Blood is the Sky

Chapter Fifteen

We waited for the sun to go down. The darkness seemed to creep in all around us until we were totally swallowed by it. Under our little overhang with the dead tree covering us, the darkness made me realize how alone we were, how far away we were from anyone who could help us.

We kept close together, trying to stay warm. As I shivered I could feel the last gallon in my tank burning away to nothing. Without food or shelter, I didn’t see how I could live to see another night.

“How are your eyes?” Vinnie finally said.

“What do you mean?”

“Look out at the trees. Can you see them?”

“Not very well.”

“Use the sides of your eyes,” he said. “You have better night vision if you don’t look at things directly. Try it.”

I picked a tree, tried to look away and still be aware of it. “All right, I think I see what you mean.”

“Okay, good. Are you ready to go?”

“Of course.” I said it like I actually believed it.

Standing up was an ordeal. We had just spent the last few hours sitting on the cold ground, leaning against the rocks. It took me a full minute to straighten out my back. Vinnie had to keep his head down even longer than that to keep from passing out. When we were both finally on our feet, there was enough moonlight for us to see each other’s faces. The war stripes on our cheeks were like a cruel joke.

“Do you remember the way back to the cabin?” I said.

“I think so. Back to the stream, and then we can work our way back to the trail.”

“What if they’re out looking for us?”

“They won’t be, not unless they have flashlights. And then we’ll see them long before they see us.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

We climbed back over the little ridge and started picking our way through the trees. My feet were numb from the cold and from the moisture still in my boots. I didn’t want to even think about what they’d look like if we ever got through this. My stomach was growling so loud, I was sure they’d be able to hear me from a mile away.

A branch caught me full in the face. I shook it off, kept walking, and took it right in the face again.

“Alex, don’t look right at where you’re walking,” he said in a low voice.

It took a few minutes until I got the hang of it. Once we got out from under the trees, the moonlight made everything come alive with an eerie glow. Every star was burning in the cold distant space, just like the night before. I stopped to catch my breath.

“Alex, are you thirsty?”

“God, yes.”

“The stream’s just up ahead.”

“Can we drink from it?”

“There might be a few little things swimming around in it,” he said. “Right now I wouldn’t worry about that.”

We heard the stream long before we got to it, the sound of the water carrying far in the night air. The trees opened up and there was moonlight shining bright on the rocks. Vinnie held me back for a moment. He stood there and listened for a long time, and then we both went to the stream, got down on our knees, and drank the cold water.

I drank as much as I could, and splashed the water on my face. It made me feel a hell of a lot better, and even made my stomach stop hurting for a while. Beside me I could hear Vinnie gritting his teeth as he splashed the water on what was left of his ear.

“I’m gonna tear up my shirt,” I said. “You need something else to stop the bleeding.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Let’s see what happens at the cabin first. If they’re not there, we can use the other stuff you boiled.”

“How far away are we?” I said. “It felt like we were running forever.”

“Probably not as far as you think. That trail has to be down here pretty soon.”

We followed the stream maybe a half mile until we found the trail. Vinnie bent down to look closely at the ground. He stood up and looked all around us. “They were here,” he said. His voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Can you tell how many?

“No, not in this light. I can make out some tracks, though. Somebody was here.”

We headed south down the trail, making as little noise as possible. When I stepped on a twig, the sudden snap was like a gunshot.

“Fucking shit,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

Vinnie let out his breath and kept walking. He seemed to know just how to pick up and plant his feet without making the slightest sound. I tried to follow in his exact footsteps. A few minutes later, he stopped.

“What is it?” I whispered.

He didn’t say anything. Then I noticed where we were. It was the stand of birch trees, looking ghostly white in the moonlight. This is where he had found all the bootprints, and now it all made a horrible sense. There was some sort of struggle here. The bodies were only a half mile away.

I heard the sounds again. I knew Vinnie could hear them, too. I put my hand on his back and led him away. “Come on, let’s keep going.”

I couldn’t take seeing that scene again. Not in this moonlight.

He didn’t resist me this time. Instead, the sounds seemed to give him new life. He took off down the trail, walking quickly. He wasn’t quiet anymore. He was kicking up dead branches and leaves, and if anybody was waiting to ambush us, Vinnie was suddenly making it very easy.

I caught up to him and slowed him down. I could see new blood on his face, running all the way down his neck.

“Find something you can swing,” he said. “A good solid stick.” He picked up a long stick from the side of the trail, dropped it, looked for another.

“Vinnie, you’ve got to get a hold of yourself. They’re gonna hear us.”

He picked up another stick and swung it. “I want to kill somebody, Alex. For the first time in my life I really want to kill somebody.”

“I’m with you,” I said. “Let’s do this right. We’ll only get one chance.”

He tapped the end of the stick in his free hand, testing its weight. “This one will do.”

I looked around for my own club. As I picked up a branch, I flashed back on my playing days. How long ago now? It was forever. Back when I’d pick a good bat out of the bin, swing it a few times, and tap my spikes with it. That’s what I needed right now, a good 34-ounce Louisville Slugger.

I finally settled on a straight piece of pine I picked up off the forest floor. It was light enough to swing, and hard enough to really hurt somebody. If I got the chance to use it.

A single cloud moved across the sky and hid the moon. It was too dark to see anymore. We waited for the cloud to pass and then finished our journey to the cabin, slowing to a crawl as we got closer. Finally, we left the trail altogether and made our way through the dense trees. I held my breath with every step.

At last, we were close enough to see the cabin through the trees. It was completely dark. We each got down on one knee and stayed there, perfectly still, watching the cabin and everything around it. Nothing moved.

