Instinct (16 page)

“What do we do?” Lisa asked. “We can’t jump that, and the liquid is everywhere. We have to go back.”

“Back where?” Romie asked. “We’re boxed in. We should have turned around when we had the chance.”

“We tried, remember?” Pete said. “We were doomed as soon as we came across that bridge. Maybe that’s why that other bridge was booby trapped. Maybe someone was trying to keep us from running into trouble.”

His logic seemed flawed, but Brad didn’t bother to argue. They had bigger problems to worry about than incorrect conclusions.

“It doesn’t seem to flow up these rocks,” Lisa said.

Brad looked down and saw a fairly small rock near his foot. He carefully crouched, using a tree next to him to keep his balance, and lifted the thing. It was heavy for one hand, but he managed to get his fingers under it and brought it up to waist-level as he stood. The others saw what he was doing, and nobody objected. Brad cast the stone out into the gap in the wall. It landed with a hollow thump and rolled over before it came to a stop. It was right in the middle of a pulsing patch of wet leaves. The top of his rock remained dry.

“Are there enough rocks though?” Pete asked.

“There was a clump of pretty small rocks farther back,” Brad said. “I think we could lift most of them.”

Brad walked backwards down the wall, leaving the others where they stood. He found what he was looking for. One section of the wall had been created with a few big rocks and then chinked with dozens of liftable stones. He grabbed one and turned.

With the extra weight in his hand and the flashlight in the other, Brad lost his balance. His foot slipped on a mossy patch and shot out the side. Brad clutched the rock to his chest as his light swept up towards the sky. His right foot came crunching down in the leaves. When he tried to pull back, he only slipped more. His leg buckled and his knee slammed into a rock. He pointed his light down. His foot was a hair away from a pulsing tendril of liquid that flowed through the leaves.

Brad dropped the rock and threw his torso down on the wall to pull his leg up from the leaves.

He looked back. He had somehow managed to avoid touching the liquid. Brad carefully got his feet underneath him again and lifted the rock.

It was too difficult to walk the wall and carry the rock. Pete appeared in the faint glow of Lisa’s light, and put his hands out. Brad handed him the rock.

They formed a chain of hands. Brad propped his light in the crook of a branch and he found the stones. He handed them to Pete, who turned and handed them to Romie. Behind them, they were creating a nearly impassable gap.
 

“We think that’s enough,” he heard Romie say to Pete.

Pete waved Brad forward. He grabbed his light and followed.

On their side of the gap, Lisa had placed a few stones side by side. On the other side, it was just a line of small rocks. Some looked uncomfortably far apart.

“We need more rocks,” Brad said.
 

Lisa shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. It’s getting harder and harder to place them. I think we should just try it.”

“No,” Brad said. “It’s impossible.”

Robby ducked under Lisa’s arm and stepped out onto the stones. At the beginning, he was able to step back and forth, straddling two stones at once. About halfway across, he had to move in a straight line. The rocks were just big enough for his feet. The second one rolled as Robby stepped on it. He sprang forward, and ran the last few steps before leaping up to the wall on the other side.

Brad was focused on the rock that rolled over. The side that turned up was wet. As he watched, the liquid parted in the center and flowed down the sides of the rock. Another rock fell out of the dark and landed next to the rock that had rolled. Brad raised his light and saw Robby. He turned, crouched, and came back up with another rock. Robby added a few more stones to the sparsest part of the path.

“We need more rocks,” Brad said.

“No,” Romie said. “We’ll make do.” She took Lisa’s hand and lowered herself down to the rocks. Brad held his breath. He wanted to tell her to stop. She would never make it across. He couldn’t. They had to move forward. It was their only option.
 

Worse than watching Romie move across the rocks was listening to Lisa suck in a startled breath each time Romie faltered. More than once, Brad wanted to go out after Romie, so he could perhaps reach out and stabilize her. But she needed plenty of room. Romie would lose her balance and have to retreat several stones before she could move forward again. Robby reached out from the other side and Lisa exhaled her relief when Romie’s hand finally made the connection with the boy.
 

