by Nancy Hartry
“And you walk around, and the first one to wimp out and turn on his headlamp loses,” said Yvette.
“That would be me, within ten seconds.”
“If you lose, you have to spill your guts about something dark and intensely personal,” said Slash. “It’s a great game. Don’t worry. It’s great; I’ll protect you.”
“Where’s the dump?” Kerry asked.
“Just north of here,” Slash said.
She felt panic flopping in her stomach like a caught fish. Breathe in the nose and out the nose. Calm down. Her mind raced. How could she turn this to her advantage? She had an idea, but could she bring herself to make Yvette choose between being a chicken and doing the thing she feared most? You can do this, girl.
“I know another dump,” she said, and she reached into her shirt pocket, noting that her hands weren’t even shaking. She unfolded the map she’d sticky-fingered from the office. It made sense that Aubrey was hiding out at the fishing cabin he’d mentioned. “This one.”
“How do we get there?” Yvette asked.
Kerry turned to Slash. “I’ve been checking around about you.” He took the match he’d been sucking out of his mouth, but his eyes never left her face. “You have a pilot’s license but you don’t fly. Why?”
Yvette sat up straight. “He does? I didn’t know that.”
Slash shrugged. “Busted! I can fly, but I’m taking a break. How’d you know? Have you been checking me out?”
Yvette looked uncertain. “How many years have you been flying?”
“I started when I was twelve, soloed at fourteen. I’m twenty-two now. You do the math.”
Yvette let out a long breath. “This dump, it could be promising, but I don’t like flying. Can I trust you?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Normally I only go with Matt but he’s in Kenora and, like, you did save my life. See, there’s this guy who broke into my trailer and stole something from me. Something that was my dad’s. I overheard him talking about his fishing spot with Rolf. It’s near a dump.”
Slash raised an eyebrow. “Are we talking about Aubrey Two-Beers?”
“Yes! Since he stole Papa’s good luck charm, I’ve had horrible luck!”
“Slash, we could do both things,” Kerry said. “We could look for Aubrey on our way to play Truth or Bear.”
He tapped the map. “This dump is in Sector 14. I could lose my job.”
“Are you chicken, Slash? You chicken too, Yvette?” Yvette bit her lip. “Come on! Do you want that necklace back or not?”
“Quit pushing me! I don’t know what to do! If Matt was here, I’d go.”
“Slash will do fine. Make a decision, Yvette. He can’t wait all day.”
“It’s a twenty-minute flight. If we leave before seven there’ll be almost four more hours of light.” Slash snapped the match in two and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “The fire boss is a New Brunswick boy, as am I, and I already put my application in to him to fly. He told me to keep my flying hours up in case they need me. I think I can sneak you on.”
Yvette scrunched her face and held her nose as if she were jumping into the deep end of the pool. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Let’s do it!”
PART 4
Truth or Bear
July 10–15
CHAPTER 23
As the helicopter lifted off the pavement, Kerry peered through the plexiglass floor at the swaying, blurring grass. Straight up and they hovered, then zing, like a dragonfly, darted away from the camp.
“I love this!” she said into her microphone. Slash gave her the thumbs-up.
Buffeted by every gust of wind, she felt cocooned in a bubble of motion. She turned around to see how Yvette was doing. Poor thing has guts. Yvette’s eyes were closed as she chomped on gum and tried to block out the flight noise with her music.
It was fluky how things had fallen into place. Only twenty men had shown up for supper, because the fire crews had been ordered to camp closer to the fire as a fuel-saving measure. Rolf was happy to give his girls the evening off “to go to town,” as long as they were back in time for breakfast prep.
The lies and deceptions prickled at Kerry but she swatted them from her mind. Her job was to find Aubrey and save him. He loved this land too much to destroy it by setting fires. She pressed her nose against the window, searching the banks of the lake below. Aubrey, where are you? I’m so scared for you.
Slash touched her arm, pointing out a bull moose grazing in a swamp, his rack of antlers huge and dripping with water. The moose started to run through the shallows head up, braying at the intrusion from above. Slash changed course, giving him a wide berth. There was no reason to stress the animal.
