The Preserve

by Patrick Lestewka

  Stella Fulton, the missing reporter’s mother, said, “The boy would do anything for a story–for a ‘scoop,’ as he was forever calling them. Even as a boy he was curious, always searching, never satisfied.”

  Aerial photography of the terrain indicates…

  — | — | —

  IV.

  dream of a

  northern land

  Northwest Territories

  December 6th, 1987. 2:17 p.m.

  The thrum of CH-113 Labrador helicopter blades filled the cabin. Five-hundred feet below, the snow-crusted scrubland of the Canadian Shield was a white-and-green blur at 350 mph. Out the west-facing porthole, the Rocky Mountains rose in sheer spires of schist and granite. Five middle-aged men sat in canvas web-seats, feet shod in ballistic nylon combat boots. Five Jack Wolfskin backpacks rested in the cargo hold, pockets crammed with camping gear and dehydrated food packets.

  The pilot’s face was obscured by a smoked-plastic visor. He said, “Five minutes to drop-off.”

  Oddy recounted the events of the past twelve hours. From the hotel, they took a limousine to Pearson International. On the way, Grosevoir made telephone arrangements to transfer a quarter of a million dollars into five Swiss bank accounts. They taxied to a private runway and boarded a Learjet, arriving five hours later at an airstrip near Fort Nelson, British Columbia. Waiting in a supply shed was an arsenal to rival a small war-mongering nation. Some of the weaponry was so cutting-edge that nobody had even heard of it.

  “Gear up,” Oddy said.

  Crosshairs selected a silenced Remington Model 700 sniper rifle outfitted with an Ajack telescopic sight. Tripwire took a DeLisle Carbine—a self-silenced machinegun used by elite commando forces—and strapped a bandolier of M14’s, PBX explosives, and white phosphorus grenades across his chest. Answer kept his Kirikkales and added a Sig Sauer SG540 light-assault rifle. Oddy choose a fifty-pound Heckler and Koch HK23 heavy machine gun and tucked a pair of Webley Mark 6 pistols into his waistband, remembering how well they’d served Deacon. Zippo loaded a pair of Llamas—the exact model he’d been using for years—and was leaning towards a Galil SAR assault carbine when Grosevoir motioned to a canvas-draped object in the far corner.

  “Why not go for what’s behind door number three?” he said.

  Zippo grunted and pulled the canvas clear. His eyes widened. “Is that—?”

  “The M2A1-7,” Grosevoir said.

  The M2A1-7 flame-thrower was developed in the early eighties by the U.S. military. Two lightweight alloy canisters held six gallons of jellied gasoline which, when drawn through an asbestos-coated tube into a pressurized mixing chamber, produced a forty-foot stream of liquid fire capable of melting flesh off bones in the time it takes to spark a cigarette. Zippo hefted it. The unit was much lighter than the LPO-50 he used in ’Nam. He shouldered it, snapping the buckles over his chest and stomach. He looked kind of foolish: a squat man in Brooks Brothers suit with a Buck-Rogersish jetpack contraption strapped to his back.

  Then he thumbed the pilot light and stepped outside and unleashed a sizzling rope of flame that turned a nearby pine into a towering cone of fire. Everyone agreed he didn’t look so foolish anymore.

  “I’ll take it.”

  Crosshairs wondered if such massive firepower was really necessary to take down three poorly armed prisoners. Kind of like using a bazooka to kill a doodlebug.

  Grosevoir outfitted them with tents, parkas, snow pants, boots, toques and gloves, all top-quality. They were also provided a set of collapsible snowshoes, fishing line and hooks, and an M-5 medical kit.

  The Labrador helicopter idled on a nearby pad. Grosevoir clapped each man on the back as they boarded, face set in a mask of solemnity.

  “Do it for Judy,” he told Oddy, the last to board. “Do it for Allison. Just do it.”

  “Like the shoe commercial,” Oddy said, deadpan.

  Grosevoir watched the Labrador lift off, carrying the men up and off into the night. The flashing red lights on the helicopter’s hull were only slightly more brilliant than his own crimson eye.

  “See you soon,” he whispered.

