Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  At dusk, they spotted the lights of Fort Liard from afar and spent the night in a stand of spruce along the river’s steep banks. Though their new civilian clothing was not as warm as their well-insulated prison jumpsuits, their newfound sleeping bags kept them snug through the night.

  For the next week, they moved south at a steady pace, passing Fort Nelson, Prophet River, and a handful of tiny hamlets in between. At times, they were sorely tempted to come out of the forest and walk the shoulder of this section of the famed Alaska Highway. With tourist traffic having been reduced to zero by security measures imposed under the North American Defense Treaty, most of the road traffic consisted of trucks serving the oil and gas industry. And since that industry had been nationalized, the drivers would be government employees who were required to report any suspicious activity they spotted along their route.

  By the time the three fugitives had reached the halfway mark between Fort Nelson and Dawson Creek, they were running low on food again and halved their daily rations. Though they had passed many small farmsteads, none of the men had proposed poaching farm animals, until Browning smelled sheep one evening before dusk and spotted a flock grazing a few hundred meters away.

  “Back in Montana, it would be lambing season about now,” he commented idly.

  “A broiled lamb chop would be mighty tasty,” Rhee added. “Maybe we should do a little recon.”

  “No thanks,” Linder replied. “I’m not hungry enough to get caught for rustling.”

  “Will?” Rhee asked.

  “I’m a rancher. Where I come from, we shoot rustlers. Besides, where there are sheep, there’ll be dogs. One wrong move and you could get us all busted. Forget it.”

  But Linder could tell from the look in Rhee’s eye that he would not forget so easily. And later that night, Linder awoke to the sound of a broken twig and found Rhee creeping back into camp from the direction of the sheep pasture. To Linder’s relief, the Korean was empty handed.

  “No luck, eh?” Linder remarked as Rhee unzipped his sleeping bag.

  “Damned sheep,” Rhee cursed. “I slipped inside the wire and crept up to a bunch of them three times with my knife in my teeth, but the moment I got close, they trotted away. The moon was too bright to risk standing up and chasing after them, so I came back.”

  At that, Browning, whom both had thought was asleep, let out a deep guffaw.

  “Dumb greenhorn,” he told Rhee. “The sheep mistook you for another animal because you came up to them on all fours. If you had walked over to them like a two-legged master, you could have had your pick of the flock.”

  “Damn,” now you tell me,” Rhee replied lamely.

  “You never asked,” Browning rejoined. “Now here’s another tip. If you ever go thieving like that again without telling Linder and me, you might not wake up the next morning. The driver was strike one. This is strike two. No more.”

  Though it was too dark under the spruces for Linder to see the expression on either man’s face, he knew that neither was smiling.

  * * *

  The rivers and streams were frozen hard and snow still covered the ground in places, but each day the wind grew milder and a few more trees showed buds on their branches. From time to time, they heard the beat of wings overhead and saw ducks and geese headed north to their summer breeding grounds. Green shoots rose from dead tufts of grass and danced in the wind, luring rabbits from their burrows. Groundhogs by the dozen popped out from their mounds to look around, drawing tossed sticks from the men, who had watched Scotty kill them this way. But the rodents moved too fast to be hit.

  Every time the three men saw the lights of a village at night or the faraway silhouettes of buildings, they steered clear and sought to remain hidden among the trees. After two more days, they cut their daily rations further, down to one meal per day, eaten at mid-morning, as they were down to their last kilo of steel-cut oats and little else. Though it was a prisoner’s reflex to hide a few bread crusts or pieces of meal bar deep in one’s pockets, Linder shared everything he had, holding nothing back.

  They continued to the south, moving parallel to the highway across hilly and wooded terrain, with stiff climbs and scrambles down into steep-sided east-west valleys. Just past a deserted settlement, the men camped for the night. Having eaten little for three days, they could think of nothing but food. Rhee revisited the issue of stealing livestock, this time proposing to leave one of their fifty-dollar Canadian banknotes to pay for the meat, but Browning rejected the idea. Stealing the animal and leaving the money would draw unwanted attention, since only a fugitive was likely to do either.

