by J. T. Cross
He pulled out his flashlight and examined the prints the animal had left. They were huge and from the cat family. Whatever it was, it had been sitting directly in front of the opening.
He flashed his light between the boulders and was disappointed to find it still empty. Staring down at the dirt floor and wondering what could have become of the boy, he thought he saw something drop onto the dirt.
He crawled part way back into the crevice, reached out, and touched the spot where it fell. He pulled his hand back and examined it under the light. It was blood. Where the hell did that come from, he thought. He looked back at the spot and saw another drop hit the dirt.
Quickly he crawled to the back of the crevice, rolled on his back, and looked up. Above him, he saw a body wedged into a small space. Yes! There was still a chance. He reached up and tugged on the boy’s pants leg.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
“Yes. Thank God you found me,” a weak voice responded.
“What’s your name?” Luc asked.
“Kevin.”
“Okay, Kevin, I’m going to help you out of there. Do you think you can work yourself free and slide down to me?”
“I can’t move, I’m stuck. My leg’s broke. There’s a bone sticking out. It’s bad...”
Luc reached in and touched his feet that were wedged between the rocks. “I’m going to move your feet and get you loose, okay?”
“Okay,” the boy said, then moaned.
Luc grabbed one foot and worked it free. He then freed the other as the boy screamed out in pain and came sliding down on top of him. Luc worked himself out from under the boy and backed out of the crevice.
“Which one of your legs is broken, son?” Luc asked.
“My right one.”
Luc grabbed the boy by his left foot and gently began pulling him out. He screamed as Luc pulled.
“Kevin, try to lift your right leg up a little to keep it from dragging on the ground.”
“I’ll try.”
Luc gently pulled him the rest of the way out and then helped him sit upright against the side of the boulder. He examined his leg. It was a bad break and the skin was punctured by the piece of bone. It pressed outward through his jeans, which were soaked wet with blood. Fortunately, the bleeding seemed to be slow.
“You’re mighty lucky you didn’t tear a main artery when you broke your leg,” Luc said. Even so, he imagined the boy had lost a considerable amount of blood. His face was pale.
He put his hand on the boy’s forehead. It was hot to the touch. He probably had an infection starting, Luc thought.
“My leg’s on fire, I can’t stand it,” the boy said, and moaned again. Luc noticed he shivered.
“I’ve got something that will help. How much do you weigh?”
“One-twenty.”
Luc removed his small medical kit from the ATV rack and pulled out a small pre-filled syringe of morphine. He removed it from the wrapping. He opened Kevin’s jacket and exposed his arm. He tore open a sanitizer pad, swabbed his arm, and injected part of the syringe of the painkiller. He handed him a bottle of water.
“I want you to drink as much as you can, okay?”
Luc watched the boy drink the water until the bottle was empty. “I needed that. I was so thirsty,” he said.
“The shot should help with the pain in a few minutes,” Luc told him.
Luc gently grabbed both of the boy’s shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. “I need you to be brave now because it’s going to hurt when I move you, but I’ve got to get you up and onto the quad. Are you ready?”
The boy nodded and Luc bent over and lifted him up. The boy moaned as Luc carried him to the quad and sat him on the seat sideways. He helped him lift his good leg over the gas tank as the boy cried out in pain.
“Sorry, Kevin, but that was the only way to get you on the seat.”
The boy laid his head down on the handlebars to rest.
“What happened to your friend?” Luc asked.
“Something got him. We were on top of the mountain, and it came up from below. It jumped him and took him back down into the fog. It pulled him right off his quad,” the boy said, beginning to cry.
“I think I ran into it a little while ago. I unloaded about six rounds of buckshot into it. I’m pretty sure the animal that got your friend is dead by now. I pumped enough lead into it to kill a bull moose,” Luc said, as he climbed on the ATV behind Kevin and started its engine. He looked around the area and then started back down the slope.
He rode slowly, trying to be as careful as he could, because each bump jerked Kevin’s leg causing him agony. After the morphine took effect, things got easier for the boy.
The journey back to the campsite was slow and arduous. Luc stopped several times and consulted his map and compass. Twice, he attempted to use the GPS, and it failed to acquire the satellites. On the third attempt, when he was farther from the eastern mountains, it began working. After that, he made much better progress.
Two hours later, he saw the blaze of a campfire, and Yudi and Miki rushed over to them as he rode into the campsite. Kevin rested his head and upper body on a blanket Luc had laid across the tank and didn’t move after Luc shut off the engine.
“You only found one of the boys?” Yudi asked.
“Only Kevin. He told me the other boy was attacked by a mountain lion and carried away.”
Yudi frowned and shook his head back and forth, then turned his attention to Kevin.
“How’s he doing?”
“His leg’s broken, but he’s hanging in there. Right now he’s feeling pretty relaxed. A few hours ago, I gave him a small amount of a morphine injection to help with the pain.”
“Is he sure the mountain lion killed Jesse?”
“He said the cat carried him down a foggy mountainside. There’s very little chance he survived the attack.”
