Alex Archer - Footprints

“Why not?”

Annja smiled. “Methinks you’ve got a lot of faith.”

“Just a confidence in the way the Creator works, that’s all. If that’s faith, then so be it. But I don’t get all religious about it. Just appreciative.”

“Thankful.”

“Exactly.”

Joey hunkered down on a nearby log and started studying the ground. Annja watched him as he ran his hands over the dirt. “Any tracks?”

Joey shrugged. “Not sure, actually. I see some depressions, but I can’t tell what made them.”

“Really?”

He looked up. “Well, like I said before, I’m still studying. I can’t get out here every single day when school’s in session. I still have to do homework.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

Joey went back to studying the ground. “Funny thing, though, whatever made this was pretty large.”

“Meaning?”

“Nothing, I guess. I’d sure like to know what track this is. There are no real impressions, just a displacement of dirt. It’s weird.”

“Why are you guys looking at the ground?”

Annja glanced up. Coming out of the trees in front of them was Jenny Chu.

Annja couldn’t contain herself. She rushed up and grabbed Jenny in a bear hug. “Thank God you’re alive!”

Jenny nodded and Annja let her go. “I don’t know what happened exactly.”

Joey frowned. “When I left you, you were passed out asleep.”

Jenny smiled. “I think it was that tea you made me. It was so warm and delicious. I just about went out after a few sips of that stuff.”

“Old family recipe,” Joey said. “But what happened? I wouldn’t have left you if I’d known you were going to up and leave like that.”

Annja brought Jenny over to the side of the trail. “Are you feeling all right? Joey can make a fire if you need one.”

“I’m okay, actually,” Jenny said. “Getting down here helped warm me up, so that’s a good thing.”

Joey squatted and looked closely at Jenny. “Well, considering how bad off you were when I found you, I’d say that’s definitely a good thing. You made a remarkable recovery for someone who was struggling with hypothermia. Pretty impressive.”

Jenny nodded. “I feel a lot better.”

“So,” Annja said, “can you tell us what happened to you?”

Jenny took a deep breath. “I left the camp early this morning. I’d come because a contact of mine out here found some tracks.”

“Tracks?”

“He believed they belonged to the Sasquatch.”

Joey rolled his eyes and Annja resisted the urge to. Instead, she smiled. “All right, that made you launch the expedition. But what happened this morning when you left camp?”

“I was getting a feel for the lay of the land. There’s something incredible about this forest. I’ve been to plenty of places but it’s almost as if this location has some type of spirit watching over it. The trails aren’t beaten down by humans. There’s very little, if any, litter anywhere, and the majesty of the place can be overwhelming.”

Annja glanced at Joey. “I tend to think our friend here helps keep the place looking better than average.”

Joey shrugged. “Part of my duty.”

Jenny smiled. “Well, you’re doing a phenomenal job. But I tend to think there might be another presence here. And the footprint casts that I saw in pictures made me desperately want to come here and find out for myself.”

“And drag along your skeptical friend,” Annja said.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

Annja nodded. “So you were out hiking this morning…”

“I hadn’t planned to do much. Maybe a few miles on one of the trails. I didn’t take a pack with me. I felt I needed to be out by myself, you know? Away from everyone else. I love my students, obviously, but the chatter can get annoying sometimes. I don’t imagine you’d understand.”

Annja frowned. “Actually, I have a pretty good idea.”

“I was out for a good long time. Again, I just got caught up looking at things. I lost track of time. By late afternoon, I was heading back, but instead of the camp, I found it deserted.”

“We had some nasty visitors while you were gone,” Annja said. “They were very persuasive when they asked us to leave.”

Jenny looked at her. “The students?”

“Safe back in town, thanks to Joey.”

Jenny smiled at Joey. “That’s one more I owe you, huh?”

“Added to the tab, no worries.”

Jenny looked back at Annja. “And you stayed?”

“Sure, I wasn’t going to desert one of my friends. Especially not one who went through so much trouble to get me to come out here in the first place.”

“Thanks. I mean it. And thanks for making sure my students got taken care of. If anything happened to them—”

“Let’s not think about that right now. They’re safe. So are you. That’s what matters.” Annja glanced at Joey. “Would it be too much to ask you to make a fire? Some of that tea you made Jenny sounds really good, too. I could certainly use a cup and I’m sure Jenny would like another, as well.”

Joey smiled. “Consider it done.”

Annja watched him vanish into the woods to find the necessary ingredients. Annja looked back at Jenny. “All right, now what the hell is really going on here?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, you bring me out here to some camp in the middle of nowhere. I get here and instantly I’m faced with three mean dudes with guns. I have to shepherd your students back to town. Then I have a run-in with a wolf. It’s been pouring buckets and you almost die from exposure. I visit some old Native American man who surreptitiously teaches me how to do something called spirit tracking and we manage to find each other.” Annja took a breath. “You’re sure this is all about some set of tracks?”

Jenny took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

Joey emerged from the brush and started making the fire pit. “I take it you want this thing kept low profile?”

Annja nodded. “The lower the better.”

Joey nodded and within a few seconds had a small blaze started. Annja watched him fix several sticks together to make some sort of grill. On top of this, he placed a small container of water to boil. Where he’d managed to get the water, Annja had no idea. She wondered what else Joey had hidden away in the small pack he carried.

She glanced back at Jenny who wasn’t looking nearly so happy. “Tell me about this contact of yours,” Annja said.

“David? He’s just a friend I met through an online site for Sasquatch aficionados. We hit it off and started comparing notes. He mentioned he was out here and that he’d come across something he thought I might find interesting.”

“The tracks.”

“Yes.”

“And he showed them to you?”

“Via e-mail. He sent me a digital photo of them.”

Joey sniffed. “Any fool with Photoshop can alter a picture and make it look like something else.”

Jenny sighed. “Maybe I was naive.”

“Have you seen this David guy since you’ve been out here?” Annja asked.

Jenny frowned. “That’s the odd thing. He was supposed to meet up with me in town to discuss the search pattern we were going to run to find the creature.”

“You actually thought you were going to find the Sasquatch?” Joey shook his head. “And they say kids are crazy.”

“Make the tea, Joey,” Annja said. She turned back to Jenny. “You really thought you might catch one?”

Jenny shook her head. “That’s a bad choice of words. By find I meant that we would get some type of evidence on film that the creatures exist. I didn’t mean that we were going to trap one and cart it off for study.”