The Totem 1979 (18 page)

“Even so. If only two or three are up here.”

“Yes, it isn’t hard to measure Quiller’s failure.”

“What’s the point then? I don’t see your story?”

“That’s

the story. How it failed, and more important, why.”

“Well, you must know your business.”

They kept walking. Once again, Slaughter heard a noise behind them. He turned, but there was nothing. “Now who’s jumpy?” Dunlap asked him. Slaughter had to laugh then. But the laughter echoed through the forest, and he quickly stopped.

The loggers’ road disappeared a hundred feet ahead of them.

“Or could be that the forest just reclaimed it,” Slaughter said.

They reached the dead end of the lane and glanced at the maze of trees around them.

“What now?” Slaughter asked.

“Well, the road was going straight up, and the clearing I suppose was somewhere near it. Let’s just keep on through these trees.”

“We could end up walking in a circle. We’ll have to pay attention to our landmarks.” That big boulder up ahead, Slaughter thought. And then that line of cliffs below the ridge. They veered through the pine trees, the needles lancing at them. Dunlap stumbled, falling on his camera, and he groped up, clutching at his chest, staring at the camera that was dangling from his shoulder.

“Is it broken?” Slaughter asked.

Dunlap didn’t know. He hurriedly checked the camera, but it seemed intact, and he’d made certain that he kept the lens cap on. “I don’t see any damage.” “What about yourself?” “Oh, just the wind knocked out of me.” “It could be worse. You want to try to walk?” Dunlap nodded. Bent a little forward, limping slightly, he pushed farther through the trees. The forest now was thicker, darker, dead trees fallen among the live ones, intersecting, thick vines growing up around them. Dunlap stopped and took deep breaths. “There has to be a better way. They brought their cars and vans up here. But it’s sure as hell they didn’t bring them this way.”

“Maybe we should go back to the loggers’ road and angle right or left,” Slaughter suggested.

“And maybe lose our way as you just said? I wish I knew.” “Well, let’s keep going then. If this gets much worse, we’ll have to change direction.”

So they pushed up through the pine trees, and the clearing wasn’t fifteen steps away, the trees so dense they didn’t see it until they stepped free from the forest.

There were stumps that stretched off through young forest, all the growth here up to Slaughter’s chest so that he looked out past the new tips of the pine trees toward the compound over there. Slaughter was reminded of a camping trip years ago. He’d gone with his father to a small lake in northern Michigan. They’d pitched their tent and eaten, so exhausted that they soon had gone to sleep. Rain pelting onto the canvas had wakened them, and they had talked and dozed and wakened again as the storm got worse, and in the morning when the storm was finished, they had crawled out from the tent to stare across the lake. A billowing mist hung over it, but they were camped up high enough that they were just above the mist, the pine trees visible along the other bank, and Slaughter now remembered how he’d thought about what he couldn’t see below the mist-the fish that would be rising, and the ducks and frogs and other things. It wasn’t real. That thought again. Like now. That sense of life around him but unseen. Except the compound was deserted.

They started through the new growth toward the compound. Dunlap took a photograph. “Hope the camera works.” They continued walking.

“Sure,” Dunlap said. “They used the timber here to build the barracks.” He thought that Rettig had been accurate. With the difference that the walls were like log cabins, Dunlap was reminded of a deserted Army camp. Lanes and squares, a parade ground, everything was here. No, not exactly everything. He didn’t see a flagpole. Hell, this kind of culture, they’d have called it a Maypole.

The compound loomed as they approached it, wide, the buildings all one story and with slanted roofs. At least the hippies knew enough to compensate for deep snow on the roofs in winter, Slaughter thought. And then he paused as Dunlap took another picture.

“Watch these branches on the ground here,” Slaughter told him. “We don’t want another accident.”

Dunlap nodded, staring toward the compound as they walked around the branches, coming toward the nearest buildings. There were weeds and bushes, young trees growing in the lanes, and vines enmeshed around the shutters. There were broken windows, doors half off their hinges. And the slogans on the walls, the symbols, Day-Gloed green and red and blue, now faded, flowers, flags with rifles for the stripes and bullets for the stars, a skull and crossbones and a down with nixon, the down with slashed out, then to hell with scrawled above it, that too slashed, a simple fuck above it. vietnam will claim our children. Skeletons across a pentagon.

