CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning I felt like my mouth and head were shoved full of cotton balls. The lack of sleep wasn’t taking it easy on me and I slogged around the cabin in a half-asleep state. I wish I could say this meant I was more relaxed and chill but though it felt like the world was passing by me like mud, I was still nervy from the night before.
And I was also getting a little cabin crazy, which is probably why, when Mitch suggested we go camping, I didn’t protest as much as I thought I would.
I still protested, though.
We were outside surveying the remains of Apricot in the sunshine. It was a piercing blue sky that soared high above the trees and the world around me glistened like a Christmas card. It was warmer, too, and I found myself sweating underneath my gloves and hat, which still didn’t counteract the chills I got whenever I caught a glimpse of blood out of the corner of my eye, the slaughter even redder now in the broad daylight.
I was keeping the camera focused on Mitch and Dex as they argued over what to do.
“We really need to get back to Rigby,” I told them, Mitch especially.
“Rigby is too far away,” he answered, not looking at me. He shoved the sleeves of his army-issued jacket up his arms in a huff. “And the walkie talkies are useless.”
That they were. We had been trying all morning, but neither of them could pick up any signal. It was like broadcasting into thin air.
“He’s not too far away,” I countered. “That was an easy walk, just over an hour. We could be there and back before lunch time.”
“Then you guys go ahead,” Mitch said with hard eyes. “I’m finding out what happened to the llama before it gets picked up by the raptors.”
Oh shit. “Raptors?” I questioned with shaking lips.
“Birds of prey,” Mitch said, like I was an idiot. “They’ll come and pick off whatever is left behind. I thought you celebrities were all about finding the proof. Well here is your proof, if you want it. If you don’t, tough tits, but I’m going and I’m taking a llama with me.”
“You’re camping?” Dex asked.
“Couldn’t pick a better day to do it, could I?” Mitch growled back, raising his arms to the saturated sky. “You’re both welcome to join me still. I can take you to the places on the map, just like Rigby wanted.”
I remembered the map that Christina had given me, then decided it was best to keep it a secret for now. I looked to Dex. He had his newsboy cap pulled low on his head, his eyebrow ring glinting in the sunlight. He was thinking and thinking hard and I knew that the decision would come to me. It usually did.
As I thought, when his brows couldn’t knit together enough, he raised his head and looked at me with wondering eyes. “Well, kiddo, what do you think?”
What did I think? If Dex and I left for Rigby’s, we’d be on our own without a guide. It didn’t seem like a tough trail to follow but it was one we were unfamiliar with. With luck it would take us a short while to get there. Without luck, we could veer way off course with minimal food, no protection and walkie talkies that didn’t work. It didn’t seem like a very good plan.
“Will my llama lead us back?” I asked hopefully.
“Your llama will lead you to my llama,” Mitch answered confidently. “And I’m the one with the food.”
I wiggled my lips back and forth. “What about if we stay behind in the cabin and wait for you to return?”
Mitch shrugged. “If you want to do that, be my guest. Just know that I’m taking the gun and according to Rigby, that thing can open doors.”
“Perry,” Dex said gently, coming over to me and guiding me away from Mitch with his arm. He lowered his voice and spoke into my ear. “This is totally up to you. Whatever you decide, that’s what we’ll do.”
“That’s putting an awful lot of pressure on me,” I whispered back. “What do you want to do?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I studied his eyes. They were conflicted as anything but I caught a hint of resolve somewhere inside. He knew. He usually did.
“You want to go with Mitch,” I supplied.
“I want what you want.”
“Are you going to resent me if I make us stay behind?”
I expected a roll of his eyes or some kind of rebuttal. Instead he took both his hands and cupped my face in them. My skin tingled under the warmth of his touch.
“Baby,” he said, his tone gruff yet solemn, “there’s nothing you could ever do to make me resent you. You’re my light, remember that.”
My lungs constricted and a flush of warmth filled my lips and I waited, anxiously, for him to do something like kiss me. Something to distract me from the sincerity of his words. But he didn’t do anything except hold my face close to his and stare at me like he was trying to read my soul.
When I realized I wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of him other than the one he was giving me, I knew I had to make the decision all on my own. He did not want to be held accountable for anything that happened and I couldn’t blame him for that.
Still, I had to remind him, “You don’t want to put me in danger…”
He shook his head gently. “No. I don’t. And if I thought one choice was less dangerous than the other, then that’s the choice I’d be making. And there would be nothing you could say about it.”
