Enemy Closer, page 2
“Dude? What the hell, man?”
The beam fell on the broad wooden planks of the bridge, and in the center of it lay my dog, tail wagging once more as he nosed joyously at something roughly cat-sized between his front paws. It gave a plaintive quack and he barked in response, leaping up to bow to it in the universal doggy sign for, “Play with me!”
“You abandoned me for a duck?” I demanded. “You butthole!”
In answer, he gently picked the duck up by its neck and carried it over to where I stood, dropping it proudly at my feet. I watched it labor to its feet and then fall over again, disoriented but not sporting any obvious injuries.
“I’m not hungry.”
Dude sat down, front paws astride the bewildered bird, and gave one pointed bark.
“Come on,” I sighed. “Let’s go home already. No, leave it. Leave it.”
Another half hour brought us within sight of the cabin, warm light flooding through the windows and onto the gravel driveway. Dude, his duck offering forgotten, dashed ahead and began pawing at the door. Though just as eager as he was to get inside, I stopped at the door and faced him.
“Sitz. Bleib.”
He sat at once, eyes gleaming, and stayed put while I walked back down the driveway. I stopped several yards away before turning to face him again. Standing with my back to the dark woods was no picnic, but I ignored the impulse to look behind me.
“Komm!”
He bounded toward me, the cozy cabin all but forgotten.
“So, there is a brain in there!” I said by way of praise. “Now. Haus.”
Watching him struggle to work it out was almost more than my severe façade could take. He glanced down the driveway, straight northeast as though guided by a compass; then with a whine he glanced up at me, back down the driveway, back to me, then once at the truck next to us before finally he made up his mind and returned to the cabin.
“Good boy, good dog!”
Halfway back to the door myself, I heard something behind me and whirled around, running the beam of light over my truck and the trees that grew up to the edge of the driveway behind it. Warm pressure on my right thigh told me Dude had come to lean against me; and I felt a deep, silent growl building in his chest as he gazed toward a spot to the left of the truck.
“Hel—hello?” I stammered.
The growl rose in pitch, and Dude took one half-step forward. With a thrill of genuine fear, I saw his hackles were bristling, his teeth bared. My right hand drifted toward my Glock, but something told me retreat would be wiser than a show of force. I grabbed Dude’s collar, turned us both around, and marched toward the cabin door at double-time, too frightened to look at anything but the doorknob getting closer and closer. The door, unlocked, gave way before my trembling hand and I stumbled inside, slamming it closed behind us. The thunk of the deadbolt sliding home was music to my ears. Dude stalked to the nearest window at once, pressed his nose to the glass, and froze.
“Oh my God, could you not?”
He answered with a low growl, not at me, but at whatever he could see out there.
“Wine,” I squeaked, manically chipper. “Wine is what we need.”
I poured a generous glass, walked around the living room three times, took a sip, and then realized I was still wearing my backpack and hiking boots. Once I’d divested myself of both, I sank down onto the couch and took a second sip. My gaze was drawn inexorably to Dude, whose tail began to sweep from side to side as he continued to look through the window. Giving up on the wine, I joined him at the window and pressed my nose to the glass, too.
How long we sat staring at the rain-washed driveway I had no idea, only that I never saw anything. When my stomach gave such a mighty grumble that Dude’s ears flicked unwillingly toward me, I tore myself away from the window and wandered to the kitchen for some dinner.
A hot dinner, warm shower, and the rest of the glass of wine later, I was drifting away on the couch with Emma keeping me company, feeling silly for getting lost and almost getting eaten by a mountain lion or whatever it was. Dude, who had resumed his post as soon as the last kibble of dinner had passed his lips, had long since curled into a ball in the chair next to the door. His long snout was propped on the arm of the chair, eyes darting toward the window every few seconds.
Monday, June 22, 2020
Hesperus, Colorado
My eyes closed on that dark, rainy scene and opened onto a cabin transformed by morning. Through the east-facing windows, sunlight slanted sharply across the blank TV screen to bathe Dude in an ethereal halo of light. The great beast was snoozing peacefully in the exact position I’d last seen him, now blissfully ignorant of the threat in the woods. The cabin was chilly, but I was smothered in multiple blankets and had to throw them off to escape the heat. I stood, stretched, and winced as a sore spot in my groin reminded me I’d never removed my gun last night. I readjusted it to the side and woefully rubbed the spot where the sharp edge of the holster had been digging into my skin through the night.
This commotion roused Dude, who hopped down from the chair and began scratching at the door to go outside. I didn’t even think twice about opening the door; the freshly minted morning was the farthest thing imaginable from the horror movie scenario of the previous night. I opened the door and, intending to follow Dude outside to get a better view of the sunrise, bumped right into his ample backside. He was absorbed in something on the welcome mat; but as soon as I bumped him, he trotted off to do his business. I glanced down to see what was so interesting and saw a large, green and blue feather. Unimpressed, I tracked the dog as he cut across the driveway and into the trees behind my truck, not to do his business, but to sniff eagerly around the spot as though looking for some trace of his new arch nemesis. I took another look at the feather.
