Windigo fire, p.17
Windigo Fire, page 17
“Are you kidding me? A light beer has more strength than you.”
“Quit arguing. Grab my jeans and press down on your right knee. Roll onto your right side, bend your left leg and get your left foot under you. Lean forward and climb back up.”
“Forget it.”
“You’re right, forget it. You’re so fat even Godzilla on steroids couldn’t haul you up.”
Ricky mumbled something inaudible.
“Come on, man, this is your only chance. What are you waiting for?” Danny said.
“Can’t …”
The bear let out a dark growl. Instinctively Ricky glanced over his shoulder. He swore and leaned his forehead against the stone.
“Don’t look down. Pretend you’re on the beach climbing a boulder.”
A blur of motion. The bear reared up, clawing the air. “She’s going for my legs,” Ricky shouted. “She’s gonna tear off my legs.”
“Then move!”
“What part of ‘forget it’ don’t you understand?”
“OK, fine, stay there. Let her eat you alive, piece by piece.”
“Yeah, and when I fall, she’s gonna tear me apart, so what’s the difference?”
“What happened to your manhood? Guess it shrank in the wash. That’s why you shot a tame bear. To fool everyone into thinking you’re a man, you stupid nark.”
Ricky let out a roar. He threw out his beefy left arm and seized the jeans.
The fabric clamped down on Danny’s forearm in a brutal tourniquet.
Ricky leaned back, balancing precariously on his right knee. His two-hundred-plus pounds started dragging them down ruthlessly.
“Roll onto your side,” Danny bit out. Ricky made to roll left. “The other way, damn it.”
Ricky crashed down on his right side, legs dangling over the cliff. His free right hand scrabbled for a hold on the rock. His left foot slid and kicked to get purchase on the slippery granite.
“Get your feet under you. God …” Danny wheezed in agony. The pain in his arm was beyond bearing, as though blood were bursting through the ends of his fingers.
Ricky let out a bellow to match the bear’s. Suddenly he rose up on both feet in a sprinter’s crouch. And made a wild leap for the ledge.
The force of Ricky’s jump wrenched Danny’s arm across his chest. Momentum tossed him off the ridge onto the sloping rock face.
He slid down on his back, hanging by the arm tied to his jeans. He dug in his heels, groping madly for a hold with his free hand. An agonizing wrench in his shoulder: he’d stopped sliding.
He rolled onto his front. Ricky lay prone on the ridge on top of the jeans. His bulk had saved Danny from sliding the rest of the way.
Danny managed to crawl back up to the safety of the ledge. He collapsed next to Ricky.
For several minutes, he lay on his back, staring up at the grey sky, listening to the wind groaning through the treetops. Blood from a cut inside his cheek leaked down his throat. His scratches burned like fire.
The odour of Ricky’s pungent sweat flooded over him. He sat up and spat blood.
“Get off my jeans. You’re killing my arm,” he said.
Ricky flopped onto his back, belly heaving with each breath. Danny tugged his jeans free, fighting to unsnarl the fabric knotted round his arm.
Finally loose, he flexed his fingers, but that only ramped up the pain. He untangled his pants and slipped them back on.
“What’s the bear doing?” Ricky asked from where he was lying.
Danny had to force himself to lean over the cliff edge once more. He looked straight down into the mother bear’s face. She eyed him curiously, grunted, reared up on her hind legs and swatted at him, black claws flashing.
“She’s still there.” He looked around for his shoes. “We’re safe until she figures out how to climb up here.”
“My bow,” Ricky’s hands groped the stone around him.
“Don’t see it.”
Ricky hauled himself to his feet, vest and pants torn, bare arms blotched with bruises. “You know what that bow cost me? Seven thousand dollars. You owe me. Don’t think I won’t collect.”
“You shouldn’t have pushed me,” Danny shrugged. He found his runners and shoved them on. “And you shouldn’t have tried to shoot those bears for nothing.”
“Look down there and tell me bears are cuddly, you stupid tree hugger,” Ricky said.
“If you want to stay out of her stomach, shut up. Bears are unpredictable.” And dangerous. “If we’re lucky, she’ll opt for easier food and leave.”
