Footprints of Thunder

by James F. David

  When they first followed Ripman into the forest, Carl and the guys fired recklessly. Ripman had darted from one giant tree to the next, Angie and Ellen mimicking his moves. The crack of gunshots and the whine of bullets—sometimes slamming into nearby trees—covered the sounds of their movements. Ripman angled them up the hill and away from the guys, and soon the gunfire became distant thunder.

  He kept the pace long after the gunfire ended. Ellen’s fear was diminishing as was her adrenalin-fed strength. Exhaustion filled her body. The sun was gone now and the forest had become one unending shadow. Their eyes adapted to the dark but Ripman’s pace meant stumbles and falls. Ellen was about to ask him for a rest when his hand came up, signaling for them to stop.

  They were near the crest of the hill by a rocky outcrop. A huge fallen tree lay there and disappeared into the forest in a tangle of broken limbs. Ripman circled the tree, climbing toward the massive exposed roots. When he disappeared over the rocks, suddenly Ellen’s fear returned. Ripman had been their savior and protector. Though no older than her son, John, his competence was evident in every move he made.

  He soon reappeared at the top of the outcrop, motioned them up and then signaled for quiet. Angie and Ellen pushed and pulled each other up the rocks. Around the exposed root of the tree, they could see fresh dirt, as if the tree had fallen that morning. Ripman led them down and under the overhanging roots, into a hollow.

  Ellen and Angie collapsed against the dirt walls, enjoying the womblike security. Temporarily safe, Ellen began to think about what had happened to Angie and was plagued by doubt and guilt. Angie’s friendship, which had made it possible to look for John, had resulted in disaster. She had no idea how far the rape had gone before Ripman interrupted it. She also knew she would never ask and doubted whether Angie would ever say.

  Now Ellen and Angie were hiding in a hole, in a forest that couldn’t possibly exist, and being hunted. Ellen thought about the forest around her and hoped she had been wrong about the possibility of other dinosaurs. But why would two dinosaurs be more impossible than one?

  Perhaps if they had found John their situation would be easier to accept, but it was hopeless. Portland was gone. Their home was gone, and her son. With that admission Ellen began her grieving. She cried softly in the darkness, muffling the sounds with her hands. After a few minutes she felt Angie’s arm around her shoulders. Then she remembered that John’s friend Ripman was sitting in the hole with them. “Ripman! You’re here! Is John here? Is he alive?” Moonlight filtered into the hole, and Ellen could see Rip-man’s face. He looked uncomfortable and turned away, visibly ashamed.

  “I don’t know. Last time I saw him he was alive.”

  “When was that? Why didn’t you stick together?”

  “We did stick together at first. We were out in Newberg when it happened. John and Cubby wanted to find their moms and dads … you … so we headed into the forest to look.” Ripman paused and looked down again. “I couldn’t believe those two … complete assholes. They were clueless about what to do. Made every mistake possible. They talked, stumbled, wandered off the trail. Didn’t know when to be quiet and when not. If it hadn’t been for me they would have been dead a hundred yards in.” Ripman brought his eyes up to meet Ellen’s. “Finally I had to ditch them. They were stumbling along be-hind me making a racket I couldn’t believe. Some dinosaurs heard it and came after us. We took off running. I was leading, but when I looked back they were running off on their own with the dinosaurs right behind them. I couldn’t do nothing so I just kept running.”

  “Oh no!” Ellen gasped. Angie pulled her closer.

  “Those dinosaurs didn’t get them. I heard them calling my name later. Walking through the forest yelling my name. So stupid. I knew they would only get me killed so I just let them keep looking. They’re still looking as far as I know.”

  “You should have stuck together.”

  “What for? They almost got me killed. If I stuck with them I’d be dead now. It’s every man for himself in here. They needed me. I didn’t need them, I can take care of myself. I don’t need anybody.”

  Angie, whose arm was still around Ellen’s shoulder, had been listening to the conversation, watching Ripman’s eyes.