“What do you think?” I whispered.

“I don’t think they’re in there.”

“How can we tell for sure?”

He shook his head. “We can’t just walk in. We’ve got to fake them out somehow.”

“The only windows are in front,” I said. “We should go one on each side, until we get to the door. We’ll throw something, see what happens.”

“If they shoot?”

“Then we’ve got to go for it. Hit them as they come out the door.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll take the left side, you take the right.”

“If nothing happens, I’m gonna go in,” I said. “You should move back into the woods.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll try to cover you. If they’re out there and they start shooting, just get down. You’ll be pretty safe inside if they’re outside. I’ll try to pick up on where they’re shooting from.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”

“Wait,” he said, looking up into the sky. “Another cloud’s gonna pass over the moon.”

We waited another few minutes. The cloud came in front of the moon and cast a shadow over the whole scene. We picked our way through the brush and into the clearing. I expected the gunshots at any second. The only question was which one of us would be hit first.

We crept closer to the cabin. A slight wind picked up. It carried the trace of a noise from far away. The bears again. I swallowed hard and kept moving.

Then another sound. A sudden rush of air. I grabbed on to the club, got ready to swing.

Bats. The goddamned bats woken-up from the back wall of the cabin. A couple dozen of them flew out from the bottom of the wall and into the night. I took a breath and kept going.

When we got to the cabin, I went around the right side. It was unnerving, not being able to see what Vinnie was doing. I found the plastic lid from a garbage can. That would be my decoy. When I got to the front of the cabin, I peeked around the corner and caught Vinnie’s eye.

He gave me a little nod of the head.

I threw the lid at the front door. It hit the frame and then the ground. Clunk, clunk.

Nothing happened.

I waited another minute. Then I turned the corner and made my way to the door, keeping low to the ground. I looked in through the screen window, couldn’t see a damned thing. The door creaked when I eased it open. Fucking door, I thought. Fucking son of a whore door.

When the door was open just enough, I slipped inside. After all the moonlight outside, in here I was totally blind.

I sat there for a while, giving my eyes a chance to adjust. Outside, the cloud moved past the moon. A thin stream of light came in through the front window, and shapes started to appear in the room. I saw the table, the stove, the refrigerator. The door to the back room.

They had trashed the place. It was already a mess before-now it was completely destroyed. There were pieces of Styrofoam all over the floor, and what looked like the stuffing from our sleeping bags. When I moved back and took a look in the back room, I saw the wood stove pushed completely over, the exhaust pipe pulled right out of the ceiling. I came back out into the kitchen, checked the refrigerator and the cupboards. Every bit of food was gone. The pots and pans were gone, even the utensils. Old Mother Hubbard, I thought, and what a fucking strange thing to think of at a time like this. They had probably taken everything that could have been of any use to us and thrown it right in the lake. For the hell of it, I tried turning on the stove. There was no propane.

I got down on my hands and knees and checked the floor. Maybe they had missed something. There was an empty plastic bottle under the table. Good for holding water. I put that in my coat. And what was this? It was something silver. I reached under the table and grabbed it. A half roll of duct tape. I put that in my coat, too. You never know.

A sound. Outside. Something close.

Where’s that club? Where did I put that fucking club?

Over there by the door. I grabbed it and crouched down next to the door, waiting for it to open. The sounds got closer. My heart was pounding in my chest. This is it. This is the showdown.

It was joined by another sound. Some kind of hissing. It sounded like-

Fuck, it was Vinnie. What was he doing?

I looked out the window. A big black bear was coming toward the cabin. His fur glistened in the moonlight. Vinnie was hissing at him, trying to keep him away.

I slipped out the door and waved at him. We met up on the back side of the cabin, moving quickly, back into the cover of the trees. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I didn’t want that bear to come right through that window again.”

“He can have the place now,” I said. “They totally destroyed everything inside.”

“That figures. If they’re not gonna be there themselves tonight-”

“Maybe they’ll come back here. Should we stick around?”

He leaned over with his hands on his knees. “I don’t know, Alex. I don’t know what the fuck to do now.”

“Let’s move back in the woods,” I said. “If they come back, we should be able to hear them.”

We made our way through the trees until we were about a hundred yards from the cabin. We found a thick mass of hemlock, perfect for hiding behind. If they came this way tonight, we’d hear them long before they got to us.

I took the roll of duct tape out of my coat pocket, made Vinnie roll his sleeve up, and taped up his arm. “It ain’t perfect,” I said. “But it’ll do for now.”

His face was a different story. I knew I had to do something with it, but the slightest touch made him flinch. “Here,” I said, grabbing a stick. “Bite this. And hold your hair up.”

He did as he was told. I stretched a piece of tape from his jaw, down his cheek, over his ruined ear, and around to the other side of his face. He closed his eyes and bit right through the stick. I put another piece of tape over the first, and then another. It looked like hell, but it seemed to stop the bleeding.

He sat down in the dirt and leaned back against a tree trunk. I sat down next to him. I listened closely to the night, but didn’t hear a thing. The crickets were all asleep, buried under the ground. The birds had all flown south. The bears were out there somewhere, but at that moment I couldn’t hear them.

“We need another plan,” I said.

Vinnie didn’t answer me. His head bobbed down, snapped back up, then bobbed down again.

“You should rest awhile,” I said. I pulled him closer, so he could lean his head against my shoulder, with the bad side of his face in the air.

“No,” he said. But he put his head on my shoulder and kept it there.

I spent the next couple of hours just sitting there, careful not to move. No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t make things look any better. We were lost.

As I drifted off, I wondered if the next time I closed my eyes would be my last.