“I didn’t think you’d let me go.”
“You’re right about that.”
“I just wanted a vacation for a few weeks. I’d have come back. I left a note explaining.”
“We would have worked something out, helped you plan a nice vacation somewhere safe.”
“Probably at Six Flags, or something else for little kids. Even the senior trip was dorky. Everything was planned and supervised, again like we were a bunch of children. I wanted to do something adult that would show you that I could be responsible.”
“Like take off for the wilds of the Montana wilderness, leaving us worried sick?”
I hate it when my parents are sort of right. “So I didn’t think it all the way through.” I expect another wiseass comment from him but he says nothing more. He did say he was proud of me so I stay focused on the warmth of that, even though I’m not sure what he is proud of me about. The more I look at it the more I realize how much I have screwed up.
“We’d better get moving,” he says.
He is watching the cats on the other side. I look at Mom and Matt. Their attention is elsewhere. “Yeah,” I agree. “Do you think Sam sent them along with us?”
“Little doubt in my mind. I don’t think they’ll hurt us.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I think, too.”
Dad stands and then offers his hand. I take it. He pulls me up and gives me a hug. It feels good. He walks over to Mom and says, “How you feeling, sweetheart?” He hasn’t called her sweetheart in a while, I don’t think. I like that. He helps her to her feet the same way he did me.
“I could use a couple of days rest, but other than that I guess I’m ready.” She doesn’t seem to be as warmed by the hug as I was. She walks by me without saying a word; the cold shoulder. I’m out of the shits with Dad, but Mom is another story. She gets in and Dad gets in beside her.
I get on the back again and we wait for Matt to saunter over and climb on. I wonder how long I can put up with the stress of dealing with these three while reading minds and feeling and seeing death at every other turn, plus worrying about where we’re going and about our long toothed escorts. Is there some point at which their instinct and hunger overrides Sam’s orders?
The engine starts and we head out in the only direction available to us at this point, still away from our destination.
Zach
I challenged the phobia monster and I won. I’m free, and despite seeing the sabre-toothed cats on our tail, I feel light and energetic again. Tanya is tensed about something and it seems to be directed at Becky, or maybe it’s my imagination and it’s the situation that’s doing it. I glance over at her and catch her eye. She smiles a sad smile then looks ahead and rests her hand on my leg. I lay my hand on top until I need it to help steer. If we live though this, we might be okay.
We round a point of bushes and are stopped by a fallen tree. It is twice as big around as me and is laying half horizontal and half vertical across the trail. We all get out. There is no going around it. To the right is the near vertical hillside from where the tree dislodged its roots and toppled over. A couple of large boulders that dislodged with it also lay in our way. They will be no problem as the four of us should be able to move them. The tree is another story. Our only bet is the chain saw in the back, but it is a little chain saw and this is a big tree. I turn to go get it. Matt already has it out. He looks in the gas hole, and seems to be satisfied that it is okay. I don’t know what we’d do if it wasn’t. He closes it up and walks over to the tree.
“This is a dangerous cut because of the potential force built up with this tree’s angle.” He points at the base of the tree. “I can’t cut there because I can’t get to it. I’m going to have to cut about here.” He is standing in the middle of the trail, his hand making an up and down motion at the tree trunk.
“That still leaves the tree in our way,” Becky says.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He yanks on the cord several times and the saw roars to life. It may be a small saw and a big tree but little by little he cuts into it. Initially he attacks only from the bottom, making a deep pie-wedge cut. Then he has me pull the Rhino up close so he can stand on the bumper and reach the top. I watch his concentration as he cuts down. I start forming a picture of what will happen. At some point—while he is still cutting—the tonnage of tree that is hanging down the hillside, pulled by the force of gravity, will break from the part still anchored by the roots. The thought of him being right there with a roaring chain saw in his hands when it all separates sends another of those edge-of-the-cliff pains through my groin.
Then, suddenly, the pain is gone and there is a tightness in my chest.
And Becky is screaming.
Chapter 45
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Matt can’t hear her over the saw roaring a foot or two from his ear. I know something is going to happen, and that it’s going to be bad, but Becky can see it and she’s going crazy trying to get his attention. I reach up and slap him on the leg.
He pulls the saw away and it comes to an idle. He leans his shoulder against the tree and looks down at me, then hears Becky.
“Get away! Get away!” Her voice is frantic.
I flip the Rhino into reverse and yell at him to hold on. He looks confused but he complies, hooking a hand around the roll bar. We back up about thirty feet and stop. Matt drops to the ground and turns the chain saw off. He looks at me, waiting for an explanation, then looks at Becky. She’s staring at the tree, a tension filled expectation in her posture. “What was that all about?” he demands.
“It was going to crash.”
“What was?”
“The tree . . . over the edge.”
Impatience shows on his face. “Well, duh! That’s what I want it to do.”
“It was going to. . .”
“What?”
“Hurt you.”
He furrows his brow.
“Bad,” she adds. “It would have hurt you bad . . . killed you.”
“I doubt that.”
She takes her eyes off the tree and looks at him. She’s analyzing and weighing her next words. She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I just got scared.”