“Sure. They took the time to do all that, but they didn’t even think to treat the logs for insects,” Slaughter said and pointed. There were tiny holes in all the logs, and down below the holes, thick piles of what seemed sawdust, dirty, flecked with dead leaves from the vines.

Dunlap took more photographs. As they reached the buildings, Slaughter had the odd sensation that he’d been here before. “Is anybody around?” And then he knew what he was thinking of. Sure. Bodine’s ranch when yesterday he’d gone there and he’d heard the kettle.

“You look in this building. I’ll check the others,” Dunlap said, and Slaughter stopped him.

“No, we’d better stay together.”

“What’s the matter?” Dunlap asked.

“Let’s just say I’ve got a bad feeling. Anybody here?” he called again.

He waited, but no answer.

“No one’s been here for quite a while,” Dunlap said.

They stepped inside one building. There were bunk beds, wooden slats instead of springs, no mattresses, but many spiders, cobwebs, leaves piled in one corner as a nest for something. The floor-decaying planks-looked unsafe.

“Let’s try a little farther on,” Slaughter said.

But almost every building was the same. Slaughter glanced around to notice how the compound had been situated in a canyon, cliffs beyond the trees on three sides, and the slope behind them descending toward the loggers’ road. A wind came from below there, rustling trees and cooling him. He took his hat off. Then his back felt unprotected, and he looked behind him. “Well, they picked a good spot anyhow. Except they would have needed water, and I don’t know where they got it.”

“Higher up. Those cliffs might have some streams.”

“Could be. But I don’t have time to look.”

That made his point, Slaughter hoped. He didn’t have time. He hadn’t thought it would take this long getting up here. While he felt more sympathetic toward Dunlap, all the same he had his job to do, and he was anxious to get out of here.

Because you’re thinking of Bodine? he asked himself. That feeling you had yesterday? You’re scared. You might as well admit it.

No. Because I have to get back if there’s trouble. Sure. And now he followed Dunlap past some bushes toward a larger building. Its door had toppled. The steps were rotted. They looked past the spider webs at what must once have been the dining room. Rettig had been accurate again. Logs made into trestles, tables that went down the whole length of the room. A bird sat in a glassless window, staring at them. Slaughter blinked, the bird flew away, and Slaughter felt that spot between his shoulder blades again. He turned, but there was no one out there.

“Are they hiding?”

“Little children laughing?” Dunlap asked. “What the hell is that?” “It’s from a poem. T.S. Eliot.”

“I know who he is. That’s not what I meant.” And Slaughter started running toward the small low building in front of the parade ground. “I saw something moving.”

He ran harder, glancing at the buildings on each side, staring toward the trees beyond them, and he had his gun out, lunging past the listing door, finding just a table, spider webs and dirt, more pine needles.

But there wasn’t any back door, and he didn’t understand what he’d seen moving. Then he did. The wind blew toward him, and he saw the thick, rotted curtain moving. A blanket really. Torn in half and hung up on a branch before a broken window. He was nauseated by the smell that he’d been registering all along: must and crumbling wood, the fetid, sick-sweet smell of buildings left to ruin. Then he saw the hornet’s nest in the far right corner. Something moved inside its portal, and he stepped out into the open.

Dunlap.

Where was Dunlap? “Over here!”

Now he reads my mind, Slaughter thought as he ran toward the muffled voice inside another building. The emotion in Dunlap’s voice worried him.

This building didn’t have planks for a floor. Only dirt. There weren’t any windows. Two big doors hung open. Dunlap stood in a shadowy corner, staring at dark stains on the ground.

“That’s blood?” Slaughter asked.

Dunlap only shook his head.

“Well, what then? Christ, you scared me.”

“Did I? Well, I didn’t mean to. No.” Dunlap picked up the dirt and sniffed it.

Slaughter suddenly was angry. “Tell me what that stuff is.”

“Even after all these years, you can still smell the oil. This is where the Corvette would have been.”

“Except it isn’t.”

“Where then?” Dunlap wondered.

“Look, there’s no one up here. Quiller drove out years ago. He maybe let the others walk, but he kept the car in case he needed it to leave.”

“I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. And now my goddamned job is almost over.”

“You can still track Quiller.”

“No, it’s finished. I’ll be out of here by Monday. After I talk to Wheeler and see your records.”

“And visit Parsons,” Slaughter told him.

