Deadfall (11 page)

“What?” Laura said. She twisted her shoulders, pumped her arms. The man's grip was solid. She tried to kick him, but he was fast as well. He dragged her several steps backward.

Dillon was instantly awake. Confusion etched his face. His sore eyes blinked. “Mom?” he said.

She stopped fighting. “It's okay, honey.”

Declan reached behind him and came back with a long knife. It was thick and heavy looking. A military weapon or something hunters were getting into nowadays. He turned it in the air, letting light glint off it. He stepped closer to Dillon.

“No!” She wanted to scream, but it came out a hoarse whisper.

“You can keep your boy,” Declan said. “But I want you to know something.”

He brought the knife to Dillon's face, pressing the tip to his cheekbone. Dillon's eyes flared wide. He sucked in a sharp breath, as he had in September when he got his Hep B immunization.

“Don't,” Laura said, straining against the powerful hands.

Declan drew the blade down, leaving a thin red line, then he pulled it away. The cut on Dillon's face grew thick with blood. It stretched to his jaw as a rivulet leaked out.

Laura hissed.

“I want you to know that I'm not above hurting a child. So be quiet. Be good. Don't cause trouble, and we'll get along. Understand?”

Her eyes flashed at him. She showed her teeth, thinking she would say something. Nothing came out. She hoped her expression was enough. Enough to let him know that he would pay for harming her son. Enough to warn him against trying it again.

“I'll take that as an agreement,” Declan said. He pursed his lips and kissed her through the air. He left, followed by the teen.The man holding her turned her around, walked backward to the door. She knew he would shove her hard into the room. By the time she recovered, the door would be shut and locked again. Instead, his hands came off her like a vise coming undone. She stepped away and glared back. It was the black man, Bad. She gave him the same fierce expression she had given Declan.

He returned it and growled.Then he laughed, stepped through the doorway, and locked them in.

She dropped to her knees before Dillon. She hugged him tightly. Whenever Tom had approached Dillon to hug him, he'd say he was going to squeeze him like a Go-Gurt, a yogurt treat that you had to squeeze out of its packaging. She tried to hug him that way now.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. She leaned back to examine the long vertical line on his face, black now in the dim light. Gently, she wiped at it. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “Are you?”

She laughed, relieved. At least for now he seemed himself, always so concerned about other people.

He said, “They want us to obey them.”

She braced him between her hands, looked into his eyes. “Well, they don't know us very well, do they?”

13

Hutch woke to the gentle
but insistent chime of his watch. Quietly, he unzipped his sleeping bag to retrieve the clothes he'd put inside it the evening before. He maneuvered past Phil. The man had taken up snoring since their last camping trip, probably the result of his weight gain. He emerged from the tent into the cold, dark morning. Plumes of breath formed in front of his face as goose bumps popped up on his arms and thighs under his long johns. His muscles contracted in an effort to fend off the cold. It was four o'clock, still three hours before dawn.

He set his clothes on a rucksack near the tent. Standing outside the shelter in only his skivvies, he surveyed the campsite by the light of a quarter moon; the campfire had gone out hours before. He saw no evidence that animals had come to inspect their presence, that humans had made a covert visit, or that anything unsavory had fallen or blown, slithered or crawled into camp.

Fog filled the ravine, at the bottom of which the river gurgled and sluiced out of sight. Moonlight illuminated the gently swirling mist, reminding Hutch of the dry-ice fog that churns from the witches' cauldron in stage productions of
Macbeth
. It climbed the banks and sent tendrils snaking into the campsite and surrounding forest. It billowed away from him as he made his way down to the bank of the river. He dipped his hands into the freezing water and splashed his face.The cold wetness shocked him into a higher level of wakefulness. His heart raced.

Returning to his clothes, he used a towel to dry off. He shook out a pair of camouflage pants and slipped into them, instantly appreciating the extra layer of material—the extra-warm layer, thanks to sleeping with the clothes; he'd forgotten to do it plenty of times. He tugged on a shirt and jacket, then pushed into his boots. He donned a camouflage baseball hat and applied streaks of black, olive, and beige makeup to his face and neck. Since he would track his prey through the woods, his clothes and the pattern of his camouflage makeup resembled trees and leaves—not so much to look like foliage but to break up the pattern of his body.

