Dark Sky, page 21
part #21 of Joe Pickett Series
Keeping right on the tracks of Joe and Price would get harder by the hour.
Earl zipped up. This wasn’t working out as he’d planned it. If everything had fallen into place—if Joe hadn’t screwed everything up—he and his sons would have been down the mountain by now and loading their horses into trailers. They’d be back in their homes long before anyone realized Price and his party were missing. It would take days and possibly even weeks or months for investigators to come up with a theory of what happened—if they ever did. All evidence of Price and the hunting party should have been buried or obscured, and the winter weather would bury the terrain in heavy snow within a month. Predators would feed on the bodies and scatter the bones. All the physical evidence that the hunting party had even been up here—the gear and supplies—were all packed away on the string of horses that Brad led.
Eventually, somebody might find some exposed human bones. Or maybe not.
Earl knew he and his sons had only a few hours left to catch Price and take care of him once and for all. Joe didn’t know these mountains as well as Earl—no one did—but Joe certainly knew if he kept well ahead and continued to the west that he’d eventually hit a logging road or the trailhead itself.
Kirby moved his horse closer to Earl and said, “You know, we probably ought to do a post from Price. His followers are going to start to wonder what the hell happened to him.”
Earl made a face. “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do that.”
“Well, give me his phone and I’ll do it.”
“I don’t have his phone.”
“Shit,” Kirby said. “We must have left it with Joannides. That was a dumb move.”
Earl said with irritation, “I wish you’d said something back then. It don’t help much bringing it up now.”
“He put the phone in his pocket just before I cut him.” Kirby shrugged. “I just now thought about it.”
“Fuck—another complication. We’ll have to go back and find the body later and get that phone back,” Earl said. “We can’t leave evidence like that around.”
Kirby grunted and sighed.
* * *
—
As Earl pulled himself back up into the saddle, Brad moaned. It was a plaintive cry. Earl thought he sounded like an exhausted or severely wounded bird dog.
“Muh fuggin’ mouf huts,” Brad said.
“What?” Earl asked. “I can’t understand you.”
“He said his fucking mouth hurts,” Kirby said, translating. Kirby had always been able to understand the words his older brother said, especially when they were very young and Brad had a speech impediment that later was improved by therapy. Translating for Brad came naturally to Kirby.
“Ah,” Earl said. Then to Brad: “Suck it up. You’ll be fine.”
Brad moaned again and Kirby said, “He sounds like Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies. You know, the Wookiee.”
Earl reached into his parka and pulled out his headlamp and turned it on. He kept it in his hand and raised the beam to Brad’s face.
His older son winced at the light and painfully turned his head. Earl could see the tiny hole in Brad’s face through his dense beard. The bullet had entered two inches below his left cheekbone and obviously shattered his jawbone on that side.
Brad leaned forward in the saddle and spit out a gob into the snow that consisted of dark blood with fragments of shattered teeth or bone.
“It huts,” he said.
“Well, hang in there,” Earl said, clicking off the lamp and dropping it back into his pocket. “I’ve seen worse.”
He turned in his saddle toward Kirby. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” Kirby said through clenched teeth. He rode hunched over, with his arms tight to his sides and his head bent forward. “It hurts to breathe, though.”
“Where’d he hit you?”
“The lungs, I think. Or maybe just short of the lungs. I taste blood every now and then. It’s hard to breathe.”
“Can you keep going?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really,” Earl said. “I’ve got to say, Joe surprised me. He’s feistier than he looks. Where do you suppose he got that gun?”
Kirby shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably found it somewhere in that cabin.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“I seed id,” Brad slurred. “Id was a fuckin’ siggle-shot dwendy-doo. A piece of shid.”
“What did he say?” Earl asked Kirby.
“He said it was a fucking single-shot twenty-two. A piece-of-shit gun.”
“Ah, well. It did the trick, though,” Earl said. “It sounds like the first rifle my daddy—your granddaddy—gave me. It’s a good thing he didn’t have a real weapon.”
Brad moaned something.
Earl said, “You don’t need to try to talk, Brad. You sound simple when you do.”
“He is simple,” Kirby said. “He should have let Brock come out on his own. If he had, this would all be over.”
“Fug you,” Brad said.
“That I got,” Earl responded. “He’s got a point.”
Brad looked sharply away. Earl was familiar with the gesture. Brad was angry and hurt.
“Jus’ cuz you cain’t fug her no mo’,” Brad said.
Earl froze. “What did you say?”
“She’s god. Your liddle Princess. You’re puddin’ us frew dis ’cause you cain’t fug her no mo’.”
Earl turned to Kirby.
Kirby hesitated a moment. His face was ashen, and Earl was pretty sure it wasn’t from his injury.
“Kirby, what did he say?”
“He said, ‘Just because you can’t fuck her anymore, you’re putting us through all of this.’”
Kirby’s tone wasn’t sarcastic or mocking like it usually was, Earl noted. Kirby said the words cautiously.
“Are you sure he said that?” Earl asked.
