Mountain Echoes (The Walker Papers)

by C. E. Murphy

  The military was likely to be combing every inch of the mountain, and I doubted they’d miss it, but it was better than nothing. Maybe I could do something very rash, like bring a little rock-fall down over the cave mouth, except that would leave fresh scars for them to find, which would again defeat the point. And besides, the idea made me stumble with exhaustion, even though I wasn’t moving. Morrison tightened his arm around me and my father glanced at us, worry etching his face again.

  I hadn’t quite put that together, that he might be worried about me, and shifted uncomfortably. “I’m okay, Dad. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not,” he said stubbornly. “I told you. Your reserves are completely depleted, beyond anything that should leave you on your feet, and it’s not the first time that’s happened recently. What have you been doing, Joanne?”

  I wet my lips and frowned at the mountain above his head. It was certainly true that this wasn’t the first time I’d been totally wiped out in the past few weeks, but last time I’d gotten this flat it had been followed up by the most invigorating spirit dance I would probably ever encounter. I’d have thought that had fueled me sufficiently that the drain wouldn’t leave any marks, but I supposed running beyond empty left scars on any engine. “It’s a long story, Dad. We’d be here for a week if I tried explaining it all. Am I okay to get up the mountain?”

  “No. We could bodily carry you up there,” he said grudgingly, “but if we don’t do something about your reserves you’re not going to be any help if things go badly.”

  “Things will go badly,” I assured him. “Let’s get Petite into that cave and we’ll worry about the rest later.”

  * * *

  “Later” came a lot sooner than I expected. We rolled Petite up the mountain and into the cave, which is to say, Morrison and Dad rolled Petite up the mountain and into the cave while I steered with a focus and ferocity previously known only to kittens intent on a piece of string. I managed not to crash her, which in my book was a huge triumph. Proud of myself, I got out of the car. Morrison put me right back in, and dragged my drum out from behind the driver’s seat again. I stared at it like I’d never even seen it before. So did Dad, with more justification: he hadn’t seen it before, at least not with its new modifications. I’d just totally forgotten about it. After a while I mumbled, “Wish I’d remembered that was there. It probably would’ve helped with...flying the car.”

  When I said the words out loud it struck me just how amazingly stupid that stunt had been. I mean, I really had been utterly, absolutely confident of my ability to do it, which meant I’d been able to do it. But I would never be able to do it again, because I was now far too aware of the cost. Maybe if the choices were Morrison being eaten by monsters or me flying Petite again, but short of genuine life and death it was never gonna happen again. And really, that was okay, because although I didn’t want to tell Morrison, I could barely feel my arms and legs, never mind fingers and toes. I wasn’t at all sure I was still functional on any meaningful level.

  “Yes,” Morrison said dryly. “I’m sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your James Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren’t, now I’m going to drum until you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don’t argue with me.”

  I nodded mutely, and honestly didn’t remember more than the first beat or two of the stick against the drumhead. I had odd, flitting dreams of healing power washing through me, like I was one of my own patients, and every once in a while I felt my breath catch like maybe I’d stopped breathing and someone was getting it started for me again. The drumbeat broke through every few minutes, dragging me toward the surface of sleep before losing its grip on me again. It was pleasant, in a soft, surreal way. I could feel the earth’s weight above me, its steadiness below me, and the stillness of the air within the small cave. I felt comforted, contained, safe. I wanted to stay there for weeks, though a niggling, uncomfortable feeling suggested that wouldn’t work.

  After a far-too-brief forever, Dad’s voice broke through my reverie. “We’re going to have to leave if we want to get into the mountains before dark.”

  “She still looks like death warmed over, Joseph.”

  “Her aura’s stronger.”

  Morrison’s sigh matched the last beat of the drum. I opened my eyes, unable to focus on the dark cave wall beyond Petite’s windshield. I wasn’t sure I felt better. I didn’t feel worse, though, and I could wiggle my toes with a reasonable confidence that they were still attached. It would have to do. I said, “I’m good,” and hoped I sounded more convincing to the men than I did to myself.

  I swung my legs out of the car, stood up, and swayed as hunger galloped through me. Morrison made an alarmed noise and I shook my head, hanging onto Petite’s roof a minute. “No, I’m okay. I am. Just getting my feet under me. How long was I out this time?”

  “Another hour. Not enough,” Morrison opined. I had no argument there, but it was astounding the military hadn’t found us yet as it was, so we really couldn’t waste any more time. I wobbled out of the little cave and glanced back.

  Petite barely fit in it, honestly. I supposed it was ever so slightly possible that when the military came around using radar, or whatever they might be using, that her big back end would make the whole stretch read as solid rock. It would be better, though, to hightail it into the mountains, find the missing tribe, and finish this thing before it turned into a new round of Indian wars. I tried concentrating on that idea instead of my stomach gnawing on itself as we headed into the hills.

