by Barr, Nevada
Maybe that was all courage was, pretending not to be afraid, and taking the next necessary step.
“Shitaroonie,” Sean whined as he delicately eased his foot out of his shoe. “I’m all tore up. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this, Dude. My feet are all tore up to hell.” Sean wasn’t into pretending to be a better man. He looked and sounded like a vicious, beastly little boy, the sort that strangles the neighbor’s cat, then screams bloody murder because it scratched him in the process.
Leah, weariness paring her low voice to a whisper, said, “Rest, Katie.” Katie looked around vacantly, either trying to see who cared about her enough to suggest rest or trying to find a place that looked alluring. Leah untied Heath’s ankles from the footrests. Heath’s legs immediately kicked out.
“Kids at recess,” Heath said. During the first few years, the spasms had embarrassed her. As if they were rude, in the same category as belches and farts. When her legs “acted up,” as she called it, she would apologize. E was the one who made her stop.
“It would be like me saying ‘sorry’ every time I blink or breathe,” she’d snapped one evening as Heath was apologizing during a movie Elizabeth had been wanting to see. “It’s silly. You twitch. Like anybody is going to die because you twitched at them? Twitches don’t even stink or make noise.”
After that Heath had ceased apologizing, because it annoyed her daughter. Over time her motive changed. She didn’t apologize because E was right. Eyes blinked. Hair blew in the wind. Legs twitched.
“I can do it,” she said as E started to help Leah lower her to the ground. “Your ribs must be killing you.”
“They’re waiting in line,” Elizabeth said with a grim look at the dude.
Heath made herself laugh.
At Elizabeth’s suggestion, Leah helped her upend Rick Shaw. The paddle handles were shoved into the ashen earth, the wheel braced against a burned tree trunk. Upside down, the seat formed a tiny place of shelter from the rain. Heath insisted Katie and Leah use it. E disapproved, but Katie was quick enough to scuttle under. For Heath it was a small victory. This time it was she who had given comfort. It was better to give than receive, if for no other reason than that having something to give was a facet of power.
Heath found a rock and scooted back until it supported her upper body. Elizabeth sat next to her and leaned her head against her shoulder. Leah joined Katie beneath the pretense of shelter. Their shoulders touched. Heath realized that this was only the second time she’d seen them so close to one another. Both their heads drooped on their necks. Hair once black and hair once blond were now the same ashen hue. For the first time they looked like mother and daughter.
Heath dug in the pocket of her jacket to get a cigarette. The pack of Camels was mashed and slightly damp where sweat had soaked through the jacket. Smoking in the burn felt redundant, but, without food, she hoped the nicotine would soothe her nerves and give her energy a boost. Anyway, it was something to do.
As she patted pockets in search of her lighter, she remembered Sean had taken it the night before. It was a cheap hot pink Bic, and it never failed. Since knowing Heath, Anna had taken to carrying a lighter in the backcountry. Cigarette lighters weren’t nearly as fashionable as small, watertight tins of ten sulfur matches, but Anna wasn’t as interested in fashion as she was in function. As every smoker knew, a Bic could go through the washer and dryer and still light.
“Could I have my lighter?” Heath asked.
Sean looked up from his study in personal podiatry. “What for?”
Heath held up the cigarettes.
“Give her the lighter,” the dude said.
Sean threw it. It landed near Leah’s thigh. She retrieved it and tossed it gently into Heath’s lap.
“Thanks,” Heath said.
“Watch out for Smokey Bear,” Elizabeth said wryly. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Heath lit her cigarette. The first drag was heaven.
“Bad example, you smokin’ in front of the fuckin’ kid,” Reg said.
“Yeah,” Heath agreed. “Where do you take your kid on father-daughter day? Joliet?”
Reg was nearly as fidgety as her lower limbs. His head snapped up at every thump of a branch falling from a tree or caw of a crow. She was too tired to care if her remark pushed him over the edge. For nearly two days, she had been ringed round with precipices. There came a time when even fear got tired.
