Chapter Seven
Their third hour in the woods, Alex admitted that his initial estimate had been flawed.
“My feet are killing me,” Peter complained. “And I’m fucking starving. You got any more granola bars, babe?”
“You ate the last one a half hour ago.”
“Chief Deeds said someone’s bringing sandwiches up,” Alex reminded them.
“Probably peanut butter and jelly, from that same place in town we ate. I think it’s the only restaurant in town. You think one of these yokels would run down to The Palm for me?”
“Just look at these trees,” Alex said, desperate to change the subject. He waved an arm at the devastated pines. “Think about the footage we’ll get up here.”
“Yeah.” Peter eyed the forest, raising a hand and making a corner from fingers and thumb. Framing the shot. Alex wished he could see the way Peter did, with an artist’s eye. “We’ll get some awesome footage, if I don’t have to have my feet amputated.”
“It’s not that bad, Peter,” Ellen said. “I’ll massage them later.”
Peter laughed. “You can start there and work up.”
Alex didn’t want to hear any more. He drifted away from Ellen and Peter—although trying not to stray too far beyond the police chief’s requested six-foot distance—and toward a guy who looked like he had grown up in these woods. The man wore patched, faded camouflaged fatigue pants and jacket with a bright orange vest. He carried a beat-up rifle that might have been his age or a little older, maybe from World War II. Or the War of 1812.
“How long have these trees been in this condition?” Alex asked. “All dead like this?”
The man glanced Alex’s way, showing him narrow eye slits in a blunt, ruddy face. “I guess maybe it was seven, eight years ago or thereabouts, it started up,” he said. “Don’t remember exactly. And there’s always some of it, right? Just seemed to have got worse around then. Kinda leveled off for a while, but then this past summer it got really bad again.”
“It’s the cumulative effect of the carbon in the atmosphere,” Alex said.
“No, it’s bugs.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The cold winters used to kill the bark beetles. Since the winters have been warmer, the trees’ natural defense hasn’t been there, so the effect of the insects has become much more pronounced.”
“I don’t know where you were last winter, but it was pretty fuckin’ cold up here.”
“What I’m saying is, it’s cumulative. The hottest years on record have almost all been in the last ten years or so. Glaciers and ice sheets are declining, sea level’s rising—”
“Don’t start with that global warming bullpuckey,” the man countered. “It all goes in cycles, hot and warm. Anyway, the good Lord won’t let nothin’ too bad happen.”
Alex started to respond, then decided against it. He was lecturing, which he had promised himself he wouldn’t do. Anyway, science and faith had been in conflict forever, and he wasn’t likely to change this guy’s mind. Some churches preached that humanity served as the Earth’s steward in God’s stead, but many continued to claim that the works of mankind couldn’t have a significant, harmful effect on His handiwork.
But walking through a forest that should have been an emerald-green cathedral, Alex couldn’t fend off the crushing weight of hopelessness. Even the breeze rustling the trees had a brittle edge, instead of its usual smooth susurrus. The air carried a hint of decay.
“Hey!” someone called from about thirty yards away. “Look!”
Alex couldn’t see what he was supposed to be looking at, but then he heard the word repeated over and over. “Ravens!” someone said. “Look!”
Now Alex saw them: what looked like twenty or thirty ravens wheeling about above the trees, some darting down toward the earth or soaring away.
Carrion birds. They looked like ink stains sliding across a crisp blue background. The searchers streamed toward that point from every direction, converging beneath the raven wheel.
Just before Alex reached the group—Peter and Ellen left behind someplace, not running flat out as he was—somebody let out a scream. Alex threaded through the clot of people gathered there, and a woman bumped into him, bent over double, hand over her mouth. She barely got past Alex, who turned to see that she was okay, then dropped to her knees and made retching noises. Someone on the far side of the group did the same.
Alex wanted to run. Whatever was attracting those ravens and making people sick, he wanted no part of.
But he couldn’t. People were pressing in behind him, and curiosity propelled him forward. The stink hit him before he could see it, the sick and sour-sweet smell universal to death. Then somebody else moved away, cupping his face in his hands and sobbing out loud, and there was nothing between Alex and the mess that had been Michael Hackett. Blood painted the ground. Jagged bone protruded through pale, torn flesh. Bits of orange fluff were snagged on stiff, dry grasses.
“Oh, God,” a man said. Tears streamed down his reddened face, mucus slicked his nose and mustache. “Oh, God, oh, God, Mikey, no!”
Alex’s guts flipped and churned. He leaned forward, hands on someone else’s shoulders, for a better look at the remains, then closed his eyes against the gruesome sight. It didn’t matter; what he had seen was seared into his memory.
“Back off!” Chief Deeds shouted. He waded through the crowd, which parted before his advance like the Red Sea for Moses. “Give me some space here!”
Alex was trying to move away, but he was close enough to see the chief’s face blanch. The lawman swallowed hard, twice, but didn’t look away. Alex was impressed by the man’s steady gaze.
