by Jeff Stone
“What?” I asked.
“Your girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I glanced at the time on my phone. “It’s only two forty-five. I’m early.”
“Well, take your time. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be waiting inside the limo for you. If I’m asleep in the driver’s seat, just knock on the window. I’ll have it open at least partway because it’s kind of hot out here. Don’t get heatstroke or anything.”
“I won’t,” I said, pointing to the hydration hose clipped near my right shoulder.
Michael nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat, and I pedaled across the parking lot to Pine Loop’s start/end point.
It was indeed a hot day, but the moment I hit the trail, which was shaded by tall leafy brush, the temperature dropped at least five degrees. It dropped another five degrees once the brushy stretch ended and the trail opened up to huge, widely spaced oak trees.
I inhaled deeply, savoring the rich aromas of the forest. I felt my stress begin to melt away. My oversized mountain bike was designed for this type of trail, and it handled this section as smoothly as the limo had handled the open road.
The view was spectacular, with the trail running up and then down several deep ravines. I’d learned in science class that the glaciers of the last ice age had stopped advancing near Indianapolis, which is where I lived. The land was flat as a pancake there. Here, though, it was very hilly, like Kentucky or Tennessee.
I breezed along the edge of a particularly deep ravine and slowed down. The trail was under a yellow cautionary status, after all, and this stretch contained a few puddles of water. Riding through the puddles would leave ruts on the trail that would then harden and make it miserable for future riders. Worse than that, puddles were slippery. I didn’t want to find myself slipping down that nasty drop.
I cleared the stretch along the ravine and wove around a few switchbacks, then over some small hills.
Then I stopped.
Before me was the steep, silty hill that Hú Dié and I had talked about. To one side was a thick cluster of ferns.
I climbed off my bike and pushed it into the ferns. I didn’t think anyone would be riding along this trail at this time of day on a weekday, but I wanted to play it safe. I found a big pine tree among the ferns and dropped my bike behind it. I scanned the area with my eyes as well as my nose, searching for signs of stinkhorn mushrooms.
The wind picked up for a second, and I caught a whiff of something rotten. I noted the direction of the breeze and started walking. I hadn’t gone more than fifty yards before the stench became almost unbearable. I was on a hillside, and near the top of the hill was a level section of ground that was noticeably darker than the rest of the earth around it. The dark ground was covered with slender mushrooms. Set into the rocky hillside behind the mushrooms were a bunch of pockets that resembled tiny caves.
I grinned. This was the place.
Pulling the collar of my shirt up over my nose, I took the rake from my backpack and headed for the spot where the caves met the stinkhorns. The ground was soft and squishy, and I immediately sank to my ankles. Warm, moist earth oozed into my shoes and seeped through my socks, pooling between my toes.
I cringed. I hadn’t been expecting this.
I scanned the line where the flat spot of rich soil met the hillside, but I didn’t see any signs that somebody had been here, so I just started whacking away with the little rake. Bits of pungent, gooey earth went airborne, sticking to my legs and arms despite my best efforts to direct the muck away from me.
It took me half an hour of clawing at the rotten ground, but I eventually located Phoenix’s hiding spot. He’d blocked off one of the tiny caves with a few rocks and some rancid soil. The blue silk bag appeared to be intact, and I carefully opened it. Inside were several handfuls of gray powder that, even through the mushroom stink, had a strange odor best described as old. I remembered Ryan smelling like that whenever he sweated while taking dragon bone. This was it.
I closed the bag and—SNAP!—heard a stick break.
I looked back the way I’d come.
A gigantic man was walking toward me. He wore a bicycle helmet and sunglasses and was pushing a huge mountain bike. He stopped at the edge of the mushroom patch, and I noticed that his bare arms were covered with tattoos.
Tattoos of gorillas.
I froze.
“Hello, Jake,” DaXing said. “What’s in the bag?”
I stared at DaXing, my feet frozen ankle-deep in the squishy ground. This was Gorilla, the guy who’d strangled DuSow to death with his gigantic hands.