“Yes.”
Earl wheeled in his saddle and hit Brad with the butt of his rifle in his shattered jaw. Brad cried out and fell to the ground beside his horse with a heavy crash.
Earl was on him in seconds, moving faster than he had in years, and he brought the rifle butt down again and again, even though Brad managed to parry a few of the blows. Brad lay on his back with his knees in the air and his arms out in front of his face. He didn’t try to fight back. All Earl could see was the massive form of his son writhing through a curtain of red.
“Dad, stop it,” Kirby cried out. “You’re killing him.”
Earl saw an opening between Brad’s forearms and slammed the rifle butt through it and into his chest. Brad wheezed and rolled over to his side, exposing the side of his neck.
Earl took aim and raised the rifle when Kirby shouted, “Dad, stop it!” Kirby sounded panicked, which was unusual for his second son.
Earl hesitated. He was out of breath and the red curtain faded away. Brad groaned beneath his feet and turned his bloody head toward him. His expression reminded Earl of the last look from a severely wounded animal before he cut its throat. The look was dispassionate and almost understanding in regard to what was about to happen.
Instead, Earl spun the rifle around and lowered the muzzle until it was pressed against the flesh of Brad’s forehead. His son’s eyes were white and wide and they stared stupidly up at him.
“Do not ever say anything like that to me again,” Earl said calmly.
“I won’d,” Brad replied. He sounded like he was gargling at the same time.
“If you do, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”
Brad blinked his agreement and his understanding.
Earl turned on his heel and walked away to cool down. As he did, he glanced over his shoulder. Kirby had dismounted and was helping Brad get to his feet. Brad staggered and Kirby held him up and tried to steady him. They embraced for a moment and then pulled away so they could look into each other’s eyes. Something passed between them, something unsaid.
Earl fought an urge to turn, raise his rifle, and shoot them both down.
For the thousandth time in the last year, he asked himself why Sophia had been taken away from him, leaving these two in her place.
The guilt he felt about Sophia was paralyzing to him at times. It wasn’t her fault, it was his. He recalled her firmness, her smell, her blond hair, her innocence. The fact that she was the only female in the house after his wife left him. Her realization that what he asked of her was wrong, and his pledge to her to stop, now that she was older.
But before he could follow through on that pledge, Steve-2 Price had intruded, and he’d taken her away from him. Before he could make things right.
* * *
—
After he’d walked it off and wiped tears from his eyes no one would ever see, Earl returned to his sons and the horses. No one said a word.
This was how a Thomas male dealt with things, Earl thought: by not addressing them once the storm had passed. It had served them well over the years.
Earl mounted up and said, “We better get going if we’re going to find that asshole.”
“What about Joe?” Kirby asked.
“Fuck him,” Earl said. “He didn’t have to protect that prick or shoot either one of you. What happens, happens. He brought this on himself.”
“Fuggin’ ride,” Brad replied.
Brad was back in the fold, Earl thought. Kirby, he wasn’t as sure about.
TWENTY-TWO
The Vibram sole of Joe’s boot slipped off the icy surface of a perfectly round river rock in the dark and he lost his balance and performed a clumsy dance from rock to rock, his arms windmilling, until he hurtled away from the creek as if launched and hit face-first into the trunk of a spruce tree, where he collapsed in a jumble of arms, legs, and the J. C. Higgins Sears and Roebuck Model 41.
He found himself sitting down with his back to the trunk and his legs spread as bright yellow spangles passed across his vision like so many electric clouds.
“Wow,” Price said from where he’d been stepping from rock to rock on the creek bed. “That was quite a spectacular crash.”
Then, after a beat: “Are you okay?”
Joe closed his eyes, but the spangles didn’t quit. He did a mental assessment of his limbs and torso. Nothing broken, he didn’t think. He reached up and touched the growing goose egg above his right eyebrow with the tips of his fingers. He didn’t feel any blood.
“I’m okay, sort of,” he said. “But I need a minute.”
“You’re not the only one,” Price said. The man carefully negotiated the river rocks and joined Joe beneath the tree. Price sat down heavily and sighed. Both men simply breathed in and out, in and out, resting while their lungs stopped burning from exhaustion.
To avoid leaving tracks in the snow, Joe had led them down the middle of the small unnamed creek. It was treacherous footing made worse by the darkness. Joe’s left sock was soaked through from an earlier mishap when his foot had glanced off a slick rock and plunged into a small pool up to his knee. Icy water had poured in over the top of his waterproof boot and it now squished with the sound of a wet kiss when he walked. Under any other circumstance, Joe would have stopped to dry out his sock before proceeding. But he couldn’t afford to do that now.
“I can’t believe you didn’t fall down until you hit that tree,” Price said. “I wish I’d had my phone to get a video of it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“How long can we rest before we have to get going again?”
“I’m not resting. I’m waiting for my vision to clear.”
“You know what I mean.”
“The answer is, not long.”
“How far do you think they’re behind us?”
“No idea. But I’d guess thirty minutes at most.”