  The next day, upon entering a clearing in the forest, they came upon a horse hitched to a crude sledge. The horse’s bridle was looped around a tree branch, and across the back of the sledge lay the pelts of what looked like a fox, a beaver, and several muskrats or badgers, alongside a weathered double-barreled shotgun and a leather ammo pouch.

  Browning seized the gun at once and then scanned the clearing for signs of its owner, who was not long in coming. He was a broad-shouldered trapper in his fifties or sixties, with clear, intelligent eyes and neatly trimmed gray hair and beard, though his bib overalls and parka were patched and worn. He entered the clearing from the direction of the nearby stream and approached the trio calmly, showing no sign of fear or alarm. He went at once to the horse, ran his hand through its mane and laid his walking stick across the sledge where his shotgun had been.

  “Howdy,” the man greeted them while sizing up each of the fugitives in turn.

  “Good to see you,” Browning replied evenly. “It’s been a long while since we’ve seen anyone out here.”

  “How can I help you fellas? Am I right that you’re just passing through?”

  Browning hesitated and Linder could see that he was weighing how to respond.

  “You got it right, mister. We’re headed home and don’t mean to harm anyone. But we’re short of food and would be grateful if you could spare us a few bites till we get to the next town.”

  “Always ready to help travelers in need,” the man replied with a simple dignity that Linder found disarming. He removed his backpack, set it on the sledge, and reached deep inside, removing a thick-crusted loaf of brown bread, a half-dozen smoked fish, and a slab of cured meat. Then he slowly withdrew a long hunting knife from a scabbard hanging from his belt and cut the loaf and meat into four equal pieces before handing a fish and a piece of bread and meat to each man.

  “You don’t have to worry about me. I live alone and I’m the only soul for kilometers around.”

  “Thanks,” Browning said as he accepted his portion of the food. “But this doesn’t leave much for you to eat later.”

  “I’ll be fine with what’s left,” the stranger replied. Yet Linder could see an unspoken question in the man’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, my friend, but we’ll have to take your gun with us,” Browning said, addressing the man’s apparent point of concern.

  For the first time the stranger appeared annoyed.

  “I understand your situation. But you know it won’t be safe for you to fire it around here.”

  That much was true. Using it to hunt game would attract notice. But the fugitives couldn’t just leave it with the trapper and risk his using it to threaten them or signal others.

  “Why don’t you hang it on a tree along the trail where I can find it after a while?” the trapper proposed.

  Browning looked at Linder and then at Rhee before agreeing. Then all four men sat on the snow-covered ground to eat together in silence. When the food was finished, the trapper rose to leave.

  “Good luck to you,” he said in parting. “I hope you find what you’re after.”

  The three fugitives walked on for an hour or more without speaking. Linder felt a nagging unease at having taken something of great value from the trapper.

  “Well, at least we left him his horse,” Linder noted. The comment drew an uneasy laugh from the other two men
but failed to make Linder feel better.

  Five kilometers further on, Browning slung the rifle from a low tree branch overhanging the trail after wrapping the breech and muzzle with plastic film.

  Later that evening they used a thick pole to break through the ice on a frozen pond and caught some fish using Scotty’s techniques. While roasting the fish over a fire, Linder and Browning interpreted this success as fate’s endorsement of their decision to leave the trapper unharmed. This time even Rhee agreed.

  As he gazed across the fire at Browning’s weather-beaten face, Linder was troubled by how much the Montanan seemed to have aged since they met on the forestry detail only a few months before. His tall, lean, broad-shouldered frame appeared stooped, his face haggard and his right hand had acquired a tremor.

  “Not far from Montana now, Will,” Linder remarked as Browning handed him a piece of skewered fish to roast over the fire.

  “Yep. The border won’t be more than a day or two away once we hit the rail lines,” the older man replied.

  “You must realize the DSS will be waiting for you if you show up at your ranch, don’t you?” Linder probed.

