We stood there catching our breath on the rock where we’d left the others just over two hours ago. No one was there. There was no Gucci purse, no pieces of towel, nothing except for remnants of dried blood from when we’d rinsed Conroy’s wound before splinting his leg.
“Oh, nononono, not like this. No way, man,” said Colby. “No fucking way.”
Tabby did a three-sixty, scanning the land. Behind us only a fingernail of that massive red sun remained over the mountains, setting the valley afire in an eerie red glow. Soon it would dip out of sight, and then we’d experience our first night on that new world. I wondered what night had in store for us, besides the ever-increasing cold.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that I’d missed on first inspection, or maybe it was the way the light had slightly changed. The waist-high grass had been disturbed. A swath about three feet wide ran from the rock all the way to the forest.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the grass. “They went to the forest.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Tabby. “There it is!”
“Regular bush boy you are,” said Colby. “But how’d they move him all that way by themselves?”
Leaping off the rock, not wanting to waste time, I said, “Let’s go find out.” As I waded through the waist-high grass, following the trail, I again tried to picture Anna and Simon lifting and hauling Conroy to the forest. Simon was wiry, strong for his size, but not strong enough. I couldn’t see it. I’d learned the heft of heavy weight and a person’s capability lifting it while living at Whispering Cedars, carrying around things like bags of fertilizer, hay bales, newborn calves, and tractor parts. There was no way they could’ve moved him that distance. But somehow they’d all moved.
No sooner had we set off than the sun’s red glow changed to a violet color, bathing the landscape in an odd kind of twilight unlike anything I’d ever seen. And the closer we got to those broccoli-shaped trees, the larger they seemed to be. I began to hear strange sounds, wilder than anything I’d ever heard before––frenzied croaks, staccato clicks, rapid flaps and flutters, as though an alien nature chorus had been unleashed.
We paused at the edge of the forest. I looked up, stunned. The tree trunks were as big around as houses and they seemed to rise for thousands of feet. The air was humid. Birds––regular sized––circled and weaved around the heights, their songs echoing strangely in the natural cathedral. A trail of matted brown needles, some disturbed, led into the forest and wended through the trunks until it vanished.
“Look at the way the needles are kicked up,” I said. “Could’ve been the others.” I found myself second-guessing the seriousness of Conroy’s injury, thinking maybe it wasn’t as bad as we’d originally thought. Then the image of that protruding bone from his torn flesh came back to me. It was bad, very bad.
“Should we call out?” said Tabby.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What if we call out and . . . something calls back?” said Colby uncertainly.
“Um, that’s the point, isn’t it?” said Tabby.
“I mean, what if something else besides the others calls back?” said Colby.
“Like what?” said Tabby, and after a brief pause: “Oh, I see what you mean.”
They were nervous, hesitant to enter the forest, to cross the threshold into another place on that strange new world. What dwelled inside? Who knew? We’d almost been devoured by giant birds. What waited for us inside the forest? Colby was right. What if something else did hear our calls and decided to come and investigate? What if it was something that we didn’t want to meet face to face? What then? I felt terribly vulnerable standing there, shaking, wondering.
“You got a point,” I said. I looked from Colby to Tabby. “I say we follow the trail, be quiet, keep our eyes open. I doubt they went that far.”
Colby nodded, but I could tell he didn’t really want to go any farther.
“Sounds good to me,” said Tabby.
They both just stared at me like they were waiting for me to say more. We’d been here before. The first step would be mine. I gave my head a shake, smiled to myself, and entered the forest, leading the way on the trail. I felt like an ant among those trees––an ant followed by two other ants. As we got deeper into the forest, the trees and foliage acted as a windbreak against the mountain breeze that we’d been experiencing since we first arrived, and my goosebumps subsided. The trail of disturbed needles carried on, and so did we.
Between the bark on the trees were cracks wide enough a person could hide in, or an animal. In some of the trunks were cavernous holes big enough to drive a Chevy pickup into. I couldn’t figure out what was making those wild sounds, nor was I about to go traipsing off the trail to find out. About twenty minutes in, a loud crash echoed throughout the forest, then somewhere a stampede began rumbling the ground underfoot. We stopped dead in our tracks and looked around. We couldn’t make out from which direction it’d originated, which direction it was heading. The forest’s canopy made every sound spooky, made echoes that carried on everywhere. We dashed to the edge of the trail and hunched down behind fern leaves the size of cars, trying to figure out whether we were in danger or not. Gradually the stampede faded off. We stood and started to make our way along the trail again, this time more warily, following those disturbed needles.
To be honest, at that point, I began to have doubts. What if the others had been snatched by the birds? What if something else was responsible for the swath in the grass, for disturbing the needles? What if it had been some kind of animal? At Whispering Cedars, old ranch hand Jerry had shown me the basics a few times of how to spot cow track, and also predator tracks like wolves and bears and wild cats that might be stalking the ranch’s livestock. But that was it. I was no expert. Far from it. As we carried on, it began to feel like blind faith. But what were our options? Go back and freeze to death on the slope? Even if we made it through the night, then what? Be awoken at dawn by those giant birds screaming down for breakfast? And what if Conroy and the others needed us, needed our help? I didn’t know what Tabby and Colby were thinking. I didn’t ask. I was dog-tired, and so I was sure they were, too.
Half an hour passed, then one hour, and still the trail went on. At one point, I heard a turbulent fluttering overhead. As I stared up, my imagination conjured up a giant black bat with red eyes chasing insects. But how big, this bat? If the birds were any gauge, the bats would be freakishly big. But like that stampede we’d heard earlier, the fluttering soon faded off, leaving us with those other sounds we’d been hearing since we entered the forest. Leaving us with louder heartbeats.