My swallow felt thick in my throat and I wanted him to keep holding onto me a few minutes longer. But eventually his hands dropped away and my skin was met with sparks of cold from the mountain breeze.
The fact was, Mitch was going. I needed to know where exactly and for how long. I wanted to get some footage – that is the reason we came – but I didn’t want to go on a wild goose chase down a mountain. I trusted Dex with my life and I knew he’d do anything to protect me, whether that meant getting me back to Rigby’s or guarding me at the cabin. But when it came down to the place we were, the wilderness around us, I had to rely on Mitch. He was a creep who made my skin crawl and I wasn’t sure if I could totally trust him, but I felt he was the safest person to be around. He had nothing to gain from the expedition except a hunting trophy of some sort. He wasn’t afraid. Maybe we shouldn’t have been either.
I cleared my throat and looked around Dex’s shoulder to him. He was chewing tobacco and watching us with feigned interest.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked him.
“Of what?” was Mitch’s response.
“Of what’s out there?”
He chuckled to himself, totally humorless. “No, girly. I ain’t scared. Cuz I don’t know what’s out there. I want to find out though.”
“You don’t think it can kill us?”
“Hell, maybe it can. Lots of things out there can kill you. You just have to be prepared. If you think I’m some redneck moron who’s just going to take off into the bush after something without arming himself to the teeth, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m a hunter. I hunt things. It’s not the other way around.”
I exchanged a look with Dex.
“Whatever you want to do,” Dex whispered. “I won’t let anything happen to you either way.”
And you know, I believed him.
I threw my shoulders back in an attempt to appear brave and looked at both of them.
“Well considering I’ll go crazy if I have to spend one more day in that cabin and I’m not about trust our abilities to find our way back, I guess we’ll be joining you on your camping trip, Mitch.” >
Mitch’s face remained passive at my response, but just as I was about to head back inside to pack, I caught a gleam in his eye. It was something worse than sinister. It was excited.
~~~
Because there were only so many hours in the day, we had to pack fast. Rigby had left us with a lot of essentials but with only two llamas left, we couldn’t take everything. We decided protection against the cold was the most important. I was already feeling pretty ripe thanks to the freezing cold towel-showers I had taken from the wash basin, so I figured it wouldn’t matter if I lived in the same clothes for the next day or two. It would save on space and instead we packed a copious amount of space blankets. A lot of high energy foods like chocolate bars, nuts and jerky were in all of our small backpacks, as well as the dehydrated camping food. Even though the walkie talkies still weren’t getting a signal, we brought them along anyway. I wished we had some other way of getting help in an emergency – our cell phones were useless and I ended up leaving mine behind - but I prayed that they’d end up working somewhere along the way.
Just as we got the llamas outfitted, our packing job not as neat and tidy as the one Christina did, Mitch walked up to Dex and handed him a rifle.
“You know how to shoot, bud?”
Dex raised his brows and then looked to me. “If you remember correctly, Perry’s the one who can shoot a gun.”
Mitch didn’t even give me a glance. “Never trust a woman with a gun, son.”
“She’d do a lot better than Charlton Heston.”
“Charlton Heston’s dead.”
“Exactly.”
“Um,” I spoke up, giving Tonto a nervous pat. “Do we really need two guns?”
“What if there are two of your beasts?” Mitch responded, still looking at Dex. No, he was staring him down until Dex reluctantly took the rifle into his hands. Oh this was just brilliant.
“They aren’t my beasts,” I countered.
Mitch just shrugged. “Ready to go?”
Dex and I exchanged a wordless glance. When were we ever ready?
We started out following the few spots of blood that had been left from the scene of the crime. Considering a llama body had been hauled off somewhere, I was surprised at how little there was to show for it. If it wasn’t for the occasional patter of red, we wouldn’t have a trail to follow.
The trail also happened to correspond with Rigby’s map, which Dex kept looking at every five minutes. I kept Christina’s map close to my chest. I mean, it was literally folded up in my inner coat pocket.
The hardest part of our journey came first, the steep, sliding trek down the slope toward the hollow of trees. Thankfully the snow provided better grip this time around and Tonto was extremely surefooted. The llama-less Dex was right behind me too, ready to catch me if I fell.
With the hard part out of the way, the most unnerving part was next – the hollow. Even the llamas stopped their constant chewing, looking nervous and on edge as we entered the thicket of trees. As before, a cold, neverending wind whistled through like we were walking through an underground tunnel. The light from above was blocked off, bathing us all in a dim, grey light and it was completely silent except for our boots and the occasional llama snort.
