Bones Omnibus (89 page)

“The short version of growing up in the U.P. is that you’re outdoors a lot,” Alex added. “
A lot a lot
. They give up on school buses in the harshest parts of winter, and everybody shows up on the backs of snowmobiles. It’s crazy.”

“Did you ever see a sasquatch up there?” Jess asked.

“Nah,” Alex snorted, shaking his head. “There are dozens of ‘spirits’ in the Potawatomi religion, and they all have some tie to animals, but seeing a sasquatch? Didn’t even think they existed until last night.”

“Grandma Lil believed in them,” Christy said.

“Yeah, but she believed in stuff that was Ottawa, Anishinaabe, Noquet, and Wyandot, too, but not because she was an Indian. She just watched all those cable shows that investigated that shit, and she bought into it. I remember her telling some Canadian that Potawatomi Indians believe in Wakinyan and Unktehi. I was like, ‘Grandma, you’re thinking of the Lakota, and we sure as hell ain’t Lakota. Come on!’ But she just started saying that her grandfather told her all about it and she remembered it like it was yesterday. But you’d check the TV listings in the paper, and whatever she was talking about would’ve been on one of her shows a day before.”

For the first time all night, Christy laughed a little.

“Remember that time you ended up feeding a pack of wolves?” she asked.

Alex laughed.

“I believed in recycling food,” he explained. “We put the lawn garbage in the green barrel, recycling in the blue, trash in the black. Food was
supposed
to go in the black, but it just felt wrong to me, stuffing it into a garbage bag that would have to biodegrade first. So I just took it to the edge of the woods behind our house and threw it out there.”

“Composting without any of the necessary ingredients to actually compost,” Jess offered.

“
Precisely
,” Alex enthused. “I wasn’t so stupid as to put meat out there, but fruits and vegetables, old bread, so on. I didn’t know this, but pretty soon we had a substantial population of Norwegian rats out there. Sure, I saw more hawks in the area and heard more owls at night, but I didn’t put two and two together. But then some of our neighbors started reporting seeing actual
wolves
in the area, not a common sight in the U.P., and I figured out what happened. I thought Dad was going to skin me alive.”

“Mom wanted him to, but he couldn’t stop laughing,” Christy interjected.

“What did you do?!”

Alex’s arms were raised and mouth open, primed for the enthusiastic punch line. But whatever he was about to say was interrupted by an outburst of sudden and feverish barking from the resident German shepherd. Everyone in the tower jumped, but collectively realized who it must be.

The dim glow of headlights whitewashed the corner of one of the tower windows as Alex galloped to investigate.

“It’s a Jeep. I doubt those monsters can drive, so this is a good sign.”

He turned to the trapdoor, but Jess raised a hand.

“I know we want to think this is over, but we told him it was a bear or a big cat. It’s cold-blooded, but there’s a chance they followed him right to us.”

This stopped Christy and Alex in their tracks, surprising themselves at how quickly they came around to Jess’s way of thinking. There lingered an unasked question: Should they even warn the ranger, at their own peril, now that he was here? But they all answered it for themselves, a unanimous decision made without a word spoken.

Bones, however, didn’t get the memo, and continued raising a clamor.

“You guys gonna shut that dog up?!”

The voice of the ranger sounded both bemused and knowing, as if campers scared shitless of things that went bump in the Big Frightening Woods were hardly worth climbing out of bed for, much less driving out to some distant fire tower.

“Hey, quiet down,” Jess said, signaling Bones.

The shepherd obeyed, sitting down on his haunches to watch what the humans did next.

“Safe to come up?” the ranger asked, though they could already hear him coming up the ladder.

Christy opened the trapdoor and was relieved by what she saw.

“He brought a gun,” she murmured to the others.

A moment later, the ranger appeared. He was just as Jess remembered him, a short, paunchy, mustached weirdo who kept the top three buttons of his shirt buttoned, in strange contrast to the lowest three, which looked ready to separate from their buttonholes and fire across the room. A fraying patch on his shirt announced his name as Tom, something Jess hadn’t noticed on the drive in. As soon as he was off the ladder and up on his feet, the ranger’s eyes went straight to the German shepherd.

