All Green, Part 6

A serialized short story.

Continued from Part 5:

We fought through the forest a yard at a time. The shapes of fallen trees hunched all around us in the gloom, decked in ferns. I looked up into the branches above and wondered what it would feel like to be knocked flat by a mountain lion. How long it would take to die after the first vicious bite to the back of the neck. I wondered if wolves could slip through the shadowed jumble of foliage that surrounded us—if we would even hear them coming before they closed in—if anyone could get a clear shot before they dragged us down. I wondered if there were already bones hidden under the leaves beneath our feet.

Somewhere above us, outside the leafy twilight, the sun swung toward the horizon. And we still had miles to go.

Finally, Ray shoved through the mesh of branches and vines in front of him, like opening a door to the outside, letting in a shaft of sunlight. We followed him across the threshold and stumbled back into the day we’d left behind.

---

The trees gave way to an open stretch of tall grass dotted with black walnut saplings. In front of us was the half-buried skeleton of a ruined garage. Next to it stood a farmhouse with a caved-in roof, its windows blindfolded with wild grapevines and Virginia creeper. Flaking white paint and clapboard siding disappeared beneath the conspiracy of leaves that was gently pulling the forest over it like a blanket.

Ray unhooked his canteen from his belt, gave it an appraising shake next to his ear, took a quick swig, and put it away. “Watch your step,” he said. “No telling what’s in these yards under all this mess. Could be rusted metal, broken glass, barbwire, rotted well covers… it’s a long way to a doctor if you put your foot in something nasty.”

“We getting close?” said Henry.

“Getting closer,” said Ray. “Other side of this little place here. Might be doing some more bushwhacking to get through to Beaver Creek.” He squinted up at the sun. “Hopefully it’s not as bad as what we just came through. We’re already running behind.”

“Fuck,” said Henry.

“Ain’t too late to turn back,” said Ray, looking from Tucker to me.

“Is there a road we could take to make up some time?” I said.

Ray took off his hat and wiped the sweat away from his face. “Could be, if we’re lucky. Ain’t much to call a road out here. Might even be harder than going through the woods. The asphalt’s cracked and pitted all to hell under there, and if the leaves are too thick, you can’t see what you’re walking on. Slow going, and hard to keep your balance.”

Henry spat. “Fuck all this.”

Ray grinned. “Told you it was different out here.”

Henry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Too bad you were dumb enough to get stuck in this shit your whole life, huh.”

Ray shrugged, taking his bow from his back and knocking an arrow onto the string. “Suits me better than driving around in a Humvee and gunning down kids,” he said mildly. “But maybe I’m just old fashioned. We moving out?”

Henry opened his mouth to reply, but I cut him off before he could start something. “Let’s check the road,” I said quickly.

Ray and Henry began picking their way carefully across the yard toward the side of the house, heads down, keeping a safe distance from each other.

I waited for Tucker, who was taking a drink from the old soda bottle he’d brought for water. “You doing alright?” I said.

He wiped his mouth and nodded. “Tired,” he said. “It looked a lot closer on the map.”

“We’re getting there. As long as those two don’t kill each other.”

“They might kill us, if this doesn’t work out. What if Bone Man doesn’t want to barter? Or if he’s sold out of mushrooms?”

“Then Ray and Henry will split the barter goods and we’ll figure something else out. We just need a few mushrooms to start growing our own anyway, right?”

Tucker cleared his throat. “I think so. Probably. Yeah.”

“We got this,” I said, punching him gently on the shoulder. “Just think about going back to The Haunt for a beer and telling Liza that you’re in business.”

He smiled faintly. “Yeah. That’ll be good.”

We heard Ray’s two-note whistle from the other side of the house.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The road in front of the old house was buried under a carpet of dead leaves, running north to south through an abandoned neighborhood. Glassless windows left black holes in the empty houses along the street. In a few places, piles of charred timbers, scorched plywood, and melted siding showed through the clutch of leaves. All that was left from old insurance fires, or maybe a last gesture of fuck-you defiance, aimed at the place that had swallowed these people’s dreams: a final, fiery middle finger held up to the grasping plants they tried to cut back, year after year, mowing and trimming and slashing away every summer.

The people had left, defeated, and the forest remained. It waited patiently all around. Promised to erase everything they’d built in its own good time.

Henry and Ray stood by the road, at the end of their flattened tracks through the knee-deep grass, like scarecrows in a field gone to seed.

“How’s it look?” I called to them.

“Depends which kind of bad you want,” answered Ray. “We can try hacking through the jungle again. Or take our chances cutting through the yards, and hope nobody falls through something. Or we can go on the road and skate around on this rock pile out in the open.”

