August Ansel - Shadow Road

“GONE AS IT GETS.” Alex kicked the guy’s booted toe as if to prove how dead he really was. The entire leg, which had been bent at the knee, fell to one side with a loose thump. The foot now pointed out at an impossible angle. The other boot lay several feet away in a scatter of small bones.

The Konungar search team stood at the base of a tree in a loose semicircle. With dusk coming on and a storm bearing down, they’d just decided to quit for the night when they stumbled upon the body.

If he hadn’t died with a lot of heavy winter clothes on, there wouldn’t have been much to find; animals would have disassembled him and made off with the parts they liked best. As it was, there was little left of him but skeleton and hair. His bulky down parka and canvas pack had kept him in a seated position, though, while the flora and fauna had done their business with his soft parts. His head lay over so that his lower jaw hung open on the zippered front of the jacket. The denim of his jeans was so thoroughly enmeshed with the forest floor it was impossible to tell what color they’d once been.

“Get the pack,” said Russell.

They hesitated, looking at the dead man, then at each other.

Doyle stared at them. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. “Do it now.”

Garrett crouched next to the dead man. He grasped a shoulder strap and pulled the backpack. Even with the voluminous hood pulled up and tied at the corpse’s chin, dark remnants of skin were visible, clinging in thin folds to the bones beneath. Sandy colored tufts of beard protruded in patchy clumps. He gave a final tug, and the body slouched toward him, skull rolling sideways and bouncing against Garrett’s chest. He jerked away with an involuntary grunt of disgust, yanking the pack free as he did.

“Aw, sick,” Alex hooted. “Watch out, G, he’s going down on you!”

“Shut the fuck up, Wyszkowski,” said Gilch. “How about you get your pimpled ass down there and go through its pockets?”

Alex curled his lip in dismay, but dropped to one knee. Gingerly, as if approaching an untrustworthy animal, he began to rifle through the dead man’s clothing. The many outer pockets of the parka were zippered shut and Alex soon had a small pile of goods on the ground next to him: insulated gloves, a compass, a disposable lighter. When he pulled the jacket open to check the inner pockets, his face lit up.

“Yes!” he crowed, and fumbled with whatever had gotten his attention. He turned and held up the prize in one fist. It was a leather sheath, intricately stamped all over with a leaf design. Alex grasped the knife’s handle—wood wrapped in thin rawhide strips—and withdrew the blade. Ten inches long, its slightly curved tip glinted in the lowering light of the early evening. “Woah,” he whispered, face reverent as any child opening a favorite gift at Christmas. He moved the blade back and forth in front of him, eyes wide, mouth open in apparent awe.

Russell cleared his throat, and Alex looked up, face idiotically hopeful.

“Keep it,” said Russell. “Give Doyle the rest of it.”

Alex leapt to his feet, with a whoop. He slid the knife back in the sheaf and laid it at his feet as if it were made of glass. He scooped up the other items from the dead man’s pockets.

“Sure that’s everything?” said Doyle. “You didn’t check his pants.” A low chuckle from Gilch made Alex glance around. He looked again at the body, at the way the jeans seemed almost melted into the ground, black with fungus, forest refuse, and whatever had leached through the fabric from the inside out. Alex’s fingers flexed, and he wiped his palms down the front of his own thighs. “I… uh. Yeah, I guess.”

Doyle made a hoarse sound in his throat, like something a black bear would do right before charging. “Never mind, idjit,” he said. “Do you think I’d lay hands on anything that came out of those pants?”

Supreme relief flooded the boy’s pale, freckled face. “You’d have to be nuts,” he laughed. Then he set about unbuckling his belt and working the sheath onto it. Once he’d gotten the belt back on, he dug around in his own pocket. He retrieved a small pocketknife, surely no more than three inches long with a badly chipped plastic handle. With all the grace of a stork on land, he ran to the edge of the bluff that overlooked the river. He hurled the pathetic little knife into the air with another howl of happiness and it sailed off in a high arc, out into oblivion.

Meanwhile, Doyle inventoried the contents of the small daypack Garrett had taken off the dead guy. He tossed aside a plastic water bottle that still sloshed with an inch of cloudy liquid. A wilted paper sack held some indistinguishable contents that made Doyle wince and fling it aside. “Brought his lunch, I guess.”

He dug around in the smaller side pockets and fared better. There was a mylar survival sheet folded into an impossibly small packet, brown iodine tablets, and a magnesium fire-starter kit. “Sweet,” he said, and held up a pack of playing cards. He slid these into his own jacket pocket and dumped the rest back into the pack. “Stow this,” he said, tossing it to Gilch.

Gilch gave the fabric a sniff and shrugged, apparently not finding it offensive. He rolled it into a cylinder and stuffed it into an outer compartment of his own kit.

Garrett looked up, a slightly dazed expression on his face. In both hands he held a creased piece of notepaper he’d fished out of the dead man’s things. He blinked once, as if coming back to himself. Instead of giving the paper to Doyle, he handed it directly to Russell. “You’ll want to see this, Chief,” he said.

Russell tilted the page toward the last bit of light coming through the trees. Whatever was written there took him a moment to read. When he looked up, he started to laugh. It was a muffled sound, coming from under his scarf, and seldom heard—but was nevertheless a perfectly cheerful and infectious laugh. His eyes creased at the corners, and the men around him found themselves smiling, though they didn’t know why. Theirs was a queasy humor, glazed with hesitation.

“Have a peek,” he said finally, handing the paper to Doyle.

Doyle flicked on his headlamp, aiming it at the note. He held the page close to his face and squinted as he read. When he looked up at Russell, he was smiling, too.

“What is it?” asked Gilch.

“See for yourself,” said Doyle. He passed the note to Gilch. “He hiked into the woods when he got sick, looking for help. Trying to keep it from his kid.”

Gilch’s thick features bunched into amused awareness. “He knew he was dead.”

“Absolutely,” said Russell.

Alex, clutching his knife, looked from face to face, trying to grab the gist of the conversation. “Why is that so funny?”

“Our friend here lived close by,” said Doyle. “There’s no way he got far from home with the Pink running through him.”

Garrett stood slightly removed from the group. The wind had picked up considerably, and he had his fists bunched into his pockets. His blond hair whipped around his head in a wild tangle. “He had a cabin,” he said to Alex. “That’s where he left his boy.”

“A cabin where the old woman and her crew could den up,” said Gilch. “Nice little hidey-hole. We’ll find it tomorrow.”

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” said Russell. He laughed his soft, infectious laugh again.

Doyle stripped off his own rucksack and dropped it with a thud. “All right. Make camp.”

Alex looked sideways at the toppled corpse. “Here?”

“Yeah, here,” said Doyle. “That thing’s so dead it doesn’t even stink.”

“It stinks,” said Alex, but quietly, so that the wind swallowed his words.