Page 46 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
It was midafternoon, but the sunlight passing through the trees was already low and slanted, with drifts of shadow gathering along the snow. Sunset was at four these days, and in the mountains, it didn’t linger. Russ had to rein in his urge to get the other two moving faster. It was like deer hunting; you didn’t get your buck by hurrying. Of course, he hunted at dawn, and walked out to an artery-seizing breakfast at a local diner before going home for the day. He didn’t have to worry about setting up a winter camp with an inexperienced helper in the dark.
Up ahead, Terrance stopped and beckoned them forward. When Russ got there, the ranger pointed to where the creek bed curved downhill. He held up his compass. “We need to go uphill from here.” Knox’s groan was barely audible. Terrance looked at her, concerned. “Do you want to switch packs with me?”
“No. I carry my own weight. Literally, I guess.”
The eastern white pines rising above them were very mature, the ground cover low and creeping, with scarcely any thickets to impede hikers. “Looks like an easy passage.”
Terrance nodded. “It’s not an established trail, but it’s the way I’d go if I were moving around this part of the mountain.”
“Let’s switch lead.” Russ gestured toward his gear. “Heaviest pack first. Knox, you stay in the middle.” If she slipped, the ranger could catch her without bowling both of them ass over teakettle.
It wasn’t terribly steep, just tiring and slow. The light shafted between the massive trunks, golden-orange and worrying. Russ slogged upward, his boot steps silenced by the thick pine straw. The copse ended at the summit of the slope in a lip of granite, and he surmounted it to find himself in a much younger swath of forest, shaggy hemlock and bare maple and alder trees rising over broom and prickle and drooping, winter-copper vines. He waited until the others had clambered over the granite bluff, Knox panting hard and Terrance looking around cautiously. “Looks like a burn site,” he said.
“That was my thought. We’re either going to have to travel closeror start blazing a path, because we’re not going to be able to see for shit through this, especially with the light going.”
“Let’s mark the trail. Do you have a—” The ranger broke off as Russ retrieved his hunting knife from a side pocket.
Terrance pulled a Sharpie from his pocket and pushed up his sleeve. He had a series of numbers and letters scrawled onto his skin. “This is our way so far. How many steps and what direction. Let’s give you a copy, just in case.”
Russ gestured with his chin. “Put it on Knox. Also just in case.”
Knox shoved her parka and sleeve up. The ranger took her wrist and began writing. “Why on your arm?” She laughed. “Sorry, it tickles.”
“Can’t lose your arm if you drop your pack or fall in a stream, can you?” Terrance grinned up at her, his teeth gleaming white in the shadowy gloom. “Or if you do, you’ve got worse problems than being lost.”
She tugged her clothing back into place. “I don’t have a compass.”
“Relax.” Russ reset his strap so he could cut with his right hand without dislodging the rifle. “We’ll be together. And if for some reason we’re not, you can always use the sun or the stars to tell the direction.”
“The sun and the stars. Oh, that’s very helpful, Daniel Boone.”
They set off again, Russ leading, Knox and Terrance hanging behind a little. The ranger was talking quietly; Russ made out “Polaris” and “stick compass” and figured Knox was getting a crash course in woodland survival. He glanced back; the edge of the promontory was almost out of sight. He reached up and peeled a couple inches of bark from the east and west sides of an alder, notched them to indicate the first blaze, and went on.
In this dead season, the undergrowth was more a visual screen than an impediment to hiking through. He looked for any sign of human passage as he went eastward, but this was terrain that didn’t yield much, other than deer scat and rabbit pellets and, at one point, several wild turkey feathers where some bird had met his end. He led his team of two deeper and deeper into the woods, marking the trail along the sight lines. They were following the path of least resistancetoward Terrance’s coordinates, but really, how accurate could the man have been when they were all flipped sideways and under fire? He was starting to wish for the bear to show up again and lead them to their destination when his careful perusal of the ground paid off. Not scat, or feathers, or even a boot print. A trip wire.
It stretched across two tree trunks about ankle-high off the frozen leaf litter. He followed the line around one trunk to see a simple homemade alarm: a clothespin screwed into the wood, connected to a circuit board small enough to have come out of a garage door opener.
He stood. The others had caught up with him. “It sends a radio signal, which means they’re close.”
Terrance shook his head. “You’re forgetting, anybody can get a signal booster these days. One of my friends flies drones; he’s got two that work off batteries.”
“Why would they have a trip wire right here?” Knox glanced around. “There’s no obvious trail.”
“There might be a perimeter line strung all along here, every few feet. If I had enough of these cheap rigs and the manpower, that’s how I’d do it.” Russ held out his hand. “Knox, take off your pack. You and Paul go in either direction and see if I’m right.”
The two split north and south, walking slowly through the brush, angled over to better scan the ground. Knox returned in five minutes, Terrance in six. “I found one. I was actually behind it.” Knox pointed in a northwesterly direction.
The ranger emerged from the brush and nodded. “Yep. I had to look farther; mine was slightly south-southeast.” He dropped his pack and retrieved the topographic map of the area. “If we assume it’s roughly circular, the center would be around here”—he pointed to an otherwise undistinguished spot—“which would be in the range of our coordinates.”
“Okay, let’s adjust our trail accordingly.” Russ peeled two small strips off one of the trip-wire trees while the others redonned their backpacks. They all stepped gingerly over the wire, and struck out toward the northeast. Now, Russ had no problem keeping the paceslow, despite the gathering late-afternoon shadows. The last thing he wanted was to stumble onto the militia unawares.
He continued stripping markers in bark as they went deeper into the wilderness. They were traversing a till plain, the relatively flat and rock-strewn remains of a glacier’s passage, so the hiking was fairly easy, despite the brittle gorse and bramble and the several half-frozen streams they had to navigate. It was the ease that worried him the most—if he were pitching camp, he’d do it in an area like this.
Finally, he called a halt to check their location against the coordinates. They gathered together while Terrance pulled out the map and spread it on the ground. Russ envied the younger two their ability to squat; he had to settle for going down on one knee. The ranger traced their path so far. “We’re getting close, Chief.”
Russ’s doubts about the coordinates were gone. Between the trip wire and the terrain, this felt right. “This is what I want to do.” He leveraged himself up and shrugged off his backpack. “I’m going to reconnoiter ahead. It’ll be easier for one of us to creep up on them. You two are going to stay here.”
Terrance stood. “This is my jurisdiction.”
