Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 66



MICHAEL’S GAZE DRIFTED over the survivors, his heart heavy. While Jake smeared some of the poultice Charlotte carried on his wound, the others sat and waited. They all needed to rest a moment, to somehow find the strength to regroup and overcome the emotional maelstrom of being stunned, sickened and horrified by all that had happened. The villagers had seemed ready to help them fight a common enemy, but then revealed themselves as monsters. The day had been a vision of the power of evil.

At least no one had been lost when the mercs attacked. Still, he couldn't imagine what the students must be feeling and thinking with four members of their group gone. Too much death lurked here. Too much horror.

“I’m ready to keep going,” Jake soon told them. The poultice already dulled some of the pain.

"Why bother? It's hopeless," Devlin said. "I’ve traveled; I’ve tried to find help; nothing worked. No one is out there. We're stuck here just like those village men...until they all died."

"It's not hopeless. I've been told there is a way," Michael said, "and that I'd recognize it. It's got to be near."

Charlotte's gaze narrowed. "Who would say such a thing?"

Michael looked ready to give a flippant answer, but then his shoulders sagged. He gazed at her, then at Jake, wondering how much they remembered of his tale of Mongolia. "Lady Hsieh. And I wasn't hallucinating. She’s real…except that she'd been dead for two thousand years."

"Oh, boy," Jake muttered. "Now it's Chinese ghosts. The more the merrier."

“Ghosts?” Quade asked.

“An immortal being, created by her own alchemy,” Michael said. "She lived for over two thousand years stuck between heaven and earth in the world her alchemy had created. When I opened her coffin, I somehow freed her to break the alchemical spell she was under. I don’t pretend to understand it. All I can say is she thanked me for that, for freeing her to go to the land of souls." He paused a long moment, letting all sink in, and then he added. "She warned me that this place is evil. But she said I'd know how to leave—and that I must."

"Do you think that's possible?" Charlotte asked.

He gave a half-smile. "If you'd have asked me two months ago I'd have said everything we've experienced was completely impossible. Now, to me, it is the only explanation."

Jake added, "If it gets us out of here, I'll buy the story, too."

“It’s got to be the pillars,” Charlotte murmured. “Those damn pillars that attract danger like a magnet each time we go near them.”

o0o

“I see it!” Lionel cried. “I see the array! It’s much, much clearer than ever before. I’m not sure what happened. I’ll be damned, it’s actually beautiful!”

How could Lionel be surprised by its beauty? Michael wondered. It had always been so. “Yes, I see it, too.”

“I thought you did,” Lionel said. Then, all but dismissing Michael, he turned to Charlotte. “Give me the book. I need it.”

“You haven’t understood a word in it up to this time,” she said. “Why should you now? It’s more than reading. It takes an intuitive feel. If anyone here has it, it’s Michael.” She held out the backpack. “You take it, Michael. Open the gateway for us.”

Michael’s instincts told him to fight the temptation. He sensed that if he opened the gateway, he would cross a bridge from which no return existed, at least for him.

Quade’s gaze jumped from one brother to the other.

“I agree with Charlotte,” Jake said. His voice already sounded stronger as the poultice worked its magic.

Michael shook his head. “I've never studied anything like that book, and Lionel said he could do it.” He faced his brother. “We’ve never been close because of the way we were raised. But we can change that.”

Lionel stared longingly at the backpack. “You’re right. We can change.”

Reluctantly, Charlotte took out the book and gave it to Lionel.

He climbed to the top of the mound, opened the book to the section that showed an array, and stepped on the lights on the ground as he walked between the pillars. Nothing happened. He placed the book on the lights and walked through again. Still nothing.

Dismayed, Michael watched with growing impatience.

“I told you he can’t do it!” Charlotte angrily removed the red pendants she wore and grudgingly thrust them at Michael. “Take these.”

His gaze locked on the stones in his hand. “They’re beautiful.” He reached into his pocket. “The color is the same as this small one from Lady Hsieh’s tomb.” When he opened his hand to show her the small red stone, all of them began to glow. Bright beams of red light shot from each one skyward, meeting and intertwining. Rolling thunder boomed, and bolts of lightning arched above the pillars.

“My God,” Charlotte whispered. “We’ve never had thunder and lightning on this side; only in the real world. You’ve bridged something. Made a connection! This just might work!”

Jake stood and moved closer to her. “You’re right. Michael, go ahead.”