We had just passed the area where Rigby had found the footprint when I felt Dex at my side, squeezing up next to me in the narrow path. Branches scraped at his coat as we passed.
“How are you doing, kiddo?” he whispered, keeping his eyes on Mitch in front of us.
“Nervous,” I admitted in a low voice. “You?”
“I feel great,” he said. Then he grinned at me and patted his rifle.
I shook my head quickly, taking an involuntary step ahead of him. “That has to be the worst idea on earth.”
“What? You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust you with a shovel, Dex.”
“Touche.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes, the path growing so narrow that he had to go back behind Tonto, who was raising his head higher than normal, nostrils flared wide. He didn’t like this any more than we did and who could blame him. We had to have been walking for at least an hour and there was still no sign that the path would ever end. It was just dark grey undergrowth and ominous tree-tops everywhere you looked.
I was about to panic, my claustrophobia finally settling in, when the path suddenly widened and the air around us grew brighter. A few happy minutes later and all of us spilled out into the open.
We stopped at the edge of the forest. I looked around me, blinking hard and taking it all in. I guess we had been walking gradually downhill that whole time because we were a lot lower in elevation. There was no snow around us, just a rolling landscape of mossy rocks and scatterings of trees beneath towering peaks that threatened to block out the low sun. It was very green, the air slightly warmer, and in the distance you could hear the growling rush of a river.
“Well if it ain’t Rivendell,” Dex commented, stretching his arms above his head. I was perplexed at his comment, considering I had just compared the hollow to the Mines of Moria the other day.
“Rivenwhat?” Mitch asked, turning to face us.
Dex gave him a dismissive wave and pulled out his map. “Nevermind, are we there yet?”
“The blood trail has stopped.”
“So now what?” I asked, feeling tired and impatient. I wanted to get to wherever the hell we were going so we could set up camp without being in darkness.
“Give me the map,” Mitch demanded. I saw Dex cluck his tongue, like he was catching himself from saying something “Dex-like”, but did as he asked.
Mitch brought the map up his face, his brows scrunched up as he looked it over. I had the impression that the dimwit needed glasses. Then I imagined a pair of Harry Potter ones on him and had to choke back a laugh. It was nice to not feel intimidated by the guy for one second.
Mitch put down the map and looked around him. Then he brought a compass out of his jacket pocket and raised it to his eyes.
“We ain’t too far from where we should camp. Don’t matter where the trail stopped, the animal has to be out here somewhere.”
He tugged on his llama and we began the arduous process of walking across rough – albeit beautiful – terrain. It was probably for the best that the blood trail had stopped. I wasn’t in the mood to follow it all the way to a feasting scene. Whether it was beast or bear or whatever, if we interrupted a meal, there was no doubt we’d be needing both of those guns.
I shuddered at the thought and continued. We walked past a flight of brown and grey birds that Mitch almost shot at but thankfully didn’t. We came across the river we had heard, a bright blue-green torrent of rushing water that looked too deep to cross. We followed it for a while until it veered off down a slope. We continued going straight, not up or down, just across the valley, picking our way through loose rocks and deep earth that had been thawed by the sun.
Mitch told us we were close to the campsite when we entered yet another thick patch of forest. The path here was a little bit wider than it had been in the hollow and it was nowhere near as dark, even though the sun had already disappeared behind one of the white mountain spires.
At this point I was dragging my feet and contemplating riding Tonto for the rest of the journey. Too bad Rigby had warned us that the llamas hadn’t been trained that way. Besides, as short as I was, I was no lightweight and would have broken the poor thing’s back.
Dex noticed and had just taken over llama leading duties as well as my backpack, when I heard a faint growling in the darkness behind me.
I stopped dead in my tracks and whipped around.
There was nothing behind us except the ominously gloomy forest. The birdsong that we had been hearing had suddenly stopped, like it was listening too.
“What is it?” Dex asked, bringing Tonto to a standstill.
I waited a few seconds, in case I heard the growl again, before telling him what I had heard.
He looked over to Mitch. “Hey, Mitch, wait up a second will you?”
I heard Mitch mumble something rude but I was in no frame of mind to care. Dex watched me carefully, then let his eyes roam over the forest, as if seeing would help with hearing.
Then I heard it again. A low, low growl, so low that it rolled through the forest like a bass chord, heavy sound in my bones. I sucked in my breath, trying to hear past the beating of my heart in my head.