Miles to the left was the fire, a red festering sore, consuming everything in its path and spewing ash and smoke into the air. Kerry wrenched her eyes back to the burn-over below. It looked like patches of black mold until she peered closer at the stripped skeletons of trees still standing, defying gravity. The fire was as vast and powerful as a tsunami rolling over the landscape, twisting and eddying and turning back on itself, leaving charred devastation in its wake amongst isolated stands of trees.
Slash touched Kerry’s arm again and motioned to a burned-out cabin. There was nothing left but lumps of metal—a refrigerator, a stove, the remains of a water heater and an old truck.
“Crazy. Did they get out?”
He nodded.
Five more minutes and they were following a wide frothing river the color of maple syrup. Kerry didn’t need to be told they were crossing into Sector 14; she’d memorized the map. She strained forward, looking for a dump, a waterfall, and Aubrey’s fishing camp. A lake not far from the river, he’d said. Nothing. Nothing. We’ll never find it—omigod, is that it? She felt like bouncing up and down on her seat but calmly directed Slash farther north.
Over the dump site he circled, looking for a place to land. He headed for a flat beach several hundred yards away, on the edge of a lake. The helicopter danced in the air as one skid lowered and then the other, until it kissed the ground. But as Slash was powering down the rotors the headset squawked, and Kerry was cut off from his conversation. He looked worried, now angry, now calm, like someone taking orders. “Copy that.” He turned to Kerry. “A firefighter has a ruptured appendix and I have to go pick him up.”
“Come on, really? This is the place, I can feel it,” she said. “How long until you get back here?”
“Oh no, I’m taking you with me.”
“We’re supposed to be in town, remember?” Yvette piped up.
“I remember.” He bit his lip. “Okay. Grab that pack there. It has a couple of sleeping bags, energy bars, and some flares. I’ll be back before you know it. Don’t start the game without me!”
No chance of that! They bent double and scrambled out, ducking low under the rotor blades.
“Wait, Slash, I changed my mind.” Yvette waved at him to come back, but he misunderstood and waved as the helicopter jumped off the ground and buzzed off. “Maudite marde!”
Kerry watched the helicopter silhouetted against the sun until it darted into a cloud. Long after he was out of earshot, she convinced herself that she could still hear the thrum of the engine.
Slash is the only one who knows where we are!
She took the lead as they walked the path from the beach to the dump. She tried to imagine it in the dark, full of bears, with a scary game of chicken underway. Not happening.
“I don’t think Aubrey would camp here,” Yvette said.
“We’re looking for a well-hidden cabin.”
They returned to the beach, selected another path, and had walked for about half a mile when Kerry heard voices. Aubrey? She backtracked and took a cut to the left. She was about to call out when Yvette yanked her to the ground, putting a finger to her lips. They wiggled commando-style behind a fallen log and watched. There was a perfect sight line from a forty-five-gallon drum in the middle of the clearing to
a hunting blind high in a tree, and a hunter in green camouflage, sipping whiskey for courage.
A mother bear lumbered into the clearing and reached deep into the drum, scooping up a putrid chicken carcass. It took a bite and tossed the rest toward two cubs gamboling at the forest’s edge, all the while sniffing the air.
BOOM.
He shot the mother in the head. Splinters of bone javelined across the clearing as the bear staggered and hit the ground, legs outstretched. Did Kerry only imagine the whimpering and squealing of orphaned babies scrabbling at their mother’s teat? One of the cubs bolted and scratched up a tree, climbing higher and higher until it was level with the blind. The skinny tree whip-sawed back and forth under the baby’s weight.
BOOM.
The cub tumbled to the ground, a trickle of blood seeping from its mouth.
It was too much for Kerry. Her overstimulated brain withdrew from the carnage and focused instead on the surrounding details. Pink campfire smoke hung like gauzy curtains in front of a wall of jack pines. Whiskey jacks squabbled from tree limb to tree limb. Horseflies and dragonflies hovered—until another man dressed in camouflage squirmed in on his belly, elbowing closer to the drum where the mother bear and babies had so recently shared a meal. His bullet caught the other cub in the shoulder and it crawled, bawling, to its mother’s side. With the next shot, it crumpled there.