He helped her up to the other side and Pete stepped down on the rocks.
 

“Throw the light,” Romie said from the other side. “Half the problem is the damn shadows.”

Brad realized she was right. They had both of the flashlights on one side of the gap. He looked at Lisa and motioned for her to throw. Brad would go last across the gap.

They made it without incident, but not without stress. Brad’s heart pounded by the time the hands pulled him up on the other side. He looked back across the gap. At this pace it would take them until dawn to move a mile. Dawn was when it became dangerous to be outside. Dawn was when you had a stronger possibility of being plucked backwards into oblivion by unknown forces. They had to find shelter. They had to find somewhere to hide from the sky.

A while later, Pete must have been thinking the same thing.

“We have to start moving faster,” Pete said.
 

“I’m exhausted,” Romie said. “If I try to move any faster, I’m going to fall off this damn wall.”

“I think maybe that’s okay,” Pete said.
 

Brad looked up from his feet and saw that Pete was looking off to the side. He trained his light on the leaves where Pete was staring. The leaves looked dry.

“Do you think we’ve gone past it?”

“Looks like it,” Lisa said. She was shining her light up the hill on the other side of the wall. She moved her light from spot to spot. There was no glistening liquid under her beam either.

“What do you think?” Brad asked. “Should we risk it.”

They heard the leaves crunch and Brad and Lisa turned their lights forward. Robby was walking off through the woods.
 

“Robby!” Lisa called.

“It’s fine,” the boy said over his shoulder. “There’s a thing over here.”

Brad couldn’t tell what he was talking about. Lisa took the plunge next. She stepped down off the wall and followed the trail of rustled leaves that Robby left behind. The others went as well. Romie was the last to trust herself to step off the wall, but as soon as both the lights started to move into the forest, she didn’t have much choice. Brad heard her pulling up the rear. She made a relieved sound when her feet hit the forest floor. Brad knew the feeling. After walking on the uneven rocks for as long as they had, his ankles were fatigued to their limit. Walking across the leaves felt like a vacation.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

Robby was standing with his face pressed to the window when Lisa and Brad arrived. Pete stood off to the side, unwilling to commit to a course of action.

“What is this place?” Lisa asked.

“Ranger station,” Pete said. “According to the sign.”

“What’s a ranger station?” she asked. She swept her light across the face of the building. It was a two-story log cabin, but Brad doubted if there was anything behind those upper windows. They looked like they were only for show. The logs that made up the siding were stained dark and blended well into the surrounding woods. The porch roof was shingled with cedar shakes. Except for the glass windows and the green metal door, the place looked like it could have been two-hundred years old.

“Great,” Romie said as she walked up. “Now we’re in Little House on the Prairie.”

“It’s shelter,” Lisa said. “We might need it.” She walked up the steps and pointed her light through the window. She and Robbie examined the interior of the place as the others stood well back. They watched as Robby walked over to the door and tried to turn the handle. Robby turned and thrust his elbow into one of the panes of glass in the upper half of the metal door. He made a face and hit it harder.

“Wait,” Pete said. “You’re going to cut yourself.” Pete went to the side of the porch where he found a stove-length piece of wood. He handed it over the porch railing to Robby. The boy rammed the end of the wood into the glass several times before it cracked. Romie looked into the dark woods to see if the noise was drawing any attention.

Brad came forward to add his light to the door. The glass broke with a crunch and Robby knocked out the stray pieces with the log. Robby reached in carefully to unlock the door. When he swung it inwards, the glass scraped on the floor.

Robby stepped through first. Brad trotted up the porch stairs and followed him in. Lisa’s light angled through the window as she moved down the porch to follow them inside.
 

The air smelled like it held colonies of dry spores. Brad imagined that with each inhale, raiding parties of harmful organisms were settling into his lungs. Their virulence would be awoken by the moist environment of his body. Brad pulled his shirt up over his nose. Brad’s flashlight found only a few furnishings in the room. He saw two desks along the back wall. A bookshelf held a small library of field guides and picture books. A rack held a bunch of information pamphlets. On the right side of the room, a small table sat between the wood stove and a small refrigerator.

