Текст книги "Poisoned Soil"

Автор книги: Tim Young

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

The dark green vegetation and black floor sucked up any light that managed to leak through the forest canopy. Jesse squinted to see, staying close to the sound of the bubbling brook, but discerned nothing. No rock overhangs, no caves...no Ramada Inns! The walls on each side of the creek slope began to steepen and the creek slowly increased its flow, a good sign, Jesse thought. But the storm approached, and as it did the wind moaned fiercely through the ravine Jesse entered. The wind howled and sounded somewhat like owls, but more and more it sounded to Jesse like—

Hushed whispers?

As Jesse walked something trailed softly across his cheeks. He swatted and found his head covered with tentacles, fingers...something sliding over his face and ears. He hobbled quickly through the fluttering vines that descended from trees above. “Jesus!” Jesse tried to compose himself and shake the feeling of spiderwebs and vines as his heart began to pummel his chest. Light faded to twilight as he forged ahead, able to see mere feet in front of him.

A monumental crack of thunder arrived with a terrific flash of lighting that brightly illuminated the forest, momentarily blinding Jesse, but not before...

“What was that?” he asked.

What? Did you see something?

“You know I did, just over there. What the hell was it? Something big and white!”

Jesse tried to decide if he was now hallucinating. He felt sure that the lightning illuminated something odd in the forest, no more than sixty yards from him, high up the left slope of the ravine. Something that seemed out of place. “I know I saw something there,” he said aloud in an effort to reassure himself. In the chill of darkness he knew he’d never make it out of the woods that night. His only hope was to find shelter and make it until morning. He believed that what he thought he had seen might just be his ticket out.

***

The ravenous coyote pressed his black nose to the leaf and flared his nostrils as he inhaled the intoxicating scent of fresh blood. His three pack mates yelped wildly around him. Blood, not carrion, not yet. Only fresh blood, but where there was blood there was a wound, and where there was wound there was chase and then dinner. He knew that this was no woodchuck. It would be a big dinner. A feast.

The alpha male lifted his head from the ground and craned his neck to the skies. A prehistoric ghostly howl ascended from his soul to the heavens, inciting his lieutenants to moan a harmonious alarm to any nearby creatures in the darkening forest, especially to the one bleeding. To that injured soul it was a summons to surrender and give himself back to the mountain, to the soil.

They each took a turn sniffing the leaf, imprinting the scent of the target as they scampered and paced around the blood, riling each other up as surely as a quarterback boisterously slams a teammate’s shoulder pads before attacking an opposing defense.

There was no denying who had earned the alpha male role in this pack. His bushy tail was as thick as a man’s arm and resembled a furry club when held horizontal to the ground if he felt threatened or challenged. His eyes, the iris an ancient amber the shade of wet, Egyptian sand, encircled deathly black pupils the size of forest acorns. When challenged, he took on a wild appearance. He seemed able to command every mane hair to stand erect, looking like an agitated porcupine as he spread his ears, narrowed his menacing eyes, and opened his mouth to flash his most terrifying weapons. By simply opening his mouth and snarling, he invoked more fear than his counterparts did when they snapped their jaws loudly. His lower incisors, a single spear on each side of his mouth, rose like two pillars framing the entrance to hell. The razor-sharp crescent moons curved up to meet the upper incisors on each side that served as enamel nails sealing the doorframe. In preparation for battle, saliva dripped from his fangs and suspended in a thread that made him seem even more menacing, if that was possible. His scowl cinched back his upper lip, allowing a serrated row of teeth to protrude that filled the gap between his upper incisors. He was not to be tested.

The alpha male easily picked up the trail of blood that had spilled and spattered on the occasional leaf in an unwavering line leading down the slope. He trotted in that direction as quickly as he could while remaining certain of the trail. The pack followed closely, anticipating a successful hunt.

Three hundred yards ahead, Ozzie rested against a yellow poplar. The sun hung low in the sky and light began to wane sharply, owing in part to the ominous clouds that obscured the sun and hovered gloomily over Ozzie. He was utterly exhausted after trekking miles in the overgrown forest, up, down, over and around, all the while being chased. Now his injured body required rest as much as water. But those were not the thoughts on his mind. As he leaned against the tree, unable to fully comprehend the meaning of approaching coyotes that serenaded his subconscious, his mind focused on Isabella. There she was, with Ozzie, strolling together in the woods, eating wild blueberries, finding mushrooms, presenting her warm and loving shoulder for Ozzie to rest against. That’s where Ozzie was at that moment. In his mind he wasn’t against a tree; rather, he was against the warmth of his mother’s love and protection.

