The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5

by Roy MacGregor

  The passenger seat was empty!

  The passenger door was swinging open and bent, almost as if it had been kicked open.

  Wherever Jake Tyson was, he wasn’t here!

  18

  Travis had witnessed enough: the smell of death, the wildly buzzing flies, the pilot staring back at him through lifeless eyes.

  He again felt like he was going to vomit. He shook his head to throw off the thought, and carefully stepped down.

  “What is it?” Sam called.

  Travis had almost forgotten that they were waiting for him. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He could feel his throat tighten. “There’s only one – and he’s dead!” was all he could manage to say.

  “Is it Jake!” Nish called, his voice breaking.

  Travis shook his head, no.

  “Check the radio,” Rachel said.

  Travis cringed, but he knew she was right. The radio might still be working, and if he could only turn it on, the rescue craft might pick up the signal.

  He forced himself to step back up to the open window. Fighting to keep his eyes off the pilot, he reached until his shoulder was half in the window, flicked the radio switch, and realized it was already on. The radio was dead.

  Of course. They’d been signalling just before the plane crashed – probably right up until the plane hit the swamp.

  “No good – it’s dead,” Travis shouted as he stepped down.

  “We have to look for Jake,” said Fahd.

  “Maybe he was thrown when it hit the trees,” suggested Rachel

  They searched throughout the swamp. They searched along the path the plane had cut through the trees, in case the passenger door had burst open and he’d been thrown out.

  “He’s just vanished!” said Sam.

  “Maybe he sank,” suggested Sarah.

  “It’s not deep enough anywhere,” said Fahd.

  They searched the immediate area again, but found nothing. No sign whatsoever of Jake Tyson, the hero of the Stanley Cup.

  “There’s something over here!” called Rachel.

  It was a man’s shirt, muddy and soaking wet.

  Rachel carefully spread it out on the ground.

  The right arm was missing.

  “A one-armed man!” said Nish. “Just like in that movie – whatyacallit?”

  “The Fugitive,” Fahd said, without even thinking.

  Rachel held up her hand for the boys to shut up. They did so immediately. “I’d guess he was having more trouble with one of his legs than his arm,” she said. “I think he ripped the sleeve off to make a tourniquet.”

  “What’s that mean?” said Nish.

  “It means Jake Tyler’s still alive.”

  No one said a word.

  “Or,” added Rachel, “at least he was when he stopped here to try to stop the bleeding.”

  She got up and headed back towards the plane, where the pilot still lay dead against the controls.

  “Be careful!” Sarah shouted after her.

  “Give me a hand, Trav,” Rachel called back.

  Together, the two of them made their way out to the craft, carefully stepping along sapling branches to approach the wreck from the passenger side.

  Rachel checked the bent and torn passenger door, still loosely hanging off one of its hinges, then she crawled onto the busted pontoon and leaned in the doorway at floor level and looked around.

  She ducked back out, sucking in wind to catch her breath. When she looked at Travis, he noticed a large drop roll down her cheek and fall from her chin. He thought at first it was sweat, but when he looked into her eyes he knew that it had been a tear, with others now following.

  “There’s an awful lot of blood on the floor in here,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s metal ripped up from the floor, too. He must have been cut badly. There’s blood on the door at the bottom as well. Maybe he had to kick it out.”

  “Track him,” Nish suggested after Travis and Rachel had come back.

  Rachel looked up at him, smiled quickly, and shook her head. “That only works in the movies, silly. Maybe you’d like me to send smoke signals off to Muck and the rangers, too?”

  Nish blushed deeply. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he sputtered.

  “We have to look for him!” said Sam. “We have to!”

  Rachel nodded, looking up at Travis. “She’s right,” she said. “We’ve got to stay here.”

  “How long?” Nish asked, a tremor in his voice.

  “Until we find him,” said Rachel.

  “Or they find us.”

  19

  “Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Sarah whispered when she and Travis were out of hearing range of the others.