I swallowed my urge to scream and asked, “Wh-what’s up, DaXing?”
“No time for small talk,” he said. “Give me the dragon bone.”
“Dragon bone?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, Jake. I respect both you and your friends for the manner in which you handled yourselves in California. I do not wish to hurt you. Hand over the dragon bone and be on your way. Forget you ever saw me, and I won’t tell anyone that I saw you. I imagine your parents would be quite upset if they were to discover that you rented a limousine so that you could dig up a questionable substance.”
“How did you—”
“Lin Tan once told me that he spied on Phoenix racing along this very trail, only to abandon the race. He thought Phoenix might have hidden some dragon bone here. The substance is my ticket back home to China without the authorities catching me. Hand it over.”
“I can’t,” I said, and shoved the blue silk bag into my backpack. I slung the pack onto my back.
DaXing leaned his bike against a tree and took two quick steps toward me onto the rich, gooey soil. His massive bulk made him sink almost up to his knees.
“Argh!” DaXing shouted, and he began to try to pull himself free.
I grabbed the rake and made a break for it, slogging my way to the edge of the mushroom patch. I was half a step from solid ground when DaXing suddenly lunged at me like a linebacker diving at a running back. His thick arms were impossibly long, and he managed to grab hold of my ankle as he went—SPLAT!—face-first into the stinkhorns.
I wasn’t sure whether the mushrooms were toxic, but he let out a choked wail that suggested something unpleasant had just filled his mouth. I tried to jerk my leg free of his grasp, but he didn’t let go. I fell onto my side in the rich soil and kicked at his hand with my free foot. I heard small bones snap each time the metal bracket on the bottom of my riding shoe connected with the slender bones in the back of his hand. He grunted in pain and his other massive hand suddenly shot forward, latching on to my kicking foot.
DaXing began to roll in the rancid patch of soft, moist soil like a crocodile. I had no choice but to roll with him, but I remembered the rake. The instant we both rolled out of the stinkhorns onto solid ground, I twisted around and sank its three sharp tines into the back of his hand. He howled and let go, and I scrambled to my feet.
DaXing pulled the rake free and managed to hurl it at me with amazing force and accuracy. I turned and ducked, and the rake bounced off the back of my bicycle helmet. The impact knocked me to my knees and I saw stars, but the helmet had taken the brunt of the blow. I was fine.
I jumped to my feet and sprinted away, wanting to run to my bike, but unsure whether I could find it fast enough. DaXing’s ride would have to do instead.
I reached the overgrown gorilla’s bike and threw a leg over it. I stood on the pedals, but the cleats on my shoes didn’t exactly line up with the clips on his pedals. Also, his seat was way too high. I considered dropping the bike and running away, but DaXing roared and got to his feet. He raced toward me, and I instinctively pushed off.
We were on a hill, so I put my faith in gravity. I began to roll quickly, doing my best to keep my feet parallel to the ground and balanced atop the pedal clips. I remembered the general direction of the trail and steered toward it. When I reached the tall ferns, I risked a glance
over my shoulder.
DaXing was in hot pursuit. He half bounded, half skidded down the hillside with gigantic strides, gaining on me.
I would have to do better.
I sliced through the ferns, my wheel spokes shredding the foliage like a food processor cutting lettuce. I wove around trees and bounced over rocks, constantly adjusting my feet to keep them in contact with the pedal clips. I couldn’t turn the cranks, so I more or less just hung on for the ride until the trail suddenly appeared. There was no point in trying to climb the silty hill, so I headed back toward the parking lot.
I cruised around switchbacks and rolled over several small hills, pumping whenever I could to keep up my speed. I was going pretty fast, but I’d have been flying by now if I was on my own mountain bike.
DaXing shouted something in Chinese and I looked back to see that he was, unbelievably, closer than he’d ever been. He was huffing and puffing like a locomotive, and he showed no sign of slowing. If I didn’t pick up more speed, I was doomed.