“I’m not going back in those fucking woods unless we have to,” said Henry.

“Roads can’t be any worse.” I said, looking at Tucker.

Tucker shrugged. “I’d rather get shot on the road,”

Ray gave a short laugh. “That’s the spirit. Let’s try our luck and see if we can make up some distance.”

We went east. Just as Ray had said, the road beneath the mat of leaves was a tilting scree of broken asphalt. We kept to the shoulder at the edge of the old front yards, walking single file, stumbling now and then on hidden cracks and potholes. The empty houses watched us as we struggled past.

It was hard to imagine that the place had once been full of people—that there was ever a reason to live so far away from everything. Buildings stood like wrecked ships sunk into the weeds, with a few remnants of normal life strewn across their overgrown yards. There was the rusted frame of a car that someone had once thought of fixing up and driving into town. A few scraps of colored fabric clinging to a flagpole, left to decay, blown away bit by bit on the wind in the years since it was new, when someone had hung it out with pride. Front porches with rocking chairs rotting to mulch. A hand-painted sign for a yard sale—”MOVING, EVERYTHING MUST GO”—on a date long past. All of it slowly going under the rising tide of green.

One house had a screen door on its front entrance, half-opened to the shadows inside, propped ajar by debris. I stopped and looked at that screen door for a while. Tried to imagine what the house was like when it was still a home.

In my mind, I saw the house from the inside, looking out onto the front yard, with the smell of mowed grass still hanging in the air, the screen door letting in the golden light on a summer evening, crickets starting to sing outside, and two little kids peering out, pressed up to the screen, shoulder to shoulder, silhouetted against the filtered sunlight, waiting patiently for their dad to come home from work, back from wherever people worked when there were still jobs around, driving home from some factory nearby, pulling his gas-powered car into the driveway, tires crunching on gravel, maybe bringing home some cold soda for his children and a six-pack for him and his wife to share, drinking beer and sitting on the front porch, waving to the neighbors, watching the kids play in the front yard among the lightning bugs before running off to meet their friends, dusk settling down to night as lamps were switched on inside kitchens and living rooms, lighting the windows one by one, all along the street that now stood as empty as a broken promise.

There was no way I should have remembered all those things. They were from someone else’s life. But I remembered it, somehow.

“Mark.”

I turned and found Tucker standing next to me. “You okay?” he said.

“Yep,” I said. A tightness in my throat made my voice sound strange. “All good.”

“You sure?”

I nodded, and turned to continue down the street. Henry was stopped up ahead—crouched next to the curb, unmoving, head down. Ray was still walking ahead, apparently unaware that Henry had fallen behind.

“You talk to him yet?” I asked Tucker.

“No,” said Tucker. “You think he's hurt?”

“Dunno,” I said, quickening my pace. Tucker hurried after me.

When we walked up beside him, Henry was cradling a shoe in his hands—a small sneaker, probably for a kid not quite old enough to be in school, made of white canvas with white cotton shoelaces, rubber soles, decorated on the sides with a curving slash of royal blue. Aside from a few scuffs of dirt, it looked almost brand new.

“Henry?” said Tucker. “Whatcha got?”

“How’d this get here?” muttered Henry.

I shrugged. “Somebody’s garbage, I guess.”

He shook his head. “Nice pair like this? No fucking way. This was one of somebody’s favorites. Especially somebody living in a hard-luck place like this used to be.”

“Maybe they dropped it when they were packing up to leave?”

He ignored me, turning the shoe carefully in his hands, not taking his eyes from it, as if it would melt into mist when he looked away. “I always wanted shoes like this when I was little,” he said, his voice quiet.

“I think this one's gonna be a little small for you,” I said, trying to force some good humor into my voice—hoping for a laugh, or at least a smirk, even a casual insult. Anything to shake us loose from his strange stillness.

Instead, he looked at me wearily, like he didn’t have the energy to save me from my own stupidity. His expression was slack behind his sunglasses. Dirt and sweat lined the creases of his face. After regarding me for a minute, his attention returned to the sneaker in his hands. “Little guy must have been heartbroken when they got wherever they were going,” he murmured. “Too late to turn back and search for it. No way to replace it. And here it was, waiting this whole time. Hardly any dirt on it. Looks like it could’ve been dropped yesterday.”

Ray stepped up to where we stood. “Everybody okay?”

I shrugged. Henry was still crouched on the ground, lost in his thoughts with the shoe; Ray and I stood above where he could see. I tapped my temple and gave Ray a questioning look.