  The Labrador pitched side-to-side with turbulence. The men swayed with the familiar movement. Tripwire checked his watch: 3:00 p.m. Twenty-two hours since he’d met Oddy in Canary Isle. Now here they were, miles away from civilization on a fool’s errand for a lunatic millionaire. What the hell was he doing here? Had someone slipped an idiot pill into his vodka, making him submissive to this lunacy?

  Oddy stared out the window. Although daytime, the landscape was draped in permanent twilight. He tapped the pilot’s shoulder. “Will it be like this the whole time?”

  “This time of year, yeah,” the pilot said. “Be a little lighter in the morning and a little darker come nightfall, but otherwise it’s this endless dusk.”

  The helicopter’s nose dipped as it made its descent. Cold air hissed through seams in the airframe. The pilot set them down on a flat-hatted hilltop. The bay-hatch lowered.

  “Everyone out.” The pilot’s visor-shielded eyes swept the barren terrain as if expecting a sudden attack.

  From who? Or what?

  They shouldered their packs and weapons and moved down the gangway. Oddy paused at the lip. “This is the rendezvous point?” he asked the pilot.

  “Back in three days.”

  “See you then.”

  “If you say so,” the pilot said grimly.

  The gangway rose and the Labrador lifted off, quickly disappearing from sight.

  The men looked around. They stood on a rocky, rubble-strewn plate which slid out of the thin earth directly ahead like a dark slate tongue. There was a vastness to the landscape, an unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the land reaching out towards nowhere. Down the rise and all around, fir trees grew where they could, jutting up between and around huge boulders left by receding glaciers and crumbling rock piles. The color of the rocks varied: some were black as obsidian, others so white as to blend in with the snow, others carpeted in sickly yellow moss the hue of calluses, others dappled with light brown splotches resembling rust.

  A steady wind blew coldly in their faces, carrying with it the scent of…nothing. The air was completely sterile, scentless. Staring down the hill, Crosshairs thought he saw shapes moving beyond the gloom cast by the trees—the oldest, tallest firs he’d ever seen. The whole effect of this high, empty place was emptiness, though an emptiness that somehow resonated with something feathery and alive.

  The cold was shocking. A dry, arid cold; the men were forced to breathe through their mouths when the mucous in their noses froze, pinching their airways shut. Answer had only felt this cold once before, when he’d interrogated a Castiglio snitch in a sub-zero meat locker. It was a mind-deadening coldness that crawled around the base of their skulls and seeped up their brainstems, wrapping their thoughts in layers of numbness.

  “No wonder the people up here live in igloos,” Zippo said. “Goddamn brain freeze must keep them from coming up with a better idea.”

  “We’ve got to find low ground,” Oddy said, “set up camp.”

  They found a path zigzagging down the hillside and followed it, soles skittering across patches of bare ice. Crosshairs was surprised at the lack of forest sounds. The jungles of ’Nam were full of them, sly and furtive and skulking. But it now felt as if they were moving through a noiseless vacuum sucked clean of life. No birds chirping. No forest animals scuttling beneath the underbrush. Nothing.

  As they moved deeper into the forest, Tripwire experienced the sensation of the trees closing in behind him, blocking the way out. He could almost hear the firs stealthily disentangling themselves from the ground, dragging their ages-old root systems and empty birds’ nests, settling down over the path to bar any escape. Tripwire was seized by the momentary fear he’d developed an early case of north-woods delirium tremens, and that he’d soon be seeing two-headed snakes darting between the rocks, flying eels arcing through the darkened sky, p
erhaps a massive asthmatic toad croaking at the foot of his sleeping bag. Fuck. He’d rather die than end up like those shell-shocked vets who dove under the table every time someone banged the kitchen pots. He shook his head violently, slapped his face a few times, and walked on.

  Answer located a circle of scrubland ringed by tall trees. “It’ll do,” Oddy said.

  Zippo and Crosshairs were elected wood-gatherers. Searching beneath the canopy of firs, Crosshairs stumbled across the gutted carcass of a fawn. Its belly was slashed open and its guts torn out. Viscera lay in haphazard piles around the body like moons surrounding a dead planet. Its large black eyes and unhinged mouth were set in a rictus of animal terror, pink tongue lolling between teeth the color of old bone.

  “Don’t worry, little boy.” Zippo patted Crosshairs on the shoulder. “It’s just sleeping.”