The alpha male was getting close enough to allow a celebratory yelp that sent the others into a mood of maniacal celebration. He had detected a new smell a few moments before. Smoke. Burning. It was of no concern to him as it was beyond his target, and was a smell he detected from time to time. Ozzie, too, had picked up on the smell of smoke and burning and he was blindly heading toward it. Now he was close, very close he felt, but he could go no farther tonight. He would rest there, against his mother, and let the night rejuvenate him.

The alpha male almost skidded to a stop atop a hill crest. In the entirety of the forest, with all its trees, creatures, leaves, and pine cones, he zeroed in on a singular target, bleeding and resting against a tree forty yards in front of him. A tree close to the stream that they had been following before they had stumbled upon the blood trail. There he was, down, weak and theirs for the taking. The pack charged and communicated with each other with a primordial telephony that instructed them to spread out, circle the tree and enclose the target.

Ozzie looked up the slope. His gaze, lost in a daydream of Isabella’s face, dissolved into the forest floor as her eyes gave way to two beasts charging his way. Beasts with jaws wide open, teeth flashing and narrow, penetrating predatory eyes. Adrenaline jolted Ozzie to his feet. He stood, paralyzed; only his head seemed able to move as he looked left, then right, as a circle of beasts danced around him as surely as the moon orbits the earth. They moved in a blur, making the circle seem impenetrable.

A flash of lightning lit up the forest and bounced off the coyote’s eyes and reflected their crazed looks to Ozzie. Thunder crashed loudly and shook the forest. The fear Ozzie hoped had receded for the night reemerged as the circle of fur moved faster and came ever closer, somehow moving concentrically and closing in. Ozzie spun around as he tried to see each and every one of them, but they were fast. So fast! And Ozzie was tired, so tired. He just wanted it to all to be over. He wanted to sleep.

The eyes of the alpha male caught Ozzie’s eyes and held him in a trance the way Dracula hypnotizes his victims with his stare. The gaze was broken by searing pain, a sharp bite to Ozzie’s side that had opened and enlarged his wound as it spilled more blood on the dank forest floor. Ozzie jerked around. His mind was no longer in control as his body reacted helplessly and fought to survive. The coyote’s jaws were dripping with blood, Ozzie’s blood, as it raced off to rejoin the circle.

Another bite from his rear, this time on an upper leg. Then another, always from the rear, Ozzie kept turning to ward off attacks from behind. As he did, he constantly presented a new flank to the next in line. He was weakening fast and couldn’t fend them off. Somehow he knew it. He needed time...he needed to block the rear, to keep them in front of him and in his line of sight. Sitting against the poplar and letting the tree block his rear seemed the answer.

The pack yelped and barked louder than ever, loud enough to awaken any souls that had ever cursed this land. Another boom of thunder, then another in succession as the storm closed in on Ozzie. Collapsing at the base of the tree, Ozzie plopped down as the alpha male stood before him, charging and snapping at his feet. Retreating and charging. The others circled the tree and ran to the leader at the top of the circle before reversing direction and circling the other way, but so far the tree protected—

Sharp pain emerged from Ozzie’s left shoulder as a starving coyote reached around the tree and inflicted a serious, bone crushing bite. He tried to get up as he realized that the tree had failed him, but he couldn’t rise. There was too much fatigue, too much thirst, too little breath, and too little resolve to mount another defense. The seconds seemed an eternity to Ozzie as he faded, his head bobbing and no longer able to see the forest or the predators. Now he saw only Eduardo’s eyes, his father lying dead in the mud, calling to him. Come with me son. Let go of your pain.

Ozzie felt a wave wash away his pain as a final thunderous clap exploded right before him. The jolt pried his leaden eyelids open once more to see his hunter, the alpha male, staring into his eyes as a thread of saliva suspended from his fangs. Then, the coyote’s legs collapsed as he crashed motionless to the ground at Ozzie’s feet. Ozzie’s eyelids sank again and he drifted away.