  “I don’t know. What’re you thinking?”

  “It was Jake Tyson walking through our campsite last night, not Slewfoot.”

  Travis nodded, but he had no idea what to say next. Ever since Rachel had said the missing shirt sleeve might have been used as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding in Jake Tyson’s leg, Travis had been wondering the same thing.

  “Why wouldn’t he wake us?” Travis asked.

  “There’s one possibility,” said Sarah.

  “Which is?”

  “He’s had a head injury. Maybe he doesn’t know who he is. Maybe he has amnesia.”

  “But not remembering who you are doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get help if you could.”

  “I don’t know – perhaps he’s not thinking right, or he thinks we did it to him or something. It just seems to me that if Rachel’s right and he’s got a badly hurt leg he might be dragging, then that would explain the marks around the campsite this morning.”

  “I agree,” said Travis. “I never believed that stupid story about Slewfoot anyway.”

  Sarah smiled gently at him. “No one ever believes those stories unless it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  Travis looked quickly at her, puzzled, then realized what she was saying. Stories like Slewfoot required an imagination to run away with them.

  He smiled back. “You got that one right.”

  Sarah and Travis showed the others the markings in the ground when they returned to camp. Nish seemed extremely nervous, as if now not only did he have little green men to worry about and his favourite hockey hero, but mad Slewfoot was invading the camp at night.

  “I-I-I don’t really think we should stay here tonight,” he said.

  Sam clucked her tongue. “If Jake’s around here, he needs us. He could be dying, for all we know.”

  “We’re agreed we stay and look until we find him – or until the others find us?” said Sarah.

  “We have to,” said Fahd.

  “There’s no other option,” said Sam.

  “None,” said Travis.

  “We should get searching,” said Rachel.

  “Can’t I eat first?” moaned Nish.

  20

  They searched first for more signs of Jake Tyson, but they had no further luck.

  “Nothing,” Travis said as he returned to the camp.

  “Nothing here, either,” said a disappointed Sam.

  “Not a thing,” said Fahd. “If he’s out there, he’s probably dead by now.”

  “Don’t say that!” Sarah practically screamed. “He’s here somewhere – and he’s hurt!”

  No one said anything for a while.

  Nish came walking up the trail with the front of Sam’s pink sweatshirt held out in front of him like a tray. From the look on his face, he seemed terribly proud of himself.

  “I found us some blueberries,” he announced.

  Holding the sweatshirt with one hand, he reached for a handful with the other – just as Rachel lunged and struck the pouch of the shirt from below with her fist, sending the berries flying.

  “What the -?” said a startled Nish.

  Rachel was already prying open Nish’s chubby clenched fist of berries, knocking the squashed black fruit to the ground.

  �
��Are you nuts?” Nish shouted.

  “These aren’t blueberries!” Rachel shouted back. “They’re deadly nightshade – poisonous!”

  “Whadyamean?”

  Rachel leaned down and picked up one of the berries. “Look at it,” she said. “It’s black, not blue, and about three times the size of a blueberry.”

  “Big blueberries,” Nish argued feebly. “And very sweet.”

  Rachel looked with horror at Nish, who was scarlet.

  “You didn’t eat any, did you?”

  “Not these ones – but before, on that portage …”

  “What portage?” said Sam.

  “That first one, where we all ate blueberries. I found this big bush with huge berries on it. But there were only a couple I could reach.”

  “Blueberries grow on little bushes,” Sarah said.

  “You ate two?” Rachel asked.

  Nish nodded, growing ever redder.

  “Well, then, that explains it, doesn’t it?”

  Nish was flabbergasted. “Explains what?”

  “Your flying saucer It’s a wonder you weren’t sick to your stomach, too.”

  Nish blinked. “Well, if you must know, I was. I went outside to throw up, that’s how come I was there when they tried to abduct me.”

