He glanced back, expecting the lightning to be close. Instead the thunderheads stayed on the horizon. In the twilight they looked more like mountains than clouds.
He signed off and managed to reach up and click off his microphone. That’s when he heard a voice saying “… asking all emergency personnel … ”
It was his police scanner. Had they seen the lights?
“ … reporting injuries. Southwest side of the forest off Highway 83.”
Wesley Stotter spun around to look at the sky over the national forest. It was in the opposite direction of where he had seen the lights. But it had to be related.
He checked his watch. Then he rammed his equipment back into the duffel bag. Slammed the tailgate, making three attempts before it stuck in place.
He was close enough that he could be one of the first to arrive. He would witness the damage before anyone had a chance to cover it up this time.
FIVE
Maggie recognized the smell from another time, another place. Scorched flesh, singed hair. This is what her father smelled like lying inside his casket. He had been a firefighter, killed in the line of duty. Maggie would never forget the smell of his burned flesh, despite the plastic wrapped around his arms and legs.
The odor was alarming, but it was the moans—soft, wounded cries in the darkness—that unnerved Maggie the most. She wasn’t a first responder. Though she knew CPR, most of her victims didn’t need it. Usually, by the time Maggie arrived, they were dead.
Slices of light from high-powered flashlights caught the huddled figures crouching, hiding. Leaves swirled and skittered away like frightened animals.
Maggie would never forget the looks on their faces. Eyes wide. Lips trembling. Some of them mumbled incoherently. Hands and arms flayed in front of them, jerking under the flashlight beams like stoned dancers under a revolving disco ball.
Maggie had put on her leather jacket before leaving the pickup but her chill came from within. The darkness inside the forest disarmed her, swallowing up everything that the flashlights missed.
The canopy of branches became a moving ceiling, creaking and swaying. Gaps allowed a view of black sky. Once in a while the full moon pierced through the cloud cover—the result a brief and startling streak of sudden illumination.
A tall, thin forest ranger named Hank guided Maggie and Donny. He had met them at the main campground, telling them they wouldn’t be able to get a vehicle down to the site.
“You’re the first to arrive,” he had said with such relief Maggie found herself hoping Donny would know what to do with the injured. Her specialty—heaven forbid it was called on—would be dealing with those who could afford to wait.
“Damn, it’s steep,” Donny kept repeating.
Maggie was thinking the same thing as she followed him down an overgrown trail, feeling more than seeing, grabbing branches before they whipped into her face, missing a few and feeling the sting. How the hell were they going to get the injured back up this path?
By the time the three of them reached a flat clearing, they were breathing hard. Maggie felt sweat trickle down her back despite the cold.
“We’re here to help,” Donny called out so low and gentle Maggie wondered if anyone heard him. “We need to get some light down here, Hank.”
“I’ve got one of my guys bringing down strobes with a mobile generator.”
The dispatcher’s details had been scant. She’d received a 911 call from the forest, but the cell reception kept cutting out so she had trouble deciphering the message. A group of teenagers had been attacked. There were injuries. No, they didn’t know who—or what, she had emphasized—had attacked them. She added that the caller sounded stoned and he wouldn’t tell her why they had been in the forest.
“You’re an EMT, right?” Donny asked Hank.
“Yes, sir.”
“Agent O’Dell?”
“No.”
“But you know the basics?”
“Very basics. I’m a little rusty.”
“Let’s do a quick check.”
Donny tipped his flashlight back at himself.
“I’m State Patrolman Donny Fergussen. We’re here to help. You’re not in trouble. If you’re hurt, call out. If someone’s hurt next to you, call out for them.”
Silence. Even the moans went quiet.
An owl hooted. Branches creaked in the breeze.
Finally a voice, a girl’s, thin and high-pitched, yelled, “Over here.”
Another voice, a male from the opposite side of the darkness. “I’m hurt pretty bad.”
Then another girl’s voice, on the verge of tears. “I think he’s dead. He’s not moving. Oh my God, he’s not breathing.”
Donny looked to Hank, the only EMT. The ranger simply said, “I’ll take that one.” He shot his flashlight in the direction and followed the beam.
Donny pointed the opposite way to indicate that he’d take the “hurt pretty bad” male. That left Maggie with only her pen-size Maglite to check the girl. She avoided shining it in their faces, scanning for anyone down and not moving. Two girls huddled together under a tree. Maggie tried to get a take on the area while making her way to them. She walked slowly, acutely aware of not disturbing what could be a crime scene.
Hank had led them down through the forest but on the other side of this clearing Maggie could see the rolling hills of pasture separated from the forest by a barbed-wire fence. And close by there had to be a river—she could hear water.
Her penlight picked up something fluttering in the branches, hanging down from a pine tree about ten feet away. She needed to check on the girls first. Maggie swept the light across the path with slow swipes. Every time the beam brushed close, the girls jerked as if the thin razor of light had sliced them.
“Are you two okay?”
They stared at her with glassy eyes. One finally nodded. The other girl lifted her arm to Maggie and said, “He bit me.”
Maggie bent down a couple of feet in front of them so she could get a better look without startling them again. She traced over the girl’s arm with the penlight, making the girl jump back.
“I won’t hurt you. I just want to see your arm.” Still that blank stare. “I’m Maggie. What’s your name?”
“Amanda,” the girl with the bite mark said and batted the hair out of her face.
Both of the girls were in shock but other than the bite mark Maggie couldn’t see any blood. The other girl’s eyes stared, still wide and unblinking, at something above and beyond Maggie’s head. She turned to track what it was. The dark object hanging from the tree swayed back and forth.
Maggie stood, flicked the penlight up, and pointed as she moved closer. It looked like a dark piece of cloth pierced on the branch. She was almost directly underneath it when she realized it was an owl, hanging upside down.
A dead owl.
Startled, Maggie took a quick step aside and tripped over a log. She lost her balance and fell, hitting the ground hard and dropping her light.
“Agent O’Dell?” She heard Donny call out. “You okay?”
Maggie fumbled in the pine needles, trying to get back up while her hands searched for her penlight. It was still on, about three feet away. She reached for it just as she noticed what it was that she had tripped over.
The beam of light shined directly into the wide-open eyes of a boy who appeared to be dead.
Then he blinked.
SIX
Wesley Stotter knew a back way to the forest. The sandy road became impassable after a little rain but with any luck he’d be out of there by the time those thunderheads arrived.