“How long will that take?”
“No idea.” Bears are intelligent, skillful problem solvers, Danny knew. The mother might not give up at all. Odds were she’d dive back into the woods, find their scent and follow their tracks up the easier side of the rise.
A trivial climb for her and the cub.
Rachel landed on her hands and knees in the grass outside the back of Barry’s office. Pointed pieces of broken glass like daggers lay everywhere.
“It’s that bloody kid,” Santa shouted after her through the broken window. “Stop her. Go get her.”
She could hear him scrambling and tripping over the mess of furniture in the spare room. She daren’t look back. She bolted away from Barry’s cabin, heading straight down to the lake and the centre of camp.
“Rachel, Rachel Forest,” she heard Barry call behind her. “Come back here! People, stop her.”
She raced past a cluster of shed-like cabins where the youngest campers slept. She could hear Barry and Santa’s shouts above the chatter of the white-shirted kids streaming out of the cook tent. They turned to stare as she tore past them.
She was running so fast, her breath was giving out by the time she reached the wooden dock fronting the lake. The battered canoes and piles of soiled life jackets offered no place to hide.
Footsteps were slapping the hard ground behind her. She turned left, leaving the dock behind her and headed out of camp, taking the long sloping footpath that led up into the woods. Running was agony. Her legs were tiring, slowing her down. Lungs bursting, her breath raw in her throat, she struggled to the top of the hill and limped past the remains of the rotten picnic bench that had served as Barry’s craft table.
She found the familiar trail to Logan’s zoo.
Luckily the path was flat. She half-ran, half-walked along it, her breath coming in wheezes. It took forever before she spotted the decaying, black-stained arcade booths at the end of the path.
Logan, where was Logan?
She dared not shout for him: Barry and Santa would hear her calling. They’d know exactly where she was.
Adult voices behind her. If she ran down to the booths and the old cafeteria building, they’d see her and catch her. She looked around frantically. And spotted a faded sign marked ‘Woodland Trail’ that pointed into the trees.
She stumbled over to the sign and recognized a narrow dirt trail that led away from the booths. She remembered how it plunged through the trees and ran along the cliffs edging Red Dog Lake. It was the same path she and Dad had followed past the empty animal cages, the path with no guardrails.
Breathing a little easier now, she fled down the Woodland Trail. She left the abandoned cages behind; they were traps for her, not hiding places. She reached a curve in the trail. She stopped and listened. The sigh of the waves of Red Dog Lake sounded very loud now.
“Where is she? Where’d she go? God, my bloody leg …” she heard Santa say. He and Barry sounded very close behind her. They hadn’t searched for her in the arcade booths: they’d followed her down the Woodland Trail.
They’ll catch me for sure!
She left the track and dived into the brush beside it. She shoved and clawed her way through a thick clump of alders. Falling onto her hands and knees, she kept going, struggling blindly through tangles of twigs and leaves.
Suddenly, the knife edge of the cliff appeared in front of her: a startling schism six inches away from her hands. She gasped and stared down at the dark shale beach one hundred feet below.
“We’ve ended up in Logan’s bloody zoo,” Santa said. He must be standing on the trail about ten feet directly behind her. Only the alder bushes stood between them. “This is as far as I go,” he panted.
“That Logan’s a bloody maniac.”
She dared not move. She crouched in the leaves, waiting, listening. She heard Santa and Barry continue a little way further down the path.
“She always runs over to visit Logan,” Barry coughed out. “I’ll call the police again. They’ll bring her back.”
“Oh, very intelligent, my son. Print out the directions to your special websites while you’re at it, why don’t you? No, Mate, you waddle over to Logan’s and bring her back.”
“What if she won’t come?”
“You squealing mouse, you’re bigger than she is.”
“What if Logan’s there?”
“Pull your poncey officious act, the one you’re so good at. Go on, bring her back here and I’ll deal with her.”
“What do you mean ‘deal with her’?” Silence, except for a wheeze from Barry. “That-that’s a bad joke, Merry.”
“I’m not joking.”
Where were the other campers? Where were the camp counsellors? Rachel prayed for the sound of more footsteps above the noise of the waves and wind.
