in the rearview.

  “One by one,” he said. “Just a matter of time.”

  He checked the monitor. The people were gone. The image showed the cabin from directly overhead. He had seen three people on the front porch. Now nothing. The shaking and rattling of the car did not help. He looked up to make sure he wasn’t about to drive into a ravine or over fallen timber or a boulder. He glanced down again. Either they had gone back into the cabin, or they were standing under the eaves.

  On the left side of the screen, the Bronco broke free of the woods and shot directly toward the cabin. It slid to a stop at the cabin’s southeast corner, kicking up a plume of dust. Three doors opened. Kyrill hopped out of the driver’s side and ran to the front bumper. Bad got out more slowly, appearing to steady himself on the door. Pruitt exited the rear passenger door and immediately lifted the camera into position. He stood behind the door, filming through the window.

  The walkie-talkie spat out static, then Bad’s voice came on. “I don’t see ’em.”

  “Check inside.”

  On the monitor, Kyrill and Bad—their weapons panning tightly back and forth in front of them—moved onto the porch.

  Appearing more militaristic than they had in the woods, Kyrill and Bad flattened themselves against the cabin’s facade, beside its door. Bad leaned out, then back again. He turned to Kyrill, held two fingers to his own eyes, then pointed to the front window. Kyrill nodded. He stepped past the closed door. He dropped low to edge up under the window.

  Declan’s voice, tinny and overloud, said, “Right there! They were right there. Bad? See ’em? Bad?”

  Bad started and brought his hand to a breast pocket. He fumbled with it.

  “Maybe under the—” Declan’s voice cut off.

  Kyrill popped his head over the sill and lowered it again quickly.He performed this move three times. Someone witnessing his behavior under different circumstances would have assumed he was imitating some exotic bird. He looked at Bad, shook his head.

  Bad didn’t move, thinking. He held tightly in front of him the plank of green metal that was his machine gun. He gestured toward the door with his head.

  Kyrill moved out from under the window. He stood erect, his back against the wood logs of the cabin’s facade. He unclamped one of his han
ds from the sniper’s rifle to wave impatiently at Bad.

  Bad shook his head and indicated his injured leg.

  Kyrill nodded. He stepped in front of the door and kicked it in. He disappeared inside. A single shot rang out. The bullet ripped through the side of the cabin, splinters spraying out. Right where the cabinet was. Bad hobbled in, and the quick maraca shake sounded, echoing in the tight space. The next sounds they made indicated a violent search: splintered cabinet doors, broken shelving, tipped-over bunk beds.

  After twenty seconds, Bad emerged. He stayed close to the cabin wall and edged along the front porch toward the only side they had not been able to see when they approached.

  Kyrill appeared and moved in the other direction, toward the Jeep. He reached the corner before Bad did and peered around.When Bad reached his corner, his movements were similar to Kyrill’s at the window. He popped his head beyond the edge and back again, fast enough to absorb the vision of the side of the cabin without analyzing anything he saw.Two seconds later his brain had caught up with his eyes. He did it again. He checked on Kyrill at the far end of the porch. The teenager shook his head.

  Bad plucked the walkie-talkie from his pocket and spoke into it. “They’re not here,” he said in a harsh whisper.

  Declan’s voice crackled through. “I’ve been trying to raise you for three minutes.What happened?”

  “Uh . . . the walkie-talkie went dead.We cleared the cabin.They’re not in it.”

  Declan: “They were just there! I’m looking right at the cabin.They have to be there. Did you look under the porch?”

  “Hold on.”

  The walkie-talkie disappeared back into his pocket. To Kyrill, he once more pointed at his eyes, then at the porch. Kyrill stepped off. Bad did the same on his end. Both dropped to their knees and bent low, pressing their faces into the dirt. They peered into the two- or three-inch-high space under the porch. Bad brushed the dirt from his face and returned to the porch.