In the Barren Ground

by Loreth Anne White

  “I’m sorry,” he said near her ear. “For the other day. Let me know what I can do. I have my own hunting rifle.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Other young men and several young women entered the hall on gusts of cold wind, among them the volunteer firefighters, and Caleb Peters.

  “Okay, listen up, everyone,” she said. “I need a reconnaissance team to go with me onto the ranch, stat. Crow TwoDove might, or might not, be there. He also does not like police. This could become a problem—he could become a loose cannon.”

  There were more murmurs.

  “So I need you, Jamie, to be a buffer between your father and me, okay? Jankoski, you’re coming, too. Caleb, you know the ranch from visiting Jamie. Can I count on you?”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Dupp Peters said.

  “No, Chief, thank you. I need you to lead the community, man the command here. Any messages that need to go in, or out, can come through here, however we manage to send them in this storm.”

  “I can make coffee,” Marcie said. “And soup and sandwiches.”

  Tana smiled in spite of the tension. “Thanks, Marcie.”

  The elder dipped her scarfed head.

  “Jamie, you and Caleb will enter the ranch property from the front, going down the main driveway. If your father comes out of the house, talk him down, get up close to him, explain what’s happening, and get him inside the house. Jankoski will cover you guys from the north side of the driveway, across the field, where there is shadow from a row of spruce. I will go down the south side, along the buildings toward the barn. I’ll cover you from there. Just in case. We’ll use your whistles, Jamie. One sharp birdcall means all is clear. Three bursts means you need help. Two short bursts is a question: Are you all right, do you need help? Got it?”

  All nodded, and started selecting whistles. Tana also handed out radios. “In case we need to talk, but use the whistles first until we know what we’re dealing with. We don’t want to blow our cover. Set the radios to channel four. Everyone else not involved in the operation, please stay off channel four.”

  They all set their radios to the same channel, and tested them.

  “If Crow comes outside armed, Jankoski and I will wait until you’ve gotten him inside. One of you please remain with him inside, the other come out. Is there a back entrance to the house, Jamie?”

  “Yeah—back door.”

  “Okay, the other person, either Jamie, or Caleb, comes out the back door, and approaches the barn from that rear angle on the river side. If Crow is not around, both come via that approach. The barn is where Heather lives in a loft, and that’s where she might have taken Mindy, or could be holding Crash. Jankoski can approach the barn obliquely from the front. I’ll come around to the back door at the rear of the barn. Whoever leaves Crow’s house can come around the back side and join me.” She paused. It was a crapshoot, but a start. “Proceed with caution, and only on my command. This is critical, understand? Only fire to stop deadly force. No other reason.” Tana scanned the group. “And like a group hunt, you don’t want to go shooting the other hunters. Be aware where everyone is at all times, and if there’s doubt, use the question whistle call—two bursts. Above all, stay calm and focused. If there’s one thing that will get someone killed, it’s panic.”

  “And if they are in the barn?” Caleb said. “What then?”

  Then it’s the worst-case scenario, and I don’t the hell know yet.

  “Then you wait for my orders.” Tana scanned the group. “I could use additional backup to cover from the road, and up and downriver on either side of the TwoDove ranch while we approach the barn. And I could use the best trackers on standby in case they’ve left the farm and we need to go after them.”

  “Me. I’ll track.”

  Everyone turned to face the back of the room.

  Near the door stood a lean, black-haired youth with crackling eyes and a leather jacket with chains. With him were five other guys in black leather, chains, braids with feathers. Tats. Huge hunting knives at their hips. Snowflakes flecked their hair.

  “Damien?” she said.

  “I heard Crash might be in trouble. I can track. I’m good—learned from Charlie when I was little. I want to help. So do these guys.”

  His bootlegging gang.

  Emotion slammed Tana in the throat.