But nobody else was coming down the trail.
26
The wooden float plane dock was a grey tongue stretching out into the waters of Red Dog Lake. High overcast, bit of haze, Corazon noted. Waves low, fine for takeoff. But she wasn’t: she felt dry and hollow. Her legs were trembling as though she’d galloped five miles uphill.
It had taken her one or two seconds to make up her mind what to do. Her kitchen staff wanted her to call the cops, but McKenna was the last person she wanted to see right now. She’d fed them a lame lie about misfiring her shotgun. They didn’t believe her, of course, but out of respect, they let it go. Everyone in Red Dog Lake knew Corazon Sinclair solved her own problems.
Finally alone, she’d stripped off her tunic and satin pants and pulled on jeans, a plaid shirt and her leather aviator jacket. On her way out, she’d stopped by the diner, grabbed some sandwiches out of the cooler and made up a thermos of coffee. Edgar was eagerly stuffing down the Trucker’s Special – free of charge courtesy of the Galaxy Tavern. That should keep him busy, she thought. In a moment of foolish weakness, she’d promised to fly him up to see his mum. Maybe those fat-laden calories would make him forget the idea.
She had to move fast. She’d slipped out through the kitchen, wheeled her old Harley Davidson out of her private garage behind the motel and taken off.
Half an hour later, she was stowing her tool box back in her Piper Cherokee when she recognized the roar of the Christmas Hummer. She leapt for her shotgun resting on the pilot’s seat, but when the Hummer pulled up at the end of the dock, it was only Edgar, not Santa, who climbed out.
Damn, Corazon thought. Doing what she had to do had taken far too long.
She released her grip on the gun and shoved it into its usual spot beside the pilot’s chair. She watched Edgar jog down the dock to join her beside her Piper Cherokee PA-32S-300 seaplane.
“This is real nice of you, Corazon,” Edgar panted. “Flying me out to see my mum before you go pick up those hunters. There’s still time, right?”
“Sure, Baby.” She rubbed her face, praying the trucker’s caffeine tablets she’d downed would do their job.
She began her flight checklist. Edgar was immediately bored, twirling his elf hat and chewing on his thumbnail. Well, tough, she thought. She worked methodically through her list: wings, struts, floats, propellers, tail boom, all go.
She wiped the sweat off her face. “OK, let’s get up in the air.”
Edgar leapt nimbly onto the nearest float and shovelled himself into the cockpit through the open pilot’s door. She watched him climb into the passenger seat, strap himself in, and slip on his mike and earphones with practised ease.
“You’ve flown a lot,” she remarked. Edgar smiled in crafty complicity.
Her turn now. She untied the moorings and jumped, nearly sliding off the float. Getting inside was an ungainly struggle. She was too slow starting the engine and had to steer frantically to avoid the dock and pull the plane back onto a straight course to head out into the lake.
Edgar found the whole process amusing, the little jerk. She reminded herself to stay patient, for a while anyway.
She settled back into the pilot’s chair, pleased that her cockpit looked perfectly neat, the way it always did. She taxied out into unobstructed water, running down her interior checklist: windshield wipers – check; radio – check; altimeter – check. Strange, she could taste smoke on the air blowing in through the open pilot’s window. She knew that smell. She’d lived through several forest fires.
Danny! She lunged for the radio. She’d call Morty now, make sure the hunters weren’t just sleeping off their pricey liquor.
“You OK, Corazon?” Edgar was staring at her.
“Of course, I’m OK.” She slammed the radio back into position.
“I mean, are you OK landing on Buggy Lake? It’s real remote, you know.”
“Yeah, I know that. And I know for a fact that its real name is Bouge Lake.”
“Well, we all call it Buggy Lake. Look, maybe you could just fly me in to Kirkland Lake and I’ll hitch a ride or something.”
“Takes a day to drive from Kirkland Lake to Small Trout Falls. And another day to walk in to your so-called Buggy Lake.” Corazon squinted at the dials on the controls. Compass – check; flaps – check. “This way I’ll have us back by suppertime.” Edgar looked thoughtful. “Don’t get scared, Big Guy. I’ve landed on hundreds of lakes.” She’d even landed on Buggy Lake once, but why tell him?
