I followed the blazes for several hours, taking compass readings every so often. I began to worry about getting back before dark. Twice I thought I heard an animal in the woods, and once I saw the back end of a moose as it ambled away from me, its huge bulk somehow making no noise as it moved quickly through the forest. It was nearly 2:30 p.m. by the time the blazes ended abruptly at the edge of a huge rocky outcrop studded with cliffs and boulders that stretched ahead of me for perhaps a hundred yards or more before descending again into the trees. It was a high point of land overlooking a vast wild forest, uncut for as far as the eye could see and dotted with lakes and rivers too numerous to name. No wonder the loggers were drooling over this country.
I looked about me and wondered what to do next when I caught sight of a piece of burlap waving gently in the sickly hot breeze. I stopped and studied it from a safe distance. It was some kind of shelter or blind built between two boulders with the burlap acting as a roof and back wall. What the front looked like, or how big it was, I couldn’t tell from where I stood. I could feel the excitement building inside me.
I waited and watched the blind, but after ten minutes, when there was no movement, I cautiously approached, moving quietly and carefully until I reached the flap. Gingerly I pulled it back and peered inside.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but it wasn’t the fully furnished affair that I found myself staring at. It was still crude, but as blinds go, it was like Buckingham Palace. Diamond certainly had been a man who liked his creature comforts. At the far end was another burlap wall with the telltale peeping flaps of a blind littered throughout it. There was a hunk of foam rubber leaning against the rock, almost obliterated by a mountain of pillows and several blankets. It was positioned right under one of the peepholes. Beside the makeshift sofa was a small crude bookshelf made from slabs of rock holding a dozen whodunits and some papers. There was even a square of carpet on the rough rock floor. I made my way over to the peephole nearest the sofa. It was a square patch of burlap attached only at the top and loose on three sides. I lifted it up and found myself staring out over a small ledge and then down what looked to be a sheer drop of thirty feet onto a jumble of rocks and caves that wended their way down the cliff into the forest floor below.
The blind was actually a natural crevice between the rocks of a much larger cliff. Diamond had simply run two overlapping pieces of burlap across both ends on a wooden pole and then roofed it with more burlap. There was a pair of new miniature binoculars with Diamond’s initials scratched onto the left-hand tube; the hand that did it had jerked on the D so that it looked like a P. I picked up the binoculars and put the cord around my neck out of habit, cautiously pulled back the flaps, and looked out. I looked down through the jumble of rocks, but if Diamond had indeed been watching cougars, they weren’t there at the moment. There was nothing to see. Disappointed, I quietly let the flap fall back and turned my attention to the blind itself.
I picked up a Macleans magazine that lay on the crude wooden desk to the left of the chair, looked at the date, and sucked in my breath. It was a very recent issue, so recent that I had only just received mine in the mail the day before. I looked at the subscriber, and a chill went through me: Don Allenby. I looked about in alarm and saw a black and red checked coat flung into the corner near the chair, and a small leather satchel hidden in the darkness. I picked up the satchel and opened it. It was full of papers, old magazines, a change purse, and a wallet. I flicked open the wallet and Don Allenby’s face stared up at me. I felt a swift flicker of fear.
I stood there like some brainless idiot holding the wallet with his licence in my hands as a million thoughts careered through my head. Don Allenby was out there somewhere. I could hear my heart beat in the calm of the blind, and the sudden grating of rock against rock sounded like an explosion in the silence. I dropped low and moved quietly toward the lookout flap. The sound had come from somewhere below me. Was he out there waiting for me? If Don was out there somewhere I was a sitting duck and we both knew it.
Through the binoculars I could make out movement in the shadows of one of the rocks, and I held my breath and watched. Suddenly a small spotted golden animal tumbled into view, followed by two more furballs rolling and tumbling and biting each other as they frolicked, their ringed tails flicking in the sun. I let out my breath slowly and, despite my fear, savoured the sight below me. So I had been right. Diamond had found a family of cougars. He had pulled off the unthinkable — finding an endangered species on the eve of a chainsaw gang moving in to clear-cut. What a coup — not only for this piece of forest, but for Diamond as a researcher. And the find was all the more impressive because the home ranges of these creatures were so large. I held my breath as the long, lithe, golden body of the mother glided into view, her cubs gambolling around her as she blithely ignored them and curled up in the crevice. I sat spellbound, watching them tumble and chase each other, rolling over their mother and playing with her tail. The den must be very close, I thought.