Yudi shook his head. “How bad is Kevin’s leg?”
“He’s got what’s called a compound fracture. He’s lost a fair amount of blood, but he’s holding on. We need to get him back as soon as possible. He’s going to need surgery.”
“Thanks for finding him,” Yudi said.
They loaded Luc’s quad onto the trailer and within minutes were on their way back to the village.
Chapter 6
The trip from the hunter’s campground to Manatuk took just under three hours. By the time they were driving into the hospital parking lot, Kevin was complaining that his leg was burning again. They pulled up to the emergency entrance and two nurses rushed out to the truck. They helped get Kevin out of the back seat and onto a gurney. Luc and Yudi followed as they wheeled him into the emergency room.
Events moved quickly after Kevin was admitted. The authorities called Kevin’s aunt and Jesse’s parents and informed them of Kevin’s rescue and Jesse’s probable death. Luc called Kate and she rushed to the hospital to offer any support or help she could to the families. Within twenty minutes, everyone was at the hospital. Shortly thereafter, Kevin was wheeled into surgery.
Luc and Kate stayed with Kevin’s aunt during the surgery. The time seemed to pass slowly. Luc was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when the door opened and the surgeon, still dressed in scrubs, walked over to them. He looked tired, but in a good mood.
“Kevin’s out of surgery, and he’s awake. He’s doing fine, and there were no complications. We had to put several pins in his leg to stabilize the break. He’ll have to spend the next several days here until we get the infection under control. After that, we’ll get a cast on the leg, and he can go home.”
“So, he’s going to be alright?” his aunt asked.
“I think he’s going to do fine. He’s got youth on his side,” the surgeon said.
“Thank you,” she said and shook the surgeon’s hand repeatedly.
The surgeon looked around the room. “Is the man here who rescued Kevin?”
“That would be me,” Luc said.
�
��Kevin asked to see you.”
“Is he okay to have visitors?”
“Yeah, for a few minutes at a time. He wanted to see you first then his mother.”
“Lead the way,” Luc said.
He followed the surgeon through the waiting room doors and down a long hall to the intensive care area. The surgeon held up his employee badge to a reader and the door opened to reveal a circular nurse’s station. Surrounding the nurse’s station were four intensive care rooms. The surgeon took Luc into room number two.
He walked in and saw Kevin lying in a slightly raised bed. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and IV. When he saw Luc, he smiled at him.
“How’re you feeling, champ?” Luc asked, walking closer to him.
“I’m doing better. Thank you for rescuing me, Mr...”
“My name’s Luc Moon. You can just call me Luc. It was my pleasure to go out there and bring you back.”
Luc watched the expressions on the boy’s face. He seemed troubled. He started to say something then stopped.
“Something wrong?” Luc asked.
“Yeah, kinda.”
“I left my father’s rifle in the mountains. He’s going to be so mad when he gets home from jail. He’s got a temper.”
“Hey, don’t worry about that. I found the rifle and a backpack out there near your quad.”
“Really?” The boy looked relieved.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to bring them over to your aunt’s house tomorrow, okay?”
“Bring the rifle, but you can keep the backpack.”
“You don’t want your backpack?”
“I think the black rocks we found brought us bad luck. My aunt said that anything I touched would be cursed if I went hunting with Yudi. At least that’s what the medicine woman told her.”
That medicine woman seemed to be involved in every little detail of this tragedy, thought Luc. He hoped he wouldn’t run into her again.
“You got it, champ. I’ll take care it.” Whatever the kid wanted was fine with him. It was late and he was too tired to try and convince him that black rocks didn’t cause bad luck any more than black cats.
As he turned to leave, Kevin called out, “Mr. Moon.”
Luc turned back to him. “Be careful with the black rocks. They’re really hot,” the boy said and closed his eyes.
“I will,” Luc said. He walked back out to the waiting room and saw that Kevin’s mother and Kate were still there. The boy’s aunt thanked him for the fifth time for saving her nephew.
Yudi walked into the waiting room and joined them. “I’ll drop your stuff off at your grandfather’s and help you unload your quad if you’re ready.”
“I’d appreciate that. Kate and I are heading over there right now.”
After a quick drive to his grandfather’s house, Luc and Yudi unloaded his ATV and other things. When they had finished, Yudi came over to Luc and held out his hand. “Thanks for coming through for the village. If you ever need anything, just let me know,” he said then climbed in his truck and started the engine.
Luc noticed the air was colder than the night before. He put his arm around Kate, and they watched Yudi drive off. It wouldn’t be long before winter returned, he thought.
“Let’s go inside. It’s getting late,” he said.
In the house, his grandfather had hot soup on the stove. He dished up three bowls, and they sat down to eat. While they ate dinner, Luc told them about his experience with the giant mountain lion and the tragic circumstances of the other boy’s death. After dinner, Kate went to a spare bedroom to get some sleep and Luc went back out to the garage.
In the garage, Luc loosened the bungee cords that held down his things on the front and back racks of his quad. As he took them off the racks, he put them away on the shelves. He picked up his backpack and took it over to his grandfather’s workbench. He pulled out his GPS, compass, and binoculars and put them back in the cupboard.