“You didn’t mention a dog. Who does he belong to?”

“None of us,” Jess said. “He found me on the trail. Helped get me this far.”

“Well, you’re going to need to leave him behind. If we’re dealing with wild animals, having a dog in the mix just increases the likelihood of a confrontation.”

“He’s been a great watchdog through all this, though. He knew you were coming long before we did.”

The ranger shook his head, turning dour.

“You know how long I’ve worked parks? Almost thirty years. What you don’t want is to stick a wild card into an already volatile deck. We can always come back for him in the morning.”

Jess eyed Bones, preparing a response, but thought better of it.

“Okay,” she relented, turning to the shepherd. “You’re going to have to stay here.”

The dog looked back at her without comprehension, though Jess couldn’t decide if he didn’t understand or didn’t care.

“Can you get down the ladder?” Tom asked Jess, nodding to her injuries.

“I got up here, didn’t I?” she snapped back, still unhappy about leaving Bones.

The ranger put a hand on his hip and scowled like an old woman. It was a comical sight, a man put out by a child, but Jess still felt bad.

“I’m sorry. I’m still a little out of it.”

“That’s okay,” the ranger replied. “Let’s just try to remember we’re all on the same team here.”

He glanced from Christy to Alex.

“Ma’am? I think it’d be best for you to go first, maybe stay a few rungs below your friend here and talk her down.”

“Don’t you think I should go down first?” Alex asked.

“No,” the ranger said, shaking his head. “The injured girl…sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Jess.”

“
Jess
. Tom Winters.
Ranger
Winters. Anyway, she’s going to take the longest to get down. If there is some kind of threat out there, the last thing I want is the three of us standing around by the Jeep waiting for her when your wolves or bears or
wolf-bears
decide to attack. Make sense?”

It took Jess a moment to process what the ranger was saying before realizing it was a karmic quid pro quo. She hadn’t been any more willing to expose herself to risk when the ranger arrived than he was now.

And from the look on Alex’s face, there’d be no protesting the arrangement by him.

“Can I have it?” Christy said, nodding to Alex.

Alex stared at her, as if trying to force her to take back words already said. But she held out her hand instead.

“If I’m going down first, it’s the least you can do.”

Tom and Jess looked from one sibling to the other, unable to crack this code. Finally, Alex reached into his backpack, took out an automatic pistol, a .38, and handed it to Christy.

“Holy shit!” Jess exclaimed. “You had that the whole time?”

“For emergencies,” Alex insisted. “A last resort. We’re down to only a couple of bullets.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Tom protested, putting a hand on his rifle. “You fired that in the park? I’m sorry, but that’s got to come with me.”

Alex got to his feet. He was easily a foot taller, if not more, than the ranger. His body language wasn’t particularly intimidating, but his size did the talking for him.

“We haven’t been completely honest with you,” Alex said. “It’s not wolves out there, not bears. It’s sasquatches. Bigfoot.”

The ranger scoffed, then looked to Jess, as if checking to see if she was in on the joke. Only, Jess stared back, deadly serious.

“I saw them, too.”

“Oh, come on!” Tom replied. “What is this? Are you people criminals? Just dehydrated? This isn’t funny.”

The ranger backed up a few more steps until Christy grabbed him. He whirled around, unshouldering his rifle in a single fluid motion. That’s when he saw he had almost backed himself right down the open trapdoor.

“Look, if it helps you, just think of them as bears or people in costumes playing some kind of horrible, murderous prank,” Christy stated flatly. “Our injuries are real, and we need medical attention. We’re not criminals. We just need your help getting out of here.”

Tom relaxed a little and nodded.

“All right,” he said, then turned to Alex. “But yeah, she should take the gun.”

Christy descended the ladder at an even pace, keeping an eye on the tree line even as Alex, Jess, and the ranger did the same from the fire tower. With no moon, the visibility was almost nil. But Christy’s eyes had long since adjusted to the dim light and could at least see that nothing was moving directly below her.

When she reached the bottom, she crouched low, taking out the gun and turning in every direction. The coast was clear.

“Okay,” she called up to Jess before climbing halfway back up.