“Oh, I’m not saying you’re not a good pilot. It’s just that, well, now that I’m really going, I feel nervous.” He rubbed his nose. “I miss my mum so bad. I haven’t talked to her for six months.”
“Long time.” Battery – check; flight controls – check; clock – check … “Doesn’t she have a phone?”
“No, uh-uh, no phone at my Aunt Vera’s place. I would’ve wrote Mum, but Vera really hates me. She’d tear up my letters before Mum could read ’em.”
Great, Corazon thought, growing more and more convinced this flight was a bad idea.
“Thanks for the shirt,” Edgar said, stroking the Galaxy T-shirt he had on under his greasy overalls. “I should’ve had a bath, too, I guess. I really want to look nice for my mum.”
“Quiet!” Corazon said, more sharply than she’d intended. She stared at the gas gauge, grabbed her logbook and flipped to her last entry. She’d filled up after flying out the hunters on Friday: 386 litres. Now the gauge indicated 200.
“Nobody touches my plane,” she said. “Who touched my plane? Did Santa touch my goddamn plane?”
“No, no,” Edgar shook his head wildly. “He doesn’t know how to fly.”
“What about your pilot, Tear Drop? What about Santa’s creepy buddy, that Hendrix guy?”
“Mr. Hendrix and Tear Drop just use the Twin Beech, I swear.”
“And what about you, Edgar? You seem to know your way around my plane pretty good.”
“No, Corazon, I never touched your plane. I swear to God I didn’t.”
Edgar could swear all he liked but, in reality, anybody could have taken her plane. Like the other float planes, it rested at the dock unguarded. And nobody locked their planes in Red Dog Lake.
“Never mind, relax, Baby.” Important to keep him happy. “But
I need to turn around and gas up. How much cash you got?”
“Oh, um, I’m kind of cleaned out,” he said. “Charmaine needed grocery money.”
“Well, that’s real helpful.”
“I know you two don’t see eye to eye, but Charmaine’s a nice girl. Santa doesn’t treat her right.” He looked away. “He’s a real jerk.”
“You got that right.” Corazon frowned. Time was getting short. “Forget it. We gotta get moving.”
She revved the engine and headed into the wind. Takeoff in a float plane was always tricky. The ends of the floats dragged and tended to throw the nose forward. Worst case scenario, they could porpoise and capsize you.
She felt the familiar abrupt lurch as the floats lifted free of the sticky water. The nose of the Piper Cherokee swung up alarmingly; she moved swiftly to correct it.
“Scary,” Edgar said through his mike as they levelled out. “I could take over on the way home if you want.”
“You don’t have your pilot’s licence,” she shot back, eyes on the dials while the plane chugged up to cruising altitude.
He shrugged. “It’s just a piece of paper.”
“I see, so piloting a bush plane is just a little skill you picked up, like playing elf at Santa’s Fish Camp. But then you’ve packed in plenty of practice flying those great big loads for Santa.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Hey, I admire you for flying Santa’s Twin Beech fifty miles out to Fire Island with a four-hundred-pound bear in the hold. Risk-taker, aren’t you, Big Guy? You tranked her, sure, but what if you got the dose wrong and she woke up while you were still in the air? She’d have torn you to pieces before you hit the ground.”
“What do you mean ‘she’?”
“Come off it. We both know the bear was Pasha. Santa was just being practical, I can accept that. Besides he doesn’t have the cojones to track down and capture a real wild bear.”
“I figured there was a catch, you flying me up to Buggy Lake to see my mum. You just want to pick my brain.” He stared out the window, sucking the inside of his cheek.
Buggy Lake, bug brain. Corazon thought. You’ll be begging to spill your fat, greasy guts by the time I’ve finished with you.
Danny stood on the ridge of the granite outcropping, staring at the black tornado of smoke to the west. He tried to tell himself that the forest fire wasn’t closing in on them. Below them, he could hear the growls of the mother bear and the chirps of her cub as they paced back and forth at the base of the cliff.