  “So why did you help us?” Angie asked.

  “For the fun of it. I didn’t like what they did to that dinosaur. They didn’t kill it for food, they did it for fun. I decided to have the same kind of fun.”

  “You could’ve left us.”

  “I may still.”

  “And you don’t need anybody?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then why do you keep looking at my breasts?” Angie challenged him.

  It was too dark to make out colors, but Ellen was sure Ripman’s face reddened. He turned away and didn’t say anything. . Angie obviously knew what men needed—especially teenage men. Suddenly self-conscious, Ellen pulled her blouse together in front. The absurdity of her sudden modesty struck her: one minute running through the forest dodging bullets, and the next minute embarrassed that a teenager was peeking at her bosom.

  Then she realized Angle was naked from the waist up.

  “Ripman, give Angie your coat,’” Ellen told him crisply.

  Ripman turned back defiantly. He sat tight-lipped, making no move, facing the same crisis he’d faced with John and Cubby. He didn’t want anyone to become dependent on him. Finally Angie spoke up.

  “If you’re cold, go ahead and keep it, I’m fine.”

  Ripman snorted softly and mumbled, “I don’t get cold,” then removed his coat and tossed it to Angie.

  “Get some sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll keep watch.”

  When he left he took his backpack and canteen with him. Ellen wasn’t sure they would see him again. Eventually Angie slept fitfully, but Ellen spent the night worrying about John and damning her husband for leaving her.

  They were drunk, but the party atmosphere was gone, replaced by fear and anger. John was glad that one of the men was dead, one of those who attacked his mother. Another one was hurt, but not hurt bad enough to suit John. It must have been Ripman, John thought, who put those arrows into the men and helped John’s mother escape.

  Cubby and John had watched as the men fired after his mom and the other woman. It was a long time before the bikers gave up searching.

  Then the men built a fire away from the body of their friend and passed bottles around. Cubby and John crept through the forest until they could hear the men talk of their fear and plans. The injured man, Carl, listened for a while before cussing their stupidity and throwing the fiberglass arrow from his leg in their faces. After that he led the discussion.

  “We can’t let those women get away,” he argued. “They saw Deputy Dawg get it.” No one dared point out that Carl had done the killing. “What about what we did to the women? Hey, Miller, what’s your wife’s old man gonna say about that? Think you’ll still be workin’ at his mill after that? Butler, Chief Peters hates your guts already. He’s been looking for some reason to get your parole pulled. He finds out about this and your ass is back in the can. He didn’t like Deputy Dawg better’n anyone else, but what’s he s’posed to do when one of his deputies gets killed? He’ll pin it on all of us, not just me. And what about Bobby? Kishton, you were a better friend a his than the rest. You gonna just let someone murder him like that? Shot him in the back … in the fuckin’ back! It ain’t right.”

  Carl wheedled and worked on all of them till they agreed. They couldn’t let the women get away, and whoever killed Bobby was going to pay for it.

  Cubby and John slipped away after that for their own discussion.

  “We gotta help them, Cubby. Ripman helped my mom. You know he’d help us if we were in a jam.”

  Cubby agreed and so they decided to disable the motorcycles, giving Ripman and the women a chance to get away. It also gave Cubby and John a better chance if they came after them. They then worked their way through the forest to a spot well away from
the camp. It wasn’t close to the bikes, but a shorter crawl wasn’t worth the risk.

  John had listened to the men long enough to pick out their voices. There was Carl of course. One of the others was Miller, one Kishton, and Butler, who seldom spoke-—that worried John. As John crawled he listened, checking the voices against his list. They were around that fire—except Butler, who could be anywhere.

  John had been inching through the grass on his stomach for what seemed like hours and was almost to the motorcycles. The last stretch would be the most dangerous, because the grasses and the ferns were trampled down and even on his belly he would be visible. John knew the roaring fire the men were staring into would help. Their constricted pupils would find it hard to pick out shapes in the shadows.