Kerry felt sick to her stomach as she looked at the mother bear, its thick, glossy fur matted with blood. How could anybody kill something that looks so human? Death could not erase the obvious curiosity and intelligence on its face, as if, at the moment of death, it had been asked a puzzling question. She hugged her knees to her chest, unable to watch while the men dragged the bear away.
“This hunting is so illegal, and those guys are deaf drunk,” Yvette whispered.
“Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know. We need to stay here like little mice until it’s dark and then go back to the beach.”
“But they must have seen the helicopter drop us here?” Kerry asked.
“Doesn’t look like it. They couldn’t give a care.”
“What about Slash?”
“We’ll listen for him and run like hell when he comes. Stop talking.”
For what seemed like an hour, Kerry lay facedown in the earth, her hoodie pulled tight with only her nostrils and mouth free. The mosquitoes whined in her ears until she thought she’d go mental. Keeping still was just about the hardest thing she’d ever done. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she loosened her hood so she could see.
Soft, billowing green light, like shimmering veils strung on a clothesline, shape-shifted across the sky. Sparkles of starlight poked through like pinpricks. “Omigod, is that the northern lights?” she whispered.
“I like to say it’s Papa, reminding me he’s all around,” said Yvette, stretching. “I’m a stiff and sore little mouse.” She hauled Kerry to her feet and they started back the way they’d come, feeling their way in the dark with the help of the aurora borealis.
“I can’t figure out why Slash hasn’t come back,” whispered Kerry.
“He’s probably waiting for dawn. Me, I’m gonna kill him.”
They bumped along, shoulder to shoulder, until they reached a clearing. That was when a rope slid over their heads like a lasso, snapping tight around them and jamming them together.
“I knew youse’d come out sooner or later,” a man behind them sneered. “I be a patient man.”
CHAPTER 24
“W ho are you?” gasped Yvette. “Where are you taking us?”
“Shaddup!” The man pushed her from behind, whipping her head back and forth. “You don’t know me.”
He shone the flashlight ahead and shoved them along an overgrown path. Spindly trees were snapped and bent, as if something heavy had been dragged over them. When the girls struggled against the rope, he yanked it, slamming their shoulders against each other.
“Go right, and keep your yaps shut.” They came to a small cabin, and he kicked open the door and pushed them through the doorway.
It was cool inside, but the air was so rank that it caught Kerry in the throat and she coughed uncontrollably. He pumped a Coleman lamp and lit it, the mantle glowing brighter and brighter as he turned the screw. Only when he held the lamp high did Kerry see the bear carcasses strung from steel girders, dripping blood. She opened her mouth to scream, but shut it as blowflies dive-bombed her on their way to the light and their sizzling death.
“Move!” He shoved them through a door into another small room. It took a couple of minutes for Kerry’s eyes to adjust to the lamplight. The guy wore a greasy Blue Jays cap pulled over his face, obscuring his features, all except a scraggly graying beard. She searched for some sign that this might be Aubrey’s cabin. A case of whiskey was open on the floor and a row of ten shot glasses snaked across a round plywood table, each touching the next, and partially full. Kerry’s knees felt weak and she leaned against Yvette for support. Rifles stood behind the door, no doubt loaded and ready for bear. Or inconvenient visitors.
The man tied Kerry’s wrists behind her back with twine but otherwise left her alone. Yvette wasn’t so lucky. He patted down her thighs, her bum, her whole body, in such a sleazy way that, if she’d been Yvette, she’d have wanted to take a bath. Yvette kicked at him as he tied her wrists but he just laughed wheezily. He took off the ropes that bound the two girls together and shoved them onto chairs, tying them down where they sat. He walked out the door, slamming it shut and leaving them alone.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through Kerry’s body. Get out of here. She worked at the ropes on her wrists, twisting and picking until she was sure her skin was bleeding. Yvette was doing the same thing with the same lack of success. She started sobbing.