Heat stroke? Ray mouthed silently.

I shrugged again.

“All I had growing up was a pair of buckskin mocs that somebody in the village made,” said Henry, ignoring the rest of us. “Until I was big enough to fit into my dad’s old work boots.” He turned to look at Tucker. “You had those old sneakers when we were little, didn’t you. The gray and red ones.”

Tucker nodded. “My dad got them at the secondhand market in Morrisville.”

“There’s a good chance I made those moccasins you had,” said Ray. “I used to make a bunch of them when I got some extra hide, give ‘em away to folks with kids. Still do, once in a while.”

Henry looked back at the sneaker.

We stood around him in silence, shuffling awkwardly.

“You had any water to drink, Henry?” said Ray. “It’s damn hot out here. Started getting a bit lightheaded myself.”

Henry sighed and stood up, still holding the sneaker. “I’m fucking fine, man.” The fire had gone out of his voice. “You just look after yourself. Let’s go.” He turned and walked away from us, down the empty street, heading east.

Ray watched him go, then looked back to us with concern. “What was that about,” he said in a low voice.

“He was like that when we got to him,” I said.

Ray turned back to mark Henry’s progress. “Seems like he’s walking okay. Let’s just keep an eye on him for now. Nothing else we can do.”

We walked on. Past more empty houses, more collapsing garages. Past an old gas station that was looted and stripped and smashed apart so completely that it looked like the wreckage from a tornado. Past a small white church set back from the street, with the announcement board out front robbed of all its plastic letters—all except for those spelling out the word “HOPE,” which someone had stubbornly duct-taped into the sign, safe from the wind until the fraying tape finally weathered away.

Beyond the little huddle of buildings, the country opened up. Old fields dotted with young trees stretched away toward the green hills off in the distance. A trail of smoke rose up into the bright blue sky from the hills behind us. The breeze blew in and rattled the tired leaves in the trees, exhausted after a long summer in the hot sun.

We trudged along, with Ray and Henry walking ahead, Tucker and I trailing behind. None of us talked.

“How are you going to marry Eliza when you’ve barely talked to her?” I said to Tucker, finally breaking the silence.

Tucker cleared his throat. “I’ve talked to her a lot.”

“You have not. When?”

“In school. A few times around town.”

“Where was I?”

He hitched the straps of his pack up higher on his shoulders. “At home, I guess? Helping your mom? Drinking out in the woods?”

“How come you never told me?”

“I must’ve mentioned it.”

“You must have mentioned that you’ve been sneaking around with Eliza Miller? And I just forgot about it?”

He sighed. “We weren’t sneaking. Just talking.”

“Then how come you didn’t tell me?”

He stopped abruptly. “Maybe I just wanted something that was mine,” he said. “I can hardly get a minute to myself in this place without somebody getting into my business. Maybe I don’t want to announce everything I’m doing the minute it happens.”

“Okay. Jesus. Settle down.”

We kept walking.

“Listen,” he said. “I just don’t need your help with everything, okay? We’re not kids anymore. Like you keep reminding me.”

“I know that. You think I want to spend my whole life looking after you?”

“What makes you think I need looking after?”

I couldn’t think of a nice way to say because you’re still a mousey little shit trying to act tough, so I said nothing.

“You’re not coming along to look after me at college, are you?”

“Tucker, don’t be a dick.”

“I’m just saying. I’ve got to start having my own life sooner or later. Once I leave.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why we’re doing this. I want to help you get there.”

Tucker shook his head briskly. “Don’t make this about me. If that’s why we’re doing this, we should go back right now. I don’t want anybody getting murdered just so I can go to school. I’ll be fine. I’ve got rich parents, remember?”

Up ahead, Henry’s foot slid on a loose slab of asphalt, making him stumble before he regained his balance with a shouted curse.

A raven grokked somewhere up in the trees.

“You can’t spend the rest of your life digging ditches,” Tucker said quietly.

I tried to unclench my jaw. Tucker couldn’t fight back if I started hitting him. Ray and Henry were too far ahead to pull me off. “Listen, you—”

North.

The voice stole into my head like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Ringing filled my ears.

“Mark?” Tucker sounded worried.

“I—What?”

He looked at me carefully. “You just went white. You feeling okay?”

“Fine,” I muttered.

“Maybe you should sit down.” He called ahead to the other two before I could stop him. “Hey! Hold up!”

“I said I’m fine. Don’t make it a big deal.”

Henry stopped and turned back toward us.

Ray retraced his steps, walking gingerly back down the broken road to where we stood. "What's up?"