  “We got some shit—guns,” said the tallest of the young men. “These two guys here, from the Wolverine band, they’ve both done survival-man training—they know about indigenous man traps, counter-tracking. They know the land. What do you need?”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then quickly cleared her throat and outlined the rest of their approach. “Depending on what we find at the ranch, we’ll decide on the next steps.” She paused, taking in the faces around her, the sense of community. And in their eyes she suddenly saw the eyes of that poster in the abortion clinic—those firefighters, cops, social and civil workers—men and women. She saw the eyes of the beat cop who’d turned her life around. She saw community. A tribe.

  You are not alone. You are of the north. You are strong. You will not be broken.

  “Let’s do this,” Chief Dupp said with a clap of his hands.

  CHAPTER 44

  Tana crouched down outside the rear door of the barn and examined the blood on the snow. A trail of it led down toward the water, and it was fast becoming covered by snow. Her mouth was dry. She got quietly to her feet and peered through the hinges of the barn door.

  Jamie and Caleb had disappeared safely into the front of Crow’s house. Jankoski was now in position at the entry of the barn. All was uncannily quiet. She could make out a faint, quavering light inside the building. It seemed to be coming from the back end, near MacAllistair’s loft. The light glinted off the chrome of the small chopper. Something lay near the AeroStar’s skids. It looked like a body, but Tana couldn’t be certain in the dim light. They were not using headlamps. Damien and his guys were in position, keeping watch along the road for signs of anyone approaching, or trying to leave the ranch. The volunteer firefighters were stationed around the boundary, and up and down the river in case MacAllistair tried to come or go that way. Her truck was here, but no snowmobile. A crunch in the snow behind her made her spin around, heart galloping.

  Caleb and Jamie’s forms materialized from the gauzy darkness and snowflakes.

  “My dad’s not there,” Jamie whispered as he came up to her. “And his dog is gone. Collar has been removed, been left attached to the rope. My dad wouldn’t have done that.”

  A dark notion sank into Tana as her mind flipped back to the shape lying in front of the chopper.

  “Jamie, you stand guard out here. Caleb and I will enter the barn from the back. Jankoski from the front.”

  He nodded. She sensed his fear. If that was Crow TwoDove’s body lying in there, she didn’t want him to be shocked, and spin out of control.

  She blew her whistle. Two quick shrieks, like a night bird.

  Jankoski blew the all clear.

  Tana crept forward into the barn with Caleb at her side. Jankoski came in the front door. The faint orange light came from what appeared to be a hole in the barn floor near the base of the ladder that led up to MacAllistair’s loft, but Tana moved quickly toward the prone shape in front of the chopper while Jankoski and Caleb swept the rest of the barn. Her heart spasmed at what she found.

  Crow, almost decapitated. Blood puddled in huge pools around his body. His eyes were skewered with tools similar to the one that had stuck the eyeball to the station door. Blood leaked from them.

  “Shit,” Caleb hissed as he came to her side. Jankoski approached behind him.

  “Stay back,” Tana commanded in a whisper. “No one touch anything.” Her skin was hot. Adrenaline screamed through her. “Caleb, go outside and tell Jamie. Ease him into it. Keep him calm. Tell him to leave quietly, go back up the road. I don’t want him in here seeing this. Jankoski, clear
the loft.”

  Jankoski made his way carefully up the ladder to the darkened loft, got in position, then flung open the door.

  Tana moved toward the trapdoor in the floor.

  “All clear,” Jankoski called softly from the top of the ladder.

  Tana motioned for him to come down. Quietly he descended the ladder and came to her side. They crouched at the open trapdoor, and listened.

  All was silent. Tana made a move to start down the ladder but Jankoski’s hand clamped onto her arm. He shook his head. “Let me go first,” he whispered.

  Conflict warred inside Tana.

  “We need you in charge,” he said. “I go.” And he started down the stairs. Tana waited, wire-tense. He gave a whistle, and she followed him into the barn basement. Shock stopped her dead.

