The Call of the Mild

Chapter Forty-One

The sun was hidden by the tops of the trees, but the air near the forest floor was hot and thick, choked with dust and decaying pine needles.

Gus crawled along the ground, sweat cascading off him. He scraped away a foot of dry needles, then clawed out a small handful of dirt and dropped an acorn into the hole. He swept the dirt and pine needles back in place and crawled forward another foot.

All around him in the forest he could hear the sounds of the lawyers performing the same ridiculous, repetitive task. He was sure their fingers were blistering just like his, that their bare knees were aching and their heads pounding from the heat.

Even their armed guards looked like they were beginning to fade under the high temperatures. Their camouflage shirts were rolled up to their elbows, and their pants, unequipped with zip-off legs, were pulled up to their knees. They’d even rolled their balaclavas up over the backs of their heads to let their scalps breathe. It would have made more sense to take them off altogether, but Gus was glad they hadn’t. The fact that they were concerned about being identified suggested they intended on letting their hostages go at some point.

Now that they were partially uncovered, Gus realized that he’d been wrong about one thing. These weren’t four men. Judging by the thin wrists and ankles and delicate neck, one of the guards was a woman. In normal circumstances Gus would have tried to figure a way to get her alone, in hopes of overpowering the weakest member of the team and getting away. But normal circumstances meant the weakest member wasn’t carrying an automatic rifle, and that wasn’t the case here.

And so he continued to crawl along the ground, dropping acorns into dry holes. This was the red-haired man’s order. Manning Timber’s clear-cutting campaign had cost the state hundreds of thousands of trees. Until he got his way, the hostages were going to repair that damage. They’d plant one tree for every one that had been cut.

Gus didn’t know much about arboriculture, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t a particularly well thought-out plan. There were already a lot of trees in this part of the forest. There didn’t seem to be a huge amount of room for more to grow. And even if the older trees made room for the new sprouts, Gus suspected that before an acorn could turn into a sapling, it needed some amount of water. This ground was dry and powdery. If anything, they were probably just laying out a progressive dinner party for the local squirrels.

But the red-haired man did not seem interested in debating the logic of his plan. When Gwendolyn tried to object, he aimed his gun in the air and let out a stream of bullets. Then he turned it on the lawyer and asked if she still had any problems with her assignment.

That’s when one of the gunmen brought out the sack of acorns and they all got down on their hands and knees. Ever since then, Gus had caught the occasional glimpse of one of the lawyers through the trees, but aside from that, and the armed guards who patrolled the area, he was completely alone.

Gus reached out his sore, blistered hand to scrape away another pile of pine needles, but his fingers closed on rubber. Startled, he looked up to see he was clutching the toe of a hiking shoe.

Shawn’s hiking shoe.

Shawn was sitting against a tree, his legs splayed out in front of him, eyes closed as if he were taking a brief nap. When Gus squeezed his shoe, Shawn’s eyes flashed open and his face brightened into a bright smile.

“Lovely day to be outside, isn’t it?” he said cheerfully.

“We’re supposed to be planting acorns,” Gus whispered, checking over his shoulder to see if one of the guards was about to stumble across them.

“Actually, we’re supposed to be catching whoever killed the mime,” Shawn said. “And we’re not doing that, either.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about a pillow,” Shawn said.

“You look comfortable enough already,” Gus said.

“Actually, I’m thinking about a lot of pillows,” Shawn said. “To start with, I’m thinking about how many pillows we had on those feather beds back at the campsite.”

“There were plenty of them,” Gus said, thinking back to the way he’d sunk into the soft down as he laid his head down in the tent. If only he’d known then how much worse his life was about to get, maybe he would have tried a little harder to enjoy the night.

“Yes, there were,” Shawn said. “Certainly more than enough.”

“I’m glad we agree on that,” Gus said. “Maybe now we could start thinking about how we’re going to get away from these maniacs.”

“I’m also thinking about ketchup,” Shawn said.

It must be the heat, Gus thought. It was melting Shawn’s brain. If a guard did show up, Gus would beg him for mercy, and for water for Shawn. “Are you?”