Maybe it was the way it lay on the welcome mat, perfectly centered, quill pointing east, no other feathers in sight, that gave me a tingle of unease. I picked it up gingerly and twirled it between my thumb and forefinger. I was no expert, but it sure looked like a duck feather to me. I went to see what Dude had found, if anything, unconsciously slipping the feather into my pocket. Just inside the tree line, his nose was pressed to the ground inspecting what I assumed were paw prints. They were big and deep, confirming my worst fear: mountain lion or bear, almost certainly the former considering how quiet it had been.
But as I pushed Dude away to get a better look, I realized I wasn’t looking at paw prints at all. Among the scuffs and general disarray caused by Dude’s investigation, two distinct boot prints were plainly visible in the mud, toes directed toward my front door. Either the depressions had been protected from the rain last night, or the person who made them hadn’t moved until the rain had let up—after I fell asleep.
They were large, at least size twelve, and so deep I had to marvel for a moment at the sheer size of the person wearing the shoes; or possibly I was only seeing what I wanted to see. He’d been mere feet from me in the darkness, and he’d done nothing. A slow, disbelieving smile spread across my face, and I cast around the ground nearby for more prints. The tree cover was thickest over the footprints, and a step or two in any direction lay ground that would have been more exposed to the rain. There were no other prints in sight, and I concluded it had still been raining when he’d left.
“Scheissezeit,” I mumbled, still quite distracted by the questions and possibilities running through my head. It wasn’t one of the fifteen core commands, but Dude knew what I meant. He picked his way deeper into the trees for some privacy, and I retreated to the driveway to gaze at the sunrise as originally intended.
The sun was just peeking over the top of the east ridge, dazzling me and warming the chilly morning air. I cupped a hand over my eyes and squinted down at the road, a mile or so away, which stretched twenty miles north-to-south connecting two remote Colorado state highways. A battered looking white Bronco was trundling north, kicking up a cloud of red dust in its wake. I watched until it disappeared around a slight bend in the road, thinking of my view from home.
In two years, I’d only seen a road this deserted when the president’s motorcade was out and about, and a lone SUV set out to scout the street in front of my apartment. The president’s car hadn’t even come that way. The scout had been one of dozens of SUVs sent out on every possible street they might’ve taken, but the whole block was shut down the entire day nonetheless. I wondered if the driver of the white Bronco even knew what the president looked like.
Once we got back inside, I decided to plot a course to the summit today. It seemed like a logical thing for a girl to do on her Colorado vacation. We struck out an hour after waking up, kitted out in more or less the same fashion as the day before. All I added to my gear was a poncho in my backpack, a second spare magazine, and some food, while Dude got to carry his doggy backpack laden with extra water, his own food, and a rain fly.
Dude was compelled to follow me this time, the better to forge a trail to the top that didn’t double back on itself ninety-two times. I built a cairn right where we left the gravel of the driveway, picked a spot uphill at the limit of my sight line, and climbed up to it to build another cairn. From the second cairn, I looked back to make sure I could still see the first. The unlikely arrangement of stacked rocks stood out surprisingly well against its disordered backdrop. I had no idea if this were the correct cairn-building procedure, but it seemed fairly idiot-proof to me.
The problem became that the higher up we got, the wilder the land became. Within a thousand feet of the cabin, the ground had been tamped down in a handful of fairly logical upward courses, all crisscrossing one another. After that, we were dealing with truly untouched woods. I lost count of how many cairns I built, only to trudge back and knock them over when the path ahead proved to be a dead end. At 10:00, when I estimated we should have been halfway to the top, my altimeter read 9,301 feet. I couldn’t believe it—three hours to hike less than 2,000 feet. Granted, we were stopping and backtracking frequently, but that was still dismal progress.
While I sat on a flat rock and mulled this over, Dude paced back and forth in front of me, eager to get moving again. By contrast, I was out of breath and slightly dizzy. I hadn’t counted on feeling the altitude this much, another stupid mistake. My apartment was literally eighty feet above sea level: I gained five percent in elevation just by getting out of bed in the morning. My body was spoiled rotten with oxygen in Washington.
I forced down an energy bar and as much water as I could stomach before setting out again. If this was to be our pace, I couldn’t waste any more time sitting around feeling puny.
Though my self-imposed task became more arduous with each cairn, Dude and I finally gained the summit just before 5:00. Exhausted as I was, I had to admit the view from the top made it all worth it. We were about one hundred feet above the tree line, at the highest point for ten or twelve miles in any direction. The air was thin and cool, and thankfully no clouds had formed to threaten me with rain and lightning. Behind me, to the west, the slope of the mountain was significantly steeper. To the north and south, its spine rose and fell to form a number of false peaks, all below the tree line.
I stood on top of the world, surveying my domain, basking in the glow of conquest. The feeling was so heady I found myself laughing in disbelief, recalling with perfect clarity how the land had almost swallowed me up less than twenty-four hours ago.
Even with his boundless energy, Dude was tired, too. He laid down near my feet and rested his head in his paws, gazing out at the scene with what I imagined was satisfaction.
