Cold River Resurrection (7 page)

Laurel was conceived up here, that summer. Ah, Amelia . . .  we just never talked about it when things got bad for you.

Smokey lay there for a long time, thinking of things past, of regrets, of things unsaid. His uncle snorted, then began to snore, a low rumble, and then he turned and quit. Smokey lay on his back and looked up at the stars, the dark sky giving way to moonrise, the starlight giving the forest a surreal quality, as if he were on the moon, or a moon of another planet. One of the moons of Jupiter. He drifted off to sleep. He dreamed of that first summer with Amelia here, with her by the fire. But his dreams turned to his night here with his uncle.

Something moved in the tree line.

There in the forest.

In his dream, Smokey slowly reached over and touched his uncle. The snoring stopped.

Uncle, what’s that in the woods, coming this way, something walkin?

Uncle, can you see?

Yes, Smokey, I can see things we were not meant to see.

A strange figure stood at the edge of the woods and looked at them, standing on two legs, covered with long hair, too tall for a bear, didn’t walk like a bear.

I’ve seen Mr. Bear walk before, up on two legs. This shadow walks in a lurch, like the undead, like a shadow man on a stroll.

Uncle.

Can you see?

I can see.

Uncle, you have your eyes closed.

As you should, Smokey.

The hair figure looked straight at Smokey, raised his head and howled, a sound like Smokey had heard only once before, when he camped up here with his uncle many summers ago, a sound not unlike that of the wolf, only deeper, longer.

Uncle, my eyes are closed, what’s that noise?

And what is that creature howling at us?

Smokey could see the muscles moving under the hair as the creature walked toward them. Smokey shivered, wanting to get up and run, to leave his uncle here, the sweat coming down his arms now.

The creature (Sasquatch?) What is this animal coming toward me? Must be a bear.

Uncle.

The creature is walking toward us, Uncle.

Get your gun, Uncle.

Won’t do any good, Smokey.

The creature is walking toward us, now thirty feet away, I’m getting my gun. He’s howling again.

Howooooooooo!!

Close your eyes, Smokey.

Smokey closed his eyes, thinking that he should get Uncle’s rifle.

Smokey shifted in his sleeping bag and sat up, now wide awake, aching, the hair on his neck rigid, aching. He slowly reached for his rifle and felt Nathan move beside him.

“Did you hear that, Big Brother?”

Nathan grunted.

“What the hell was -?”

“Sounds in the forest, been here longer than we have, Little Brother.”

Smokey looked into the darkness, listening, the forest quiet, not even small animals moving.

Quiet.

Then he heard it again, this time awake, the sound far off, a mile or more. He suddenly thought of Jennifer Kruger, alone in the woods all those nights, alone and dying, and he felt a kinship, a warm admiration that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
How did she survive?

“Go to sleep, Little Brother.” Nathan turned over in his bag and was still.

Lieutenant Mark “Smokey” Kukup, thirty-eight years old, former staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, college graduate, a fifteen year member of the Cold River Tribal Police Department, and Cold River tribal member, lay in his sleeping bag in the woods below the Whitewater Glacier on Mt. Jefferson, wondering what the hell was going on. He wanted to go back to that time when he was here with Amelia, but the problems of today interfered.

A lost woman.

Body parts in the woods.

Something howling that you haven’t heard before.

But then he knew.

Yes, you have heard it before.

You and your uncle, Smokey.

Long ago.

It was a long time before he slept, and when he did, he dreamed he was carrying Jennifer Kruger through the woods, running in the dark, stumbling, being chased by a large hairy creature. The creature went down on all fours and ran after them, and now it was up on two legs. Jennifer cried out and he ran again, running in the moonlight, not wanting to turn around and see what was chasing them, knowing that they had to get away.

Smokey slept, turning, sweating, running in the darkness.

C
hapter
15

Whitewater Glacier

Smokey opened his eyes to the incredible smell of coffee. It was early light, the sun not up yet to the downhill side, east of them. He looked over at Nathan and groaned. How does he do that so quietly?

“How’d you sleep?” Nathan was tending a coffee pot on a small backpacking stove. He handed Smokey a metal cup. Smokey sat up and reached for it and nodded.

