Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

“Oh.” Summers turned. “I’ve never worked with it myself, but fire rangers use it to measure heat when they’re doing prescribed burns. You’re familiar with it, right, Phil?”

Seated on the easy chair, Phil nodded.

Jason remained focused on Craig. “How does it help us here?”

“By letting us see what’s out there. Day or night. It works by using differences in temperature gradients to create an image.”

“English, Craig.”

“Basically, it’s night vision. Air is one temperature. Bodies—human, animal, whatever—are another. A thermal camera creates an image by using the difference. It’s easy to set up. Basically a camera on a tripod, so we can put it wherever we want. There are twenty cameras in that shed, so if nothing else, we can set some up near the area where we found the body and see if anything returns to the scene of the crime. And since they’ve got a monitor that reads the signals remotely, we don’t even have to leave the cabin. Between that and the radar, we’ll get a great look at what’s going on out there.”

Impressed, Jason turned to Darryl. “What do you think?”

“Not much.”

“Really?” Jason shrugged. “It sounds like a good idea to me.”

“Then do it.” Darryl walked to a window. “It’s technology hunting. Scopes, radar, GPS—it’s not my thing. I just wasn’t raised with all that crap. What are you gonna do when it doesn’t turn up anything, Craig?”

Summers quietly seethed. “Shut up, Darryl. You don’t know it’s not gonna turn up any—”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say it doesn’t.” Darryl said this with utter confidence, like it was as certain as the sun rising. “What are you gonna do, then? Go out there and look for it?”

“Of course. We all will.”

“You’re gonna lead us, then?”

Craig paused nervously. “What?”

“You heard me. Are you gonna lead us? Are you experienced hunting wild animals? Comfortable tracking, locating, and killing them?”

“Well…”

“Because I am experienced. I’ve spent a large part of my life doing it. And I’m not gonna waste our time on some random search.”

“What ‘random search’? And what do you mean, ‘waste our time’? We have all the time in the world.”

“Not what I’m talking about. I don’t want to burn our energy, blunt the knife before we even get a chance to use it.”

“What do you mea—”

“We’ll get tired. As simple as that is, it happens all the time. You realize how big this forest is? Try a few hundred square miles, junior. We go out there looking around, we could go for days without seeing anything. We wouldn’t just get tired; we’d get exhausted. But we’d be out there. Then, when we really needed it… We’d get slaughtered. And I’m not jeopardizing my safety, my wife’s safety—even your safety, Craig. When I step out to hunt, there’s only one way. Guns loaded and ready to kill.”

“And I’m going out there to play hopscotch?” Craig shook his head. “Lisa, Jason, Phil. Tomorrow we’ll set up the equipment then practice shooting.” He gave Darryl a look. “We’ll be guns loaded and ready to kill, too. In the meantime”—he sat—“I’m exhausted. Anybody up for a fire?”

Minutes later, they sat in front of a huge blaze with mugs of cocoa. The cocoa was the cheap watery stuff with fake marshmallows, but it still tasted good. They all relaxed. Even Jason. Staring at the flames, he was mesmerized. “I can’t remember the last time I was in front of a fire.” Neither could anyone else. They all just looked at the fire, drinking their cocoa, and savoring the rare homey feeling they’d all missed for so long.

Darryl was the least relaxed of everyone. He gazed at the flickers of yellow and gold with particular interest, watching as a steady stream of smoke ascended…. Carried by convection currents, the smoke rose beyond his sight, into a flue then out the chimney, emerging into the cool night air. There was no wind, so the smoke drifted farther, wafting up along a redwood trunk. It continued straight up, passing the tree’s upper branches, then went higher still, and filtered through the evergreen leaves. Continuing, the smoke filtered into the sky then finally went still, taking on an eerie hue from the glowing moon above.

The only sound was from the distant rolling ocean.

But then there was a second sound, a natural sound that merged into the first.

Breathing. Calm, even, and deep. Gliding silently, the winged body blew the smoke away. The animal tilted its head and studied the stream of white drifting up from the chimney below, tuning in to the signals inside. The creature wouldn’t attack them. It simply tuned to their heartbeats and listened to them breathe. Then it tilted a wing and glided toward the looming mountains in the distance. It disappeared gradually. The smoke was gone as well. All that remained were the sounds of the ocean and the silent, watching moon.

THE MOON. In the cabin, Darryl stared at it through the window. As the others slept in front of the crackling fire, he couldn’t help but wonder. Is something out there? He didn’t know if his Indian mysticism was getting the best of him again, but… He went to his room and grabbed a rifle, not bothering with the bow and arrow now; he just wanted something quick. Back to the front door, he was careful not to wake anyone but…

“What are you doing?” Monique’s eyes locked on the rifle.

“I just want to check around a little.”

“By yourself? At night?”

“I think something might be out there. I just want to—”

“I don’t want you to going, Darryl.” Her eyes were wet. “You understand me?”

“I’m just gonna look around; that’s it.”

She looked like she was going to cry. “ I said I don’t want you to.”

“I have to. I need to.”

“You do not need to. Please don’t lie to me about this.”

A line had just been crossed. “Have I ever lied to you? One time since the night we got married?”

She suddenly looked guilty. “Of course not.”

He touched her cheek. “Best night of my life.”

She turned away. She didn’t want to hear this now.

“Let me go.”

“Why? Why do you want to so badly?”

“To look around. That’s it. Get a sense of things. Like my grandfather taught me.” He glanced at the others, sleeping and lost in their dreams. “OK?”

She didn’t want to, but she had to. “Go.”

He kissed her on the lips. “I love you. And I promise I’ll be fine.”

“I love you, too.” She couldn’t say anything else.

As her husband walked out the door, Monique Hollis wondered if she’d ever see him again.

ON THE porch, broken strands of moonlight shone into Darryl Hollis’s eyes. The night air was clean, dark, and cold. He entered the desolate campground slowly, just watching and listening to the sounds of the nearby forest, birds and chipmunks chirping and chittering. He wasn’t sure—he was very out of practice—but he didn’t think anything dangerous was here now. Though it might have been recently. Holding the rifle loosely, he walked into the trees and didn’t turn back, the cabin’s diffused golden light slowly disappearing.

The shadows engulfed him. He continued for several minutes until he emerged into a clearing, the top of his head illuminated by a ghostly pale white light. He just stood there breathing, slowly, calmly, deeply. He focused on an enormous tree, a branchless shaft of wood that climbed straight into the sky. A pair of squirrels scampered past, and he followed them with his eyes. Nothing dangerous was here now; he was sure of it. He didn’t move. He just stood, watched, and waited.