In anticipation of the climb, Jess had popped a handful of ibuprofen and even had the bottle in her pocket, anticipating its need later. Rather than shooting pain as she lowered herself onto the ladder, she felt absolutely without strength. Her arms, legs, and back were completely numb and would barely respond to her commands. She would take a single step, and the rest of her body would sag, content to simply fall to the ground rather than balance her frame on the step.

It would have to be all mental.

“You all right?” Christy said, creeping up a couple more steps.

“Yeah,” exhaled Jess. “I’d better be.”

Slowly but surely, the pair descended a few more steps. That’s when Jess got an idea.

“You set the pace. Let me watch you.”

Christy was confused at first, but did as requested. She dropped her left foot down a rung, and Jess, watching carefully, mimicked the act exactly. Christy then followed with her right leg, which Jess again repeated.

“Good?” Christy asked.

“Yep. Keep going. Taps into some other part of my brain, and I just follow like a trail dog. Don’t stop this time.”

Christy nodded and began her descent. It took half a minute for her to get to the bottom. To her surprise, Jess was right behind her.

“Almost here!” Christy announced.

But by now, Jess was completely spent. She had no more energy. As her left foot touched the ground, her body finally gave up and fell backward into Christy’s arms.

“Hard part’s over,” Christy smiled. “Let’s get you in the Jeep.”

Jess was about to reply when, up in the tower, Bones began barking all over again with the same level of barbarity he’d aimed at any of the newcomers.

“Oh, shit,” Christy whispered.

The two women looked into the woods beside them but still saw no movement. But that’s when Jess noticed a couple of the trunks didn’t look like the others. They were mottled and hairier. When her gaze traveled upward, she saw a pair of eyes staring back at her.

Seeing the same thing, Christy whipped out the gun and looked around for more of the creatures. This didn’t take long, as they were surrounded on all sides.

“Oh,
God
,” Christy exclaimed, sounding as if ready to pass out.

“Tom!!” Jess called, looking up to the tower. “You’ve got to get down here!”

But instead of a response, they heard more barking and what sounded like a scuffle. The ladder shivered and shook, and Bones’s woofs sounded more and more alarmed.

“Alex! What’s going on?” Christy yelled, no longer caring how far her voice carried.

“Christy!” Alex said, sounding fraught. “Get in the Jeep! Go!!”

Christy was just about to voice her confusion at this when a rifle shot echoed across the woods. As the sound bounced off the trees on one side of the clearing around the tower first, it took both women a moment to realize it had emanated from the tower itself.

“ALEX!”

Jess thought Christy was screaming out of concern. But when Alex’s body, which Christy had seen being shoved through the open trapdoor, landed a few feet away with a grotesque snapping of limbs, neck, and ribs, she also screamed. Alex’s face was caved in as well, but not from the impact. There was a clear entrance wound on the right side of his face and a horrific exit wound on the left side. What was left of his face still had the symmetry to suggest he had been human, though the ragged meat on one side versus the relative intactness of the other gave it a distorted, funhouse-mirror appearance.

Before they could react, however, the sasquatches moved in from the trees. Christy had the presence of mind to swivel around and fire the gun at the nearest monster. It went way wide of the thing’s head. She pulled the trigger a second time, only for the gun to jam. As she stared at it in horror and frustration, the beast grabbed her wrist and snapped it like a toothpick. Christy howled in pain, dropping the gun to the ground.

Jess staggered backward towards the Jeep, hoping to get inside and figure out some way to blockade herself within, but the doors were locked. Two of the sasquatches approached her, grabbed her by the biceps, and heaved her face first into the grass in front of the vehicle.

“Goddammit! What the hell…? Hey! Help me up here!”

It was the ranger, calling down from the tower. Jess couldn’t see what the problem was, but then heard the vicious growl of her now-favorite German shepherd in the world. Clearly agitated by Alex’s death, the dog had decided the park ranger was the enemy and attacked.

“Come on! Hurry up!” the ranger called, more terrified by the second. “He’s gone crazy!”

One of the sasquatches hurried to the ladder and climbed up. It did so with such ease and dexterity, as if the ladder had been designed specifically for it, that Jess wondered if Christy’s “men in Bigfoot suits” theory was that far off.