Lionel clutched the book to his chest. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“Wear them, Michael.” Charlotte’s voice filled with wonder and awe as she lifted the cords holding the pendants over his head.

With the philosopher’s stones hanging from his neck, his own small stone still in his hand, a surging power coursed through his body. It felt new, yet familiar, as if he had waited his whole life for this moment, as if he’d found his purpose.

Without knowing why, he climbed up the mound and stood beside Lionel. The pillars began to sway as if they might tumble.

“What’s happening?” Lionel cried.

Before he managed to answer, Kohler and the other villagers walked out of the forest.

Michael’s flesh turned cold as ice.

The village men no longer wore camouflage clothing, but a much older style, homespun, from the time of Lewis and Clark and the secret expedition. They carried primitive weapons, hatchets, bows and arrows.

The gunshot wounds they had suffered were visible—some gaping open, others puckered, a few had scabbed over. And yet, no blood flowed.

“It can’t be,” Lionel whispered as he gawked at them.

“How can they be here?” Brandi’s high-pitched hysteria carried over the valley. Devlin slipped his arm around Rachel who stood petrified, her hands over her mouth. “They’re all shot up! We saw them dead!”

Michael’s pulse thudded. Seeing the villagers that way confirmed the suspicion that had grown in him, but one too terrible to contemplate, one he had pushed aside as lunacy. He didn’t want to believe it, even now.

“What the hell?” Jake strode toward them, his rifle pointed at Kohler.

Kohler raised his chin high as he spoke. “My true name is Ezra Crouch, captain and leader of our ill-fated expedition. And the young man that you know as Will Durham is in truth Francis Masterson, the scribe who penned the words that taught you so much about us. We have waited over two hundred years for someone with the ability to open the gateway, and now we have found him.” He glanced up at the pillars at the two brothers. “Or them.”

“Impossible!” Jake shouted. “You expect me to believe you’re some kind of zombie? You’re crazy!”

“He's not,” Michael said. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“Where are the others, then? The men who came here thirteen years ago?” Jake demanded.

“Dead,” Kohler said, devoid of any emotion. He and the others moved closer as he spoke. “They were useful for a time. We learned quite a bit from them with their modern armaments and current knowledge. But then, as all newcomers do, they became exceedingly troublesome and irritating, and we were forced to kill them. We used their identities since they were easier to explain away than our own. They tried to fight us, but they had no chance. No one can kill us. On occasion, our anger boils over and we kill each other. Or those annoying beasts kill us, and we them. But we come back, always. To live and kill another day.” He smiled. “Today, for instance.”

“So you do know alchemy,” Charlotte said.

“If only that were the case,” Kohler admitted, “our lives would be far easier. Try as we might, we have been unable to learn it. We do not know what gives us immortality, but immortal we are. Soon, we will be in the decaying world, your world. And we will become part of it until we reveal ourselves in power. All men will revere us and want to be like us. They will worship us. We will be more than gods to them, for gods are unseen and live in the heavens, while we will walk among them forever.” His gaze lifted to Michael and Lionel. “Now, if you want no harm to befall your friends, you will open the gateway.”

Michael realized that if he opened the pillars and the villagers went through it, there was no telling what evil they might do. He envisioned them biding their time, learning the ways of the modern world, and then slowly amassing wealth and power. After all, they had all eternity to achieve their goals. With vast libraries of knowledge and people willing to do almost anything if paid enough money, they would seek to master the alchemy that had transformed them into immortal monsters.

Once that happened, if they promised immortality to the public, they would own the world. How much would man give up to live forever? His freedom? His wealth? His soul? Some would see the folly and object, but who knew how many would die before someone stopped the village men forever, if that were even possible?

“I will not help you,” he said.

“You have no choice!” Kohler shouted. “I saw what you could do. You must continue. Do you not want to become immortal? You people can be our first conversions. You will go back to your own time, your friends and family, and you will live forever. If not, you will all be killed.”

How many people had they already murdered, starting with Abbé Gerard? Michael wondered. They had taken Vince’s life without a second thought. Surely, other poor souls had stepped between those pillars in the two-hundred-plus years they had stood, and they, too, must have been killed. These villagers, these explorers from the Secret Expedition, might be immortal, but they weren’t men any longer. They had become monsters. He could not reason with monsters.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Will Durham, who was Francis Masterson. “I know him. Once he’s through the opening, he’ll kill all of you and take The Book and the stones.” He glanced at Rachel once, sadly, longingly, and then faced Kohler. “I will not countenance any more death, Captain!”