  It was as though they’d stepped into a devil’s dungeon. Tana turned in a slow circle, trying to absorb the scope—the horror—of what they’d found beneath the barn, the insanity in the wild drawings and sketches that plastered the black walls. It was hot down here, glowing, pulsing embers in a kiln-like oven. Someone had been here not too long ago, judging by the life still in the fire. She walked up to a long table against the wall. Candles burned at either end of the table, wax puddling onto the black cloth beneath them. It reminded her of an altar. A jar, empty, had been placed in the center of the table, as if waiting to be filled like those on the shelf above it. Tana leaned closer to examine the contents, and recoiled. A human heart floated in one. Human eyes in the others. A hardback book had been placed beside the jar, like a bible. Tana read the title. The Hunger. By Drakon Sinovski.

  “Looks like Mindy could have been here,” Jankoski said. He stood at the back of the basement beside a metal bed with chains and cuffs. “Long black hair,” he said. “And this.”

  Tana came up to see what he pointed at. A silver chain with a little fish on it. She’d seen one like it around Mindy’s neck.

  “Don’t touch a thing,” she said. Her brain raced. She needed to try to call this in ASAP. She also had to secure the scene. But her priority was to find Crash and Mindy, and the blood trail outside was her starting point.

  Four snowmobiles and eight people made their way through deep snow, following the trail that had led them down to the river, over the ice, and northeast into the forest.

  The snowmobile at the rear towed a trailer in the event they had to transport someone who might be injured—a makeshift ambulance of sorts. Preston, one of the volunteer firefighters and a trained paramedic, drove the machine with the trailer. Straddled on the same machine behind him was Caleb.

  Damien led the convoy. On his machine with him was his survivalist friend, Wayne Wolfblood, from the Wolverine Falls band. Tana and Jamie followed next. Jankoski piloted the snowmobile behind Tana. With him was Len Di’kap, also from Wolverine Falls.

  They had with them weapons, snowshoes, ropes, first aid kits, spare fuel, and other survival gear.

  Jamie had refused to return to the village. He was simmering with a quiet and potent rage, and supremely focused. Tana had relented, and allowed him to come. She’d left two of the firefighters stationed at the ranch along with the remainder of Damien’s crew to guard the scene, and to watch in case MacAllistair tried to return. The other two firefighters she’d dispatched to the airstrip, to watch MacAllistair’s Boreal Air chopper in the event she tried to escape that way. Tana had also sent someone back to Twin Rivers to update the chief, and to ask him to keep attempting at regular intervals to get an emergency sat signal out to RCMP central command.

  She’d tried herself, but was not getting reception. If the chief kept trying, there was a chance he could sneak something through a small gap in the unusually dense fog and unrelenting snow—it was like being underground as far as getting a direct sightline to a satellite orbiting in space was concerned.

  Weather and darkness made it challenging to follow the trail ahead. Their headlights kept reflecting off flakes and mist. Tana had removed her visor because it was being plastered over with snow, but blinking into the flakes and inhaling blue two-stroke engine smoke wasn’t helping much, either. Their convoy entered dense woods and the going got more difficult.

  Damien’s machine came to a sudden stop. His hand shot up into the air, making a halt sign. Tana applied brakes but her heavy machine slid in to the back of Damien’s.

  “What is it?” she called out.

  Damien pointed.

  In his headlights, directly over their path ahead, swaying from a rope tied to the topmost branches of a tall conifer, was a large cocoon thing. It took a moment for Tana to register what it was.

  Jesus.

  A body.

  Tied up in blood-soaked canvas, hanging from a tree.

  She dived off her snowmobile and stumbled wildly through the snow toward the object swinging in the wind and snowflakes. Damien tackled her from behind, bringing her facedown into the drifts. “Stop!” he said, and pointed.

  Tana blinked through the flakes. He was pointing at a tiny piece of blue sticking out of the snow just in front of her.

  “It’s a trap,” he said. “There’s a pit that’s been dug under that snow and covered with blue tarp beneath that strung-up body. I’ll bet there’s a hole big enough to swallow a whole sled hidden under there.”

  “How?” she whispered, staring up at the cocoon twirling on the rope. “How did she get it up there? How did she dig a hole that big in frozen ground?”

  “Explosives,” said Wayne, coming up behind them. In his hand he held remnants of a stick of dynamite. “She blew it, not dug it.” He looked up, studying the cocooned body and rope. “Stringing the bait up like that is not hard if you know how to use leverage and pulley mechanics.”