“Uh, good, like a baby.” They both knew it was a lie, but Smokey knew it was something they weren’t going to talk about. Nathan had his sleeping bag rolled up and his pack ready to go, his rifle balanced on top of the pack. He handed Smokey a piece of jerky and walked to the place where he had marked Jennifer’s track.

“I’ll start here
. Finish your coffee and breakfast.” Nathan dropped down with his tracking stick and began measuring the stride, moving forward, slowly, down toward the river.

Smokey walked down to the place where he saw something in his dream, kneeled down, looking for sign, something to tell him
whether or not he was crazy.

Nothing.

He looked up and caught Nathan looking, smiling, shaking his head. Smokey stood up, feeling foolish, and picked up their packs and followed Nathan, changing gears in his mind, forcing himself to think about the task at hand.

He wanted to cut her sign and jump ahead, do some jump tracking, try to figure out her path by reckoning and the lay of the land, go to where she must have passed. But he knew that would be an amateur thing to do. They needed to follow her tracks, no matter which direction,
since they didn’t know where she had found the body parts.

And it could have been more than one place
.

Nathan tracked as the sun came up, first down to the riverbank, and then back up, Smokey following with the packs. When Nathan got ahead of him about fifty yards, Smokey would move the packs along behind him.

Smokey took over as lead tracker when they came back up from the river, the track now going south and a little west, up toward the glacier on Mt. Jefferson, following a game trail. Jennifer was wearing hiking boots, size six, Smokey thought, with good lug soles. Easy to follow on soft ground. He lost her track once on a rock shelf and after a few moments he walked across, getting on his knees on the other side and picked up the trail almost immediately. He knew they wouldn’t always be so lucky.

He found a place where she had been running, the track harder to find, her stride longer and the foot strike not as distinct.

In the early afternoon they found her nest, the place where she had spent the night before her fight with the bear, her third night in the woods, Smokey thought. He found a wrapper and water bottle, photographed them, marked the coordinates with his GPS, and collected the evidence of her passing.

C
hapter
16

Mountain View Hospital

Madras

Jennifer raised up and looked around. Her head hurt so she lay back on the pillow and tried
to swallow, her mouth dry from drugs. At some point during the night she knew she was in a hospital, that she was safe, but she wasn’t sure what she was safe from.

I don’t know how I got here, she thought. I must have been in an accident. I hurt. I just can’t remember. She raised her right arm up. The IV tube followed her, the bandages on her hand hiding the needle. She lifted her left arm and saw bandages on her left hand as well.

What happened to me?

She dropped her hand and tried to sit up, and in the end, pushed the call button. A nurse arrived within a few seconds.

“Well, I see you decided to join us,” the nurse said. She’s young, about my age, Jennifer thought. She had the brisk efficiency that you want in a nurse. Maybe a little too cheerful considering that many people here don’t actually go home. Home. Where is –? Portland, of course. My home. Seems so far away, so, so very different. It’s as if I had been to a foreign land, traveled for a year or more, and can’t remember where I went.

“My name is
Mary,” the cheerful nurse said, adjusting Jennifer’s pillows.

“What happened to me?” Jennifer asked.

“I think I’ll let the police tell you that.”

“The police. Was I in an accident?”

“Well, sort of, but I can’t say. Why don’t you look at the flowers and I’ll see if the police officer is still here.”

Flowers?

The card was from a lieutenant, and said something about Nanna. Where was Nanna. She looked around and found the new doll under a fold of her blanket, different from Nanna, but a doll just the same. But how did this person know about Nanna?

Mary
returned with a police officer in a grey and black uniform, a young woman with black shiny hair. Must be long when she lets it down, Jennifer thought. The woman held out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Officer Sarah Greywolf, Cold River Tribal Police.” She reached over and patted Jennifer on the shoulder.

“Tribal Police, I don’t understand, was I in an accident?”

Sarah pulled a chair over to the bed. “Kind of, you were camping and got lost, on the rez.”

“The rez, I don’t . . .”

“The Indian Reservation,” Sarah said. “You were with a Bigfoot Expedition, and then camped on the rez, and apparently got lost.”

Ohmigod, Carl

And then she remembered, a time that seemed like a year ago, driving from Portland to the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness area, camping with a bunch of fools like Carl, then camping on the reservation.