  “What the hell did this?”

  “Some mean motherfucker for sure—bear?”

  “Yeah, but nothing’s been eaten. And aren’t bears hibernating this time of year?”

  “Listen to Mister-fucking-Wizard,” Zippo said. “So maybe it wasn’t a bear.”

  “Not one bite taken. Like whatever did it…did it purely for mean.”

  “Circle of life.” Zippo was unfazed. “Use that one good eye to scope some kindling.”

  “Take a break,” Crosshairs told him. “You don’t have to be a bastard every day of your life, you know.”

  By the time they returned, the other three had set up camp. The tents Grosevoir had provided were, although expensive, utterly useless against the bitter cold. Instead, Answer and Oddy had constructed a makeshift lean-to, and Tripwire was busy tacking tent shells to the roof and sides. Thanks to a liberal dousing of lighter fluid, they soon had a blazing fire. They sat in a tight circle around the flames, unzipping their parkas to let the warmth in. All of them were silently astounded at their cohesion: in the half-hour since the heli dropped them, they had located a sheltered area with good sight lines, bivouacked, and got a fire going. It had been done in the same methodically urgent manner their Special Ops training had imparted years ago, four fingers and a thumb working in perfect sync.

  “So,” Tripwire said, jimmying a tin of peaches open with his knife, “this is the Canadian wilderness I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Who the hell would live in this?” Zippo wanted to know.

  “You got nomads living in the Sahara,” Crosshairs said. “This is the other extreme.”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Answer said.

  And, in the way unsullied nature often can be, it was beautiful. The landscape was an exercise in minimalism: windswept scrubland extended in every direction, the majority of it stony, snow-covered ground in which sickly shrubs struggled for survival. Jack pines and black spruces took root in the inhospitable soil, many of them so wind-twisted they did not look so much like trees as they did a madman’s conception of the same. The beauty was harsh but unspoiled: no candy bar wrappers or open sewer grates issuing noxious fumes, no gutter rats scurrying beneath the trees or pigeons roosting on shit-spattered boughs.

  Oddy speared a peach half from the passing tin and said, “Beautiful, maybe. But we got a job to do.” He unfolded an acetate-covered map. “This is the penitentiary,” he pointed to a red dot, “and this is our location,” pointing to a location twenty miles south. “Overton and company have been on the lam for two weeks, so our search radius is pretty damn broad.”

  “Who’s to say they’re even up here anymore?” Crosshairs asked. “They could’ve hiked to a side road, flagged down a truck, and be a thousand miles south by now—”

  “I don’t think so,” Answer said. “There would’ve been an APB put on some extremely dangerous escapees, probably radio broadcasts warning motorists to report any hitchers in the pen’s vicinity—”

  “And don’t forget that Overton’s crew only stole warm clothes and weapons,” Tripwire added. “No food. They must be half-starved by now, living on nuts and berries and melted snow.”

  “Easy meat,” Zippo said around a mouthful of peach.

  “Maybe,” Oddy said. “But these guys are killers, and killers are like animals: both are dangerous when cornered.”

  A feral howl arose somewhere in the forest primeval. There was something intensely unsettling about the sound: like a human being screaming through the vocal cords of a wolf.

  “Jesus,” Crosshairs said. “Well, at least there’s something living out here.”

  “Don’t be afraid, little guy,” Zippo said. “I brought clean diapers in case you shit the ones you’re wearing.”

  “Screw a shoe, Zip.”

  “Hey, maybe I’ll save my loot and screw a boot.”

  Oddy folded the map and shoved it in his pocket. “I say we make a circuit around Great Bear Lake,” he said. “It’s the only fresh water source for miles, so they’re probably hunkered nearby.”

  “How long is that going to take?” Answer asked.

  “Twenty years back, we hoof doubletime, circuit it in two days. But now, in these conditions? Say three, three-and-a-half.”

  “Goddamn, Trip,” Zippo said, shooting the doughy porn director a dirty look. “Would it have killed you to hit the gym once in a goddamn while—some jazzercize, for fuck’s sake?”

  “You set the pace, trashmouth,” Tripwire said. “I’ll match it.”

  “On what—a Ski Doo?”

  “You’re about as funny as a kick in the teeth.”