  Rachel shook her head, grinning. “You have to be the luckiest jerk in the world, Nish. If you’d eaten more, you’d probably be dead. Witches used to use it to make people think they were flying. But it can kill you if you eat too much.”

  Nish looked down at his berry-stained hands. He tried to wipe them off.

  “Go to the creek and wash up,” Rachel told him. “We’ll start up a fire. And stay away from black berries, okay?”

  “And watch out for space aliens while you’re at it!” giggled Sam.

  Nish wandered off to clean up and the rest busied themselves collecting wood and starting the fire. Rachel built the fire but kept sending the Owls back into the brush for more wood and kindling.

  “Why so much wood?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll keep a good fire burning all night,” Rachel said. “We couldn’t in the storm, but if we do tonight he might see it or smell it. It might bring him around again.”

  “And if that happens?” asked Sam.

  Rachel shrugged. “Maybe this time he’ll ask for help. Maybe last night he was disoriented.”

  They decided to sleep in shifts, making sure there were two awake at all times to feed the fire. Fahd programmed his wrist-watch to go off every two hours so they could switch.

  Nish and Travis drew the two o’clock to four o’clock shift. The fire was still going strong when they took over from Sam and Sarah, and Travis built it up even higher by throwing on several more logs.

  It was a beautiful night, the sky so clear the stars seemed close enough to touch. The fire snapped and crackled and periodically hissed as a wet piece of wood fizzled and steamed and eventually began to burn. It was too warm to sit close, and the boys backed off, leaning against trees as they watched the fire dance shadows around the camp and over the little tent where Fahd was now sleeping alone.

  They tried to name the constellations, but Travis could only handle Orion and the Big and Little Dipper before he gave up and just stared into the starry depths of the Milky Way.

  It was August – the time, the rangers had said, of the meteor showers – and they watched in amazement as falling stars spurted across the sky and then disappeared. They counted up to thirty, several times seeing two or more at once, before Travis heard a familiar sound beside him.

  Nish snoring.

  He had dozed off in the warm darkness. His head was lolling on his chest. Travis knew it was unfair – the whole idea of taking a watch together was to keep each other awake – but he didn’t really care. Anyway, if he shook him awake, Nish would just fall right back to sleep.

  Besides, Travis didn’t really want to talk. He wanted to think. He wanted to go over this incredible adventure and try to make sense of it. He’d been so excited to go off on this trip with the Owls, so pleased to learn that Jesse would be bringing along his cousin, Rachel. And it had all begun so perfectly.

  Right up until Nish saw his stupid spaceship.

  Now they were lost in the deep woods. They were lost without proper equipment or food, with no sign that they’d be found any time soon. And a short distance away a man lay dead against the controls of a crashed airplane, his passenger nowhere to be found.

  Travis didn’t remember feeling sleepy, but he must have nodded off. When he opened his eyes he was still leaning against the tree, and he was staring straight into the eyes of the wolf.

  The wolf was sitting off to the side of the fire, staring back.

  Travis hadn’t heard a thing. He had simply felt, once again, that strange tickle of someone’s eyes on him.

  The wolf looked fierce, terrifying – but also unbelievably beautiful. His coat was thick and dark and seemed almost to shine in the light of the fire. But most remarkable were the eyes. Travis had never seen eyes like this before in his life. They were yellow, like beams. Other times they looked red, like the fire. And always they seemed to pass right through and into him, like lasers.

  He felt afraid, and then he felt not at all afraid. It was the strangest of feelings.

  The wolf could easily kill him. It was huge. It could bring down a full-grown moose with its powerful jaws. And yet Travis felt no need to worry that anything was about to happen to him or the others. Not even to chubby Nish, snoring and burbling and grunting like a pig at the foot of the other tree.

  The wolf stared for several seconds, raised itself from its haunches and sauntered off to the far side of the camp.

  It turned, looked once back over its shoulder, and disappeared into the woods.

