Rachel turned to Warren. He shook his head.
Darius motioned to Billy, and the younger man pulled an object from his belt—it wasn’t a pistol, but rather a short war club Jake recalled being referred to as a mistik—and brought it down hard between Warren’s shoulder blades. Warren staggered forward and fell to his knees, his eyes widening in pain. Here we go, Jake thought. Welcome to our little woodsy corner of the world, Mr. Campbell. How do you like the view?
“You want another?” Billy asked.
“It’s . . .” Warren started to say, trying to catch his breath. “It’s from the provincial government.”
“Oh yeah?” Darius said. “That’s real nice, I’m happy for you. There’s some guy from Winnipeg with you, can show us this provincial lease? ’Cause I seem to remember, we’re supposed to have some say in the matter. What they call us down there, First Nations?” Jake noticed that he had quite suddenly and neatly been excised from the conversation. That was fine. He was just a guide, after all, and the brains of the outfit was sitting over there in the pine needles.
“It’s all legit,” Warren said.
“I think we better start having a better conversation,” Darius said. “Because I’m getting frustrated. Three people for an exploratory lease? Billy, you got something sharper than that mistik in your pack? He ain’t listening too good.”
Billy drew a hunting knife out of his backpack, the blade bright as he tapped it against the side of his leg. Warren’s throat convulsed once, twice, but his lips remained set. Billy leaned down, the blade glittering.
“There were five more of us,” Rachel said.
Billy paused, the knife a foot from Warren’s face. Darius held up a hand to Billy and turned to her. “Where are they?”
“There was an earthquake,” she said. “A bad one. That’s when the drill rig tipped over and caught on fire.” She went on in a rush. “The ground split open, blocked us from going back to our campsite. Some of the people fell into the openings, and one man, Greer, hit his head. Another man drowned crossing the river, less than an hour ago. We’re the only ones left.”
“An earthquake?” Garney said. “Darius, let me use Billy’s knife. I’ll cut through the bullshit real quick.”
Good thing she left a few choice parts out, Jake thought. They’d really want to do some cutting.
“Not now,” Darius said, turning to address Jake. “You understand that if somebody pops up out of the woodwork, or we cut the tracks of somebody else, the girl pays.”
“We’re all that’s left.”
Darius walked over to Warren and toed him in the ribs. Warren jerked as though shocked with an electric prod. He glared up at Darius, his expression bright with hate. He had been trying to reach the spot between his shoulder blades where he’d been struck with the mistik and couldn’t quite reach it, much to the amusement of Weasel and Garney. “The girl pays,” Darius repeated. “That’s a core drilling rig. For samples?”
Warren blinked. “Yes.”
“And you have an exploration lease?”
Warren paused, wiped the sweat from his brow. “Yes.”
Darius nodded, walked over to Rachel, and punched her in the face. She crumpled, and when Jake looked up he saw that Billy had the knife raised slightly. Rachel twisted in the pine needles, gasping. Darius watched her squirm for a moment, then held up a hand. Billy tossed him the knife and Darius knelt over Rachel, his hand curling into the blond hair on the back of her head.
“The lease?”
Warren’s face had gone pale. “I don’t have one.”
“What did you find?”
When Warren didn’t answer right away, Darius pressed a forearm across the back of Rachel’s neck, smashing her face into the forest floor. He wiped aside her spray of hair and positioned the tip of the knife on the back of her neck, twisting the blade back and forth lightly, almost playfully. Rachel let out a low moan of pain, her fists clenched around handfuls of pine needles.
“I . . .”
Darius looked up. “Well?”
“We didn’t find anything,” Warren said. “The earthquake destroyed the rig before we could extract samples.”
Darius shook his head, as though disappointed, then turned to look at Jake. “Unsling your carbine, Special Ops.” He turned his head a fraction of an inch. “Henry, he plays hero, you shoot him in the belly.”