We changed it. For the second time in one day we changed the outcome of an approaching disaster. And Becky knows that she will not be able to convince him of it. She’s now playing the I went crazy for a moment excuse.
“Right,” he says. He turns back to the tree and starts walking toward it.
“NO!”
He stops and looks at her again.
“Haven’t you figured it out by now?” Becky says.
“Figured what out?”
“That I can see the future. That I can see death before it happens.”
He stares at her, the saw hanging at his side.
“And sometimes I can stop it. I saved Mom’s life today, and I just saved yours and my dad’s.”
Mine? I was feeling the approach of my own death, as well as Matt’s? This sends another painful chill down my legs. Matt’s mouth is hanging open. He looks at Tanya and she nods her head. He turns to me and I perform the same confirmation. He turns around and looks at the tree, no more than a quarter cut through.
“Get away!” Becky’s voice rises again. “NOW MATT! MOVE AWAY NOW!”
He backs up a step. Suddenly Becky is running at him. She grabs him by the belt and drags him back behind the Rhino, then points her finger at him and says, “Stay!” She turns and stares at the tree again. Seconds tick by before she says anything else.
“Okay,” she finally says. “I don’t see anything now so we must be okay.”
“This is bullshit!” Matt says as he throws the chainsaw into the back of the ATV. No one pays attention to him. We are all staring at the tree.
“What was going to happen?” Tanya asks as she steps up next to Becky.
“I’m not sure. Somehow it was going to go over the edge and take Matt, Dad and the Rhino with it.”
“Dad! Dad! Mom, Dad can’t breathe.”
There are hands on me, rolling me to my back. The pain is horrible but I can’t tell them. My thought is a broken rib; maybe a punctured lung. Tanya has one hand around my jaw, the other pinching off my nose. I want to tell her I can breathe on my own but she blows into my mouth. That’s all I need; a jump-start. I exhale and then go to take a deep breath but the pain flairs. I try to relax.
“Zach!”
“I’m okay,” I say slowly. “You’re bleeding.”
She swipes at the blood on her forehead. “Just a small stone.”
“Becky?” I ask.
“I’m fine, Dad.” She’s somewhere out of my line of vision.
“Matt is fine, too,” Tanya adds. “What happened to you?”
“Something hit me.” I try for more than a shallow breath. The pain is not as sharp now, but there is no way I’m going to get the lungful of air my body thirsts for.
“Maybe this?” I see Becky now. She’s holding up a four-inch thick rock the size of a dinner plate.
“It felt a lot bigger than that. May have broken a rib.”
“Let me see.” Tanya assists in my rolling to my side and lifting my shirt high enough to examine the impact area. I like this position. I can almost take a full breath. She presses and I let her know it hurts. “How about here?”
“That’s okay.”
“How about here?”
“No pain.”
She pokes around a bit more, soliciting my responses. “There is nothing obviously broken,” she says. “You got the air knocked out of you and at worse maybe a cracked rib.”
That’s all? I guess I should be grateful but it sure felt worse than that a few minutes ago. I roll to my hands and knees and then push to my feet. She’s right. There’s nothing broken in there but I’m definitely going to have a gigantic bruise. I gently take a deep breath and analyze the spot where the tree used to be. It’s as though someone stuck a stick of dynamite in the hillside. I cautiously look at where the tree went and see that it took a couple of smaller trees with it before it broke in half on an outcropping of rocks, and came to a stop in several places. I back away from the edge. Without Becky’s warning Matt and I and the ATV would now be down there somewhere, probably more mangled looking than the tree, adding a little color to the landscape. I start helping Tanya and Becky who are already busy clearing the trail of rocks and debris. There is one huge boulder that the two of them and half of me can’t move. I can walk around just fine but bending over and trying to push against an immovable object ignites my pain centers. I’m now convinced that there actually might be a crack.
“Matt,” Tanya calls. “We need your help.” He is still looking down at the fresh tree splinters. He doesn’t respond. Becky walks over to him and takes his hand. “Matt. Everything is okay now.”
He has retreated again. He is a sensitive boy, the youngest child, and the baby of the family and probably treated so by his mother. He cannot take these devastating inputs. He has already buried seeing his father murdered; has yet to acknowledge it in any form. He allows her to lead him over to the boulder, and then obediently accepts instructions from her. The three of them brace and push. There is not enough room for me and I don’t know how much help I’d be anyway. The boulder rolls and then stops.
“Wait,” I say. I clear a path for it, knocking away even the tiniest of pebbles. “Okay.”
They push again and it rolls a little farther before coming to rest on its own flat spot. They start to brace one more time and then I stop them. “We can get by now.” Tanya and Becky look and then agree. Matt is still trying to push the boulder.
“Matt,” Becky says as she places her hand on his shoulder. “We’re done. You don’t have to move it any farther. He stands and looks at her. “Okay,” he says
“So! What next?” Tanya poses the question with a cheerful sarcasm, meaning, what other misfortune should we be looking forward to? She looks between Becky and me. “Are either of you feeling anything?”
I feel a sore rib. I shake my head. So does Becky. “How far to number five?” I ask Becky.