Price let his head rock back out of frustration, but he hit it on the trunk and it made a hollow sound.
“Ouch.”
* * *
—
Joe was exhausted from running, from trying to see which rocks to step on in the creek bed in the pale light of the stars, from lack of food, and from lack of sleep. The muscles in his legs buzzed warm from the effort at the moment, but he knew they’d stiffen and get cold if he sat too long. His left foot could freeze.
Although he could feel that the morning would dawn warmer than the day before and be more in line with typical fall weather, it was still cold out. The sheen of sweat on his skin beneath his base layer was starting to cool as well.
Hypothermia was curling back its lips and exposing its sharp teeth.
Joe grunted and willed himself to stand up. The constant movement had kept him warm. To pause too long was to freeze and die.
Price did the same, using the tree trunk to stand, but he whimpered as he did so. Joe looked over and saw the glint of the starlight on the shaft of the spear that still protruded from Price’s shoulder next to his neck. In all that had transpired, Joe had forgotten about it.
“Does that hurt?” Joe asked. He could see the barbed tip on the front of the shaft sticking out of Price’s back and an inch or so of the butt of it in front.
“It does.”
“You’ve been pretty stoic about it,” Joe said with admiration.
“Thank you. It’s probably because every inch of me hurts,” Price said. “This is just another thing.”
“I could pull it out, but I left my first-aid kit in my daypack back at the cabin. I’m afraid if I pulled it through, it would bleed and I couldn’t stop the flow.”
“I’ve got a first-aid kit,” Price said.
“What? You do?”
Price patted the front pocket of his high-tech cargo pants. “I’ve had it with me the whole time.”
“What else do you have on you?” Joe asked.
“My headlamp. It’s in the other pocket.”
Joe whistled, and said, “Give ’em both to me. I’ll get it done as quickly and painlessly as I can.”
“Maybe we should just leave it in there for now,” Price said. “I’ll be the only tech guy in the boardroom with a spear sticking out of him. That’ll really give me some more cred and grow the legend.”
Joe smiled. “What if it snags on a branch while you’re trying to get away? That could really screw you up.”
“Good point,” Price said glumly.
“We need to get it out. Your shoulder is probably still numb, but it’ll hurt like hell tomorrow.”
“I just hope there is a tomorrow,” Price said.
Joe slipped the headlamp over the crown of his hat, turned it on, and focused the beam in tight. The barbs on the point were two spring-loaded bends of steel that curled up from the spear. If he tried to pull it through from the front, they would do an enormous amount of damage.
As Joe studied the wound and tried to figure out the easiest way to extract the spear, Price said, “Do you know what I’ve been doing while I’ve been following you in the dark?”
Joe shook his head.
“I’ve been praying to God to help me get out of this. I’ve been saying in my head, ‘God, if you’re up there, please help me get home. Please help Joe and give him wisdom. If I get out of this, I’ll devote my life to good works.’ I’ve kind of got a mantra going. I repeat it over and over to myself. My mantra is ‘Help me God and I’ll never let you down again. Help me God and I’ll never let you down again.’”
“Good for you, if it helps,” Joe said.
“I think it does. If nothing else, it gets my mind off of this situation we’re in. It must be easier for you with your deep well of faith.”
“Honestly, it’s more like a pail of faith,” Joe confessed. “But it’s interesting you’re thinking that way.”
“We’ll see,” Price said. “The jury is still out on this God thing. It’s new to me. This is just the beta version.”
“Please turn around,” Joe said.
Price winced, then did so. He said, “Just tell me when you—”
With no warning and as swiftly as he could, Joe grasped the shaft just behind the barbed tip and pulled the spear straight through Price’s shoulder. Price reacted with a swift intake of breath and his legs wobbled. Joe tossed the spear aside and helped steady Price by holding him up in a bear hug from behind.
“Done,” Joe said into Price’s ear. “Are you okay?”
“I was about to say, tell me just before you do that so I can get ready. You could have given me some warning.”
“I could have,” Joe said, stepping back and tearing open the first square-gauze package with his teeth.
“You’ve done this before,” Price said.
“I have a few times.”
“I think I can feel it bleeding.”
“That’s good. You’re less likely to get tetanus or any other kind of infection if it bleeds out.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do. I get hurt a lot,” Joe replied. “And you have no idea how many hooks and flies I’ve taken out of fishermen over the years. It’s best to do it fast.”
Price nodded.
“Now take your shirt off so I can put compresses on the wounds and tape it up.”
* * *
—
While Price buttoned up his shirt, Joe retrieved the spear he’d dropped and stuck it into his waistband beneath his belt. He didn’t want to leave it behind for the Thomas clan to find. Plus, any potential weapon might be useful.
Before turning it off, he ran the beam of the headlamp over the .22 rifle to make sure the muzzle wasn’t blocked by mud and that the bolt action was clean. He ejected the single cartridge and studied it, hoping he could tell by looking at it if it would misfire. He couldn’t determine anything and he put the cartridge back in and secured it by working the bolt.