“That was…something,” Dex said quietly. I took my eyes off the forest and regarded him. He was chewing gum, fast.
“I think we should keep going,” Mitch said blankly. But he still cocked his shotgun with one flick of his wrist.
As curious as I was to find out what the cause of the noise was, I also wasn’t stupid. I nodded quickly and, forgetting all about my sore feet, picked up the pace. Dex and Tonto followed and after a few harrowing minutes we were out of the forest and back into the falling twilight of another small valley.
We were higher up now than earlier and though there was still no trace of snow, the wind that seemed to sweep down the mountain sides and funnel toward us was as cold as ice. We paused to pile on a layer of scarves and it took another thirty minutes of walking at a quick clip before Mitch finally stopped and announced we were at our camping spot for the night.
I was relieved to see that it had been used several times before, the faint sign of civilization bringing a feeble sense of security. There was a wide, flattened grassy area where the tents were supposed to go, a bunch of logs gathered around an ash and charcoal-strewn fire pit and there were even roasting sticks propped up for marshmallows and hotdogs.
None of us wasted any time in getting ready. Mitch knew exactly how to get the tents out and ready and with Dex’s help it took no time at all. I took care of the llamas, which was basically getting the packs off them, brushing them down, feeding them and tying them up to a nearby tree, keeping the lead long and loose so they could graze around them. Mitch had insisted that if we let them loose they would still stick around, but I didn’t want to test that theory way out in the middle of nowhere.
And that we were. I had been to many remote places in my life. D’Arcy Island, Red Fox, but none of them felt as far away and isolated as this place did. It didn’t even have a freaking name that I knew of, we were just in some valley in the Canadian Rockies. The nearest town was miles and miles of mountainous cliffs and steep valleys away. Our walkie talkies still didn’t work, either, giving me that very terrifying feeling of being inconsequential. If I let myself dwell on it for too long, I’d start thinking about those stories where people go camping in the woods and are never heard from again until a hiker finds their frozen bodies twenty years later.
As if he picked up on that, Dex had me working extra hard and staying busy. At first I thought he was just bossing me around but he just wanted to keep my mind off things. And that’s why I didn’t mind preparing everyone’s dinner for them, even though Mitch could have been a little bit nicer about it.
At least the fire we had going was strong and hot and I made everyone tea to match. Mitch brought out the bourbon again and we all partook, making hot toddies to wash down the cardboard-tasting pasta.
“Is this the first time you been camping?” Mitch asked Dex.
Dex took a sip of his tea and looked at me briefly. “Perry and I were just camping on D’Arcy Island in November. Why? Am I lacking in the survival skills department?”
“What was on D’Arcy Island?” he asked. He sounded interested but his face looked stony and bored in the campfire glow.
“Ghosts,” I spoke up, watching for his reaction.
As expected he didn’t look too impressed.
In fact, he decided to take out a switchblade from his pocket and start stroking the blade. Yeah, because that didn’t scream psychopath or anything.
“Ghosts,” he repeated, sounding almost insulted. “You guys are f*cked up, you know that?”
Dex’s gaze was a few squints shy of a full-on glare. “Is this going to turn into a pissing contest cuz I’m pretty sure I could outpiss you.”
I pulled my coat around me tighter and leaned in closer to the fire. The night was growing colder and possible confrontation between Mitch and Dex was drawing shivers down my shoulders.
“No one’s peeing anywhere,” I said. I gave Mitch a quick glance. “And yeah we’re f*cked up. You would be too if you saw ghosts.”
He chuckled coldly. His cloud of breath bounced in the black air.
“So I’m guessing you believe what Rigby’s been spewing.”
Dex scratched at his chin thoughtfully as the flames danced on his face, making the hollows of his cheeks look sharp. His face was getting quite beardy again.
“Honestly, we don’t know what to believe,” he admitted. “Ghosts are one thing and Sasquatch is another. If it wasn’t for the decapitation of Twatwaffle – God rest his soul – I’d be ready to call this whole thing a hoax.”
“You don’t believe Rigby either?”
Dex’s eyes flitted to mine and back to Mitch’s. “I believed he might be doing this to raise attention to his business. Wouldn’t you think that’s more believable?”
For once, Mitch seemed stumped. He shrugged. “I’ve known Rigby a long time. He’s not that type. Yeah, business is down but it’s not like he’s in real trouble or nothing. He lives simple, like I do, like everyone here does. We aren’t hurting for money. Besides, there are always dumb Americans coming here, wanting to shoot some good ol’ Canadian moose.”
