Sara Reinke - Backwoods

Plink! Plink plink!

More and more of them began to go, like popcorn in a pan atop a heated stove, and Andrew gritted his teeth, fumbling with the buckle to release the seatbelt. Just as his fingertips brushed the belt release button, the glass crumpled, spilling in a sudden torrent of water almost directly into his face. He didn’t even have time to suck in a startled breath before silt-filled water rushed down his throat, his nose. He thrashed in his seat, his hands slapping helplessly as the water quickly swallowed his face and head, enveloping his torso.

Seconds felt like excruciating hours, his lungs burning with the desperate need for air, his fingers pawing uselessly at the strap of his shoulder harness. He opened his eyes but there was nothing to see but a dizzying mess of air bubbles suspended and whirling inside a frothy mess of brown water. When his eyes rolled back in his skull, he watched the world seem to upturn. His body fell limp, his struggles waning. His mind faded and his throat relaxed, water coursing down into his gut in an unabated flood. He felt an arm reach across his chest, someone leaning past him to jerk the buckle of the seat belt loose of its moorings and free him, and thought he was dreaming.

“I’ve got you.”

That was the next thing Andrew was fully aware of, a woman’s voice, barely audible over the roll of thunder, the steady backbeat of rain. He felt strong hands clasping his shoulders and the muddy but solid surface of the ground beneath him as the woman lay him back. For a moment, he blinked dazedly up, watching rain spill down directly into his face, and then his belly heaved and he writhed with a gulp, vomiting the dirty water he’d swallowed.

“Easy, now,” the woman said, rolling Andrew onto his side. When lightning flashed overhead, Andrew caught a bleary glimpse of her, her shadow-draped face and rain-soaked clothes, a mottled combat uniform with patches sewn onto the breast. U.S. ARMY, the left one said, while on the right, a name stenciled in heavy black letters: SANTORO . “You’re safe now.”

Andrew rode shotgun in the military Humvee, while the woman, Santoro, handled the broad steering wheel and gear shift with white-knuckled proficiency. The rain continued to pour, thundering against the truck roof, and the windshield wipers swept a furious cadence, peeling back the water in sheets.

“What was that back there?” he groaned, pressing his fingertips to his sore temple. Upon helping him up into the transport’s cab, the woman had rifled through a metal first aid kit long enough to find a large gauze pad. Andrew had lacerated his scalp along his hairline, and the pad, which remained over the wound, was soaked through.

“What was what?” She’d long since turned the Humvee off the paved two-lane highway in favor of a steep, rutted dirt path through the forest. They’d passed through a razor-wire lined chain link fence, one with a key pad entry to the towering gate and a large sign posted: Property of U S. Government. No trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted. Although Santoro had tried several times, her motions furious as she’d jabbed in a sequence of numbers, the gate hadn’t opened. At last, grumbling and scowling, she’d climbed out of the cab, leaving the big truck’s engine rumbling, and had crossed the broad swaths of headlight beams to manually wrestle open the gate.

Andrew had struggled ever since to remember if he’d noticed anything like an Army base on any of his area maps. The area they’d been contracted to survey consisted of slightly less than ten thousand forested acres, but surrounding these had been another forty thousand belonging to private owners. To the best of his recollection, he hadn’t seen any labeled as federal lands. There was no way to check now. The maps, like his Jeep, remained behind them somewhere at the bottom of the rain-flooded ditch.

“That thing in the road. It ran out in front of me. That’s why I swerved.” Andrew opened his eyes again, lowering the gauze pad, blinking at her. “You’ve got to have seen it. It was some kind of animal, a bear maybe, walking on its hind legs.”

Only if it had been a bear, it had been unlike any Andrew had ever seen or heard of—hairless, its proportions gangly and grotesque, its mouth that wide, shrieking O.

Santoro shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. Just your headlights coming at me dead on.” She glanced at Andrew. “Have you been out here hunting?”

Because her gaze had been directed primarily at Andrew’s orange vest, similar in appearance to those hunters sometimes wore, this was a pretty reasonable assumption.

“No,” Andrew said, grimacing as the Humvee bounced through a particularly nasty rut in the terrain, knocking him sideways into the door.

“This is all private property,” Santoro said. “Federally owned. You could face criminal charges if you’re caught.”

“I wasn’t hunting,” Andrew said. “I’m a forester. My name’s Andrew Braddock.” He offered a shake but she cut his outstretched hand a dubious glance, then returned her attention to the windshield. Dropping his hand back to his lap, he continued. “I work for an environmental consulting firm. We were hired by Atlantic Seaboard Power and Electric Cooperative. They own about ten thousand acres just north of here and want to thin it out. I’ve been out timber cruising.”

Another suspicious look. “Out what?”

“Timber cruising,” he said again. “Counting trees. You know, getting an estimate of what kind of removal scope they’re looking at. That’s what they call it.”

“You’ve been counting trees,” Santoro repeated and Andrew nodded. “Ten thousand acres worth.” She managed a snort of laughter. “Hope you brought a calculator.”

As the Humvee pulled at first off the bouncing, jarring dirt road onto the relatively smooth surface of paved concrete, then came to a stop, Andrew looked around.

“Here.” Santoro killed the truck engine and lights, plunging the interior of the cab into sudden darkness. She pivoted in her seat, producing a wadded up plastic rain parka. “Put this on. Pull the hood up. I’ll come around and help you out.”

And with that, with no protective gear of her own, she swung open the driver’s side door and hopped into the downpour, the heavy soles of her combat boots slapping in the water ponding on the tarmac. When the door slammed shut behind her, it sent a residual tremor through the entire truck.

Andrew cocked his head, peering curiously out the window, using his hand to wipe away the thin condensation that formed near his mouth against the glass. At first, he couldn’t see anything outside through the heavy veil of rain, but then thought he caught the hint of something big and shadow-draped close by, a building of some sort with all of the lights darkened inside.

He jerked in surprise as Santoro’s silhouetted form suddenly came into view. The hinges creaked as she pulled the door open, her shoulders hunched against the rain.

“Come on.” She held out her hand expectantly. Andrew unfastened his seat belt and accepted her help in climbing down from the cab. Rain pelted him, pounding against the poncho, and he nearly lost his balance once his feet were beneath him. A momentary swell of light-headedness came over him and he stumbled.

“I’ve got you,” she said, draping his arm across her shoulders, slipping her own around his waist. He was probably a good four inches taller than her and at least forty pounds heavier, and she gritted her teeth, grunting softly as she bore the brunt of his unsteady weight.

Together, they approached a shallow overhang, the entrance to the building Andrew had glimpsed only a hint of before. It remained dark and looming in the shadows, its Spartan façade illuminated in staccato bursts by the occasional wink of lightning from overhead.