I gave him some water and wet dog food, his prize for sticking with me all the way to the top. For my own prize I forced down another disgusting protein bar and an entire bottle of water, chasing it with a pouch of energy supplement that was essentially just flavored syrup. It wasn’t much of a reward, but I knew I’d need to really hoof it to get back to the cabin. Even if we started now and practically ran down the mountain, there was no chance we’d get back before it was fully dark outside. The prospect was uninviting to say the least, but the alternative—hunkering down, tentless, somewhere between the summit and the cabin and waiting for daylight—was worse.
A few more minutes up there wouldn’t make any difference, so I sat down and explored the eastern slope of the mountain with my eyes, comparing it to the images from Google Earth I’d studied before coming to Colorado.
I could pick out neither my cabin nor the meadow above it that I’d used as a shooting gallery. The denser, greener vegetation along the creek was my only point of reference. Beyond that, the scene compressed by my distance from it, the county road snaked its way along roughly the same course as the creek. Turning to the south, I could barely discern a patch of bright blue nestled among the trees on the adjoining property: Ernest and Doreen Perkins, who I knew lived in a cabin with a blue metal roof. I turned north, wondering if I could spot any other structures, but the shoulders of the mountain were so high I couldn’t see as far. There was something, though…
I stood up automatically, as though that would help me see better. Without binoculars, all I could do was cup a hand over my eyes and squint down at the tiny group of right angles and straight lines that hinted at some kind of man-made structure. I couldn’t tell how big it was or even what it was, but I knew it wasn’t nothing. I glanced back at the blue roof, then at the road, picking out a spot to the north of the roof and west of the road to approximate the location of my cabin. The mystery structure was about a mile to the northwest of it, I guessed; and it certainly had not appeared on Google Earth. The satellite images had borne a two-year-old watermark, meaning either the structure was newer than that, or I had missed it when I was virtually exploring the area.
Dude stood, stretched languidly, and leaned against my thigh. I could feel his eagerness to get moving again, and it fueled my own. We had lingered long enough.
I extracted the paper map from my backpack and hastily marked down the location of the structure, or rather my best guess given the roughness of my estimates and lack of absolute points of reference. With that done, we began our descent.
The six hours it should have taken us to make the ascent were compressed to five on the way down, so much faster was our pace. My system of cairns worked beautifully, and I was understandably impressed with myself. Nevertheless, the sun set when we were only halfway down, and darkness followed close on its heels. The last two hours of the trip were made in total darkness, broken only by the beam of my flashlight. To distract myself from what would have been crippling fear, I put together a game plan for tomorrow. I’d sleep in for sure, as the hike in search of my mystery structure would be more of a stroll compared to today. I wouldn’t need to carry much, and I’d have to conceal my handgun. Every detail had to be just right, just in case I found the man who made those footprints.
Not until we’d entered the cabin and I’d closed the door behind us did I allow myself to feel the fear that had pursued me down the mountain.
“That was so stupid,” I breathed, pressing my hands to the comforting, if insufficient, barrier of the locked door. “So, so, so stupid.”
But we had done it. I could chide myself some more, but my heart wasn’t in it. Now that we’d regained the relative safety of the cabin and the fear was just a memory, I was supremely pleased with myself.
I wasn’t tired anymore, either. After a quick shower, I whipped up a calorie fest for dinner: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and of course a glass of wine. I popped Jurassic Park into the VHS player, gave Dude an extra-large dinner, and settled onto the couch; then I fell asleep with my dinner forgotten on the coffee table.
Tuesday, June 23 to Thursday, June 25, 2020
Hesperus, Colorado
When I woke up, several minutes passed in utter disorientation while I tried to remember where I was and why. Never in my life had I slept such a deep, undisturbed sleep; I felt as though a year, or perhaps only a few minutes had passed since I’d closed my eyes. My whole body ached, but in a good way; and my throat was as dry as though I’d polished off an entire bottle of wine rather than pouring and then forgetting a single glass of it. I stumbled to the kitchen for water, which was Dude’s signal to start scratching at the door.
“Please don’t let me sleep on that couch again tonight,” I implored him as I let him outside. I made coffee and surveyed the disaster state in which I’d left the kitchen. Cleaning up my mess would take an hour or more, but I didn’t feel like cleaning. Maybe, I thought as I caught sight of my spotlessly clean plate on the coffee table, I’d let Dude clean it up. Good thing I’d opted for boneless chicken.
I couldn’t take him with me today. As comforting as it would be to have him by my side, the danger to him was too great. I would just have to look after myself.
With this sobering thought, I abjured the kitchen cleanup and started getting ready for a much shorter hike than the day before. In addition to the usual hiking clothes, I fastened an oversized flannel shirt around my waist under which to hide the Glock holstered behind my right hip. It was reasonably concealed by the folds of plaid flannel, but drawing it from such deep concealment would take at least twice as long as normal.
Finally, I reduced my backpack’s contents to lessen the weight, opting for a bottle of water, my useless cell phone, a granola bar, and a can of bear spray. When I stepped outside around 10:00 to begin my search for the mystery structure, I felt positively naked.