He looked away. He’d lost interest in her. She didn’t scare him. The woods did, despite the fact that they were reduced to the leavings of an inferno.
“I’m telling you, dude, we gotta keep going. We’ll fucking freeze to death, if the wolves don’t get us,” he insisted.
“So go,” the dude said and began walking back in the direction from which they had come.
“What the hell?” Sean cried. He tried to shove the foot he was crooning over back into the boot with such haste he must have peeled off a layer of flesh. Squeaking like a stepped-on rat, he dropped the shoe.
“Where are you going?” Reg’s hand was in the pouch of his hoodie, where he kept the Walther.
“To get firewood so the wolves won’t eat you.”
“Hey, wait up.” Reg trotted after him.
Heath, Elizabeth, Leah, and Katie were left alone with Sean. Raindrops plopped toadlike onto the ash. Heath pulled E closer to keep her warm. Leah’s eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her glasses. Her hand slipped into the pocket of her coat as if she might find a gun she had forgotten about.
Sean stopped fiddling with his feet. He watched until the dude and Reg had gone from sight.
“You girls like games?” he asked and smiled.
THIRTY
Greens and browns gave way to sodden gray and black. At the edge of the living forest, Anna and Wily stopped. There was little to tell between the wet ash and the darkling storm clouds.
“Damn,” Anna muttered. “Must have been a hell of a fire. No cover left for such as we.” For a moment she stood, Wily at her side, staring through gray rain at the gray landscape. “We could circumnavigate the black and intercept the others on the far side,” she suggested.
Wily said nothing.
“You’re right,” she decided after a minute. “Chances of finding them again are slim to none.”
Wily made a sound between a yawn and a cough. Anna suspected he was laughing at her. “I can’t sniff people out as well as you can,” she said defensively. “We wait till dark, you think?”
Wily rolled his eyes.
If the dude kept going, the hostages could arrive at the airstrip in a matter of hours.
Then what? Killing Jimmy had been a stroke of luck. All day Anna had waited, but neither Reg nor Sean so much as fell behind to take a leak.
Sean’s feet were being flayed alive by his boots. If he’d straggle behind, she might be able to pick him off. Doing it in the light of day would be harder than taking out Jimmy had been, and killing Jimmy was more difficult than Anna had thought it would be. He was small, not terribly bright, she had a knife, his back was turned, she had the element of surprise. If she’d been writing a plan it might have read: (1) sneak up; (2) plunge knife into back; (3) never, ever tell Paul.
Like the king in chess, the human heart was well guarded, and, too, the little bastard had not wanted to die. Taking lives wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies.
Sean was bigger and smarter by a few IQ points. Evil hung around him like a cloud of gnats. Evil things were harder to dispatch than stupid things. Slitting his throat was an option. No coat or bones to get in the way. Sean’s cheap knife should have enough of an edge for that if she sawed a little. She’d have to be directly behind him.
“Wily, would you act as bait and lure Sean over with the old injured puppy routine so I can cut his throat?”
Wily licked her fingertips. He’d do it in a heartbeat.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Anna said.
When she thought about it, it was
surprising how many successful murders there were in the United States. Murder was a lot of work. Guns helped. Guns with gigantic ammo clips helped a lot. It also helped if the shooter thought of himself not as human but as a weapon of mass destruction, dealing death anonymously.
“We haven’t heard the plane in a while,” she said. “It can’t fly in this stuff. I doubt the dude knows he led everybody in a circle yesterday, but he has to know he was lost. I figure him for the kind with too powerful a survival instinct to make the same mistake twice. If he has the sense of a potato bug, he’ll find shelter, build a fire, and stop for the day. Get out of the rain.
“Wily, between us, do we have sense enough to come in out of the rain?” Anna asked.
Wily whined.
They backtracked to where two boulders, exhausted by geological time, leaned on one another. Soil had collected in the basin where they came together, and a maple tree had taken root. Beneath this wilderness triptych was a sheltered space about eight feet long, six wide, and four high. Plenty big enough for her and Wily.