  Tana swallowed, getting to her feet. MacAllistair could have accessed explosives at the WestMin camp. Or any one of the other remote job sites to which she transported contract workers. “It’s not bait,” she said, staring at the trussed-up body. “It’s a human.” A head was partially sticking out the top. On it was a dark hat—no, not dark, blood-soaked in places. She got her hunting spotlight and shined it on the head. Hair spiked out from the front part of the hat. Her heart stalled, then kicked into a fast staccato beat.

  “It’s Crash,” she whispered. Her stomach clenching. As she spoke, the sack wiggled.

  “He’s alive! We’ve got to get him down! Now.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Damien and his guys located the edges of the blue tarp and pulled it backward toward their snowmobiles. Freshly fallen snow and cut branches avalanched into the exposed trap in a soft explosion of white powder.

  “Fuck,” Damien said, as they all stared down into the pit. Birch poles had been honed to sharp points and porcupined up from the bottom of the pit. They gleamed like bone in their headlamps. Whoever might have fallen into the trap would have been pierced by those deadly spikes.

  “If someone climbs up there,” Preston said, peering up into the tree, “and cuts that rope holding Crash, he’s going to come right down onto those spikes. A single guy won’t be able to hold the weight, and that branch is not going to support more than one guy.”

  “You got to set up another rope first,” Wayne said. “From that branch in that other tree there, closer to us. Someone down here at the edge of the pit holds one end of the new rope. We get up there, loop it around that branch, then feed it up to the tree in which he’s tied now. Then we secure his sack to the new rope. When you cut the old one, the body sack will swing this way, lower, and the person holding the end of the rope down here can belay him down to the ground.”

  They got to work. Len and Damien climbed into the trees with ropes. But as Jankoski positioned himself at the edge of the pit so he could be ready to halt the swing of Crash’s bag should it come in low, a shot cracked the air. Everyone froze.

  Jankoski made a small noise.

  Tana spun to face him.

  His eyes were wide, his gloved hand pressing against his neck. Blood oozed
out between his fingers. He toppled, and before Tana could grab him, he tumbled down into the pit. He made a sickening grunt as stakes pierced through his jacket into his body. For a nanosecond they stood in shock, staring at Jankoski in the pit, his eyes wide, blood beginning to ooze black from his mouth, two spikes sticking up through his chest.

  Tana dropped her gloves and lay flat on her stomach. “Hold my legs, somebody.”

  Len straddled her ankles as she reached down into the pit, struggling to feel Jankoski’s neck for a pulse, knowing just by looking at his unseeing eyes and the way he’d been impaled that she was not likely to find one.

  And there was none. She edged a little further forward, straining for a better feel, just to be certain, but another shot slammed a bullet into the snow near Tana’s hip. She gasped and wiggled backward. Another bullet slammed into a tree trunk and bark shrapnel whizzed through the air.

  “Lights out!” she yelled. They were sitting ducks—target practice with their headlamps in the dark forest. They put out all lights, and lay silent. Wayne and Damien were still up in the trees. Urgency nipped at Tana. They needed to get Crash down while he was still alive. She leopard-crawled toward Caleb, who was lying flat in the snow at the side of the trail.

  “It sounds like the shots are coming from somewhere up there, to the east,” she said, pointing. “High up. Must be a ridge up there. I think we’re in a kind of gully, and she probably lured us in here for that reason. Can you and Preston try to find a way up to that ridge and get behind her while we work in the dark here? Use the whistles to give the all clear, or if you need help.”

  Caleb was silent a moment.

  “You okay, Caleb? Can you do this?” Guilt bore down heavy on Tana. She’d done this. She’d put these guys in danger, and now they had no choice but to fight their way out or they’d all die.

  “Fuck, yeah. I’m going to fucking kill that bitch.”

  “Easy, Caleb. Stay smart, okay? Stay focused. We’re going to need you to replace your dad as chief one day. You got that? We’ve all got to get home alive.”