Jake cut his eyes to the left. A few yards away, Henry had pulled a Walther pistol out of his backpack. The muzzle, which had been trained on Jake’s chest, dropped a fraction of an inch. Jake shrugged off the Winchester rifle, keeping his fingers away from the trigger. He held the rifle out in front of him and laid it down on the pine needles, the muzzle facing into the trees.
“The knife,” Darius said.
Jake pulled his knife, the handle streaked with mud and gore, out of its sheath. He tossed it to the ground next to the rifle.
Darius pressed his own knife deeper into the back of Rachel’s neck, his mouth set in concentration. Jake cut his eyes to Warren, who was shaking his head rapidly, trying to protest, to stall. Rachel let out a muffled scream, her legs thrashing. Darius’s hand applied more pressure, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.
“They have samples,” Jake said. “I saw them.”
Darius turned to him. The muscles and ligaments in his forearm stood out like cables. “Samples of what?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said. “But they found what they were looking for.”
Darius turned down to look at the back of Rachel’s neck. There was a thin trickle of blood curving down, and she had gone very still. He cocked his head to the side, staring at the blood as it trickled a path through the pine needles. He was breathing heavily, not from exertion.
“Darius.” Henry was still looking at Jake as he spoke, the muzzle of the gun never wavering. “She might be useful.”
Darius paused, still watching the trickle of blood where it welled out of Rachel’s skin. Then, abruptly, he stood and turned to Jake. “Okay.” His breathing had returned to almost normal. “Now you guide us,” Darius said, pointing down into the valley. “Down there, across the river and over to your camp. Understand?”
Before Jake could answer Garney stepped forward. “You serious? We don’t need to cross another goddamn river.”
Darius stared at the large man. Garney swallowed once, twice, then cast his eyes downward but did not retreat. Jake alternated glances at the other men. Billy seemed disappointed, either by the lack of action or by the prospect of going down into the valley. Probably both. Weasel had drifted out of sight, somewhere off to the side of the semicircle. Henry seemed lost in thought, his forehead set in deep lines as he glanced down into the valley and then back at Jake. The Winchester was only a few feet away, and Jake only needed a second or two of distraction. Where was Weasel?
“What would you have us do?” Darius asked.
Garney toed a line in the pine needles. “We already did it. We found them, stopped them. Now we just need to finish up.”
Darius rubbed at the side of his face. “And the samples? The data they might have collected already?”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t come in here blind. They found something, by satellite or maybe from all those planes we’ve been seeing. You think there won’t be others?”
“But they can’t just start mining,” Garney said. “They’re here illegally.”
“Yes,” Darius said, the contempt thick in his voice. “That will stop them. ”
“Garney’s right.” Weasel’s voice came from behind Jake, just a few yards away. “Finish it right here. Look at that rig—they didn’t get nothing out of the ground.”
“We don’t know that,” Darius said, still patient, waiting for the others to come around. Billy got it, Jake could tell. The younger man’s face had lost all sense of playfulness, and he kept looking down into the valley, same as Henry. Stopping them—Rachel, Warren, and himself—didn’t end the pro
ject. Someone would come looking for them, would find the samples . . . and maybe would find out just how effective the promethium was in animating tissue. If anything, that would give them even more reason to want to pull this particular form of promethium out of the wet ground. Biomedical applications, military enhancements . . . the sky was the limit.
Keep looking at the river like that, Jake thought. I’ll take that little popgun away from you, Uncle, and see what happens next.
“We don’t have any samples,” Warren said. “We didn’t log anything, either. There’s no reason to go down there.”
“Darius?”
“What, Henry?”
“You’re right,” Henry said. He was still looking down at the valley. “We need to go down. Whatever is there . . .” he paused, looking from Warren to Rachel, then to Jake. “It doesn’t belong to them.”
Darius cocked an eyebrow. “You’re with me, old man?”
“Yes,” Henry said. “But we go in and out, fast as we can. All of us, in and out. Understand?”