“Back away, Francis!” Kohler ordered.

In that moment of distraction, Michael aimed his rifle and fired. Kohler fell, hit in the chest. Michael dropped flat on the ground and continued to shoot at the villagers.

When Kohler dropped, Quade hurried Brandi and Rachel away while Jake, Charlotte and Devlin took cover and fired their weapons. The villagers might be immortal, but they still felt pain, still felt a bullet tear through their flesh and shatter bone. And that should stop them, at least for a little while.

But Kohler didn’t stop. He rose again to his feet even as shots to the head and legs rocked his body. He tried to move forward, but the firepower’s strength forced him and the others to retreat into the forest, their flesh torn even worse than before.

Michael and the others knew it was only a matter of time before they regrouped and returned. Lady Hsieh had told him he knew the way to free himself and others, not that he would find it, but that he knew it, inherently, within himself.

She was right. It suddenly all made sense.

The ability he and the others in his family possessed consisted of no more than that of a conduit between one world and another, no more than a connection through which energy, knowledge, and being could pass.

He firmed his resolve. He didn’t want this, but he had no choice.

He put down his rifle and stepped between the pillars. He placed one foot on one peak of light that only he and Lionel could see, and the other foot on another ray of light. Then he raised his arms, palms pressed together, fingers pointing toward the sky so that his body formed a triangle, the key alchemical symbol. Energy from the array ran through him and absorbed his life force to enrich its own before it massed into a burst of energy that streamed from his fingertips high into the heavens.

He felt the array drain his life from him as it absorbed his energy and yet he felt it share its own.

At that moment, the villagers stepped out of their hiding places in the forest to witness the glorious yet frightening event taking place in front of their eyes. Jake, Charlotte, Quade, and the students did the same.

A great ball of light formed above Michael, and shined down on them all. A kaleidoscope of colors and images. Michael then spread his arms wide. The earth rumbled. A tree near the villagers suddenly burst into flame, then another farther away. The air crackled with charged sparks of light as those who watched fell to their knees in fright and awe.

Slowly, he lifted his hands. As he did, the pillars rose. His power became far stronger than he imagined, but he knew that once the gateway opened, anyone, anything, could pass from this amoral world to his own.

The chimeras snorted and stomped as they gathered on the western edge of the forest to watch the strange proceedings before them with a human-like intelligence glowing in their eyes. They appeared to understand what they saw perhaps better than the humans.

“Hurry,” Michael said to Jake. “Get the students and Charlotte through, and then I’ll close the gateway.” Quade wasn’t with them, but Michael could do nothing about that.

At the same time, Kohler and the villagers began to run toward the mound.

The two groups raced toward the pillars. The villagers were winning.

“Hurry, Jake!” Michael called, but even as he did, he saw that the villagers would reach the gateway before the students. He couldn’t let that happen.

The villagers reached the bottom of the mound and began to climb.

Michael began to slowly lower his arms, afraid of what might happen if he moved too quickly and the pillars crashed against the earth and shattered.

“No!” Lionel cried, picking up Michael’s high-powered rifle. “Keep the pillars right where they are. We’re leaving here! All of us!” He aimed at his brother.

“Lionel, no!” Charlotte screamed.

“We can’t let them through,” Michael said, both frightened and appalled by the madness that overtook his brother. “They’ll destroy everything.” He again began to lower his arms.

“Stop! I swear!” Lionel cried. His hand, his entire body, shook. Will Durham released an arrow from his crossbow just as Lionel squeezed the trigger. His shot went wide, hitting Michael’s shoulder, tearing it open and shattering bone and muscle.

As Michael fell, the pillars slammed back to the ground. The earth shook and roared.

“He's not dead!” Kohler shouted to the villagers. “Get up there! Lift him up! We must use him to keep the gateway open!”

The villagers climbed the mound to follow Kohler's orders. The chimeras moved closer as well.

“Lionel,” Michael whispered, and dragged himself to his brother. The arrow had struck Lionel’s heart. He lay dead. Sorrow shot through Michael for all that might have been between them, for all their lost years, for all that could never be. He bowed his head, overcome, as horror built upon horror in this evil place.