The last thing left, sitting on the back utility rack, was Kevin’s backpack. He picked it up and immediately noticed it felt hot to the touch. That was odd, he thought, considering how cold it was in his grandfather’s unheated garage.
He unzipped the top flap of the backpack and dumped its contents out onto the workbench. A thick flannel shirt, wrapped around something heavy, fell hard onto the top of the wooden bench. The thick shirt felt like it had just come out of a clothes dryer. He unfolded the shirt and three black rocks tumbled out. He reached out to pick up the smallest rock and yanked his hand back in pain. “Ouch,” he said out loud.
He waved his hand back and forth through the cold air and the burning sensation began to subside. It was lucky he hadn’t grabbed it more tightly, he thought. He carefully tapped one of the other rocks with his index finger and came to the conclusion the rocks were as hot as a frying pan.
“What in the world,” he said out loud to himself. He was quite sure nothing hot had been close to them in many hours, nothing except themselves. Somehow they must be generating heat from within, he thought.
He suddenly wondered if the rocks might be radioactive. What else could explain their heat output? They might even be pieces of the power core from some Russian satellite that fell out of orbit, broke into pieces, and came down in the eastern mountains. What had he gotten himself into? He backed away from his grandfather’s workbench.
He needed a Geiger counter, and he knew just where to find one. His grandfather had always been interested in prospecting and loved finding unique rocks and other minerals that might be of value. Because of his hobby he had bought a Geiger counter several years earlier.
He went back into the house and joined his grandfather in the dining room. “Do you still have your Geiger counter?” Luc asked.
“Yeah, but I haven’t used it for a while. I don’t get out much anymore.”
“I found something out in the eastern mountains and I think might be radioactive.”
“You don’t say.” His grandfather stood up and walked out to the back porch. He opened a cupboard and withdrew a black case. He opened it and took out the device. “The batteries might even be good,” he said.
Luc led the way back to the garage and over to the workbench. His grandfather turned on the Geiger counter and held the sensor close to the rocks. It immediately began making a ticking sound and a needle moved up slightly.
“It’s definitely radioactive,” his grandfather said.
“Well, shit, I hope we didn’t get radiation poisoning.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried,” his grandfather said. “It’s not giving off much more radiation than an old watch with a radium dial.”
“Then what the heck could be generating all the heat?”
“I think you’re going to need an expert to answer that one,” his grandfather said.
“I think I know somebody who could tell me exactly what we have here.”
“Who’s that?” His grandfather asked, with a suspicious look on his face.
“Christie’s husband,” he said. It actually felt painful to acknowledge she had another husband. “To hear Christie tell it, he’s pretty well-known and respected geophysicist.”
“Screw the both of them,” his grandfather said.
“Grandfather, I don’t have any ill feelings toward either of them.”
His grandfather looked at him like he didn’t believe a word he was saying.
“Really, I mean it. It just wasn’t meant to work out between Christie and me.”
Luc remembered the fang he had found in the quad’s tire and pulled it out of his jacket pocket. “I found something else up there,” he said and handed it to his grandfather.
He examined it and a worried look came over his face.
“What do you make of it?” Luc asked.
“These things you’ve brought back, they’re unnatural. You should take them back to the place you found them and bury them. They can only bring trouble for you and the village.”
“Why do you say t
hat?”
“You can’t feel it?”
“I just feel tired.”
“Me, too. I’m going back to bed, Luc. Just remember what I said.”
He watched his grandfather leave the garage with the Geiger counter tucked under his arm.
He wrapped the rocks back in the flannel shirt and headed for the kitchen. In the kitchen, he put the rocks in a skillet and then set them on the stove. At least nothing could catch on fire as long as they were in something made of metal. Just how hot were they, he wondered.
He searched through several drawers of cooking utensils until he found an old meat thermometer. He held the thermometer tip against one of the rocks.
“Well, hello there,” he said out loud as he watched the needle begin to climb. It rose quickly at first then gradually slowed and stopped at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
He pulled out a kitchen scale, and using an insulated glove, placed the rock on top of the scale. It read six pounds. That was awfully heavy for such a small object, he thought.
He went in his bedroom and got his digital camera. He grabbed a ruler out of his grandfather’s desk and laid it next to the rock to give it a sense of proportion. He then put the thermometer back on the rock and watched it rise to 350 degrees. He focused the camera on his little setup and snapped a picture. He then took another picture of the tooth. That should sum it up pretty well, he thought.
He walked over to the dining room table and opened the lid on his laptop. It started up and displayed his desktop picture of Mount McKinley. He hooked up his camera to the laptop and downloaded the two pictures.
He opened the picture of the fang and studied it for a moment. He thought this would be very interesting to Christie. It was very detailed, even showing the red marrow on the inside of the tooth.
He wrote her a quick e-mail.
Christy,
I think you might find these two pictures interesting. I found the specimens in the mountains north of my grandfather’s village.
Luc