Backcountry Page 10

  Jenn felt her curiosity piqued again, but she knew better than to ask. Instead she just smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

  He held up a finger. “Only one condition, though. You have to promise we’ll come up here again sometime.”

  “Oh, I guess so,” she said. “But next time Brad’s not invited, okay?”

  “I don’t know, he seemed to like you.”

  She shuddered. “Don’t even joke about it. He was creepy with a capital C.”

  “Yeah, you’re not wrong. For a moment I really did think things were going to get nasty there.”

  “My hero,” Jenn teased, then became serious again. “Alex, do you think we should make a complaint to whatever company it is he works for? There can’t be too many eco-tourism places, so it wouldn’t be hard to track him down. They’d probably want to know one of their employees is a psycho, right?”

  “That’s if he even works for an eco-tourism company, Jenn.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, startled.

  “Well you’re assuming that everything he told us was true. I mean, that accent and that whole growing up in the woods thing. What sort of woods does Ireland have, anyway?” He sighed. “Look, he might have been telling the truth, I don’t know. He certainly knew his way around the forest. But can you really see that guy dealing with tourists? They’d take one look at that knife and run screaming.”

  “Not to mention his table manners,” Jenn said.

  “And his habit of pissing everywhere!”

  They both laughed, some of the tension dissipating.

  “Anyway,” he said, “we’ll never see him again, so let’s just forget about it and let the tourists enjoy his company.”

  She nodded. “No argument here.”

  The light had faded too much for her to read, so she packed her book back into her bag and stretched.

  “So what are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “Well, I could teach you some campfire songs.”

  “Oh, I think I’ll be all right,” she said. “I’m pretty hungry though. How about we have something to eat?”

  “You really are a woman after my own heart,” Alex said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  There was no fish on the menu tonight. They were too tired to do any cooking, so instead they ate from unsatisfying prepackaged instant-meal pouches. Once they were finished, they simply threw the empty pouches into the fire, and the flames flared up for a moment before subsiding.

  “Oh!” Jenn exclaimed, startling Alex. “I have a treat for us.”

  She walked back to the tent and started rummaging through her bag. By the time she returned, Alex had unlaced his left shoe. She watched with concern as he gingerly pulled it off, wincing as he did so. The bottom half his sock was soaked in blood, and he gasped in pain as he poked at it.

  “I don’t think you should do that, honey,” Jenn said. “We’ve wrapped it up, maybe you should just leave it until we get back?”

  “Okay,” he replied. “I think that’s for the best. If it gets worse we can look at it tomorrow, anyway.”

  “Check this out,” she said. “This might help distract you.”

  She held out a plastic container. Nestled inside were six chocolate-covered strawberries, ripe and red and looking so very sweet. Especially after the day they’d had.

  “Oh, wow, honey,” Alex said.

  Jenn passed him one and he took it from her hands almost reverently, using the very tips of his fingers.

  “You made these?” he asked.

  She nodded, pleased with his reaction.

  He popped the strawberry in his mouth and chewed it with a beatific smile on his face. “So good,” he mumbled through the sweet mouthful.

  Jenn took one and, far more daintily than Alex, began to nibble on it, stripping off all the chocolate before eating the strawberry itself. Alex watched her, admiring how she could make even eating look graceful.

  “Jenn.”

  She looked up at him, a smear of chocolate on the corner of her mouth. He reached over and gently wiped it off.

  “You really are wonderful,” he said. “I don’t think I tell you that enough.”

  It was hard to pick out in the firelight, but he was sure that she was blushing.

  “You’re not too bad yourself,” she said.

  He leaned forward and kissed her, lightly at first, but then with more passion. After a few minutes he broke it off and she looked at him in bewilderment.

  “What do you say we go in the tent?” he asked. “It’s probably warmer in there.”

  Jenn took his hand in hers as she stood up.

  “If not, I’m sure it will be soon.”

  Hand in hand, they walked away from the fire toward the tent. Just as they got there, Alex stopped.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  Alex recognized the alarm in Jenn’s voice and quickly explained. “It’s okay, honey, I just forgot something.” He headed back toward the fire. “I won’t be long. Why don’t you get ready and wait for me.”

  Jenn laughed at the leer in his voice. “Okay, tiger,” she said, climbing into the tent. She looked back out at him.

  In a hurry now, Alex grabbed the food bag and some rope and quickly secured them to one of the branches overheard. He hoisted it high enough to satisfy even the most conservative woodsman’s standards and then he joined her.

  It was pitch black when Jenn awoke. The fire must have gone out, though she could understand why Alex might have forgotten to put on another log before he came to bed. She scrabbled around in her backpack and pulled out her iPod. She turned it on, and a faint light filled the tent. The time on the display was 1:45 a.m.

  “Shit,” she said softly, putting it down. Its light faded away. She pulled the sleeping bag tighter around herself and tried to get back to sleep.