“Enough!” Quade shouted. His long whitish-blond hair looked like an aura around his head, while black eyes took in everything. One hand clutched The Book of Abraham the Jew against his chest, while he raised the other hand and said, again, “Enough!”

A profound authority emanated from him. The villagers stopped moving, unable to do anything but obey Quade's command. Jake, Charlotte and the students stopped as well, forming a tight knot, not knowing what to do, which way to turn.

“I did not want this.” Quade spoke in little more than a whisper that mysteriously carried from the top of the mound to every ear. “I struggled to find some way to avoid it. A misfortune of our fallen arrogant nature is that even a man—such as I—who has lived for centuries still wants to stay alive, curious about what the future will bring to this strange little planet twirling around a giant universe. But I cannot let more people die because of me.”

Kohler stood, his body so riddled with bullet holes he had been nearly shredded. “Abbé Gerard? But you cannot be him! We saw you die! We tossed your corpse into the river.”

“Die but not dead,” the Abbé said with a small, secretive smile. “You’ve done it yourself, time and again. Why should I, the greatest alchemist the world has ever known, be unable to do the same? Those many years ago, when I revived, I simply kept going. I had the power all along to escape from this place. So I opened the gateway. Several chimeras slipped out with me. To my surprise, in the real world their animal natures, which I did not make immortal, caused them to slowly deteriorate. The bones of the dead created quite a stir among scientists. A couple of them live to this day.”

“They live, but they also kill,” Michael said as he somehow managed to raise himself to a sitting position, one hand clutching his shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood.

The Abbe shrugged. “In any case, I never wanted to leave this place. I created it! I loved it! And I did not miss the company of men. They had hounded me from my beloved Paris, from Spain, Egypt, and even from China. In this New World I could live alone in peace, with only the Tukudeka. And then men from the secret expedition came and destroyed my peace. Now, here, all of you shall remain. I want us to return to the village now, my village, where I shall take my rightful place as your leader.”

Everything Michael heard, the sheer monstrousness of the story, sickened him. “Tell me, how can a man who doesn’t age live in the real world?”

The Abbé's thin red lips tightened with disgust. “I made my way to the Pacific, and from there sailed to Asia, eventually crossing the mountains to Tibet. Tibetans do not question the unquestionable. I stayed with them until the Communist Chinese took over the country. They killed many good men, many holy men.” His black eyes raged. “How can you call my world evil compared to the unimaginable horror of your world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? I left the destruction that once was the beauty of Tibet and returned to America where, for the right price, identities and insider knowledge easily can be purchased. A man who can make gold always has the right price. When I learned all that happened here, I realized my creation caused it, a creation made when I was a very different man from the one you see before you.”

“How different?” Michael asked. “You still make yourself a tin god.”

“I returned here with hope of freeing the young people, and then going on with my life. But once back, I saw that was impossible. I did not want this horror. My deeds have eaten at my soul.” He turned from Michael to speak to the students who stood awe-struck at the power that seemed to emanate from both Michael and the Abbé. “Forgive me, but I cannot allow you or those who tried to rescue you to return. Remember the curse that Abraham the Jew placed on his book—Maranatha against every person that should cast his eyes upon it and is not sacrificer or scribe. You have seen too much; you know too much; you will desire too much and never again find peace in the real world. You are all cursed! But out of kindness, I shall give you the elixir of immortality. Without it, the men of the secret expedition will surely kill you.”

Michael tried to stand, but the excruciating pain almost made him black out. He willed himself to fight past it, but failed.

The scent of flowers…Lady Hsieh. He sensed her beside him. Her words came to him, not as a whisper, but from inside. “You must act, Michael. Destroy this world to save your own. Look to the philosopher’s stones, at what they do. When you understand that, you will see that the strength is within you.”

She came once more to save him. He gazed at the red stones. What had she meant? The alchemist used them to speed up change in minerals and bring the elements to perfection. The perfect mineral is gold which never decays; the perfect man is immortal because he never ages. To create the change, the stones compressed time, used untold energy…

Energy! That was it! Earth, air, fire, and water—the matter of alchemy. The alchemist sped their change…and that change provided the energy to create all this.

He knew what to do just as she’d foretold. He removed the philosopher’s stones from around his neck and placed them and the stone from Lady Hsieh’s tomb on the ground. When he did, lights shown around them forming the symbol of immortality. The stones lay in the black circle, the center of centers.