"Not enough water," I said. "Hot out here. Just gonna grab my bottle and—"

North.

I swore and jammed a finger in my ear, jiggling it to try and shake the voice loose.

"What is it?" Ray reached behind his back to one of the large pouches strapped to his belt. "I've got a medkit if—"

I waved him off. "It's fine. Ears just started ringing."

He pulled out his kit and rummaged through its contents. "Might be low on electrolytes. I've got some salt tablets in here somewhere…"

I let Ray sit me down and baby me with water and medicine. Tucker crouched beside me, frowning, while Henry stood by and watched the road. I scanned the woods to the north, searching for whatever the voice had directed me toward.

"What's that?" I asked, once Ray had finished his ministrations. "Looks like a break in the treeline."

Ray turned to look where I was pointing. "Where?"

"North. Across that field. Looks like there might even be a path going up to it.”

“I don’t see anything,” said Tucker.

Ray looked at me, squinting, then back to the trees in the distance. “Hang on.” He reached into another pouch on his belt and produced a small tube—an old rifle scope—which he held up to his eye. “To the left of that big tree?” he asked.

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Does look like there’s an opening, and… damn me. There’s a stick or something hanging from a line there.” He put down the scope and looked intently at me. “That’s almost three hundred yards away.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Something caught my eye.”

“You saw a three-foot gap in the trees. Three hundred yards off the road. Just happened to notice it.”

“Guess so,” I said. “Like I said, something—”

“—caught your eye, yeah.” He scratched his chin and looked at me. “You sure you don’t want to learn how to hunt? Could do pretty well with eyes like that.”

I stood up. “How far are we from Beaver Creek?”

Ray pulled out the map from his pocket. “If we’re a couple miles past that little place, it’s another two hours walking southeast, then turning north… could be another four hours.” He studied the map. “But if that’s a trail… probably cut that time in half, going through this stretch of forest. Assuming it’s a clear path and not another hack job like we just came through back there.”

“Should we check it out?” I asked.

They were all watching me.

“Worth a shot, right? If it’ll save us some time—”

“Mark,” said Ray. “Is there anything you want to tell us?”

They watched me.

“I’m good. Really. Those salt tablets did the trick.”

The cicadas buzzed.

“Something just caught my eye, alright? Jesus Christ." I tried out an easygoing laugh. "You said yourself there’s something over there. Let’s go take a look.”

I could still feel them watching me as I stepped off the road and into the field, wading through the tall grass. Somebody whispered something that I couldn’t catch. The grass swished behind me as they followed.

When we got closer to the woods, I could see a faint trail worn into the grass, running parallel to the trees and ending at the little opening I’d spotted. The stick that Ray had seen through his scope dangled to the right of the path into the forest.

Except it wasn’t a stick.

It was the leg bone from a big animal, strung crossways on the wire. Below it, on its own strand of wire, the skull of a small bird was carefully hung from the midpoint of the bone. Like a windchime.

“What the fuck,” said Henry, walking up behind me.

“Uh uh,” said Ray when he spotted the bones. He shook his head emphatically. “Not going that way. It’s probably more of that same posse we saw up above. Not doing that again.”

“They did say his name was Bone Man,” I pointed out.

Ray swung his head around to look at me. “Beg pardon? Said his name was what?”

“Didn’t we tell you that? I thought we—”

Ray scrubbed at his cheeks with one hand. “The guy we’re going to see is called Bone Man?”

Henry barked out a laugh.

Ray glared at him. “Did you know about this?”

“Nah, man,” said Henry, chuckling. “Need-to-know basis, I guess.”

“We must have forgot,” said Tucker quietly.

“God in heaven,” said Ray, pulling his hat off and whacking it against his thigh.

“It’s not like it’s his real name,” I muttered lamely.

“Outstanding. Pretty important detail to forget about, wouldn’t you say? Is there anything else y’all forgot about?”

“C’mon, Ray,” said Henry, click-click-clicking his safety switch and peering into the trees. “Looks like a nice little trail through there. Big hunter like you ain’t scared of a few little bones, right?”

“We’ve come too far to turn back now,” I said.

Ray blew out a breath and yanked his hat back onto his head. “I swear to God, this is the last job I do with you all. Lord have mercy.” He stepped aside and swung a welcoming arm toward the trail. “Henry, my friend, you can take point this time. I’ll follow you. Quiet and slow, for God’s sake. And if we see any blood on those trees we’re pulling out. Got it?”

Henry grinned. “All green, boss.”

We stepped past the dangling bones and into the shadow of the forest.

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Continued in Part 7, coming soon.