  The sound of a branch breaking in the distance brought her fully awake. She lay still, listening, trying to work out which direction it had come from and how far away it was. The night was filled with sound, the croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets and the rustling of the wind in the trees. There was another crack as another branch broke somewhere in the distance, then a third one and a splash. Jenn sat up, her heart hammering.

  “Alex,” she whispered, nudging him when he didn’t respond. “Alex?”

  The only answer was his soft snoring. Jenn lay back down and tried to get comfortable, her ears pricking up every time the wind blew through the trees. Another crack rang through the night. Jenn whimpered and grabbed her iPod, stuck the earbuds in her ears, and picked a song at random: “Jewel” by Gold and Youth. She listened for a few bars and then paused it, listening for outside sounds again. She was so intent on listening that she barely noticed how the iPod filled the tent with light every time she touched it, and she wouldn’t have cared if she had realized. The night returned to its earlier quiet and she started to relax, only to jerk as two thumps sounded from just near the edge of the clearing, as if two rocks had just been thrown onto the ground. She held her breath, waiting, then the same kind of thump came from farther away. Jenn gasped and pressed play again, as if nothing she couldn’t hear could hurt her, the same way a child might hide under the covers. But she only lasted a few seconds before she pressed pause again and listened. Thump. This one was closer. There was silence for a moment, and then a thump as something landed on top of the tent and rolled down the side.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. She drove her elbow into Alex’s side. “Alex!”

  “What?” he mumbled, half asleep.

  “Listen,” she hissed.

  There was silence again.

&
nbsp; “What—”

  Another thump.

  “What is that?” she was nearly in tears.

  “That?”

  “One fell on the tent! It sounds like someone is throwing things at us.”

  “Jenn, it’s acorns falling from the trees,” he said soothingly.

  “Really?” She was doubtful.

  “Yes, just go back to sleep.” He rolled back over.

  Again she lay back and tried to relax. Suddenly there was a much deeper and louder thump. Alex sat up.

  “What?” Jenn asked.

  “That’s not an acorn,” he said, concern bleeding though his voice.

  He grabbed his headlight and crawled out of the sleeping bag, grabbing his hatchet, and pulling on a shirt and pants.

  “One sec.”

  He reached out, pulled down the zipper, and crawled out into the darkness, leaving Jenn in the tent. She sat up, listening to his footsteps. She could see his headlight bobbing up and down as he made his way around the camp. She crawled to the entrance of the tent but stopped short of sticking her head out.

  “Anything?” she whispered.

  “Shhh. One second,” he said.

  Everything was completely quiet; even the crickets had fallen silent. After a few tense moments, Alex made his way back to the tent, Jenn moving out of his way as he climbed in and zipped up the flap behind himself.

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s weird how that sound just stopped.”

  “Do you think it’s him?” She didn’t need to say who.

  “Let’s just listen for a bit.”

  They sat there in silence, listening, but the noise didn’t come again.

  “Fuck,” he said. “That’s weird. Now you’ve got me all paranoid.”

  “Do you think he’s throwing rocks at us or something?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  They listened for a while longer, but there was no repeat of the noise, and finally Alex crawled back into the sleeping bag, though Jenn noticed that he kept his clothes on.

  “Whatever it is, it’s stopped,” he said. “Let’s try to sleep.”

  She curled up close to him, trying to relax. Alex simply lay there, eyes open, one hand holding his axe.

  Sunday Morning

  Jenn crawled out of the tent, blinking and trying to adjust to the morning light. Alex was already up and was standing near the tent, staring at a small tree that was lying on its side.

  “That wasn’t there last night, was it?” Jenn asked.

  “No.”

  She grabbed Alex’s sleeve. “Do you think Brad followed us?”

  “He didn’t follow us,” Alex said, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  “Alex, I want to go home! I don’t like it here anymore. That nut job came back in the middle of the night!”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Who cares? Please, let’s just go. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this—”

  “Don’t overreact, Jenn.”

  “Alex, please, you said it yourself; someone was throwing stuff at the tent. That’s fucked up.”

  “I said it could be someone.” He took a deep breath. “Jenn, this park is huge. Let’s just move and we’ll be fine. We’ll go to Blackfoot Trail now.”

  He walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulder.

  “He mentioned that black trail thing,” Jenn said. “And you said that was kind of weird.”

  “It’s a popular spot, and you said you didn’t mention it to him,” Alex said. “So, how could he possibly know?”

  “I know, but—”

  He put his finger over her lips, shushing her, then tilted her chin up so he was looking into her eyes.

  “Jenn, bringing you to Blackfoot Trail is really important to me.”

  “Alex . . .”

  “It’s about adventure, right?”He smiled down at her.“You’ll love it, I promise,” he said softly. “I’ve waited a really long time for this. Please, Jenn.”

  Jenn thought about it for a moment and then smiled, tilting her head up more and giving him soft kiss. “Okay.”

  She went back to the tent and started packing up.