Two of the cubs were locked in each other’s arms and were rolling over and over and the third was still playing with the mother’s tail: as she flicked it away he’d leap and pounce. The mother was wearing a radio collar with a plastic tag on it, and I focused the binoculars and tried to read what it said, but she was uncooperative until she suddenly looked straight at me and I made out the letters S-i-a-n. The name rang a distant bell, but before I could summon up the memory, I noticed the complete immobility of the cougars. The family froze, like a family caught in a portrait, all turning to look up straight at me. And then they vanished without a sound.
I had a sudden blinding, unnerving, and overwhelming urge to get the hell out of there. I was halfway to the entrance to the blind when I heard a sharp scraping sound overhead, followed by a rain of pebbles onto the roof of the blind. An ominous rumble grew in intensity even as I dived for shelter toward the cougar side of the blind, not knowing if I had chosen correctly or if I was diving right into the line of the rocks crashing down on the blind. The binoculars swinging from around my neck rapped me hard in the chest. There was a sharp bullet-like sound as a boulder ripped open the roof, and I could feel, more than see, the avalanche coming down. I launched myself at the burlap wall, praying the ledge beyond it was big enough to take me.
I felt the burlap tighten and resist me, and for one dreadful moment I thought it would shoot me back into the line of the boulders, but suddenly it gave way and I was catapulted out onto the ledge. The momentum of my launch caused me to roll right over the edge, the strap of the binoculars catching on a rock and snapping as I scrambled to cling to something solid, clawing with my hands, scrabbling to retain a grip as my fingers slipped and I could feel myself falling.
chapter twenty-four
It was deathly quiet. I lay in the pile of rubble five feet below the ledge, clinging to a stalwart little cedar that had broken my fall. I looked down below me and saw that it wasn’t the sheer drop I had thought but a steep series of boulders and rocks that rolled down to the forest floor. My left leg was screaming bloody murder and I moved gingerly, afraid of any broken bones. My baby finger was mashed to a pulp, but there was no pain and I felt a moment of unreality, looking at it as if it belonged to someone else.
The moment was shattered when I heard Don scrambling somewhere up above me. I struggled to my feet, scanning the cliff, but I could see nothing. Footsteps sounded above and to my left, coming closer, causing a cascade of pebbles to fall. In the noise it made I moved quickly, angling away and down to keep out of sight. One of the loose rocks struck me on my baby finger and I viciously bit off the scream welling up inside me. I stopped when the noise stopped and waited, crouched behind a large boulder. I was just ten feet from the woods, and the silence went on and on. Suddenly the footsteps sounded again, much closer, and as I held my breath I heard rocks being moved. Bent double I bolted for the woods, not daring to look behind me, and when I reached them I kept on running.
When I came
to the first blaze I sat down in the hollow of an old cedar and tried to stifle the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. My mashed finger was bleeding and I wrestled with my shirt, ripping off a hunk and applying a dressing. I struggled to my feet and kept moving, following the blazes back, but it was hard work. I stopped often to listen to the woods, but I heard nothing. Maybe he had decided to ambush me further along the trail, a trail that he presumably knew a lot better than I did. I froze at the thought and then, in total panic, I crawled under a rock outcrop, too afraid to go on. I must have lain there for fifteen minutes before I heard a twig snap somewhere off in the woods and I froze again, waiting, listening, like a wild animal trapped by fear.
Something was moving toward me, cautiously, quietly; the telltale snap of a twig here, a twig there, was unmistakable. I held my breath, shrank back into the rock crevice, and waited.