  Travis watched after it for the longest time, but he could see no movement at all under the pitch-black branches of the spruce trees.

  He thought he had fallen asleep again. Something had shifted.

  The light.

  He was bathed in moonlight. The moon had risen over the treetops now and was shining down into the little glade where they had made camp. It was bright enough to read by.

  Travis looked up at the sky again. It was as if the moon had taken all its brightness from the stars. He could see some, particularly low in the sky, but nothing around the moon, which seemed to have gained a halo of light. There were no more meteors.

  The first howl felt like someone had stuck an ice-cold fish knife straight into his spine.

  “AWWWWOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!”

  “W-w-w-wazzat?”

  The voice belonged to Nish. He was terrified.

  “I think it’s a wolf,” said Travis.

  “A wolf? Where?”

  “He was here a minute ago – right by the fire.”

  “WHAT?” Nish scrambled to his feet,

  “AWWWWOOOOOO-OOOOOOHHHHHHHH!”

  The howl came from the far end of the campsite.

  Nish jumped up and reached for a stick, brandishing it as he backed off.

  “WOLVES KILL PEOPLE!” Nish shouted.

  There was movement in the lean-to. Rachel’s head appeared, followed by Sam’s, her eyes still blinking with sleep.

  “What’s happening?” Rachel asked.

  “There was a wolf here. That’s it howling.”

  “AWW-WWW-WWWOOO-OOOHHH-HHH!”

  “He’s just howling at the moon,” said Rachel.

  “That’s the most frightening sound I’ve ever heard,” said Sam.

  Sarah was up now, too, and a moment later the zipper sounded in the little tent and Fahd’s sleepy head poked out.

  “What’s that awful sound?” Fahd asked.

  “A wolf,” Travis said. He was surprised at his own calmness. It was almost as if he knew the wolf, and knew instinctively that everything would be all right.

  “I’M GETTIN’ OUTTA HERE!” Nish shouted, reaching now for the axe-shovel, which he held up like he was carrying a m
achine gun.

  “You can’t go anywhere!” Sam screamed at him. “You’ll get lost!”

  “What the heck’s wrong with you?” Nish shouted back at her. “We’re already lost!!!”

  And with that he turned and ran straight back into the woods, directly away from the sounds of the howling wolf.

  “AWWWWOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!”

  Travis hurried to his feet. Sam and Rachel were already out, ready to give chase.

  All they could hear was Nish crashing through the bush, branches snapping, Nish grunting as he bounced from tree to tree.

  And then they heard a sound that made the wolf’s howl seem like a lullaby.

  “AAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!”

  It was Nish, screaming.

  Screaming as if the world had come to an end.

  21

  Nish was sobbing, his chest heaving so fast it seemed, at first, as if he might be laughing.

  He had tripped over something and fallen hard into it.

  Fahd’s flashlight swept over whatever had dumped Nish.

  It was no rock, no tree, certainly no wolf.

  It was Jake Tyson.

  The sky was lightening by the time they hauled the injured hockey player back into the camp. He was out cold, but alive. His body was convulsing horribly, and sometimes it seemed as if he were about to jump right out of his own skin.

  They got Jake Tyson settled by the fire and covered him with sleeping bags, but still he shook.

  Sarah, who had taken a first-aid course, began taking charge. She checked his breathing and his eyes and pulse, then sent Rachel for the water container. They soaked one of Sam’s shirts, and Sarah put the damp edge of it into Tyson’s mouth. He was still out, but his lips automatically began sucking at the moisture.

  Fahd and Sarah checked Tyson’s injured leg. They’d been right: he was wearing a tourniquet made from the sleeve of a shirt. Sarah loosened it and, after a while, tied it again when it became clear the blood was still flowing out of the ugly gash on the back of his calf. He was wearing hiking shorts, and the bare leg was covered in blood; Sarah very carefully washed as much off as she could. She checked his eyes again. They looked milky, lost. But his breathing was strong, if rapid.