“We’ve been going in the wrong direction, but Sam said that’s what we’d do. We’ve still got a creek, and then the switchbacks I think.” While she’s talking she is pulling the GPS out. She stares at it for a few seconds and then says, “I’ve lost satellites.” She points to the mountains and trees surrounding. “Too much cover here. I’ll get it back as we move.”
“Then let’s go,” I say. Becky takes Matt’s hand and says that they are going to walk for a bit and try and get satellite again. They head down the trail, pushing a few more small rocks out of the way. I walk over to the ATV, hook my fingers around the roll bar and glance up the hillside. Although there is fairly solid tree cover, there’s a gap through which I can see a good fifty yards. At the end of the range of my vision, lying in the shadow of a gigantic Douglas Fir, is a gigantic sabre-toothed cat. Is he under watch-but-don’t-touch orders from the Spirit of Smilodon—I’m more and more liking that name—or is he keeping an eye on dinner for the entire den? What’s next? Tanya asked. I wonder the same thing.
He rises to his feet and fades into the forest. I ease into the Rhino and let the pain settle.
Chapter 46
Reba
Again I had to rescue Matt. Stress is not his friend. My touch seems to be the only thing that keeps him on an even keel. We walk ahead hand-in-hand, occasionally stopping to move rock, even if it doesn’t need moving. It keeps him busy, focused on an activity. I delve into his mind and find only simplicity. It’s as though he has shut down all circuits, all views of anything else in his life. All that’s there is what is happening now. Even the tree fiasco is gone.
Mom and Dad are hanging back a short distance, letting the Rhino idle forward slowly. I know they’re talking. I want them talking in order to sort out their differences, to soften Mom’s anger. If we don’t make it—if we all die—I’d like us to not be mad at each other. And I hope it happens fast if we do die; like in one bite from a sabre-toothed cat, or like Matt’s dad, a quick couple of bullets to the heart. And I don’t want to see it or in any way know it’s coming before hand, for myself or my mom and dad, or Matt.
A lot to ask, I know.
We round a bend and come to a creek. It’s not wide or deep, but an obstacle nonetheless. Dad gets out and looks at it. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he says.
It isn’t. Matt and I climb on the back and Dad drives on across. A non-event obstacle for a change. All that’s left, according to Sam, are the switchbacks. I’ve got satellite again and inform dad that it’s less than a half mile to P5 at the bottom of the switchbacks, then a mile or so to P6. When we arrive at the top of the switchbacks it’s decided that we will all walk except Dad. Mom at first refuses but once she sees what it amounts to, she changes her mind. We walk together down to the bottom, leaving dad to navigate it alone. I don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’ve got to get Matt and Mom down first. Near the bottom, Dad is nowhere in sight so I physically hand Matt over to Mom, although he seems to be returning to us again. I go back up for Dad.
I find Dad a petrified tree at the first switchback. He was all right where there were trees but when it opened up to a sheer drop-off on one side, he froze. “I’ll drive,” I say to him. He slowl
y turns his head and gives me a, you’re crazy, look. “I’ve already demonstrated I can do it,” I add, “so get out and walk, or sit on the other side.” I’m speaking softly, like I’m trying to talk a child out of his tricycle. “It’ll be okay. These things don’t bother me.”
He sits for a long time as though thinking it over. What he is thinking about is how to give in without further looking like a wimp; how to save face. He can’t and we both know it.
“It’s an uncontrollable fear,” I say. “Let me drive. You can ride with your eyes closed.”
“It never used to be this way,” he says. “Even after I crash-landed the plane.”
“A decade delayed reaction?”
“I guess.”
I think of something I heard in school once. I repeat it. “Manureth Happeneth.” He looks at me for a long time before the translation sinks in. He grins, turns off the engine, locks the brake, and climbs over to the passenger’s side. The ride down is uneventful, but fast. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I try not to notice Dad’s white knuckles when we get stopped at the bottom. Mom does notice and asks what is wrong. I busy myself with the GPS.
“Someone besides us and her high school driving instructor taught her to drive,” Dad says, “Like Mario Andretti.” I’m pleased to hear the humor in his voice.
“Oh.” Mom doesn’t like the humor. Humor is not in residence anywhere in her when she is stressed; nor can it be around her. I see her jaw set, and then she turns away.
“About a mile left to go,” I say, “and then we have to walk. How’re your feet doing, Mom?”
“Holding up fairly well, actually. The boots help a lot. How are you doing in those shoes?”
“Not a problem at all,” I lie. “Young, strong feet I guess.” I’m worried about the mile trek. My feet may be young and strong but these are light mall shoes, not even heavy duty mall shoes, and my feet are already starting to feel the strain . . . and the pain.
We’re standing on the road that Sam talked about. Waypoint seven is straight ahead. It’s tempting, but Sam said it was washed out. Dad gets in behind the wheel again and the rest of us climb in and on. “That way,” I point for Dad, and we head out, only to immediately hit our next obstacle. Another creek, and it looks deep. While Dad and Matt walk up and down looking for a crossing, I sit with Mom. The GPS says we are at 4700 feet, nearly 3000 lower then where I left my breakfast yesterday. My headache is nearly gone.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 65