I don’t remember lost.

Yes you do.

I can’t.

“I remember walking, but not much else. I remember, I re- .” And then it came back to her, all at once, the finding of the body, spending the nights in the woods alone, the frightening sounds, the dead.

The dead?

The dead man and the others.

Jennifer shook, and pulled her blanket up around her with her gauze gloves. Sarah touched her shoulder.

“I need to talk with someone,” Jennifer said. “I don’t want to be alone,” she added.

“I’ll be here, or someone else, until the lieutenant gets back,” Sarah said.

“Where is he?”

“Up on the mountain, looking for your trail.”

“Oh. Okay, when he gets back then.”

Jennifer lay back. So tired, I’m so tired.

She slept.

Parker Creek

1400 hours

              Smokey enjoyed the day, as much as he could under the circumstances. They were in the tree line, just down from the snowfields, the forest thick with tall Ponderosa Pines, underbrush, and windblown trees crisscrossing the path. It was cool under the trees. Smokey and Nathan sat and ate a late afternoon snack.

“What you think, Big Brother?” Smokey asked. They hadn’t talked much today, other than about the track, always the track, Nathan talking out loud, almost to himself, about the track they were following, how she was doing, whether or not she was running, wandering aimlessly, or resting.

They found a spot where she had apparently been sitting for several hours, a daytime sit, Nathan had said. It was too exposed for a nighttime bivouac. Within an hour Nathan stopped, pointing at a tree with brush around it. They stopped for a snack.

“I think that is where she spent the second night,” Nathan said. “After that, who knows?” He shrugged.

“What do you think is out here?”

“A bunch of bodies, some new, some old.” Nathan finished his snack, placed
the baggie in his pack, and stood to resume the pace.

Maybe we’ll find it today
, Smokey thought.

This place of death.

Jennifer and Carl had been camping on Parker Creek. Smokey and Nathan had the coordinates in their GPS units. They were about a mile from the campsite. If there were bodies or body parts out here, they should find where Jennifer stumbled across them soon.

And they did. Smokey could smell death before they found any sign of remains.

Nathan stood upright and motioned for Smokey to join him. He held his hand out for his pack. Smokey handed the pack to Nathan, and then the rifle. They were in a level area, the trees thin here. A clearing with rock formations, downed trees, and smaller pine trees. Nathan had been following Jennifer’s track on an animal trail, moving fast, the familiarity with her footprint an ingrained thing by now. Smokey looked up to the south, the direction of the camp, an area with thicker forest. 

“Look,” Nathan said, pointing at the trail. “She was running here, on her toes, see the stride, she was running full out, lucky to stay on the path.”

Smokey leaned down and looked at the prints, the stride longer than he would have imagined for someone her size. The print was just the round part of the front of the shoe, a divot where she pushed off. He looked up the trail and tried to see her footprints without moving or walking on them. The odor came again, stronger this time.

“She’s running from death,” Smokey said, nodding down the trail.

“We may not find much, Little Brother,” Nathan said.

“I’ve been watching Mr. Bear and Mr. Cougar tracks for most of the day. They might have been hungry as well.” He carefully set his pack to the side of the trail, keeping his rifle in his hands. He pointed to the trail.

“Look carefully. If it’s body parts we’re after, some of them may be scattered by our animal friends, those not eaten may be scattered for hundreds of yards. Miles maybe.”

Nathan removed his sketch book from his pack and quickly drew the trail, the location. He took a GPS reading and marked the trail with coordinates.

Smokey placed his pack beside the trail, opposite Nathan, and carefully looked around. He removed a pair of binoculars from his pack and scanned the clearing. There, at the other end. One hundred yards away.

Birds. Crows.

A’a
on a log. Waiting for their turn to eat. The dead odor came and went on a slight breeze, but that was where he wanted to look first. He handed the binoculars to Nathan. They approached from different angles, keeping each other in sight, packs shouldered, rifles ready. Thirty feet away, Nathan held up his hand. He gestured to the ground in front of him with the barrel of his rifle.

“Bones. A femur and some others. Some flesh attached, not in very good shape.”