He remembered once hearing a story about that circle, how a Chinese warrior, a great man, enjoyed invincibility except in one spot—the circle. It alone made the warrior vulnerable to a terrible, perhaps fatal, wound to body or spirit or both. He thought of Achilles and his vulnerable heel, and the King of the Grail Knights, Amfortas, and his never-healing wound.

“You will let the students go,” Michael demanded. “If not, I will destroy this world.”

The Abbé faced him, shocked at his new tone. His expression turned fierce, his gaze cold. “This world was a fine place, everything I could possibly want until Captain Crouch and his companions wanted to take what was mine! At first, they were good, learned men. I liked them, and fed them the elixir of immortality. But then, they wanted to learn alchemy for themselves. They coveted the wealth it could create, the immortality and power it could grant. They became corrupt!”

“This place corrupted them, as it did you.” Michael’s will grew stronger with each breath. “But these young people are innocent. They don’t deserve such a fate. You must let them leave and return home!”

“I am not evil!” the Abbé thundered. “What I do is for the greater good.”

“There’s nothing good about what you suggest.”

As the Abbé and Michael faced off in a war of wills, their audience stood muted and still, while the earth began to rumble and groan.

“You can't blame me for the evil these men did!” The Abbé clenched his hand into a fist. “I cast an alchemical spell over the pillars causing anyone who found them to forget about them after leaving the area. It’s not my fault I could do nothing to prevent a person, once here, from walking between them and entering this world.” The Abbe stood straight, regal, chin high as he added, “To destroy the world is to destroy me. You are a part of it, part of my family. In its destruction, you, too, will perish!”

“Then, so it must be!” Michael yanked the arrow from his brother’s body and plunged it into the black circle, the center of centers, the only vulnerable spot in this alchemical world.

“No!” the Abbé shouted.

Michael collapsed, too weak and ravaged with pain to hold himself up a moment longer.

The earth trembled. The hieroglyphs at the tops of the pillars developed fissures that grew and deepened. Chunks broke off and fell to the earth.

Michael saw Lady Hsieh then. He watched her image grow faint. “No! Not you,” he cried. “I can’t lose you, too.”

“I’m glad…” she murmured as she faded from his eyes.

Charlotte climbed the mound and tried to pull Michael away, but as much as she struggled, he fought to stay there, as if he saw something beyond her vision. She took Ben Olgerbee’s poultice from her pocket and smeared the last of it thickly on the gaping wound. Immediately, it began to slow the flow of blood. Michael could not die, she thought, not now, not in this battle for all their futures.

Jake joined her. They lifted Michael to his feet and carried him off the mound, just ahead of the toppling pillars. “She’s gone.” His strange words made no sense to them.

The pillars swayed faster, deeper, until finally they crashed to earth. Dirt and ash spewed into the air.

Jake, Charlotte and Michael fell amidst the tide, choking on the dust.

Michael envisioned the time in Kenya, at his first dig, when the earth collapsed on him and he felt death a certainty. But the paralyzing emptiness that came over him in Kenya didn’t happen this time. Life was a gift, and held far more wonders and beauty than he had ever believed. He rose to his hands and knees, unwilling to give up.

The sea of ash blinded Charlotte and left her unable to breathe. Strong arms grabbed her. Jake held her close as he led her away from the thick, roiling powder-filled air. Devlin, who had been some distance away with Brandi and Rachel, ran into the dust and helped Michael escape.

At that moment, a cold, violent wind rose out of nowhere, swept the cloud of soot into a tornado that swirled around the village men alone, and pinned them to one spot.

The villagers’ forms faded and then flickered and returned as they struggled against their fate. Kohler stared at Michael with malice while the world that kept him alive collapsed. His body shuddered as he struggled but failed to break the paralysis that came over him.

All the others, Francis Masterson, Noah Handy, who had been Francis’ easy-going friend and now called himself Gus Webber; the brothers Orril and Asa Munroe, who pretended to be Sam Black and Arnie Tieg; and the wise elder Reuben Hale, who was known to them as Ben Olgerbee, had once been good men, but had been overcome by the evil of this unholy place.

The chimeras watched the trapped men of the Secret Expedition. Hate-filled, they ran towards the men, their eyes glowing with the desire to tear them to pieces. They no sooner reached them when magna from within the earth, hot from fire, rose up and captured both men and beasts in its fiery grasp. The cyclonic wind that circled them grew stronger, forcing them inward even as they struggled with each other. And finally, at their feet, black, brackish water rose up from within the earth. The water boiled.