***

Jesse used his makeshift walking cane to press away from the creek, and began hobbling up the hill to the target he thought he had seen. “Sixty yards. I can make it,” he said, encouraging himself to press on with each slow and torturous step. The wind had calmed momentarily. There was nothing other than the sound of his left foot planting followed by his cane swishing through the leaves. Each step about half a yard, over one hundred steps to go. Plant and swish, plant and swish. The beat was slow, but constant. Jesse stared only right in front of him. There was no need to look elsewhere, as the darkness gave him a circle of no more than ten feet to discern his surroundings.

He planted his left foot and prepared to move his cane, but a deep depression was right where his cane would have planted. He held the cane off the ground but, to his shock, he heard the sound of a walking stick swish through leaves anyway. It wasn’t his stick. The sound came from above, just to his left. His heart stopped, his skin grew cold and clammy. He needed to calm himself...of course he hadn’t heard that.

But, you did.

Jesse didn’t answer and was scared to make a sound in the darkness. “Just find shelter,” he mumbled to himself.

He planted the cane to the side of the depression and stepped forward, stopping only to listen. Nothing, save the sound he himself had made. He took two steps this time, trying to increase the pace on the second step and then stop suddenly so he could listen intently. Nothing, other than his heartbeat thumping loudly. Five steps this time at a steady pace, then a sixth step that ended with a support tree to Jesse’s left, allowing him to stop abruptly there without lowering his cane. A half swish from his left, maybe twenty feet away, followed a second later by the snapping of a small twig, as if someone’s feet were repositioned.

“Shit!” Jesse said to himself, his mouth drier than an August cotton field in drought.

The wind growled and crept out of the mountain’s ghastly soul as it crossed the slope from his left. And the whispers came again, ghostly whispers saying something, saying nothing. As if every language ever spoken on this land had morphed into a forest opera of hushed voices speaking at once, commingling their words into a haunted stew.

Leave us, suffer, D-E-A-T-H—that’s what I heard.

Jesse took the next step, his cane trembling violently as he moved and planted it. He tried to ignore the whispers and the howls as he moved his cane forward.

A brilliant flash of lightning jolted Jesse. Fear thrust his eyes wide open, turned his head left toward the footsteps he was sure he had heard. He saw nothing but—

He turned his head in front of him, catching the last of the lightning reflect off the target he pursued only a dozen yards away. It was bright white. An erect structure of some kind, tall, like a building in the woods. Definitely something that didn’t belong. His head jerked back left toward—what was it he had seen? There was no one there, he was sure of that, a realization that allowed an audible sigh. But he had seen something.

Did you see that hideous walking stick leaning against the tree? The one with the gnarly root spikes on top?

Jesse’s mouth opened, his breath stopped. He HAD seen it, a thick walking stick leaning against the tree with a spiky head. But, it couldn’t have been...there was no one there. There couldn’t be anyone there. He shook his head, prayed silently and aloud, using the words of the Lord’s prayer to silence the ghostly sounds. Step, swish.

“Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Step, Swish. Step, swish. The cadence of the beat increased until Jesse was within feet of his destination. He still couldn’t make it out, but it was indeed white, the brightest beacon in the forest and at least twice his height. Maybe three times. He walked to it and placed his hands upon its smooth surface. Clank, clank, Jesse knocked gently on the object. “Metal? Here, in the forest. Metal?” Cloud-to-cloud lightning ignited the sky, allowing enough light to filter through the opening in the canopy above for Jesse to make it out.

“What the...an airplane? How the hell did...”

Jesse felt his way around the airplane, the image of its orientation imprinted firmly in his mind’s eye due to the brief illumination, like a freshly snapped Polaroid developing slowly. It was nose down, tail up, and wings extending from underneath the fuselage were still intact, somehow, spreading out at about the height of his chest. He made his way to the passenger side and found that the door was spread wide open. The plane wasn’t perfectly vertical. Rather, it was closer to a forty-five-degree angle and rested against a large tree that supported it from behind.

“Just get inside and close the door,” Jesse told himself. Jesse stumbled around the front, unable to see anything in the blackness. His hands moved slowly over the twisted propeller and trembled as they rounded the nose. He limped through the brush, following his hands until his hip crashed into the support arm of the passenger side wing. Jesse reached up for the passenger door.

And then he heard it.

Jesse froze, his spine stiffening tightly as he heard the most terrifying sound he had ever heard, that anyone had ever heard. A chilling, screaming cry from the depths below him that sounded just like a woman screaming. No, a child crying...something in between. And it was so close, down the slope near the stream where he had first seen the plane.

“Jesus! What the hell was that? Oh Jesus!”

