SODIUM:1 Harbinger (7 page)

I woke Bull and mentioned it and we both sat up silently listening for any more commotion. It was pitch black and the night air had grown cold. The silence was deafening except for the sounds of the millions of crickets that inhabited the meadow. We sat up for five minutes and listened and then Bull gave me a dirty look before laying back down.

What we didn’t know was that Kyle had gotten a nighttime visit from the bear. As he lay mostly awake, no doubt running the day’s arguments with Susi over and over in his head, the bear had managed to come up and corner him on the ledge. It was dark and difficult to see as he tried to hold his ground with only my bat available to defend himself.

Several feeble swings told him it was not going to get the job done so he slid down over the face of the ledge to a smaller ledge below. Swinging the bat helplessly up at the bear was all that he could do to in defense as the bear inched ever closer. The bear leaned over the ledge and swiped at him with a big nastily clawed fore-paw. As Kyle squatted uncomfortably down on the small ledge, just out of the reach of the bear, he thought he might just have a chance. The bear then backed up, disapearing over the top of the ledge. Seconds later it let out a blood curdling roar. I didn’t know at the time, but that was the roar that had awakened me.

The bear only got out the one roar and then went silent as something cut deeply into it. Kyle was splattered with the bear’s blood, but he couldn’t see what was happening just above him. Whatever it was had killed the animal and was now hacking away at it.

Bits and pieces of the now dead bear were falling over the ledge onto Kyle who was stooped silently below. The rocks were now becoming slick with the bear’s blood. Kyle then silently set the bat down so that he could better position himself.

When whatever had killed the bear finished with its hacking it pushed the carcass over the cliff edge. The bear, in its prime earlier that evening, had weighed in at 600 pounds. For Kyle, the slippery bloody rock and the heavy carcass were too much. He was knocked from his perch. For Kyle it was a 90’ drop down into the rocky Rancheria Creek below.

Chapter 6

We awoke the next morning at first light and I immediately made my way out of camp to try to get to Kyle to apologize. My sister was not talking to me, so I thought I would try the other side. Bull had described to me exactly where Kyle could be found. I carried his gun with me with the hope of trading it out for my bat.

When I arrived at the ledge my jaw dropped. I began to shake as a panic set in. There were bear tracks and there was blood everywhere. Kyle’s sleeping bag had been ripped to shreds and there was no sign of Kyle. I turned and fired off three rounds into the air.

Bull made his way up at a full run in under three minutes. When he arrived he immediately stopped and stared at the blood soaked ground. As the reality of the scene took hold, he walked slowly over to the edge and looked down into the rushing creek below.

Bull turned and looked back at the bear tracks. He remarked that the tracks came in, but did not leave. And there was no sign of Kyle. We made our way back down the trail and then down Tilden Creek to where it joined Rancheria.

As we started our walk up Rancheria, to under the ledge where Kyle’s had been the night before, I stopped Bull. I pointed to my bat sticking up out of the rushing water. It was stuck in a heavy current along with several tree limbs, but it was easy to see that it was my bat. We began looking in the creek for any sign of a body, but there was none to be found.

I wanted to recover the bat, but Bull pressed on, finding Kyle was much more important. As we continued I could not help but look back at my bat caught in that swirling torrent. The bat was my friend and I wished that I had it securely back in my hand. Even with Kyle’s gun I still felt vulnerable.

It took another three minutes for us to arrive below the ledge where Kyle had been staying. The surrounding rocks had blood spatterings and bits of animal gut on them, but Bull could not immediately tell if it was from Kyle or the bear. The creek was deep at that point, but not deep enough for a 90’ fall.

The strange thing was that there was no other evidence of either of them on the side of the creek below the ledge. We made our way across the creek and Bull put out his twisted hand with the palm facing backward in that familiar gesture of “hold it right there.”

On the southeast side of the creek there were not one, but two sets of footprints leading away, heading up the creek. And there was evidence of a bloody body having been dragged along with them. I wondered who had done this…and why? The questions were popping into my mind faster than I could answer them. I could see the wheels turning in Bull’s head as he too surveyed the situation.

We turned immediately to make our way back to camp to get the girls and fill them in on what may or may not have happened. As we hurriedly walked all I could think about was how my sister was going to hate me for the rest of our lives. After all, it had been my prodding that had elevated whatever spat they were having to the level that drove him from camp.

Susi was not going to forgive me for this one and it was a selfish thing for me to be thinking of at the time. But again, the wiring in my brain was not right as no normal human being would have worried about themselves. I then began to wonder if any of them would ever talk to me again once we returned to Atlanta.

The girls met us as we made our way into the camp. Bull filled them in and Susi immediately broke down. I wanted to comfort her, but I just didn’t know how. My total lack of being able to deal with relationships continued to rear its ugly head.

Allie stepped in and Bull signaled for me to help start packing up the camp. It took half an hour to break camp and to calm Susi enough to get her pack on her back. Bull hoisted his and Kyle’s packs and we began our walk. We stopped at the edge of the creek where the two sets of tracks had been found and Bull let Allie assess the site for herself.

They both concluded that we should follow the tracks and see if Kyle was still alive. The thought of the other sent chills down my spine. I was not mentally prepared for a confrontation or for seeing my friend dead.

Bull had guessed that whoever they were they had been there right about daybreak, it would put them a good two hours ahead of us. Allie reasoned that we should be able to catch up since we were not dragging anything along with us.

We made haste up the trail along Rancheria Creek, now in search of one of our own. It was hard terrain, but we had reason to travel it as quickly as we could. We had not gone far when we came across evidence of blood and guts on a rock beside the creek. After that point the evidence of anything being dragged had disappeared, there were only the two sets of footprints moving away.