Dex raised his brow but declined to comment on the American comment. “So you don’t think this is all a set-up.” >
“Nah. I don’t believe it’s real either. Rigby’s got an imagination.”
“And his daughter.”
“She’s a dumb young bitch,” he said simply.
Dex and I were stunned into silence. The crackle of the fire filled our ears and the only thing missing were the chirps of a few crickets.
Dex cleared his throat in a rough manner and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his cutting gaze on Mitch. “Kind of an unfair assessment of a girl who’s only, what, sixteen?”
“Women start as bitches early.”
Then Mitch looked at me, as if I was some sort of example. I cocked my head, running through the many, many things I wanted to say to him.
Yet couldn’t. Because as we sat there, staring at each other across the angry flames, the dark and unforgiving wilderness at our backs, filled with who knows what, he was our only hope of survival. And he had two f*cking guns on the other side of his log.
I bit my lip. Hard. Until I tasted copper. I stole a glance at Dex and from the way his jaw was clenched, I could tell he was doing the exact same thing.
“I think it’s time for bed,” I announced, gulping back the tea which was cooled from the mountain air, and got to my feet. I needed to remove myself from the situation before I said something I regretted and I could only hope that Dex would do the same thing.
I gathered up my toothbrush, wet-wipes and a roll of toilet paper out of the tent. I fished my flashlight out of my pocket and made my way past the men, who were staring at each other like that pissing contest was about to erupt at any moment. The fact that no one was speaking only added to the awkwardness.
I didn’t go too far to do my business, keeping their shadowy figures and glowing fire in my line of sight at all times. They could probably see me if they tried to and I was glad Mitch’s back was to me. He was creeping me out more and more and I wouldn’t have put it past him to be a peeping Tom of some sort.
By the time I was done, somehow not feeling refreshed or clean or anything, Dex was spitting out toothpaste into the fire. Mitch was staring at the flames with some super nutso look on his face, the bottle of bourbon in his hand. He was beyond drinking out of cups now and was just swilling from the bottle like it was water.
I couldn’t have been happier when Dex finally crawled into the tent, his flashlight bobbing as he held it between his teeth.
It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be. The tent was a lot thicker than your standard model, the sleeping bags were heavy and insulated and the mat beneath the tent did an excellent job of retaining heat. And yes, I was a tiny bit disappointed that we weren’t sharing a sleeping bag like the last time we went camping together, but I wasn’t about to request that I crawl into his. I had my limits and I think I blew past them the other night when I tried to put his dick in my mouth.
I wiped that mental image out of my head and settled back into the sleeping bag as he zipped the tent shut. Like I had done, he kept every item of clothing on for warmth and just crawled right into the bag.
“I was thinking about sabotaging your sleeping bag so you’d have to get in here with me,” he said with a grin, quickly zipping himself in.
My face grew hotter than the rest of me. “Thinking isn’t doing.”
He rolled over, his face now inches from mine.
I moved my head away. “Get away from me, I stink.”
“You don’t stink. You smell like Perry.”
“That’s gross.”
“Baby, I could drown in your scent.”
I looked at him askance and saw the gravity in his hooded eyes. He was totally serious.
“But,” he went on, voice low and rough, “if you need to get clean from head to toe, I’m offering my tongue.”
I wished that image hadn’t caused more heat to flash over my body, this time between my thighs.
I eyed him steadily. “You really are something, you know that?”
The corner of his mouth tugged upward. “I do.”
“Is this you trying?”
“This is me playing.”
Figured. I rolled away from him and put my back to his face. “Of course. What else is new?”
His arm came around my body and he brought me back toward him, spooning me through his sleeping bag. He gently brushed my hair away from my neck, the skin shocked from the cold air, and rested his chin there, speaking low into my ear.
“I’m not about to try anything with Heston’s understudy out there. You know he’s drunk, armed and listening.”
A shiver rolled through me, lighting my nerves. If Mitch hadn’t been sitting just outside the tent, would Dex be trying something? And would I have had the guts to turn him down?
Somehow, I really doubted it.
I didn’t know what to say to Dex about that, so I swallowed my fears and anticipation and tried to sleep. With his arm around me and body pressed up against mine, I didn’t once think about being in the middle of the mountains with Mitch and some beast. I just thought about his hot breath on my neck, wishing I could fall asleep like this every night.