I could hear the footsteps coming closer, the shallow breathing, but from where I lay I could see nothing at all. My mind was pitched to the screaming point, the terror boring holes into me like worms into apples. I was afraid I couldn’t stand it, that my fear would explode out of me, like some horrific sneeze of the mind, that I’d stand up and in desperation call out, “Yoo-hoo. I’m here.” Time passed. I struggled with my fear. The footsteps slowly receded and I lay in the crevice and watched for hours as the sun move inexorably across the sky, while I tried to regain my sanity.
Where was he? What was going through his mind? I tried to imagine what he would do, tried to build up my confidence. He was not a big man, and I didn’t think he’d ever counted on having to kill someone with his own hands. He’d baited Diamond, after all, and let the bear do the rest. He’d not had the guts to do it himself. Indecisive too. A coward as well. He’d tried to kill me with gas fumes and had thrown a rock in our canoe to destroy the film. I had a chance against a coward.
I began to feel a bit more confident, my fear subsiding to a dull roar. My mind cleared. I knew I couldn’t follow the blazes back out. He’d be there somewhere waiting for me — waiting for me to manoeuvre myself near a cliff, and make it look like an accident. My throat was parched as dry as paper, but I’d lost my pack somewhere along the way. The palms of my hands were wet and I was breathing far too fast. I tried to calm myself down and think about what I had to do — tried to stop the panic from welling up again. I took out the compass from my pocket and decided to take a new line that I hoped would bring me out somewhere below the campsite. What I’d do when I got there would have to come to me as inspiration.
The sun had long since set when I finally made my move. It was rough going, and very slow, as I tried to avoid any dry branches. I felt like a thundering jumbo jet trying to be quiet. Every time I stepped on a dry twig I’d freeze, afraid even to swipe the mosquitoes from my face, straining my eyes searching the darkness of the woods for the telltale shape of a man lurking in the shadows. I stopped and rested often as the night wore on.
I’d been walking for what seemed like hours when I stumbled on a root and came down hard on something soft, yielding, and wet. I pushed my upper body off whatever it was with my arms, looked down on what had cushioned my fall, and gagged. In the dim light of dawn, the unseeing face, contorted in death, gazed up at the last of the stars. I rolled violently to one side and did some heavy breathing. Don’s face was badly mashed and bruised and his lower body was at an angle God never intended. I looked behind me and saw the dark looming shape of a cliff, perhaps twenty feet high. He must have fallen in the dark while stalking me, I thought.
I felt the relief flood over me like a tidal wave and then as quickly ebb away, leaving in its place a void of emotion before the next flood of feelings filled me with a sense of dread. Even in this light I could see that he’d been dead for more than a few hours. My blood ran as cold as the blood in Don’s veins when I realized what Don’s death meant.
It was someone else out there stalking me, and all the rules were different now. I felt the strength of my initial fear cascading back. At least with Don as an opponent, I had had a fighting chance. Now I didn’t know who my stalker was, how strong or how well-armed, decisive or driven. I had no information at all, other than that whoever it was wanted me dead, just as surely as they had wanted Don dead.
Donaldson, Ray, Cameron, or even Lianna could easily have followed me. They all knew where I was going and had access to a motorboat. Roberta and Shannon had gone to join Patrick and Davies at the biology station, close enough for them to have paddled over here. Even Leslie could have doubled back and followed me. If any one of them knew about the cougars, there was a lot at stake for each of them.
I hadn’t realized just how much I’d clung to the unformed thought that if I had come face to face with Don I could have talked him out of killing me. But the others? I had no such confidence where any of the others were concerned.
