II
8
Tobias finished tying off his bivy sack and descended the pine tree. In the failing light, he huddled over the circle of rocks and kindling with his flint and steel, building the nerve. It was a risk, always a risk. But it had been weeks since he’d felt the glow of a fire. Since he’d steeped pine needles in a pot of boiling water and let something warm run down his throat. He had thoroughly scouted the area. No footprints. No scat. Nothing to indicate it was frequented by anything other than a doe and two fawns. He’d seen a tuft of coarse white hair caught in the thorns of a raspberry bush.
He struck a spark onto the char cloth. A yellow flame licked up and impaled a bundle of Old Man’s Beard that was laced with a dismembered branch of dead fir. The spikes of dried-out, russet-colored needles ignited. Smoke coiled out of the tinder.
His heart swelled with primal joy.
Tobias built up a cone of sticks over the growing flames and held his hands to the heat. He hadn’t bathed since his last river crossing. That had been at least a month ago. He still remembered catching his reflection in the glass-smooth current—beard down to his sternum, skin embedded with dirt. He looked like a caveman.
Tobias added a single log to the blaze and leaned back against the tree. He felt reasonably safe in this little grove of pines, but there was no sense in pushing the luck he’d already pushed so many times to the breaking point.
At the bottom of his Kelty backpack, he pulled out the one-liter titanium camp kettle and filled it halfway with water from his last remaining bottle.
Dropped in a handful of sharp-smelling pine needles, fresh off the branch.
Kicked back waiting for his tea to boil was as close to human as he’d felt in ages.
He drank the pot of tea and let the fire die. Before he lost its light completely, he took inventory of the contents of his pack.
Six one-liter water bottles, only half of one still full.
Flint and steel.
A first aid kit down to a single pill of Advil.
A dry bag filled with buffalo jerky.
Pipe, book of matches, and the last of his tobacco, which he was holding on to for his final night—if it ever came—in the wilderness.
His last box of .30-30 Winchester cartridges.
A .357 Smith & Wesson revolver for which he’d run out of ammo over a year ago.
Pack fly.
A leather-bound journal sealed in plastic.
He pulled out a stick of jerky and scraped off the carpeting of mold. Allowed himself five small bites before returning it to the bag. He finished off the pine tea and packed everything back. Shouldering the pack, he climbed twenty feet up to his perch in the tree and fastened the Kelty to a branch.
He untied his hiking boots—the soles long since worn through the tread and the leather beginning to disintegrate—and laced them to the tree. He slid his arms out of his Barbour duster. The coat was months overdue for a thorough waxing but so far it still kept him dry.
He maneuvered into the bivy sack and zipped himself in.
Wow, he stunk. It was almost like he’d developed his own musk.
His mind wouldn’t stop running.
The chances of a swarm stumbling through this grove of pines were admittedly slim. A small group or a loner—better.
Tree bivouacking was a good news/bad news proposition.
The good news—it kept him out of the obvious lines of site. Countless times, he’d heard a branch snap in the middle of the night and rolled quietly over to stare down twenty or thirty feet at an abby creeping past underneath him.
The bad news—if one ever looked up, he was treed.
He reached down and touched the smooth, leathered handle of his Bowie.
It was the only real weapon in his arsenal. The Winchester would get him killed in close combat, and he only used it anymore to hunt his food.
He slept always with his hand on the knife, sometimes waking in the dark, other-side of midnight to find himself clutching it like a talisman. Strange to think that an object of such violence had assumed a place as comforting in his mind as the memory of his mother’s voice.
Then he was awake.
He could see the sky through the branches above him.
His breath steamed in the cold.
It was absolutely quiet save for the slow bump bump bump of his heart beating in the predawn.
He craned his neck, stared down at the remains of his campfire.
White smoke trickled up out of the embers.