The villagers and creatures stood in the midst of the elements—earth, fire, air and water. They screamed, and tried to run, but molten rock held them in place as it oozed upward to cover them.

Michael’s gaze met Francis Masterson’s. The man had killed Lionel, but did it to save not only Michael, but the world from an unknown horror. But not even Francis could escape his fate.

Francis glanced over at Rachel, standing with Devlin’s arm around her, then he looked back at Michael as his gaze softened into uneasy peace and resignation. He nodded, then shut his eyes.

Michael watched with horror as the earth covering them hardened into rock, their final screams echoing throughout the valley.

Michael turned towards Abbé Gerard who remained atop the mound watching the destruction of the world he created. Michael acknowledged, if only to himself, they couldn’t have survived without him.

“Abbé Gerard,” Michael shouted, “you don’t need to die. We’ll find a way!”

“It is not possible. I have had far more than my share of life.” Tears lined Abbé’s face as he looked at the earth, the sky, one last time. “I have seen unimaginable changes in this world, far more than any alchemist ever dreamed of. And they were developed by man, not by magic. I am sad to leave, but some things are not possible to undo.” Then, with a strange little smile on his lips, he added, “Man can subvert nature, but never improve it. Remember that, Michael. Always, remember that.”

The ground quaked more violently and rocks and trees tumbled around them.

The ancient, parched pages of The Book of Abraham the Jew caught fire. Before their eyes, the being who was once Abbé Gerard began to age, his body dried and shriveled. A great whirling tornado of fire rose up, lifting the book and the Abbé high over the earth. At that moment, like a great whale coming out of the ocean, the mound itself began to rise from the earth, to swell, like a terrible malignancy.

As the book burst apart in a fiery blast, the Abbé’s body rocked and exploded into a turbulent vortex. The mound split open creating a wide, deep chasm. The men of the Secret Expedition, the chimeras, the pillars, and the charred remains of the Abbé and the book fell into the earth.

Finally, as the last echo of the blast drifted away, the vortex collapsed upon itself.

When it settled again, the land lay flat, and all evidence of the terrors they had witnessed were gone.

With balance restored, the earth became perfectly still.

o0o

Rachel, Devlin, and Brandi, with Jake and Charlotte supporting Michael, walked silently away from the area where the mound and pillars once stood.

After a short while, Jake stopped and unclipped the satellite phone from his belt and turned it on. Welcoming and welcomed lights flashed. He punched in a number and waited, then tried again. For a while, they heard nothing, but then a faint, crackling sounded, and a voice answered.

“Telichpah Flat Station. Hello? Is anybody there? This is Deputy Mallick. Can you hear me?”

“Mallick,” Jake said with a chuckle. “I've never heard a voice so beautiful!”

“Sheriff! Holy crap! Where the hell are you? We thought you were dead!”

“We've got three of the kids...Rachel, Brandi, and Devlin. Charlotte Reed and Michael Rempart also made it. All the others are dead. We could sure use a helicopter and paramedics, Deputy. I'll give you the coordinates.”

“Thank God three of the kids were saved! We had given up all hope for them, and for you, too! This is a happy day, Sheriff!”

“Yes, Deputy,” Jake said wearily, gazing back at the survivors. “It certainly is.”

When Jake hung up cheers and tears erupted in thanks for their impending rescue and return to civilization, as well as sadness for those they lost.

“How will anyone ever believe what happened?” Rachel voiced the question on all their minds.

“They won’t,” Jake’s words were harsh, solemn. “They’ll investigate. Point suspicion.”

“We’ve got to tell them something,” Charlotte said. “How can we explain? Plus, you and Michael have been shot!”

“We can blame gunshots on stumbling across drug runners or pot growers trying to hide from the law,” Jake said. “But as for the students…whatever we say, we’ll all have to agree on it. Anyone who tries to explain what really happened out here will end up in a rubber room.”

“A flashflood,” Michael barely managed the words. “Before we found Rachel, Brandi, and Devlin, the others were lost, swept down to the Salmon River. That will explain why there are no bodies.”

Michael shut his eyes from exhaustion and pain as Jake looked at the others. One by one, they nodded. “That’s our story, then,” Jake told them, “and it makes sense. There’s a reason it’s called the river of no return.”