  He heard Cubby crawling through the grass to his left. They’d started toward the bikes at different spots, but were angling toward the targets. But another noise came from his right and he froze. Someone was walking through the grass. He pulled his knife from its sheath and slowly rolled over. He was angry about what they had done to his mother, but he was also afraid.

  There was a burst of shouts from the fire and he picked out Kishton’s voice, then Miller’s. This one near him was either Carl, or Butler. He listened to the approaching steps. There was no hint of a limp, and Carl had been limping badly. It must be Butler. It wouldn’t matter, they were all bigger than John, and all with biceps twice the diameter of John’s skinny ones.

  The footsteps were almost in John’s ear when they stopped, replaced by fumbling and then the sound of peeing. John could smell and hear Butler’s loud whizzing. Soon, John’s knee felt damp. John silently cursed him.

  A loud splintering crash rolled through the meadow startling a gasp out of John, who trembled, afraid of being heard. Butler took two steps forward and uttered a “What the shit?” John could now see him through the grass, but Butler’s eyes were riveted on the far side of the meadow. John heard the sounds of running men.

  Butler shouted, “What the hell is that?”

  “You see anything?” an approaching voice asked.

  “Damn. Maybe Coop and the bitch was right. Sounds like there are more of those things around. Maybe bigger ones.”

  The sounds of splintering and thumping continued but gradually drifted off. One by one the men judged the noise to be far enough away and then turned and walked back to the fire. Butler was the last to go. John waited until Butler had enough time to walk to camp, and then pulled his leg out of the puddle.

  He worked his anger back up so he would have the courage to continue and then crawled forward, inch by inch, as silently as possible, trying not to sway the grasses and ferns. He reached the trampled-down portion and pushed his head out far enough to see down the newly created path. The men still circled the fire. When John looked to the left Cubby poked out of the grass, gave him a thumbs-up sign, and crawled to the nearest bike as John did the same. The plan was to cut a fuel line and the spark plug wires on each one—otherwise they could cannibalize one bike to fix another.

  Ripman’s stolen knife was sharp and the fuel line cut easily. The spark plug wires, however, were deep in the engine and John had trouble reaching. He switched from the smooth edge to the serrated edge and sawed more than halfway through the wire, seeing no point in cutting any further. On the second one the spark plug wires were easy to cut. He found some tubing—the fuel line?—and cut through it. He approached his last bike, the one closest to the fire, slowly on his hands and knees. The men were talking softly now, poking at the fire with sticks, and passing around a bottle.

  John sawed through one spark plug wire, and then another, but he had trouble reaching the remaining wires from this side. However, the cut fuel line immediately began dripping gas.

  He turned to crawl back and realized Cubby was gone, his earmarked destruction apparently complete. John was debating whether to follow Cubby’s path back, or his own, when he heard a “pssst,” and turned to see Cubby’s face poking out of the grass on the other side of the bikes. Checking the men again, John crept across the makeshift parking lot. Cubby disappeared into the grass as he approached, and John followed. A few yards away, Cubby waited. Putting his mouth to John’s ear he whispered, “Help me find that man they killed. He’s around here somewhere. But be quiet.”

  John was too scared to risk asking why. They split up but kept each other in sight. After a few minutes Cubby motioned John over, a pistol in his hand.

  “They forgot about this,” he whispered. “See what else we can find.”

  John looked reluctantly at the body, and his stomach rolled. He was glad that it was dark because the body was being consumed by the small inhabitants of the forest. John tenderly patted at the dead man’s many pockets, avoiding the crawling insects. The pockets on his chest were sticky with partially dried blood and John could only poke at those. They found a package of blood-soaked Camel cigarettes and a Bic lighter in one shirt pocket. A wallet, comb, and loose change were in the pants, with a huge set of keys that jingled when they pulled them out, freezing John and Cubby in a minute of panic. They found two spare magazines for the pistol in a vest pocket, and cartridges for his rifle were in another. They also found three block-style Hershey bars and a roll of mint Lifesavers.