I could not imagine how frustrating it would be for us to slip farther behind and then to lose track of whomever it was that had our friend. As my brain slowly churned through the scenarios that may have happened, I couldn’t help but get that feeling that this was not going to end well.

Were the two tracks from whomever we had spotted in the woods a few nights before? Were they armed? Were they a couple of crazies and did they wish us harm? These thoughts at least kept my mind busy and off the fact that the terrain was quickly sapping my energy. I would not be able to keep this pace up for long and I did not want to be the one that held the others up.

During our hike Susi was completely silent. I could not tell what she might be thinking as she was largely expressionless and just following the others blindly. I could only imagine the level of guilt she must be feeling having had her last conversations with Kyle as an argument. I guessed that I would have been silent too.

As we came upon a big bend in the creek Bull stretched out his hand. As we stopped I could see him sniffing the air. Immediately I could smell that familiar essence of a campfire. We were close to whomever it was that we had been following. I pulled Kyle’s pistol and fumbled with the safety. I was not going into this without being ready to pull the trigger at whoever or whatever may lie ahead.

We continued on, only at a slower pace, so that we would have a chance at sneaking up on whomever it was. Bull stopped us and then climbed up a hillside edge so that he could get a good view from on top of a large boulder. As I waited down by the creek I was a nervous wreck.

I turned to look back down the creek from where we had just come and for an instant I was sure I saw someone move in the trees 100 yards back. I was standing on a large rock by the creeks edge at the time and when I turned back to warn the others I lost my footing and began to slide.

I fell off the rock and into the rushing creek below. Allie looked back just as I went over the edge and came running to give me a hand. I had been injury free since we left Basecamp, but my fun time was over. I hit the rushing water on my back with the full pack on.

I was immediately sucked under and then spewed out of a torrent between two large rocks. I next tumbled over several times before coming to a calmer section of creek. Allie had shed her pack and jumped in about waist deep water to rescue me. I was dragged over to the side and then pushed out onto a large flat rock.

Susi had stayed up on the trail and just watched with a stoic look on her face. She only had her mind on Kyle and any of my little side shows were not going to distract her. During my tumbling I managed to crack my right wrist hard on a rock on the bottom of the creek. I had also managed to lose Kyle’s gun.

I thought it just as well as I would not have been able to hit anything with it even if it had been right in front of me. I figured that it would probably work to keep me from shooting myself. Once again I longed for my bat.

My wrist began to swell and I could tell from the numb feeling that I had broken a bone. Bull was still up on the boulder surveying the area in front of us and had kept an eye on us during the fiasco. Since Allie had been right on top of it, he did not bother to come down to help. He knew how capable she was in dealing with the situation and that if anything he would just be getting in her way.

The bone in the palm of my hand that went from my wrist to my little finger was broken. As Allie looked it over she motioned for me to look back down at the creek. When I did she pulled on my hand setting the bone back in place.

The pain was intense, but it was over quickly. I was glad she had done it without me being prepared as I would likely have once again screamed aloud. As Allie prepared a splint I noticed Bull coming down from his perch. He said that the area in front of us indeed looked like a campsite, but there was nobody there.

The fire was just a few smoldering embers. I then remembered why I had fallen in the creek to start with and this time I let Bull know that I was sure I had seen someone. This meant that either someone else was following us or the other two had somehow doubled back. Allie quickly finished my splint and a new plan was devised.

Allie and Susi would head forward to the campsite and inspect it further while Bull and I would head downstream to investigate whoever was following us. I thought it was a really bad idea to be splitting up, but as the gimp of the group I did not have much of a say.

The girls moved forward to the camp and Bull and I made our way back towards where we had come from. When we arrived at the area where I thought I had seen someone, Bull began his investigation. He had tracked animals for years as a game hunter so I had no doubt that if someone had been there he would find evidence of it.

We searched for half an hour and found nothing more than a small broken twig with a leaf on the end, no footprints or any of the other evidence that would be expected. Bull speculated that whoever it was, knew how to move about without disturbing the soil. He also told me that someone had definitely been there, because branches don’t break by themselves.

Bull pulled out his small binoculars and began scanning the trail down along the creek. Had anyone been at the spot I identified they would have had to have gone back that way. This section of the creek was guarded by steep walls on either side. Only a mountain goat would have a shot at scaling it in the best of places.

I did not like the feeling of now being cut off from the way we had originally come. My thoughts were that we needed to collect Kyle’s body and then make our way back to civilization as fast as possible. If we could not find Kyle soon it would be better to let the authorities come up and deal with it themselves. I thought this was especially true for me given my now somewhat crippled condition.

We then turned back towards the girls and made our way to the abandoned camp. When we arrived Bull was a bit uneasy as the girls had continued forward. Allie had scratched a note in the dirt saying it looked like we were only about 20 minutes behind whoever it was. She was going after them.

Bull then turned and followed at a fast pace. I knew I was going to have trouble keeping up, but I was in no condition to be left behind. Nor did I want to be the one who kept us all apart. I pressed on as best I could.

We had come to an open meadow with a heavily forested area to the right. Allie and Susi were standing about half way through the meadow with their hands raised. Bull put out his hand in the stop gesture and we then moved over behind a large rock.

Slowly we made our way, under cover, up into the tree line. Just as we stepped into the trees we saw two men emerging from them up towards Allie and Susi. The men had rifles aimed at the girls. Bull took off like an elk and moved quickly and silently around to get a good position behind the men. I knew he could run if he wanted to, but I was shocked by how quickly and quietly he had disappeared into the woods.

Moments later he came out behind the two men with his .45 ready. He demanded that they drop their weapons and drop to their knees. They complied and Allie stepped over and picked up their guns. The men each had a rifle and an additional sidearm strapped to their hips.