  Oddy checked his watch: 4:00 p.m. Twenty-three hours had passed since their meeting with Grosevoir and, apart from a few fitful hours on the Learjet, none of them had slept.

  “I’m going to get some shut-eye,” he said. “Head out at first light.”

  “Who’s taking first watch?” Crosshairs said.

  Zippo said, “Aren’t any Gooks waiting in ambush out there.”

  “I know,” Crosshairs said defensively. “But there could be…other things.”

  “I’ll take it,” Answer said.

  Oddy nodded. “Tell when you want to switch off.”

  The men shucked their boots and zipped into their bags. Despite the ground’s total lack of lumbar support they were soon deep in exhausted slumber. Their dreams, mercifully unremembered, were the dreams of combat vets: burning villages and burning farmland and burning children, brutally disfigured but oh-so-familiar faces screaming up through the haze of memory.

  They were as yet unaware that there never was, and never would be, a Saugeen Valley Penitentiary. They were unaware that Marcus Overton did not exist; his name was selected from a phone book, his crimes fabricated. They were unaware of what waited for them in the surrounding wilderness, waiting with sharp claws and sharp teeth and ageless cunning. They were unaware of why a creature masquerading as a man had drawn them there, alone, together.

  But they would. Soon.

  ««—»»

  At midnight, the man came.

  Stumbling blindly through the trees he came, parka torn and bloodstained. Mouth open in a silent scream he came, hands clutching a pair of silenced Berettas, hammers cocked, clips empty. Terror-stricken he came, casting quick glances over his shoulder as if the Furies themselves were in pursuit. Half-dead he came, arms and chest scored with long bloody scratches, chunks of flesh missing from his shoulders and calves.

  Answer watched him blunder into the clearing. The man was oblivious to the guttering fire and the sleeping men. His eyes were focused on a distant hilltop—the same hilltop upon which the helicopter had dropped Answer hours before—with an intensity suggestive of emancipation.

  The man ran recklessly, as though blind. Not knowing whether he was one of the men they were hunting, Answer tackled him around the ankles. The man fell on his face and the pistols skittered out of reach. Answer shimmied up his body like it was a pole, pinning the man’s arms to his sides. The man offered little resistance. He made feeble whimpering noises, like a frightened animal.

  The commotion roused the others
, who zipped out of their sleeping bags and joined Answer.

  “Lookee, lookee,” Zippo said, ever the optimist. “Could this be one of the dogfuckers, served up on a silver platter?” He envisioned a brisk wrap-up, Overton and Co. dead, their heads in a backpack, and him free for a week of R&R. Maybe he’d take a nature hike, cataloguing the native flora and fauna. Or maybe he’d use the M2A1-7 to flash-fry a moose. The possibilities were endless.

  “Doesn’t look like Overton,” Tripwire said, rubbing sleep-crust from his eyes.

  The man’s face was a death mask: the haggard features were engraved with shock and, nibbling at the edges like hungry mice, dawning insanity. He bore the unmistakable marks of the hunted: eyes darting like flies trapped in walnut husks, limbs twitching with the instinctive urge to flee, chest expanding and contracting in an attempt to oxygenate an overtaxed nervous system. Crosshairs noted, with more than a little unease, the man was dressed as they were. “Let me go! Goddamnit, they’re coming!”

  Who’s coming? Oddy thought. Unless this guy is one of Overton’s crew, on the run from the Mounties or some other task force. He didn’t relish the prospect of wrangling with the Canadian authorities to claim him, especially with hair-triggers like Zippo and Answer in the mix. Situation had “international incident” written all over it.

  The man’s head was shaven, the lines of his skull visible. Through a tear in his parka, Answer saw a tattoo stamped across his biceps: a pair of interlocking wings with the words CANADIAN AIRBORNE REGIMENT underneath. Evidently the man had once been part of a military unit. The name “Edwards” was stitched on the parka’s breast.

  “You are all going to die,” his voice eerily calm, “if you don’t let me up.”

  “Who’s gonna kill us, shitbird?” Zippo said. “You?”

  “Not me. They’re out there. In the woods. Getting closer.”

  “Edwards? That your name?” Oddy asked. The man bobbled his head like a pigeon. “Edwards, what are you doing out here?”