“It was a stupid idea, just the sort of thing you might expect from someone like Petris.”
“All he said was stay up in this area, and perhaps we could trap someone. You’re the one who had the idea for the trap itself.”
George glared, but silently. Ronnie wondered if they should take the now obvious trap apart, or leave it. Moment by moment the light increased, and the trap’s outline became clearer. It would take, he thought, a very stupid hunter to step into it now.
George stretched. “We’ll have to clear that mess up,” he said. “It certainly won’t fool anyone.”
“I suppose not.” Ronnie wanted to lie down and sleep, preferably for two days straight, and wake up in a clean, comfortable bed. He did not look forward to undoing the trap, particularly when he couldn’t remember exactly how the lines ran on this side. “Although . . . suppose we left it, and they saw it and sniggered, and then we had another trap they didn’t see?”
“Like what?” George asked. It was a reasonable question for which Ronnie had no answer. “Dig a pit trap with our fingernails and disguise it with more wilting greenery?” Ronnie resented the inherited knack for clever phrasing.
“Perhaps a snare sort of thing—you know, where a rock drops on them.” Somewhere, in some class, Ronnie remembered seeing something . . . a leaning stick or limb, with something heavy balanced above, and when someone went through—
“A rock . . . and where are we supposed to find more rope and a rock?” Evidently George didn’t have the same illustration in mind. Ronnie didn’t think his had rope in it.
“I’ve . . . got to sit down,” he said, as his head and stomach renewed yesterday’s quarrel. George, after all, had slept standing up. George grabbed his arm as he went down, more a fall than a controlled descent.
“You look awful,” he said. Ronnie felt slightly less sick, lying on his back, but his head pounded just the same. George’s thumb appeared in front of his face. “Focus on this—can you?” He could, but he didn’t really want to let George assess his eyes’ ability to focus—George wasn’t even a medic, let alone a doctor. He let his eyes close. “I’ll get water,” George said, and Ronnie heard his footsteps heading toward the creek.
Silence. Aside from the untalented drummer in his head, lovely dark silence lay around him. No buzzing insects, no barking amphibians—he remembered how startled he’d been to find how loud a sound those tiny wet bodies could make. The sea sounds lay at the threshold of hearing, below the headache’s contribution most of the time. He wiggled his shoulders in the soft leaves, hoping no biting insects would get him, and felt his stiff muscles relax.
He did not know he was falling asleep until he woke; the sun had speared through a break in the forest canopy, directly into his eyelid. He squinted, twisted, and bit back a groan. He still hurt, though not as badly. He had slept some hours—too many hours; it must be near midday. George should not have let him sleep so long. He forced himself up on one arm and looked around. He couldn’t see George.
Silence lay on the forest, heavy and dangerous. It wouldn’t be that still if nothing was wrong. Slowly, carefully, Ronnie sat up, then levered himself to one knee, then to his feet. Nothing stirred. No birds, no insects—nothing. His own breath sounded loud to him. His mouth tasted foul, and his lips were dry. Where was George?
He had gone for water. Ronnie remembered that much, and after a short panic remembered which way the stream was. He glanced at the trap—the leaves covering it were now a sickly brown—and eased his way toward the creek, as quietly as possible.
It lay in a steep-sided bed, just here; he could see the glint of water trickling down from a pool above before he could see it right below him. Then he saw George. George sprawled gracelessly, as if he’d simply slumped to the ground while climbing back toward Ronnie. Ronnie looked around for the enemy he assumed had shot him . . . but saw and heard nothing. When he looked again, he saw no blood, no burn mark, no injury at all.
Ronnie sank to his heels and tried to think this out. George down, without a cry, but—he could now see his back move—breathing. Had he just fallen asleep? And why there? He glanced at the creek, and frowned. From here, he could see something floating, a bit of scum or something. He stood, and moved closer to George. George was definitely breathing, and from the new angle he could see that his eyes were closed.
“George,” Ronnie said softly. Nothing happened. He reached out and touched George’s shoulder. No response. He glanced around again, sure someone was watching, but saw and heard nothing at all. George’s slack hand lay atop the water bottle he’d carried to the creek; its cap had come off in the fall, and it held only a scant swallow or two. Ronnie poured it on George’s face, hoping to wake him, but aside from a grimace, George did not rouse. Perhaps more would work. With another look around, Ronnie took the bottle to the creek to refill it.
The scum he had seen lay in drifts against the rock. At first he didn’t recognize it . . . but when he swished it away to put the bottle in, there were the limp legs and tails of the red and gold amphibians, the motionless fins of tiny fish. Dead . . . beginning to stink. . . . He stared at them, his hand frozen in place, not quite touching the water, the bottle half immersed. Then he moved his arm back, and let the bottle drip on the ground. Thoughts whirled through his mind in odd fragments. The man they’d heard last night. The silence—nothing croaking or barking after he came back downstream. George asleep. The dead things. The water he hadn’t touched. . . . He hoped the dizziness he felt suddenly came from his concussion, or even from fear, and not from the touch of that contaminated water.
That unseen hunter had somehow poisoned the water . . . killed everything in it . . . and whatever it was put George to sleep. Or was he dying? Ronnie staggered back to George and felt the pulse at his neck. It beat slowly, but regularly, against his sweaty fingers. He shook George’s shoulder. Again no response. A frantic look upstream and down . . . tree trunks, vines, bushes, rocks. No moving figures, no sounds that shouldn’t be there.
But if the poison was supposed to put anyone who drank the water to sleep, that meant someone might come to collect them. He couldn’t leave George so near the water, out in the open. He grabbed George firmly under the arms and heaved. His headache escalated from dull throbbing to loud rhythmic pounding, and his stiff ribs felt as if someone had dragged sharp knives across them. George, meanwhile, had moved hardly a centimeter, but he did begin to snore, a loud unmistakable snore that Ronnie was sure could be heard a long way.
“A . . . whatchamacallit,” Ronnie muttered to himself. “Something to drag him on . . .” He looked around. An older cousin had gone through a period of enthusiastic camping, but Ronnie spent that long vacation at a music school, honing what his mother fondly believed to be superlative talent. After hearing his cousin’s stories, most of them involving borderline criminal assaults on the younger campers, he milked the talent he himself knew to be minor, and managed another session of music school. By then, his older cousin had moved on to other amusements, and Ronnie had escaped even one six-week session at his brother’s camp. Right now, he would have accepted a few buffets, tosses into ice-cold ponds, burr-pricked mounts, or stinging crawlers in bunks, for some of the practical knowledge Knut had claimed. Ways to drag heavy loads when you didn’t have lifters or flitters, ways to make traps that actually worked.
His first version of the travois bound with vines cost Ronnie three blisters, an itchy rash from the vine sap, and most of the hours of afternoon. When he finally rolled George onto the vines and lifted the handles, George’s limp body worked quickly through the vines to the ground before Ronnie had, with great difficulty, pulled it ten meters. Cursing softly, Ronnie untangled George and tried to weave the vines into a more stable configuration. That was when he noticed the itching rash. He had never woven so much as a potholder; he knew in theory how weaving worked, but nothing about fishnets or hammocks or anything else that would hold a sixty kilo body safely between two poles as someone dragged them along.