“The lighting sucks, but so far the roof hasn’t started leaking,” Anna said, unloading their treasures from Wily’s papoose sack.
“We don’t have anything resembling a towel,” she apologized as she redistributed the goods into various pockets in Jimmy’s coat. “The underside of my sleeve will have to suffice. Can’t have you smelling like a wet dog.” While she rubbed his head, Wily stretched and groaned. “I suppose it’s the pot calling the kettle odiferous,” she admitted. “In this rig I probably smell like a wet sheep or a wet creep.”
Discussing the merits of various odors with a moderately interested dog, she began folding the nylon she’d rescued from the shell of the sleeping bag. When she’d achieved a rough trapezoid, she used the knife to cut a slit along each of the narrower ends.
“Hold still,” she said. Obediently Wily sat on her lap, his good foot on the ground, his rump supported by her thigh. She slipped his head through one slit, wrapped the cloth over his back, then slipped the other slit over his head. Carefully freeing his ears, she said, “It’s called a cape. The nylon isn’t waterproof, but it’s water repellent. It should keep the worst of it off your fur. At least until the nylon coating gets soaked through.”
Wily’s tail thumped against the side of her coat as he gave her a wry grin.
“Let me see how it fits.” Anna gently nudged him off her thigh. He hopped a few paces, then turned to look back at her. Before she recalled that there might be more ears around than was strictly safe, she laughed. The bright green fabric covered Wily’s back and part of his tail. Over his chest it parted in a neat V that accented his ruff. With the ragged ears of a dog who’d done his share of fighting as a pup, the effect was wonderful. “Green Lantern,” she said. “Who does that make me?”
Not knowing whether she was star or sidekick, and not caring, Anna rested, Wily beside her, gazing out at the destruction of what had once been a tract of forest.
This burn was probably the same that had been stopped by the Fox River. Anna vaguely remembered hearing about it. “Nearly twelve thousand acres,” she said as the number rose in her mind. “Other than toward the Fox, I haven’t a clue in which direction those acres are spread. Any thoughts?”
If Wily had them, he kept them to himself. He flopped down on his side with a groan and closed his eyes.
Anna gazed at the view until mist clouded her mind. Hypnotized by the soft patter of rain, her vision blurred, and for a while she was flying over the burned land. A cold front was boiling in from the north, clearing the rain before it. The winds carried her up. Spiraling over the blackened earth, she saw specks of humanity on the ash, and the golden brown of living forest around the perimeter. Somewhere a large cat was purring.
“Goddammit, hold up! I’m with you. Wood, fire, heat. I get it. Wait up!”
The baritone bellow snapped Anna back into the hollow beneath the boulders. The purr was Wily’s subvocal growling.
Less than ten yards from their shelter, Reg was trotting by.
The rain had stopped. Without its blur and distraction, Anna felt exposed, the dead Jimmy’s red checks blinking HERE SHE IS.
She had to be more careful, stay alert, stay in her body. Because she had chosen to ignore hunger and fatigue did not mean they had chosen to ignore her. With cold temperatures added to the mixture, confusion awaited behind every drifting curtain of the mind. This was the time climbers fell, hikers lost their way, and campers cut their fingers off with the kindling hatchet.
“Hold up,” Reg yelled.
Obviously Sean or the dude had already passed by, and neither Anna nor Wily had noticed. They could have been shot like sitting ducks, fishes in a barrel.
Reg tromped into the woods out of sight. He and whoever he followed were backtracking. Anna doubted she would have missed it if the hostages had been herded by, and knew Wily wouldn’t have. Leah, Katie, Heath, and Elizabeth were still out on the burn, one thug with them as guard.
Wood. Fire. Heat. Those were Reg’s words.
The dude or Sean, followed by Reg, had come back into the forest to gather wood. So near the burn, small flash fires and inroads of flame had thinned the underbrush. They’d have a bit of a walk before they found anything resembling fuel.