You don’t know what that is? Why that’s nothing but a panther.

Jesse’s voice trembled as he argued with the voice. “Isn’t! There are not any panthers around here.”

Well that thing that’s not a panther, it’s coming this way, Jesse.

Jesse grabbed the trailing edge of the right wing and struggled to pull himself up to the door. Again, a bloodcurdling scream that sounded humanlike, but not human. Wind howled too menacingly for Jesse to hear anything else. He pulled himself up on the support and threw his legs over the fixed landing gear that was interwoven with a tree limb, trying not to put weight on his right foot. His cane fell to the ground, but that was the least of his concerns.

The wind quieted, the sound replaced by thrashing leaves being scattered by footfalls, something rising up from the stream headed his way. The thing that was not a panther. Jesse grabbed the inside of the plane and pulled himself up and in. He scurried to the back seat, using the back of the front seats as his floorboard, and pushed back with his good leg as far removed from the forest floor as he could get. The wind howled again, but only the wind. No voices and no screams. Jesse sat, unflinching, afraid to move and afraid to breath. A loud creaking sound moaned from Jesse’s right, the sound of the tree limb wrestling with the landing gear, forming a bridge between the fuselage and the tree.

“Saved! Oh thank God! If I stay in here, I’ll be all right. Just stay put.”

Sounds good to me, champ.

As he took a moment to calm himself and catch his breath in the safety of the cabin, Jesse couldn’t believe what had happened. He was in a forest so remote, so expansive, that even a downed airplane couldn’t be found. And yet, he had somehow come across it. His heart sank as he realized it meant he was lost in a place that even searchers couldn’t find when they were trying to.

“Maybe there’s a flashlight or something in here! Maybe even a gun!” Jesse moved his hand on the seat cushion, finding nothing since the plane had nosedived at such an angle. He felt along the floorboard and found nothing of substance, only some papers. He slid between the two front seats, his hand finding the throttle for balance. Jesse pulled his legs through and planted his left foot on the instrument panel just above the left yoke. Now completely in the front of the cabin, he felt along the floor. In the black chill of night he concentrated on what his finger tips were telling him. He traced smooth, knobby limbs that must have—

He paused and slowly moved his fingers along the surface of the limb he held until he came to the end and felt four long, cold, jointed extremities.

“SHIT!”

Jesse jerked back, trying to compose himself, realizing that whoever had flown this plane head first into the ground was still here with him, or at least his remains were. His heart felt as if it would beat completely out of his chest. He was sure that any creature around would be able to hear it.

Something did.

The most bone-chilling scream imaginable rose from just beneath him. The sound of claws scraping against metal raked slowly across the underside of the fuselage. Jesse groped, feeling for something, for anything. He felt along the floor on the passenger side and found something hard...headphones, he thought, as he tossed them aside. He continued rummaging in a panic and grabbed something oblong, somewhat round. He placed his fingers in three openings positioned like eyes on a bowling ball, only–.

“A fucking skull! Shit!” Jesse shrieked as he dropped the skull and shut his eyes, fighting through his terror. He continued to feel around for something useful, but found nothing but bones. He felt along the dashboard and raised his hands to the windshield, which was still largely intact. There he found fabric, a bag of some sort. He detected pockets along its side and a zipper on top. The pockets had papers...maps he assumed. A flight bag! Jesse tore open the zipper and fumbled inside feeling for anything hard. A gun, a flashlight. Anything. His fingers went to the bottom of the bag and felt something very cold and very hard. About six inches long, tubular. A fingertip felt for a switch, finding it. “A flashlight!” he said. He pulled it out and pushed the switch, but the light didn’t respond.

“Damn it...c’mon!”

He smacked the light against his hand as he always did when trying to coax more life out of a dying remote control. He switched it on and a light flickered forth. His hands quaked violently as he steered the flashlight to his left. In the utter darkness, the light reflected brightly off the glass and plunged him into momentary blindness, but not before an image of what was reflected in the glass burned into his mind’s eye. Two glowing orbs. Only, he hadn’t seen them through the glass. No. They were reflected by the glass. Behind him!

As his vision returned he swung the flashlight around to the passenger door and reached for the handle, remembering only now that it still hung open. There, glowing in the blackness were two slits, yellow eyes, each the size of a silver dollar, perched on the branch at the door’s entrance.

The night yielded one final blood-curdling scream, and it came from Jesse.