  The midday sun seemed much hotter than it had the day before, but that might have been because they were so tired from the night before and because they’d now been walking for hours. They spoke little, simply concentrating on getting to their destination as quickly as possible. As they came to a gentle bend in the path, Alex stopped unexpectedly. Jenn nearly walked into him.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He stepped off the path and walked toward a plant he had noticed on the forest floor. He bent down and rubbed the leaves gently.

  “Here, look.”

  Jenn walked over and hunkered down next to him. He was holding some of the leaves in his hand.

  “You know, you can eat this. It’s called wintergreen.”

  She looked at the plant doubtfully. It had oval, silky leaves with three large berries attached to the stem. Alex pulled off a leaf and one of the berries and stuck them in his mouth, chewing contentedly. He grabbed another and handed it to Jenn, gesturing for her to do the same.

  “No, no, I believe you,” she said.

  He stood up and brushed off his hands.

  “Nature’s trail mix. I mean, how cool is that?”

  “That’s pretty cool,” she said, smiling at his childlike enthusiasm.

  She cocked her head curiously, trying to work out what it was she could hear farther ahead in the forest. As she stepped forward, a deep, awful buzzing sound grew louder and louder.

  “You hear that?” she asked.

  Alex didn’t even turn. “Just flies.”

  She rolled her eyes. She’d been hoping for a little more information from him than that. As she continued toward the sound, the buzzing noise grew and grew.. Icy sweat trickled down her spine. The sound was more than a little frightening. But Jenn’s curiosity was too much for her, and she had to know where it was coming from. Flies couldn’t be dangerous, anyway. She dodged a few more trees, then froze. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  Alex came up cautiously behind her and swore softly under his breath as the source of the sound came into view. There, in a small clearing, a black cloud of flies pulsated around the carcass of a deer. It had almost been torn to pieces, the rib cage pulverized and the head wrenched around at an impossible angle. It had been gutted and stripped of flesh so that only ragged pieces of skin and sinew clung to the bones. That was enough for the flies, and they crawled all over it, in and out of its empty eye sockets. The wind shifted and the stench of decay drifted toward them. Alex covered his mouth, trying not to gag, while Jenn simply stared in shock, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Her mind conjured images of what might have caused such carnage, slavering jaws and sharp claws warring with a gleaming knife for supremacy in her vivid imagination.

  “Jenn, come on. Let’s go. You don’t want to keep looking at this.”

  Alex turned back toward the trail. “C’mon. We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder.

  She stared at the carcass as if memorizing every detail, from the splintered bones and the torn hide to the scraps of flesh and the empty eye sockets, with the flies crawling all over everything, their buzzing echoing in her ears.

  The trail grew steeper as the day wore on. Despite his foot, Alex was having little trouble, but Jenn struggled to keep up the pace. As the branches crowded the path more and more, she was continually forced to push them away from her face. One branch, thicker than the rest, spr
ang back and nearly whacked her in the nose. As she jerked backward instinctively, she overbalanced and her foot slipped out from underneath her. She staggered down the slope on the side of the path, unable to halt her momentum. Her ankle hooked on a root, sending her sprawling, and she twisted in the air and managed to land flat on her stomach. The ground was soft and she was unhurt, but she was so exhausted that getting up seemed like too much effort. Instead, she lay on her stomach for a moment, her feet enjoying the break. A strange smell invaded her nostrils and she sniffed curiously, then scrambled to her feet. Inches from where her face had just been was some sort of animal dropping, and it was huge. She shuddered at the thought of what might have happened had she fallen slightly farther forward and started walking back toward the trail.

  “Found it!”

  Alex’s voice carried down the path and she rushed up toward him, paralleling the path. He had stopped up ahead at another fork and was waiting for her. “Finally,” Jenn muttered, not loud enough for her voice to carry.

  She pushed past the last lot of branches out of her way and rejoined him on the trail. He looked at her curiously and noticed a smudge on her face.

  “Come here,” he said, beckoning her closer. He pulled out his canteen, wet the corner of her shirt cuff, and started to wipe her face.

  “Shouldn’t we save that?” she asked.

  “We can fill up at the lake. I brought the drops to clean the water,” he said, gently wiping.

  She looked at the fork and noticed that both trails were uphill. She sighed.

  “This it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, pointing up the left-hand trail. “At the end of this trail.”

  “I thought you said you found it.” She could hear the whiny note in her voice but she was too far gone to care.

  “This is the trail that leads to it,” he said patiently.

  “Jesus.” Jenn wiped sweat off her forehead. “It’s hard to get to.”

  Alex handed her his canteen and she took a sip.

  “Thanks.”

  She handed it back and they started walking up the trail. Jenn was just about to put her foot down when she stopped mid-step. Where she had been about to step was the corpse of a large crow. It was well into decomposition, not much more than bone, beak, and feathers. Maggots writhed in what was left of its flesh, and a rancid smell wafted from it.