“Have you ever noticed it’s spelled two different ways?” Shawn continued. “There’s k-e-t-c-h-u-p and then there’s c-a-t-s-u-p, but neither spelling matches the way the word is pronounced. You have to take the first two letters of the second spelling and put them with the last five letters of the first to approximate the word we actually use.”

“Uh-huh.” This was worse than Gus had feared. Shawn seemed to be in the grip of full-on delirium. If this were happening in an old movie, a couple of quick slaps across the face would snap Shawn out of it. But Gus didn’t feel comfortable slapping Shawn, especially when there seemed to be so many people around who’d enjoy the opportunity to join in.

“And then there’s the whole question of whether it’s a condiment or an entree,” Shawn said. “I tend to come down on the condiment side of the argument myself, as I have generally used it as a complement to flavor food, rather than as a main source of nutrition. And I have to think that a chef talented enough to have whipped up that tasty dinner would see it the same way.”

The mention of the chef brought the image of his death back into Gus’ mind with full force. How could Shawn be prattling on like this when the man he was talking about was rotting on the ground?

“We need to get away from here,” Gus said as forcefully as he could without raising his voice above a whisper.

Shawn didn’t seem to hear. “So why would he bring four five-gallon cans of the stuff to our campground?”

“Maybe he was worried something would go wrong with one of them,” Gus said. “Who cares?”

“That might explain bringing one extra, but four?” Shawn said. “Even if we all doused our breakfasts in the stuff, there’s no way four lawyers, two detectives and one grumpy FBI agent could make it through a single gallon of ketchup, let alone twenty. And since everything they used had to be brought up by helicopter or pack mule, weight would have been a major issue.”

“I promise we’ll solve that mystery,” Gus said desperately. “Right after we figure out how to get out of this road show version of The Hills Have Eyes.”

“And that brings me right back to the question of pillows,” Shawn said. “There were far more on every bed than we needed. So why were there stacks of extras in that supply tent?”

The whole slapping thing was beginning to look a lot more attractive to Gus. There didn’t seem to be any other way to bring Shawn back to reality. First ketchup, now pillows. Gus couldn’t even imagine what sort of fevered fantasy was running through his friend’s brain that would lead him to connect the two.

“Shawn, you’ve got to focus,” Gus said. “We’re here in the woods; we’re being held captive by murderers. You’ve got to stop thinking about pillows and ketchup.”

“But they’re the key,” Shawn said.

“They’re a headrest and a foodstuff,” Gus said. “There’s no way you can put them together to make a key.”

“A pillow isn’t just for resting your head,” Shawn said. “You know that as well as anyone else.”

It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. Actually, it took more than a moment. It took his accepting the idea that his friend was not raving the incoherent babblings of the hopelessly schizophrenic, but was actually making a point. Once he accepted that, there was still a brief period when he had to piece together what that point could be.

And even then, he could barely bring himself to believe it.

“That can’t be,” Gus said. “That’s just crazy.”

“Crazier than holding a bunch of lawyers hostage to force the government to stop all logging?”

“It’s a hard call, but just about,” Gus said.

“I might have thought so, too,” Shawn said. “Until I started thinking about something the fat guy said. And then I saw something that convinced me.”

“What’s that?”

For a moment, Shawn didn’t say anything. Gus was going to ask again, but Shawn held up his hand for quiet. They waited in silence until they heard pine needles crunching in the woods to their right.

It was one of the guards. He was patrolling carefully, his gun extended, ready to mow down anyone who thought about running or fighting.

“What are we going to do now?” Gus whispered.

“Get proof.” Shawn scrabbled around in the needles at the base of the tree and came up with a small, tight pinecone. “Okay, now this may be fast, so you’re going to have to watch carefully.”

“What for what?”

“You’ll know.”

Shawn lobbed the pinecone towards the guard. It flew just behind his head and thumped into a tree. The guard whirled around, leveling his gun at the source of the sound.

And Gus saw.

And Gus knew.