I rounded a bend, and a lump formed in my throat. I’d reached the stretch where the trail ran along the edge of the park’s deepest ravine. The trail had been cut to lay perfectly flat for hundreds of yards with no change in elevation, to minimize the possibility of somebody losing control and tumbling over the edge.
DaXing shouted again, and I realized that it was some kind of triumphant war cry. He was going to catch me.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I stared down the ravine, looking for an escape route. It was pointless. The gradient was too steep.
But then I spotted the trunk of a dead tree jutting out of the ravine’s slope just a couple feet below the trail. I got an idea. While the ravine was deep, it wasn’t all that wide. The branchless trunk spanned nearly three quarters of the ravine’s width and angled upward like a ramp. I’d ridden plenty of trails that contained tree trunk “bridges” narrower than this one, and I’d cleared much larger gaps than the one between the end of the trunk and the opposite side of the ravine.
I decided to go for it.
I jerked the bike’s handlebars toward the ravine and bunny-hopped off the trail, down onto the tree trunk. My landing was solid, but my feet slipped off the stupid pedal clips that weren’t connected to my shoes. The bike began to wobble and buck, and I had no choice but to ditch it. I couldn’t fall to either side, so I threw myself over the handlebars.
I sprawled in midair, landing on the tree trunk with one arm and one leg dangling over each side. I probably don’t need to tell you that it hurt. A lot. I looked down and watched as DaXing’s mountain bike tumbled end over end on its way to the ravine floor. It landed with a metallic thunk atop a rock-strewn streambed.
I felt the trunk begin to sway, and I glanced back to see that DaXing was climbing down onto it!
I scrambled to my feet. The rubber and metal bottoms of my shoes got surprisingly good traction on the trunk’s rough bark. Perhaps I could get some speed and make the jump from the end of the trunk to the opposite side of the ravine? I began to weigh my odds of success when I heard the tree trunk’s roots begin to pop.
I turned to see that DaXing had made his way fully onto the trunk. As he advanced toward me, the popping intensified, and the entire tree began to tilt from an upward angle to a downward one.
It was now or never.
I sprinted to the end of the trunk and leaped as high and as far as I could. I imagined I was riding a BMX bike, soaring dozens of feet into the air off of one of Raffi’s perfect dirt jumps.
It worked.
I landed pretty hard, but I was a full five feet away from the ravine’s edge.
Things didn’t go as well for DaXing. I watched as the tree roots completely gave way, and he and the tree trunk went speeding to the bottom of the ravine. DaXing hit the rocky streambed first, followed by the trunk directly on top of his chest, shoulders, and head. He was still wearing his biking helmet, but of course it didn’t matter. An army helmet wouldn’t even have helped. He was now just as broken as his bicycle, which lay near him.
I turned away from the terrible sight and vomited huevos rancheros until my throat ached. Once the retching stopped, I rinsed my mouth with water from the hydration pack and wiped tears from my eyes. Some of the tears were for me, but most were for DaXing. I hated that that had to happen to him.
I pulled my cell phone out of my mud-soaked riding shorts and stared at it. It was dirty and wet, but encased in a watertight enclosure. It would work just fine.
But whom should I call?
Calling 911 would be the right thing to do, but it wasn’t like anybody would be able to do anything for DaXing. As for his remains, the police would want to know what happened to him, but at what cost to me? My parents would find out what I was up to, and I would be dragged into an investigation. An investigation would delay my trip to China. Worse than that, my parents would cancel my trip, for sure, for having rented the limo and come out here in the first place. Then I would have Hú Dié’s mother’s death on my hands as well as DaXing’s.
That would be too much to bear. I needed to get the heck out of the park and fly to China as soon as possible. Once I’d delivered the dragon bone to Hú Dié, I’d decide what to do about DaXing, if anything.
I stood and tried to get my bearings. The bike trail was a loop, and I was certain that it went all the way around this ravine. All I had to do was find the trail on this side and follow it around to the silty hill, where I could retrieve my bike. Then I could ride back to the limo with the dragon bone and hightail it home. It was 3:30 p.m., so I was still good on time.