Smokey watched as Nathan again removed his sketch book and handheld GPS unit, and wrote in the book. Smokey returned to his stalk of the log. The
a’a
flew off with a noisy protest, and then landed on another log, waiting for the intruders to leave them to their meal. He stepped forward, cautious, watching where he placed his feet, careful to not destroy evidence, footprints, anything that a person would leave in passing.

That’s a human skull, there in front of you.

His scalp tingled, the skin on his head tightened, and he breathed slowly through his mouth. The skull was just there in front of him, lying next to a dead branch, an empty eye socket staring at him, accusing him for not being there sooner. A patch of hair, some scalp, but mostly cleaned, maybe by animals. He couldn’t tell how long it had been there, with some flesh, a little decayed. If he hadn’t been looking carefully, he would have missed it altogether.

“Skull here.” Smokey pointed in front of him. Nathan looked up and over and nodded.

Smokey bent over the skull and looked closely. An adult skull, a little worse for wear, the lower jaw broken (chewed?) off, the upper teeth well formed, even, expensive, the lips gone (a delicacy) from carnivores and decay. Not a kid or someone from the rez. A hole in the right temple, bullet hole it looked like, entrance hole, the top of the skull missing. Well, this wasn’t an accident, not with the body here. Enough for a dental comparison. He fumbled for his GPS unit and saved the spot. Nathan was walking slowly toward him. Smokey looked up and around. The mountain took on a sinister look, chilling in the afternoon heat, the July sun making the meadow hot. The crows were still making a racket on a log, watching the intruders stalk their meal.

“That’s a head, not just a skull,” Nathan said. He looked older just now, and Smokey saw what his friend would look like in twenty years. More wrinkled. More serious, the laughter gone.

“That’s good, Big Brother. But I gave you a hint and you had a leg up on this one. Skull.”

Nathan grinned. The grin faded and he went down on one knee to look closely at what was left of what had once been a human.

“That’s not a contact gunshot,” he said. Smokey knew what he meant but wanted to be sure.

“Why not?”

“With a contact gunshot to the skull, the pressure of the gasses would have caused greater damage to the skull than the bullet. The skull would have fractured, split in several fracture lines. So, not a contact wound. Probably not a suicide.” He stood up and looked at Smokey.

“Let’s see what the crows are so interested in. Then let’s call this mess in.”

Smokey came around the end of the log, the odor of rotten meat strong, his eyes watering, and saw a shoe, a dress shoe, and then a scrap of material, charcoal with gray stripes. A suit pant leg. Nathan pointed at the ground.

“Jennifer stood here. Her hiking boot print there, beside the shoe.”

So she had been here. This was the place. She spent the night less than a quarter mile from here. The horror she must have gone through.

Nathan plugged in the coordinates and photographed the shoe and leg as it lay.

“Mr.
Anahuy
’s been here,” Smokey said, looking at the bear paw prints beside and over Jennifer’s hiking boot prints.

“Your call, Lieutenant. Do we move the remains to see what’s left? Bear already moved it around.”

“Grab on, Big Brother.”

They pulled on rubber gloves and Smokey grabbed the shoe. As he pulled to remove the remains from under the branches, the leg and ankle started to separate. He reache
d down and grabbed the pant leg and pulled, moving the remains away from the log.

The leg was attached
to a torso, bloody remains with the internal organs missing, one leg gone, one arm mostly gone. Remnants of what had once been a white shirt was wrapped around an arm. Incredibly there was a watch on a wrist and a gold ring on the left hand. Smokey pulled again, sliding the body another foot.
The head is missing, can’t be the skull we saw, the skull has been here longer than this.
Smokey looked up at the sun to the west of Mt. Jefferson, thinking that it would be dark in a few hours, and the forest in the dark was a different place.
How did Jennifer survive this?

Nathan sketched the remains, Jennifer’s prints, Mr. Bear’s prints, and photographed the area. Smokey opened his cell phone and saw that he had full signal strength. It always amazed him that he could be in the wilderness area and have a cell phone signal. They had a long way to go with their search, but he wanted to give their boss a heads-up on what they had found. He dialed Chief Martin Andrews. It was time to let their boss make some decisions.

T
he dead man had a left hand.

The hand that Jennifer carried was also a left hand.
But not the same. And the hand Jennifer was clutching belonged to a woman, of that he was certain.

Where’s the woman? What the hell did you get into, Jennifer?