  Helicopters and Humvees were audible in all the hollers, their engines echoing even when the vehicles were far out of sight. Dad maintained the shields, though every once in a while I noticed them shivering as his concentration lapsed. I fell back a few steps to walk with Morrison, murmuring, “He’s not all that good at this.”

  “Give him a break, Walker. Apparently it’s impossible.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a little worried. I’m still tripping over my feet, and if something nasty comes out of the hills—”

  “Then you’ll flatten it and pay the consequences later.” Morrison didn’t sound especially happy about the prospect, but he did sound like he understood it was exactly what would happen. “Are you going to kill yourself setting this straight, Walker?”

  “I hope not.”

  “If it comes down to it?”

  He meant if it came down to me or Aidan, and we both knew the answer to that, so I didn’t reply. We walked for hours, very slowly, because I absolutely couldn’t move faster than I was doing. We stopped for water occasionally, and Dad found some of last fall’s apples. I didn’t even pretend to object when he and Morrison both passed their shares to me. I wolfed them down, burped the early warning of a cramped tummy, and didn’t care. The hint of food made me need more, but I felt a little better anyway, and we were all able to pick up the pace. Dad knew where he was going, and we were content to follow along.

  Just before nightfall, Dad dropped the shields. “We’re almost there.”

  I figured they’d be hunting for us with infrared at sundown anyway, so the shields didn’t seem to matter “Almost where? Is this some kind of retreat plan that’s been in place for decades, or something?”

  “In a way. It started out as a game, with some of the young people trying out their woods skills. A few of them were interested enough to ask the elders what they knew or remembered. A while ago it started to become a rite of passage for the ones whose heritage was important enough to them.” Dad deliberately didn’t look at me. I wanted to kick him, but refrained for fear of losing my balance. “There’s territory out here that nobody lives on, nobody camps on or explores. It’s hard to imagine when you think how close we all live together, but there’s a lot of land to liv
e off still, if you’re willing to do it. Kids started coming out here for summers, and some of them, when things went bad at school, came out for the winters, too. There are always a few adults who keep an eye on the place, to make sure nobody gets hurt or in trouble, but we mostly let them get by on their own. They hunt and fish traditionally so nobody wonders about gunshots in the mountains. They do a good job.”

  I still felt like I was being reprimanded, but kept my mouth shut. I’d explored the hills some, but never gone this deep or imagined camping out for whole summers at a time. “So it’s the kind of place that people who were inclined to walk away from government interference in the Qualla would already know about.”

  “Yeah. I’d guess there’s probably four or six hundred folks out here, if they’ve left town.”

  I thought about Cherokee town’s population. “That’s not very many.”

  “It’s as many as rebuilt the tribes after the Trail of Tears.”

  I was definitely being rebuked. Lucky for Dad, it took enough energy just to grind my teeth that I thought I’d better save what spark I had for what was coming, rather than snarling at him. “The military’s not looking very hard, if they haven’t found them. That many people would show up like a wildfire on infrared.”

  “You think they don’t know that? You think they’re not taking steps to avoid being found? Kids shelter in cave systems out here, or old mines. Hunters pack themselves with mud. We’ve got a lot to lose, Joanne.”

  I pressed my lips together, reminding myself I was unwilling to be drawn into an argument, particularly one I basically agreed with. If the escapees were out here living off the land through traditional methods I had nothing but respect for them, and didn’t think it was any of the government’s business. Especially since I was pretty confident there was no zombie apocalypse going on. Hunting the refugees down would only emphasize the level of control the federal government still held over reservations, rather than providing any level of actual help.

  For one crazy moment I wondered if this mess could help the Native cause in America. If it would provide a rallying point that would bring all the tribes together to make a stand that would give them the autonomy that had been stripped away centuries ago. Then reality kicked in. With the bleak magic Aidan was wielding, if they made a stand it would turn into a slaughter. Political protest would be swept aside in the bloodshed, and when it ended, there would be no more pesky Native population on thousands of acres of American soil. We weren’t going to let that happen.

  Danny Little Turtle stepped out of the forest with a silence and expression so like the Cherokee warriors Morrison and I had encountered that if it weren’t for his trappings—a rifle, jeans and a T-shirt instead of leathers and spears—I would have thought we’d fallen through time again. Moreover, those warriors had intended to capture us. Danny looked like he’d be happy to put a bullet in each of us, and a butterfly-fluttering sense of alarm awakened in my stomach. Back then I’d been confident of stopping their arrows and spears. Right now I wasn’t at all sure I could stop flying bullets.

  “Give me an excuse,” he said, and a goddamned military chopper buzzed us.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I think the only thing that kept Danny from shooting us right then was the probably unbased fear the rifle’s report would be heard above the chopper’s blades. We all hit the ground, dampening our heat signals with leaves and mud. I folded my white coat under myself, cringing at the exhaustion that left me unable to protect it with the thin magic sheen I’d used before. The chopper skimmed past us, treetops whipping and snapping with its passage. Danny snarled, “That’s an excuse,” but my father snaked a hand out and wrapped it around the rifle’s muzzle.