I started walking, keeping my eyes peeled for the bike trail.
It was 4:30 p.m. by the time I found my mountain bike beneath the pine tree in the fern grove. It was getting down to the wire time-wise, but instead of grabbing my bike and hitting the trail, I headed for the mushroom patch. I needed to find the rake.
I realized that there was a good chance it could be traced back to me or my parents. I was wearing full-fingered riding gloves at the moment, but the rake likely had my fingerprints on it from handling it earlier. It probably had my mother and father’s fingerprints on it, too; it definitely had DaXing’s fingerprints from when he threw it at me. The rake could also have some of his blood on it, as well as skin or other tissue on the tines.
I needed to get it back.
I recalled the rake hitting my helmet after DaXing and I rolled out of the stinkhorn patch, and I had to think for a minute before I found it. The rake did indeed have some blood on the handle, as well as creepy bits dangling from the ends of the tines. I gave it a quick wipe-down with some leaves, then hit the trail.
Hard.
I raced back to the parking lot with the rake in one hand. It was nearly five p.m. when I pulled up beside the limo and knocked on the half-open driver’s-side window to wake up Michael. He took one look at me with the rake and nearly jumped out of his seat.
He lowered the window. “What the heck are you trying to do, give me a heart attack? I thought you were the Grim Reaper!”
“The Grim Reaper carries a scythe,” I said. “Not a mini rake.”
“Whatever,” he said. “It still ain’t right. Have you seen yourself? You’re a mess.”
I glanced down at my arms, legs, and torso. He was right, I was a mess.
Michael sniffed the air through his open window and made a funny face. “What’s that awful smell?”
“I accidentally fell into a patch of stinkhorn mushrooms.”
“What the heck were you and your girlfriend doing out there? You’re dirtier than your bike.”
“Clawing at stream banks,” I lied. “We were looking for old Native American arrowheads. We just used our bikes to get to the spot faster. She rode in from a different trail.”
That seemed to satisfy him. “Oh,” he said. “That’s pretty cool. Did you have any luck?”
“I found one thing, but I’m going to let her keep it.”
“W
hat a gentleman. I hope it was worth all the trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, looking around. There was no one else in the parking lot.
“I don’t mean trouble with somebody else, I mean trouble with me. I can’t let you get into the limo like that.”
“But how am I supposed to get home?”
“I don’t know. Call your folks, maybe?”
I frowned. “Don’t you have a tarp or blankets or something in the trunk?”
“This isn’t an emergency tow truck,” Michael said. “I don’t have anything like that. You don’t happen to have a change of clothes inside that grubby backpack, do you?”
I shook my head, and my mind began to race. “Hey,” I said. “Maybe you could buy me some?”
“I’m a chauffeur, not a personal shopper. Besides, the nearest store is miles from here. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“They have a lodge. Check the map the ranger gave you at the gate. There’s even a water park with a gift shop where they sell towels and t-shirts and stuff. I think they have bathing suits. I could wear one of those and a t-shirt.”
Michael groaned, reaching for the map. “This is going to cost you.”
“I have cash.” I pulled my wallet out from my riding shorts. It was covered with filth, but I was certain that everything inside was fine. The wallet was rubber, made from old bike inner tubes, and the top zipped shut. I’d ridden in a bunch of rainstorms without my money getting even a little damp.
Michael’s face twisted with disgust. “How about you wash that thing off first? I’ll pay for your new clothes. You’ll pay me back triple when I return. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Michael said. “See if you can find a creek or something. You’re going to have to rinse off those clothes, too, before I can throw them into the trunk.”
I pointed to a building across the road. “That’s a restroom. It has running water. Meet me over there.”
Michael nodded and pulled away.
I put my wallet back into the pocket of my soggy riding shorts and sighed. I really was a mess. This whole situation was one gigantic, expensive, deadly mess.