He pulled a spray bottle from the sack and misted a few areas on his torso and legs. It was the fragrance of earth, which would mask his own scent. Many deer and elk hunters preferred to spray themselves with the urine of a doe in heat. It was a product available at retail, though not usually at the same counter as Old Spice. In Hutch's experience, earth was equally effective, less expensive, and possessed none of the
eeewww
factor, should he share his escapades with nonhunters. His clothes had been washed with a scentless detergent. Even his deodorant was specially formulated to keep big game from catching a whiff of Bambi's mortal enemy.

He snapped on a utility belt and attached a small flashlight, a canteen, and a hip pack loaded with energy bars, spare bowstrings, and other things he might find useful in a pinch. He slipped into a binocular harness, which held the glasses firmly over his sternum until needed. Kneeling beside the tent, he opened his bow case and lifted his recurve bow, to which he had already mounted a quiver of arrows. Leaning the bow against the tent door, he reached again into the sack. He withdrew the topo map he had consulted in the helicopter, folded it, and inserted it into an inside pocket of his jacket. The map had been printed on vinyl, making it waterproof and silent. He stood with his bow and slung it onto his shoulder, letting the bowstring's tension hold it in place.

He checked his bearings on the Suunto watch/compass he'd bought for this trip. (Suunto called it a “wristop computer,” but Hutch thought that exaggerated its features and sounded way too nerdy) He took a moment to gaze at the river of mist, at the trees, at the distant hills as if committing them to memory for the purpose of reeling back to that spot when his day of hunting was over. He filled his lungs with cool air.

It tastes better up here, the air,
he thought.The ashy smell coming from the fire pit, the tang of pines, the crisp fragrance of the water—individually and combined, these were olfactory pleasantries matched by few things back home.Two popped into his head: fresh-brewed coffee and newborn babies. He could brew coffee up here, and would have done so this morning had he not been so excited about the hunt, and the baby smell was rare no matter where you were. So olfactory-wise, as in other subjects, northern Saskatchewan won again.

He climbed a small embankment and entered the woods. Kicking away the thin covering of mist, he began looking for the game trail that would, if Artemis, Greek goddess of hunting, favored him, lead him to a great bull caribou. Over the next hour Hutch located two trails, neither with fresh tracks. He identified a high ridge that promised an excellent vantage point of the entire valley and headed for it.

The sun was scalding the horizon by the time he stood on that ridge, an outcropping of rock that did indeed overlook the broad valley. Through his binoculars he panned the terrain, gliding his glass over streams and marshes, trees and meadows. After fifteen minutes of methodical sweeps, he saw them: five brown-and-beige animals grazing in a field beyond a thick patch of forest. He made note of their compass bearings and map location.

Moving quickly now, he came down off the ledge and the small mountain that supported it and moved into the trees. He bounded over bushes and blowdowns, ducked under branches, and pushed off of trees as he careened past. Having located his prey, there was no need for stealth until he drew closer, which he did faster than he had expected. Nearing the meadow where the caribou were grazing, he slowed. His feet became more sensitive to the noise potential of the brush under them; his eyes found passages around reaching fingers of tree limbs, beds of dry leaves, soil that concealed twigs as brittle—and loud—as snapping bones.

Attuned to the wind, he headed diagonally away from his quarry, hoping to come at them against a breeze. When he finally made it to the clearing, no animals were visible. He glassed the area, disappointed. Then a shadow shifted beyond the meadow, where the forest picked up its march north. Dapples of light, shades of blackness moved too steadily to be caused by mere wind, and he panned with them until they coalesced into a caribou.Though the caribou was the only animal in the deer family in which both male and female grew antlers, the monstrous rack on the head of this animal told him he had found a bull. It was moving deeper into the woods. Hutch knew he had to move parallel with it until the woods came together and he could approach under the cover of trees.