  Browning nodded as he held his own skewer above the embers.

  “Yeah, but I’m not so sure I’d want to go back to the ranch, anyhow. It’s an odd thing, but somewhere along the way I think I’ve lost my love of the land. What the camps have taught me more than anything is to hate physical labor. All I care about now is my wife and kids. I think that, if I make it home, I’ll never want to be more than a step away from my wife again. Wherever she goes, I’ll be right on her heels.” Browning looked up and Linder could see tears welling in his large brown eyes.

  “Do you have a safe place away from the ranch where your wife could come to meet you?” Linder asked. “Why not stay in Alberta and have her come across to the Canadian side?”

  “I’ve been thinking of something like that,” the rancher replied. “I have some friends in Calgary who helped me out when I was running cross-border ops during the insurgency. I might look them up.”

  “Good idea,” Linder responded. “Are you planning to enter the city or might you be able to phone someone from the outskirts and arrange for him to pick you up?”

  “I’d prefer to call if I can find any of their numbers. By the way, you’re welcome to join me if you don’t have other plans.”

  “Thanks,” Linder answered, “but I’m headed further south and would rather stay as far away from cities as I can. I think my biggest challenge will be keeping under the radar while I bypass Edmonton and Calgary.”

  At this, Linder tore into his skewered fish and let out a murmur of satisfaction.

  “If I were you,” Browning suggested, “I’d try hitching a ride on a freight train this side of Edmonton. That way, you’d limit your exposure in urban areas and cover a lot more ground. There’s always a risk of getting clubbed by a guard, but you’ve already developed a hard head in the camps. Hell, I’ve ridden the rails plenty of times; I could show you how to get around.”

  “I’d like that,” Linder answered. “It’s a heck of a long way to Salt Lake on foot.”

  “So you’re still heading to Utah?” Browning asked with a doubtful expression. “How do you plan to stay out of harm’s way in a place like that? Utah is a restricted zone, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s exactly what makes it possible,” Linder answered with a gleam in his eye. “You see, restricted zones are more about keeping people in than keeping them out. If you’re registered to live in a place like Utah or Idaho, the government doesn’t want you picking up stakes to seek your fortune in Chicago or New York. They want you to stay put so you don’t mess up the Five-Year Plan.”

  “But the restricted zones are where the insurgency was hottest,” Browning pointed out. “They’ve got camps and military bases scattered all over the place. How will you get through all the checkpoints? What will you do for I.D.?”

  Linder laughed.

  “You haven’t seen the government security apparatus from the inside, as I have. The national I.D. database is a joke. First off, their computers don’t work half the time and the new biometric I.D.’s are so expensive and easily hacked or corrupted that, outside the major cities, the government has gone back to issuing old-fashioned paper I.D.’s. Out in the small towns and rural areas, nothing at all is digital and there’s a thriving black market in forged documents. It’s the Wild West all over again. Outside the Fort Apache stockade, the Indians rule.”

  “So you really think you can survive by going underground?” Rhee asked, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation.

  “Not exactly underground. More like underclass,” Linder replied with a hearty laugh. “I’ll dress like a homeless drifter, work as a migrant farm worker or day laborer, and score the best phony papers my Canadian dollars can buy. I’ll be free to go wherever I want and, as long as I don’t shoot anybody or walk around screaming anti-government slogans, nobody in authority will give me so much as a second look.”

  * * *

  Two days later, a day’s walk from Dawson Creek, Alberta, amid increasing signs of human habitation, the men ran short of food once again. This time, a nagging fear that local town-dwellers might betray them to the police in hopes of collecting a reward strengthened their determination to stay far away from settlements. Each man vowed that he would rather starve than face recapture.