“In and out,” Darius said. “Yes, okay.”
Jake stared at the man he used to call Uncle. There was murder in his eyes, murder in all their eyes. Behind him, Weasel stepped lightly in the pine needles, his breath coming in quick little pants, waiting for the nod. On the forest floor, Rachel had twisted her head and was looking at Jake, the side of her neck covered in blood. Warren was on his knees, staring at the knife still in Darius’s hand.
Henry took a step closer. There seemed to be, at least for the moment, some kind of transfer of power in the group from Darius to Henry. “What did they find, Jake?”
Overhead, the wind blew softly through the balsams. Jake could almost hear Jaimie’s monotone chant in the breeze: In the treetops, in the treetops.
“Just samples,” he said. “They collected them yesterday morning, before the earthquake. I know where they put them.” He paused, aware that beneath the adrenaline and the fear and the sharp, biting pain of his lacerated feet was the beginning of something thin and tenuous as a cobweb. Up here, the only thing he could expect was a bullet. That was the logical conclusion to this interaction, a knife or a bullet, an orderly end to a disorganized life. But down there, in Asiskiwiw, chaos reigned.
“Sample bottles?” Darius asked.
“Yes,” Jake said. “They seemed excited about them. He”—Jake nodded at Warren—“said something about this being exactly what they were looking for.”
Warren seemed about to protest, but stopped himself before he spoke. Something was registering in his eyes, a comprehension.
Just be quiet, Jake thought. Act pissed and scared. Be your normal asshole self.
“Where?” Darius asked.
“They’re hidden pretty good,” Jake said. “Way back in the woods. I don’t think I could tell you if I tried.”
Darius held his eyes for a long time. “Okay, Special Ops,” he said after a minute. “Let’s see what you can find us.”
* * *
Jake went down the hogback first, followed by Darius. Warren and Rachel were positioned between Garney and Weasel, with Billy close behind. It was more difficult for Jake going downhill than it had been going up, partially due to his feet—and partially because they had tied his wrists together.
Henry remained standing at the edge of the cliff for a long time, rubbing his hands over each other as though his fingers were cold, watching them descend. He was chewing on a maple twig, stripping the thin bark off and spitting it aside until the twig was a bright white. After a while, Henry flung the skinned twig to the ground and swung himself over the edge, catching up with the rest of the group just as they were dropping down the last little section of the hogback onto the narrow beach.
The river had gone up several more feet, shrinking the cobble beach to only a few yards wide. The water was the color of chocolate milk, racing downstream and carrying a plethora of logs and branches with it. A bird’s nest made of woven grass went spinning by, turning around and around in the current.
“How deep?” Darius asked.
“Over our heads,” Jake said. “It was lower than this when we crossed it. I don’t know if we can make it across until it drops.”
“Try,” Darius said. “We’ll give you a rope. You make a wrong move, I’ll shoot you in the ass.” The men had retrieved their rifles from the brush before starting down, and Garney had pulled out his compound bow with the six broadhead arrows. Weasel had taken Jake’s Winchester, and it pained Jake to hear his rifle banging carelessly off the rocks on their descent. It had suffered its fair share of dents and scratches over the years, and the bluing had all but disappeared from the barrel and receiver, but those were his marks, and marks from his father.
“This one’s loaded with 200-grain Nosler partitions,” Darius said, patting his rifle. “Put a hole in you big enough to watch TV through. Give me your rope, Henry.”
Jake studied the river, trying not to think about getting shot, or stabbed. Trying to think about how this would work if he crossed first, and alone.
“I thought you wanted me to show you where the sample bottles were,” Jake said. “I can’t do that if I drown.”
“I told you, we have rope,” Darius said. “Besides, the girl will tell us if you don’t. Garney and Weasel know how to get people to talk.”
“She doesn’t know where—”
Darius shook his head. “Swim, Special Ops. They taught you that at Dwyer Hill, didn’t they?”