Anna pressed her lips to Wily’s ear and whispered, “Did you notice any decent shelter back a ways?” A sense of the ridiculous echoed in the back of her mind. Then she caught Wily’s steady gaze. “Me neither. These rocks are it. Heath and E, they have to shelter here, or they could die. A cold front is blowing in, driving the rain southeast.” Saying the words startled her. Only in her flying dream had she seen the cold front.
Absorbing an eerie shiver, she rose to her feet. Not the fluid motion of her youth, or even the willpowered muscle of recent years. She had to use the rock walls to get from a crouch to her feet. Wily wavered to a standing position beside her. Neither made a mad dash to do anything constructive. “Reg and whoever have to come back this way,” she whispered. “If we point this out, think they’ll have sense enough to use it?”
Wily cocked his head and looked up at her. He doubted it.
“We can’t give ourselves away. No dropped dog collars or arrows made of sticks. It has to seem like their idea.”
For her own amusement, Anna occasionally practiced hiding in plain sight. Placing herself in clear view, but in such a way that the hiker’s eye would naturally be drawn away from her. Most people walked by without ever noticing her. Never had she practiced calling attention to herself—or an item—without using signals or signposts clearly human in origin.
While she pondered, Wily hobbled over where Reg had walked past. Sniffing, he circled. When his nose found the appropriate place, he urinated, scratched a few times with one front paw, then limped back to Anna.
“Smart guy,” she said.
THIRTY-ONE
“Do you girls like to play games?”
Leah would have rolled her eyes if they hadn’t been frozen in place by sheer terror. The man was a bad joke. If he hadn’t become a thug, he’d have found a place as a petty bureaucrat, enjoying the power to thwart, delay, and lose paperwork. A gun and a lack of parental supervision allowed Sean’s juvenile despotism to flourish to a point he could torment those he hated—everyone, Leah expected—a little bit more than he hated himself.
War let the Seans of the world step from behind their desks and counters, out of their kiosks, and into a place beyond their darkest dreams, where victims were abundant and consequences did not exist. In Hitler’s Germany, Sean would have been a low-ranking Nazi; at Abu Ghraib, a sneering guard; at Guantánamo, an avid torturer.
Along her left arm and thigh, Leah could feel the unfamiliar warmth of Katie’s body. The human being, the child this creature would defile. Her child. Leah seldom thought of her that way. Usually, if she thought of Katie at all, it was as Gerald’s child. Gerald’s genes were clearly stamped in her coloring and features, but that wasn’t
why. Gerald wanted her. He had made sure Leah got pregnant right away after they married. Once he had the child, he quit work and became a stay-at-home dad.
To say Leah knew little about men would be an understatement. Raised by two mothers, whose circle of friends was largely comprised of lesbians, Leah had not known many men. Her mothers didn’t dislike men, there were simply not that many around. Growing up, Leah had been wrapped in love and support the way fine china is wrapped in bubble wrap for shipping, told she was pretty and smart and strong and good.
Genetics would tell. Leah’s birth mother must have been a mess. Leah believed none of what her mothers told her, except that she was smart, and then only in academia. When her mothers died in a small commuter jet crash, their community of friends closed around Leah in a protective wall. Money was raised and she was sent to Bryn Mawr. Leah was sixteen. At twenty-two she was heralded as the wunderkind of chemistry and engineering.
Then Gerald and Katie. In a fit of cosmic irony, Gerald turned out to be gay. The one man in the world who would marry her for her mind, because he knew how to spin her thoughts into pure gold. Katie was his insurance policy: community property and child custody. The only thing Leah hated Gerald for was believing he needed that.
“You’re not a pawn, Katie,” she whispered. “I won’t let you be used in his games.”
“Speak up, God damn it!” Sean said. “You talk, I wanna hear what’s said. You got that?”
“I won’t let you use my daughter in your games,” Leah said. Her voice was so loud it startled her.
THIRTY-TWO
Finished, Anna studied it sourly. It looked like a ranger had scratched a bunch of lines in the dirt with a stick. She hoped the dude’s city senses would not pick up on country deceits. Why would he? The belief that Anna and Wily didn’t exist was their greatest—only—advantage. Most people didn’t bother to protect themselves against that which did not exist.