  “You think they left his rifle on his bike?” John asked, in a barely audible voice.

  “No, I checked. I think his bike was that blue one.”

  Then they took the shortest path back to the trees. The splintering and roaring returned as they faded into the forest.

  “You know who that is, don’t you, John?”

  “I know what it is.”

  “It’s your old buddy One Eye. He’s looking for you, John. Wants a little midnight snack.”

  “Up yours. Give me one of those Hershey bars.”

  “Let’s find a good hiding spot for the night first.” They looked for a high spot this time, remembering their experience in the fallen trees, but couldn’t find a tree they could climb. Instead they found a fallen tree that had sprouted a mini forest of its own, with young trees twelve inches in diameter forming a semicircle. The boys hid in the middle of the enclosure and filled the gaps with branches.

  They ate the Hershey bars and drank from their canteens, talking briefly about the success of their mission and sharing the good feeling that comes of managing one’s fear—they had ridden the most dangerous roller coaster in the world and walked away with bragging rights. It was hours before they fell asleep.

  51. The Mean Bird

  Therefore, hear what the lord has planned…. The young of the flock will be dragged away; he will completely destroy their pasture…. Look! An eagle will soar and swoop down, spreading its wings.

  —Jeremiah, 49:20-22

  The I-5 Mountain, Oregon

  PostQuilt: Tuesday, 10:05 P.M. PST

  Chrissy woke up hurt and crying for her mommy. But Mommy didn’t come. No one came. She finally controlled her tears, but couldn’t keep sobs from wracking her body. When she sat up her arm ached, and she screamed and then began to cry again. But when she screamed something big moved behind her. It was dark, but she could see the big bird staring at her. She instinctively froze, and tried very hard to hold in her crying. She remembered the big bird. A mean bird, not like the one on TV.

  Chrissy remembered the bird knocking her to the ground and then hurting her arm and shoulder. The mean bird wouldn’t leave her alone and kept hurting her. Then it picked her up into the sky. She remembered seeing her mommy running to get her, and being lifted out of reach and floated up in the sky and her arm and shoulder hurting worse and worse. She remembered yelling at the mean bird to put her down, to let her go. But the bird just lifted her higher and higher. Round and round they went, getting farther and farther from Mommy. The bird kept flying close to the mountain and then away from the mountain. Chrissy remembered yelling down to her mommy, yelling for help. Then she remembered falling. The bad bird had fallen too. They had fallen down toward
the mountain. She didn’t remember anything after that.

  Chrissy stifled another sob and stared back at the bird. It was a few feet away from her, lying in a pile of its wings. She could see the bird was hurt. There was blood on its wing. Then the big bird opened its mouth and screeched. Chrissy screamed and tried to crawl away from it, but her arm hurt her. Instead, she put her good arm down and pushed herself up. She looked back to see the bird struggling to get up too, trying to get its wings out of the way, so it could get to its feet. Suddenly the bird lunged at her, its big beak poking toward her face. Chrissy screamed again and backed farther away as the bird struggled once more to get up. She looked for a place to get away from the bad bird, and ran to the edge of the ledge and looked over. It was so far down she got dizzy. She looked back at the bad bird. It would be up again soon.

  Chrissy wanted to run, but there was no place to go. She wanted to hide but there was no place to hide. Chrissy ran to the wall of the mountain and tried to climb up. But there was no place to climb to even if she had two arms. Turning, she saw the bad bird stand up. Then it stumbled toward her, dragging the hurt wing. Chrissy tried scrambling up the wall again but couldn’t get up. When she looked back again the bird was right behind her, and it jabbed at her with its beak. She tried to run out of the way but tripped and fell. Her hand and arm went deep into a shadow at the bottom of the rock wall and she landed on her sore arm. It made her hurt bad again. The bad bird was hopping and fluttering around. Chrissy knew it would hurt her again. She felt with her good arm in the shadow. It was a crack that got bigger ahead of her. Chrissy wriggled forward and down until she got herself all into the hole.