  “We’re not your enemies, Dan. You know that.”

  “Maybe you’re not, but all this trouble started when Joanne came back to town.”

  That was entirely untrue. It had started several days before I’d come back, but I didn’t think Danny would appreciate the distinction. “Is Aidan with you?”

  “Of course Aidan is with us,” he snapped. “Who do you think is keeping the military off our backs?”

  We hadn’t been being loud to begin with, but all three of us got really quiet. That was not an angle I’d expected, and it shot a spark of hope through me. Maybe Aidan had thrown off the wights’ influence. Maybe he was the hero of the hour, and we were just coming late to the party to offer our congratulations. My head throbbed with relief at the idea, even if I didn’t so much as half believe it. I was happy to hunt wights and fight the Executioner if Aidan was already safe. I’d happily fight them every day for the rest of my life, if he was safe.

  Morrison broke our silence. “When did he join you?”

  “He came and got us,” Danny spat. “Sunday evening, right before the CDC showed up. He came down to the school and said they were coming and that we’d all be quarantined if we didn’t get into the hills.”

  Sunday evening. If Aidan had been here Sunday evening, then he hadn’t lost days and days to his time travel stunt. He’d been able to land back where he came from, which just wasn’t fair. I wanted to rail at Renee for that, but at this juncture, it seemed useless. Instead I took a deep breath and tried to focus on something far more important: “Danny, did you burn the bodies? The ones who’d been keeping vigil, did you burn them?”

  I felt his blistering glare through the darkness. “Sara said we should. She got outvoted.”

  “Jesus. How many more people died when they rose?”

  “How do you know what happened!”

  “I think,” Morrison said under our increasing volume, “that we should take this discussion elsewhere. The helicopter is gone. This is probably our best chance to move.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Michael Morrison, and I’m with Joanne. If you don’t like that, fine. But the longer we stay here, the better our chances of being discovered are. If I were searching these woods I’d be doing more than one pass, but they’ve got a lot of territory to cover and we may be able to get out of their sweep range if we move now.”

  “What are you, military?”

  “Police.”

  Dan said a word his grandmother wouldn’t have approved of and rolled to his feet. The rest of us followed, mouths shut and ears sharp to listen for the chopper coming back. Dan led us into an old mine shaft when we heard it, taking us deep enough that there wasn’t a hint of moonlight to illuminate the way. He stepped up beside me and breathed, “I could drop you in here and nobody would ever know,” in my ear.

  I said, “Don’t be absurd,” out loud, because if nothing else, drawing attention to a threat frequently removed it. Women weren’t good at that, as a rule. Societal convention told us to not raise our voices, even when we felt threatened. Police academy had done a good job of breaking that training, and I wasn’t about to lend credence to Dan’s theatrics by whispering back. “First off, Dad and Morrison are here, and they know you don’t like me, so if I fell in the shaft they might be suspicious. Second, I’m the shaman here, Dan. I can See perfectly clearly in the pitch dark. If you try throwing me down a pit, you’re probably a lot more likely than I am to end up in it.”

  That was obviously not how Danny had planned for the conversation to go. He made a sound of impotent rage and stomped a few feet away. Only a few feet—I bet he wasn’t kidding about the dangers of the mine, and that there was indeed a shaft close enough to get thrown down.

  My father said, “Dan?” incredulously, but Morrison only chuckled. Apparently he wasn’t too worried about me being pitched into pits, which was heartening.

  After a few minutes we ventured out again, this time avoiding any further chopper passes. Within half an hour we were in a moonlit vale that, from ground level, had the faintest signs of human habitation. I thought they must be less visible from above
, and wondered how far from modern civilization we were.

  The cave system Dan led us into was natural and deep. I was astonished it hadn’t been exploited for minerals, but even the most assiduous explorers sometimes missed things. There could’ve been a rainstorm the day they went through this valley, who knew, or maybe somehow they’d just never come this way. Whatever the reason, he led us a fair distance down, stopping to turn a flashlight on once we were well past the cave’s mouth.

  The light caught attention down below. A number of people came to greet us, most of them expecting Dan and wary when they caught sight of the rest of us. Some relaxed at Dad’s presence, but more of them tensed up at mine. I was not exactly endearing myself to my former townspeople.

  Les’s grandfather pushed through to the front, shaking Dad’s hand, patting Danny on the shoulder and subtly ushering them both into the crowd behind him, which necessarily left Morrison and me on our own. Dad realized what had happened about half a step too late. I splayed my fingers when he made to come back, trying to stop him. If they threw us out, we, and probably they, would be better off with Dad in there. At least he had some idea of what was going on, and they might listen to him if we were ejected.

  “There’s a problem, Joanne.” Les Senior looked pained but determined. Me, I only nodded. I was sure there was a problem. It was just a question of whether his interpretation of the problem lined up with mine. “We’ve been warned, you see,” Grandpa Les went on. “Wasn’t much of a surprise, what with all this trouble starting just before you came back, but it’s coming from a source I trust, you see?”