Two hours later he stood on a game trail with fresh tracks. He followed the spoor pessimistically, remembering that caribou were fast travelers and hard to pursue. Before long, he lost the tracks. Reversing, he found where the caribou had veered off the trail. He moved into the brush to follow it. The caribou's movements through the virgin wild puzzled him, since most game followed the paths emblazoned by thousands of animals that had come before. Then he stepped into a clearing and had his answer.

Before him rose a thirty-foot-high sloping wall of golden sand and ashen dirt. It was an esker, a twisting serpentine ridge formed by meltwater streams beneath the ice of retreating glaciers. Sometimes called animal highways, eskers allowed wildlife to travel great distances quickly. He saw the tracks of his bull climbing diagonally to the flat top of the esker. The ground had crumbled under its hooves, forming an almost perfect flight of steps. Hutch had no hope of catching the animal by following it. He pulled out his map and found the esker and his current position. The esker weaved for several miles in a mostly eastern direction before arcing north and petering out.

Examining the terrain along the esker, Hutch thought the caribou was heading for a meadow at the confluence of two streams about a mile distant. The esker would take the caribou away from the spot before bringing it back. By heading straight for this meadow, he thought he could arrive there first. Lying in wait for a fast animal was always better than trying to overtake it. Hutch returned the map to its pocket and jogged back into the forest. High up, a hundred chickadees chirped to themselves. Despite their apparent numbers, he rarely witnessed one perched on a branch or flitting between trees. They were masters at hiding. Not so good at keeping quiet.

As much as he enjoyed the victory of a successful kill, he realized again the pleasure of pursuit. Moving through the trees the way an animal would, spotting their killing grounds and beds exhilarated him. He loved the fragrance of trees and moss and the dew as it misted off the leaves. His boots trod silently over the soft cushion of needles and sphagnum and crunched over dead branches. As he moved, he found himself falling into a familiar pattern in his breathing and the movements of his legs, arms, and body. Getting from one point to another in the woods became effortless, automatic, as though he'd done it every day of his life. Shadow and light, which at first had fooled him into seeing branches and leaves and obstacles in his path, forcing him to weave and duck and expend energy, once again became only shadow and light. Now he leaped when there was something to leap over and dodged when there was something to dodge. His breathing seemed to become harmonious with the woods and the wind. In this state, Hutch's mind wandered. He imagined parts of the wilderness he could not see: animals darting away before he approached, others watching him from a distance—all of them accepting him as part of their world.

The troubles of home seemed far away. Perhaps because of this, he was able to think about them without the familiar, paralyzing grip of panic and grief. Only nine months ago, his life had seemed as David's was—fantastic with a capital
F
. Picture a Hallmark card depicting a couple walking hand in hand through the surf, a pair of happy children running ahead. Add some credit card debt, make the beach a mountain trail, the couple a little older—you get the idea. Then Janet had slammed him in the head with a baseball bat.Well, not really, but it felt that way. Instead of “Louisville Slugger,” the bat she used read “Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.” She had left it on the breakfast table beside a sectioned cantaloupe and a glass of cranberry juice.

She'd taken the kids to school and hadn't returned. She had not answered her mobile phone until after two o'clock that afternoon, providing Hutch plenty of time to go out of his mind.

“Talk about out of the blue,” he'd said.

“Hutch,” she had replied, insanely calm, “it's been a long time coming.”

She'd launched into a litany of Hutch's offenses: too much time at work, too little affection at home, too committed to his friends—that's the term she used, “too committed.” The grievances had taken him by surprise. He'd kept regular, maybe even fewer-than-normal hours on the job. He'd often left little notes and gifts around the house professing his love for her. And he had certainly not seen as much of David,Terry, and Phil as he would have liked.

Of course, she'd had an answer for everything: he'd disappear into his home office for “at least an hour” after the kids had gone down, his notes and gifts were a poor substitution for genuine feelings, and he'd be with his buddies mentally when he wasn't with them physically. She had not wanted to try any of his solutions: counseling, changing his job, changing everything, separation. He'd felt he couldn't win, and of course that was true: “The heart in ascension is blind to faults; in decline, it's blind to reason.”