I had to get out of here. I travelled slowly, stopping every few minutes to listen, waiting for whoever it was to leap out and nail me, bracing for it, whittling my fear into a sharp point. I came to a grinding halt as the woods suddenly ended at a huge rock outcrop. I glanced behind me and thought about heading back into the woods, but caught my breath when I saw a dark silhouette sliding through the trees toward me, moving silently and surely. Had I been seen? I threw myself down in panic onto the cold, hard rock and belly-inched my way forward, hoping to find a crevice. Instead all I found was air. I cautiously raised my head and, to my horror, found that I was at the edge of the cliff, and thirty feet below me lay the black waters of the lake. There was a small cedar growing out of a crevice, and below it I could see a small ledge. I grabbed hold of the cedar, swung my legs over the edge, and tried not to think about the drop. I let myself down to my full length, hanging there, my legs scrabbling for the ledge and not finding it. As I hung there, I started silently reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee to steady my nerves. I concentrated on pretending I was only two inches off the ground. No problem. I could hang here forever. Suddenly a stone rasped and tumbled down past me and I heard it scattering on the rocks below. Not two inches. I was too afraid to look up even if I could have. If someone was up there I could only hold my breath and pray they hadn’t seen me.
And suddenly someone was there. I could hear them breathing and then the pain seared through my fingers as something slammed into them. I let go and at the same time instinctively bunched my legs against the cliff face as I spun around and pushed off. All that went through my mind were thoughts of all those countless people who have died because they dived into water without checking for rocks first. I don’t want to die, I thought as the lake rushed up at me in the dim light. I plunged into the coldness of the water, bracing for the hit, but nothing happened, just the peaceful silence of the depths. I kicked up to the surface, angling in toward shore so that when I surfaced the rocks and cliff face would hide me from above. I clung to a rock for a long time until I heard footsteps slowly move away. I pulled myself out, and as the sun came up I scrambled over the rocks and into the woods, heading toward the campsite. I knew I was close to the canoe. All I had to do was get to it. At least that’s how I comforted myself as I struggled through the woods.
I could hear the rapids now, slowly getting louder, and I saw a clearing ahead. I approached cautiously, moving from tree to tree until I could get a view of the open area. It appeared that I was approaching the campsite from downriver. The beginning of the portage was quite close. I hadn’t yet formulated a plan as I crept closer. Suddenly I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I shrank back against a tree and watched as a man, who had been stooping over something, stood up and looked around. I stifled a gasp. Patrick was standing over my pack, which now lay on the ground, the rope attaching it to the tree still dangling above it. In his hand he was holding a tin and looking about him furtively.
Suddenly he dropped the tin on top of my pack and turned to stare right through me. I froze. I was down-wind and the smell of fish was strong. I could see enough of the tin to tell
me it was sardines and it was open. Patrick’s hand went for his pocket. I bolted, racing between the trees heading for the water. I heard a loud bang even as Patrick yelled something I couldn’t hear.
I felt the bear a split second before it attacked. The blow, silent and sudden, sent me sprawling forward. I felt a sharp row of painful jabs sear through my arm, and I smelled the hot breath of the bear on my face, the stink overpowering in its intensity. The weight of its body pressed me to the ground. I went limp trying to remember if I was supposed to play dead or fight like the devil. With some bear species you fight them, with others you play dead. As he began to nibble my arm I knew I could no more play dead than a bear could play a violin — the pain was too excruciating. I let out a murderous bellow fuelled by adrenaline, fear, and pain, and at the same time I wrenched my arm, flung myself sideways, and rolled away. The bear growled and came at me as I scrambled to my feet and whirled around. Then, standing at my full height with my arms raised, I bellowed again. But the bear kept coming, bowling me over. I went limp again, not because I wanted to but because I had no strength left and I was terrified. My arms were pinned under the bear’s weight, my nose jammed into the smell of the cedar twigs, my ears blocked by its weight — all I could think was, What a horrible way to die. Suddenly the bear let go.
I lay immobile in the dirt, and from where I was I could see the water and the canoe and the reason the bear had left me. Patrick was yelling and bolting for the water, repeatedly looking over his shoulder to see where the bear was. The murder weapon turning on the murderer, I thought, and wanted to scream at my rotten choice of men. The bear caught up with him at the water’s edge and swatted him in the head with his paw. The blow catapulted Patrick into the current of the river, and I watched him trying to keep his head above the water as the current caught him. The bear followed him along the shoreline, and I lost sight of them both.
Forever Dead Page 25