“Right. I haven’t let that slip my mind.”

“Twenty-three years? You really thought that they’d still be here?”

“Well, I had my hopes. I needed some big story to impress them.”

“In New York?”

Dunlap’s face was blank. “You’re luckier than you imagine.”

“Well, I made my own luck.”

Dunlap took a breath and nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe after this I’ll have to spread out my own map.” He looked all around. “The new republic.” He snorted. “It’s not all that failed.” He started past the sagging doors, and Slaughter thought about the town as he went after him. The sun was descending. The wind had died. The compound felt lonelier than ever. Well, we’d better reach the car before the woods get too dark to see landmarks, Slaughter thought. “Let’s get a drink,” Dunlap said, and they walked along the lane between the ruined barracks.

*

IT SNIFFED AT THE SHOE. MUD AND DAMPNESS. AND IT CHOKED. IT SCURRIED BACK AND SETtled on its haunches, puzzled by the odd sensation in its throat. Then the choking spasm passed, and it was staring at the shoe. It waited, almost sniffed the shoe again, then made its choice, and scuttled toward the pile of clothing in one corner. Blue and stiff, yet muddy, damp just like the shoe. And once again it felt that sharp constriction in its throat-which made it angry-and it cuffed at the clothing. Then it snarled.

Over to one side, another kind of shoe, this one dark and scuffed, light spots showing through the surface, a faint odor, partly sweat, and partly from the animal the hide had once belonged to. It was sniffing closer. Then it bit the leather, and it shook its head, the shoe flopping one way, then another. But the clothes that hung down brushed against its head, and that annoyed it, so it pawed up at the clothing, snagged a pocket, pulling, and some clothes dropped down upon it. Smothered, frightened, it fumbled to get out from under, snarling, pawing, and the clothes dropped free. Then it smelled soap and chemicals, and it was growling. As it bit hard into the cloth and held the garment, tearing, it heard noises coming down the hallway out there. It turned, staring, But the door was closed. The noises stopped. It went back to the garment, snarling, tearing.

Something raided. It swung toward the door. The handle moved. It stiffened, garment hanging from its teeth. The handle kept moving. Then the door came open, and she stepped in. Dropping the garment from its mouth, it bared its teeth and snarled at her.

She breathed in sharply. “Warren?”

And it sprang at her. She stumbled back. Her elbow hit the door. The door swung shut behind her, and she fell against the doorjamb, fumbling with the handle, as it sprang at her again. She scrambled toward the dresser to avoid it.

“Warren!”

But it only snarled and kept coming.

“Warren!”

She kicked at it, throwing pictures off the dresser, dodging toward the bed, climbing, screaming. When it leaped the final time, it caught her not quite balanced on the bed so that they both went crashing off the other side, her back slamming hard on the floor as it came clawing at her throat. She screamed and hit at it. She struck it on the nose, the throat. It felt the blood pour over its lips, a salt taste in its mouth, and gagged. It pawed to clear the salt taste, angered by the gagging, slashed its teeth down toward her face, but in that moment’s hesitation, she had gripped the table near the bed and scrambled from the floor to kick at it. The shoe came toward its face, but there was time to dodge, and now it sank its teeth hard into her leg. She wailed and kicked to free the leg, but it was growling, biting, and it felt the blood spurt into its mouth, that same salt taste. It gagged again as, shouting, she twisted her leg and jerked free. Something hard smashed against its shoulder, glass and a lampshade falling past. The pain surged through its shoulder. Whining, it was stunned. Then she wasn’t before it any longer. She was stumbling past it toward the door, and it was turning, snarling, leaping as she reached the door and grabbed the handle, pulling, squeezing out to reach the hallway, slamming the door.

It banged against the door and clawed to move the handle. She was out there, screaming. But the handle wouldn’t move. It heard her out there screaming, and it dimly understood that she was gripping at the handle, pulling at the door. It knew that there was no way to reach her. More than that, it understood the danger. Others would be coming. They would trap it. Have to get away. It swung to find an exit, saw the open window, the screen, then the porch and the open air, and it was charging forward, leaping, slamming at the screen. The mesh pressed, cutting at its face. The screen gave way, and it was falling through, the porch rising up to meet it. Darkness. Pain. It shook its head, the salt taste flooding its mouth. Then it could see again, and spitting, gagging, it vaulted across the railing toward the bushes.