  But against Linder’s advice, Rhee finally persuaded Browning to accompany him on a raid shortly after dusk to capture a lamb from an isolated homestead they had passed. It was a cold, misty night when Linder draped a sleeping bag over the farm’s electrified fence and stood watch as the two men strode across the meadow toward a stout ewe and her twin lambs. Upon reaching the closest lamb, Browning grabbed it and set off at a trot toward the fence, but seconds later an unseen dog raised the alarm. The men were still at least fifty meters from their goal when the Border Collie caught up with them. Having been forewarned by Linder, Rhee stopped the dog with a savage martial arts kick and the two men made it over the fence with their bleating quarry. But before Browning reached the tree line, two distant rifle shots rang out.

  Linder watched Browning fall and roll, holding the lamb close to his stomach with both arms like a football. Then he rose slowly and limped toward the tree line with Rhee supporting him. Once safely behind a tree, Rhee seized the lamb, silenced it with a savage twist to the neck, and rolled Browning’s trouser leg up to the knee.

  “In the army, we’d call this a lucky shot—enough to get you a medevac but not enough to kill or cripple you,” Rhee pronounced. “Good for you that it was a small bore round and passed clean through the meat of your calf. Does it feel like it might have hit a bone or a tendon? Any sharp pain?”

  Browning shook his head.

  “Aches like a sonofabitch, but I think I can walk on it with some help,” Browning answered. “Let’s try.”

  Rhee wrapped the wound hastily with some gauze and a compression wrap he had found in the ranger’s cabin, then unrolled Browning’s trouser leg and helped him to his feet.

  Next Linder lowered Browning’s backpack onto his shoulders, letting the rancher lean on him while he ventured his first few steps. At that moment a steady, drenching rain began to fall.

  “Hand me my walking stick and let’s get out of here,” the Montanan declared. “If I bleed out, take my stuff and leave me behind, do you hear? I mean that.”

  “We’ll carry you till either your heart gives out or ours do. But I don’t think it will come to that. Our sheepherder is not going to come after us on a night like this. He probably has a wife and kids holding him back and pleading for him to wait till morning.”

  Rhee’s prediction was a good one, for the fugitives trod on unmolested for another three hours through the rain before stopping for the night under an overhanging rock in a steep-sided ravine. Since the mist hampered visibility and the forest was dense, they risked lighting a small fire to warm up and dry t
heir clothing. While Linder prepared the fire, Rhee unwrapped Browning’s wound and cleaned it before applying fresh gauze and tape.

  Meanwhile, Browning kept his mind occupied instructing Linder in how to butcher the lamb, and before long they were feasting on roasted lamb chops. They ate every last bite of flesh and sucked on the bones before drifting off to sleep around the banked fire.

  In the morning, though Browning’s leg had swollen, he declared himself fit to walk, and the three men set off again to the south. With each hour on the trail, however, Browning’s pace slowed. During their midday break, Linder watched closely as the Montanan drank his mug of hot water and noticed droplets of sweat break out on the man’s forehead.

  “Managing to stay warm?” Linder asked.

  “For the moment,” the older man replied, looking away. A few minutes later, Browning’s face had gone ashen and his shoulders trembled.

  “We need to spend another hour or two on the road, Will,” Linder coaxed, holding Browning’s feverish hand in his. “It’s important to make it to the next valley so we can pitch camp without being seen. Do you think you can do it?”

  “Sure thing,” Browning answered in a strained voice. “I’ll feel better once I’m moving again.”

  “Okay then, let’s go,” Rhee said, pacing nearby.

  They plodded on for more than two hours before reaching the steep banks of a small river, less than a mile from an old wooden bridge across the main highway. By the time they reached a secluded spot to settle in, Browning had stumbled more than a few times and could no longer walk without assistance. When Rhee removed the pus-soaked bandage from Browning’s wounded leg, he found the injury dark and grotesquely swollen, with red streaks leading up the thigh. Though Browning was barely conscious, his breathing was rapid and he moaned with pain when Rhee tried to wash the wound. Rhee stepped away from his patient and gestured for Linder to follow.

  “It’s blood poisoning,” Rhee said quietly. “He’s gone into shock and we have nothing to treat him with. Without antibiotics, he could be dead by morning.”