“The river will go down,” Jake said, speaking loud enough for the others to hear. “A few hours, it’ll be down three, four feet, and the current will be way slower than it is now.” He held up his wrists. “I’m not going anywhere.” As he spoke, a log drifted by in the river, a massive black spruce with limbs and needles still intact. Darius watched it, then turned to look at his men, who were watching the river as well.
“Let’s wait,” Billy said. “Build a fire, rest a little. We’ve been running hard.”
“That’s exactly what he wants,” Darius said, jerking his head toward Jake. “Give them time to wiggle free.”
Billy snorted. “The day I worry about some wannabe city Indian getting out of my knots is the day I throw my rifle into the Little Glutton. Come on, Darius. A little fire, a little rest, an easy swim in the morning.” The rest of the men were nodding behind him.
Jake watched Darius, knowing he had won another small stay, probably worthless, but perhaps not. Before, on top of the cliff, he had postponed the death he’d read in their eyes. Now, he may have done something more; applied a bit of pressure to a crack he hadn’t even known was there, a fracture within this group. Darius’s eyes remained locked on Billy. Finally he nodded.
“I’ll get the firewood,” Garney said.
* * *
There was little room on the beach to segregate the prisoners (and there was no other way to think of themselves, Jake thought; all three of them were bound hand and foot), so they all shared in the warmth of the fire as the sun went down. A stash of driftwood had lodged in a small natural alcove a few feet up the side of the bluff face, and the wood had been sheltered from most of the rain. The seasoned wood made for a hot, nearly smokeless fire. Jake positioned himself at various angles on the rocks, trying to let the heat bake some of the pain out of his stiffening joints.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel whispered. Above them, on the other side of the river, Venus hung low in the southeastern sky. Warren was a few yards away.
“Nothing.”
“You hiss each time you move.”
Jake turned to her, the dismissive reply withering in the back of his throat. She was scared, he could see that, but she had hope, too—a foolish hope, but since he clung to one himself he could hardly fault her for it. There was a large mark on her right cheek, and crusted blood had collected at the bottom of her nostrils from where Darius had punched her, and at the base of her collar where he had cut her. Her eyes reflected tiny orange triangles from the campfire.
/> “My joints.”
“Arthritis?”
“I’m not that old.” He shifted so he was facing a bit more toward her, a bit more away from the rest of the group. “I went to college after the military, in Minnesota. Some of it, the northern parts especially, are a lot like this.” He motioned with his bound hands to indicate the wilderness around them. “Well, not quite like this, but close. My wife . . . my wife and I weren’t together anymore, and I stayed out in the woods for a long time. Into the wild, I guess. Not for adventure. A couple weeks, maybe a month. It was early spring, and there were a lot of deer ticks around. I picked off most of them in the evenings. Some of the baby ticks, the nymphs, weren’t much bigger than the head of a pin. I missed one.”
“Lyme disease?”
He nodded. “I didn’t know what was wrong for a few months. Didn’t care, either. By that time it had settled into my bones, into my lymph system. Once it’s inside you, it’s hard to control. I have flare-ups.”
“Are you . . . is it bad?”
He shrugged. “There’s a new treatment for chronic cases like mine, not much different from chemo. I’d have to be in the hospital for a few weeks.”
“Why didn’t you go in?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I don’t like hospitals much.”
She was silent, studying his face. “Did you get divorced?”
“No,” he said. “She . . . there was an accident.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. She died?”
“No,” he said. “Not quite.”
He waited for the follow-up questions, but they didn’t come. Instead, she turned to look at the river, at the dark land beyond it. In the starlight, it looked like a disorganized graveyard, the scattered boulders tilted at strange angles. When she spoke her voice was barely a whisper. “We’re going back over there.”
“It’s all I could think of.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she said. “But I still don’t want to.”
Her face looked incredibly delicate, finely drawn in the starlight and flickers from the embers. Vulnerable and courageous at the same time. “Just stay by me,” he said. “No matter what.”
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