“What died in here?” Romie asked from the doorway.

“Over here,” Robby said. Brad pointed his flashlight to the table where Robby stood. The boy used the light to find a pack of matches. While Robby lit a candle, Brad turned his attention to the rack of pamphlets. Most were just glossy advertisements of local attractions, but one of them had a map of trails. Brad pulled it out and took it to the desk to unfold it.

Robby lit his candle and then found a few more in holders mounted to the wall. It looked like a major fire hazard with the flames so close to the unfinished walls, but Brad figured they could get out quickly enough if they had to.
 

Romie finally came in and Pete took up her spot in the doorway. He left them to the investigation while he looked off into the night.

“You guys never answered me—what’s a ranger station?” Lisa asked. She was pointing her flashlight up a steep set of stairs that led up through a hole in the ceiling. It was so steep that Brad thought it might be better described as a ladder, although it did have little treads instead of rungs.

“This is probably a National Forest,” Pete said from the doorway. “The rangers stay here to answer questions and help people out if they get stuck in the woods.”

“It’s like a field office,” Romie said.

“Oh,” Lisa said.

“Pete, this map might be helpful,” Brad said. He carried the paper over to the door and held a flashlight on it. Pete unfolded it the rest of the way and snapped the folds from the paper.
 

“It’s more of a trail map, but it does show the local roads,” Pete said. “Maybe we can hike over this way.”

Brad kept his light trained on the map. His eyes wandered. Romie was pulling open desk drawers. Lisa was climbing up the ladder. Robby had found a lantern on a shelf and was trying to unscrew the top of the thing. His face was twisted with effort as he tried to get a grip on the rusted cap nut.
 

All eyes turned to Lisa as she crashed down the steep steps. She didn’t yell once as she landed on her butt. Robby was the first one over to her.

They all took Lisa’s cue and stayed very quiet.

“What happened?” Romie whispered.

Lisa pointed up. “Someone’s up there.”

“Are you okay?” Pete asked. Lisa nodded.

Robby was on his toes, trying to see up through the hole without touching the ladder. Romie took the flashlight from Lisa’s hand and moved around the boy. She didn’t hesitate. Romie climbed. When her head breached the hole in the ceiling, Romie stopped. She angled her flashlight around and got a good look before she began climbing again. She waved a silent hand down, beckoning them to follow.

Pete went up next.

Brad looked over to the door of the cabin. He crossed to it and tried to close the door. He had to kick some of the broken glass away to get the thing to close. He re-locked the door and pulled the little green curtain across the broken glass. Before returning to the stairs, he double-checked Robby’s candles to be sure that they weren’t about to catch the walls on fire. Robby’s feet were just disappearing through the hatch in the ceiling as Brad got to the bottom of the ladder. He heard their whispers up there.

He remembered the little dog house dormers and thought again that the space up there must be small. For a second, he considered waiting at the bottom. They would come down and tell him what was up there. Was there really a need for all five of them to go up?

Brad held his light out with one hand and climbed.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

The second floor of the cabin was bigger than he thought. There was enough room to stand and there two full beds in the attic bedroom. The dog house dormers cut out little sections of the sloped ceiling and made the room feel less oppressive. The window at the end wall showed the woods below. The trees looked like apparitions in the dancing candlelight leaking from the first floor windows.

Brad’s group was clustered around one of the beds. Brad couldn’t tell what they were looking at until he got closer and could see between Romie and Lisa. There was a body there.

The way the hands were positioned around the hole in the chest, it looked like something had exploded out. Then he saw the gun. This person—a man, as far as Brad could tell—must have shot himself in the chest and then tried to close his hands over the gaping wound. His face was too far gone to reveal anything. Time had reduced his skin to a taut black webbing, connecting the peaks of his face bones.