“Yvette, please. Don’t give up. You can’t give up.”
Yvette struggled to control herself, and finally shuddered to a stop. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” she wailed.
“Stop thinking like that. Nobody deserves this.” Kerry tugged again at the ropes on her wrist, but it was no use.
“They can’t let us go, you know. Not when we’ve seen all this.” Yvette was starting to cry again.
“Stop it! We’ll get out of here—”
There was commotion in the outer chamber, talking, stamping of feet. Both girls tensed, waiting for more poachers to come in. Instead, when the kidnapper walked in, Didier was right behind him.
“Didier? Mon dieu, I’m so glad to see you.” Tears of relief streamed down Yvette’s cheeks. “Look what this crazy man did! My arms are dying! Hurry and get this stuff off me!”
Didier didn’t answer. He wouldn’t even make eye contact.
“Omigod, it’s you, Didier,” said Kerry quietly. “You’re the guy who’s been setting these fires.”
“What are you saying?” said Yvette.
“I’m gonna be sick,” said Kerry. “I … we trusted you.” Her right leg vibrated uncontrollably but she couldn’t reach around to stop it.
“Whatcha wanna do with them, Didier? They can’t stay here.”
“Don’t worry. I’m on it,” Didier assured him.
“You’d better let us go, you piece of shit,” said Yvette.
Didier smacked her hard across the face. Her head spun and the gold hoop in her ear sliced open her earlobe so that blood dripped along her jawline. She sagged in her chair and it almost toppled over.
“Don’t hurt her!” Kerry screamed. Yvette seemed to be unconscious.
“As for you, bunny …” Didier advanced toward Kerry, swinging a roll of duct tape. He ripped a six-inch piece off with his teeth.
“Didier, please. Come on. Don’t!” Kerry cried. “I’ll be quiet. I promise. I won’t say anything. Please, Didier! You can trust me.”
“Too funny. Who flew you in here?”
Kerry hesitated, trying to figure out if it was better to lie to him or not. “Okay, it was Slash. But then he got a
call to pick up a sick firefighter and take him to the Dryden hospital. He should’ve been back by now.”
“Thank you.” Didier grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, and slapped the tape over her mouth. “I have to make a call.”
Hot tears streamed down Kerry’s cheeks and she was helpless to brush them away. I can’t believe it’s Didier! He’s a maniac! He’s never going to let us go. She strained to listen to him talking on his satellite phone but couldn’t make out his words. The skin on her cheeks pinched and burned as she tried to twitch the tape from her mouth. When he came back, he untied her from the chair, lifted her by the arm, and marched her outside. “Aubrey’s camp makes a nice little base for us behind the fire line. I knew he wouldn’t be using it while he was fighting the fire.”
Kerry wrenched away from him, but her arms were still tied, and she tripped and fell to the ground. She struggled to roll onto her back. There was a truck parked in front of the cabin, with “White’s Meats of Winnipeg” printed on the side.
Didier yanked her back on her feet. “Clever, huh? We steal a refrigerated truck, mix the bear bits in with the other stuff, so it looks legit if there’s an inspection, give it a quick paint job, and off it goes to Toronto. The Yanks are happy with their trophy kills, and shooting bear out of season adds to the rush.” He hauled up the rear door of the truck. “Get in.”
The stench of dead bear was overpowering.
“Step over Big Mama. There’s plenty of space at the back.”
You can’t make me, Kerry said with her eyes.
Didier grinned. “Yeah, I can. You can drop the other one up against the cub,” he told his partner, who hoisted Yvette over his shoulder and threw her into the truck.
“Your turn, missy. Stay still while I tie your hands again.”
When Didier tried to help her up into the truck, she pulled away. The bear was so broad that she could only get in by stepping over its head. She crouched down and leaned against Yvette’s limp body, burying her face in Yvette’s hair to keep from gagging and to avoid looking at Didier. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. It was a small, very small act of rebellion. You can do this, girl.