The crowd swept Alex away from the massacre as the chief went down on one knee beside the body. Trauma erased any distinction between outsiders and locals; everybody spoke at once and Alex was in the middle of it all.
“You think it’s him?” someone asked, and the responses flew.
“It’s Mike. I seen his rifle.”
“His hat’s right over there.”
“What do you think done it?”
“Mountain lion, maybe.”
“Could be.”
“No, you see them tracks? They’re dog, not cat.”
“Dog pack?”
“Or coyotes, maybe.”
“That or wolves.”
“There’s no wolves in Colorado.”
“Heard about some sightings at the High Lonesome.”
“That’s south of here. They come in through Wyoming, they could be here, too.”
“Never heard about any.”
“You look at him? Coyotes didn’t do that. I don’t think dogs did either.”
More discussion about the likelihood of wolves followed, and then the conversation dwindled, down to one searcher talking to the next. The word “wolves” came up often. Alex rejoined Peter and Ellen. They hadn’t come close enough to see, or to take part in the analysis.
“’Sup?” Peter asked. He leaned against the trunk of a stripped-down pine. Ellen sat on the carpet of discolored needles around it.
“Wolves, they’re saying. Guy’s a mess; I’m amazed they can even identify him.”
“Really?” Ellen asked. Suddenly she sounded interested, like she might want to check it out.
“I’ve never seen anything like it outside of a horror movie. Lot of people getting sick over there, and I had a hard time keeping my doughnuts down.”
“Nice,” Ellen said.
“Some of these guys, hunters I guess, are probably used to it. Field dressing their kills and what have you. But I don’t know, I think it might be a while before I can eat meat again.”
Peter laughed. “I thought we’d get off this mountain and pick up some burgers in town. Rare and juicy.”
Alex’s stomach did another quick churn. He blinked, tried to erase the memory. It wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“We done here?”
“I guess so.”
“Think we made friends among the populace?”
Alex shrugged. “I couldn’t say. I hope so.”
Other searchers began to drift back toward the road, so Alex, Ellen, and Peter joined them. “Gotta get what’s left of Mike down to Dr. Steinhilber,” someone was saying. “He’ll know what done it.”
“Gonna have to scrape him up with a spatula,” someone else answered.
“Be a special service tonight at the church, you think?” This was the man Alex had talked to earlier, the one who didn’t believe God would let anything bad happen to the world.
“I expect so.”
“I’ll be there, for sure.”
“Same here.”
Alex was not a religious person, or particularly spiritual—he had given up that quest when Steph and Eleanor died—though he understood the impulse to seek answers or solace in what he considered the realm of the supernatural. Seeing Mike Hackett’s ruined body didn’t cause him to become a believer, but he felt a kind of inner pang at the idea that other people would come together in their grief, while he would be sitting in a lonely, empty motel.
He spat to clear an unpleasant taste from his mouth, and trudged toward the SUV.
Howie Honeycutt looked at the remains with what he considered to be a cool, clinical eye. All around him, people were puking, sobbing, threatening all manner of revenge, or simply silent, holding their terror inside. Even Tim Jones, who grew up in Silver Gap and had been on the force for fifteen years, looked green around the gills. Tim would probably judge Howie’s reaction, and he would find it lacking, because that’s just how he was. That, in Howie’s opinion, was how lesser men viewed others, through a prism of judgment and distrust.
Howie was proud of Chief Deeds, though. Deeds was naturally disturbed to find one of his townsfolk torn apart by wild animals, even though that wasn’t in itself a crime and therefore was outside his area of responsibility. Still, he was exhibiting strength to the members of the search party, who at this point needed that more than anything. He didn’t let them see how torn apart he was, but showed them that he had his act together. Howie would help in any way he could, of course. He was the newest member of the force, with just over three years in, and he had never worked for anybody he admired more.
He looked at the body—the parts, anyway—and tried to figure out how to get them back to town. No sense crying over Hackett; he was beyond any pain or human judgment or possibility of help. He was no longer a person; he was an assortment of tissue and bone. A logistical problem. Howie figured they would need shovels and bags. Body bags if they could be spared, but heavy-duty trash bags would do. Shovels would be the main thing. And gloves. They wouldn’t get all of him with that, but they’d get the big pieces. The rest they could leave. Insects would finish off what larger animals didn’t. Come spring there might be a few bones scattered about, but that wasn’t a problem out here.
Hackett’s ribcage arched up from the bloody mass, reminding Howie of a bent bicycle wheel, its spokes catching sunlight. Looking at the body parts, breathing in the scents of blood and raw meat, Howie realized that his engagement with the scene wasn’t entirely clinical after all, unless by clinical you meant that it made your pants suddenly fit tighter around the groin area. It stirred memories, that’s what it was. Memories that he thought were long buried. All in the past.
Maybe, though, not so much …