Deep Trek

On the first evening he’d been readying himself for camping. Jim hadn’t seen a single soul for the past five hours and was just beginning to find the majestic stillness of the woods oppressive, followed by a profoundly uneasy feeling.

As if he was being watched from somewhere. He knew what to do if he came across a grizzly, and the bell on his pack had been jingling merrily.

He took care to put anything edible in a pack and haul it high off the ground. Even as he’d lain down in the survivalist sleeping bag, Jim had made sure that his Ruger Blackhawk was in there with him.

Oddly he’d slept soundly and dreamlessly, waking in the refreshing cool of a Montana dawn, to find the deep paw marks of a very big grizzly all around him in the damp earth.

That unease was swelling within him now, making the hairs on the nape of his neck start to bristle and his lips grow dry.

“We’d better go,” he said abruptly.

“I think that’s best, too,” agreed Joseph J. Sirak, Jr.

“Come along with us. We could use a man with your mechanical skills,” suggested Kyle.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I have commitments to my family.” He touched his chest lightly. “And the old pump isn’t quite as reliable as it once was.” Shaking his head, he said regretfully, “No, I fear I have to decline. But I wish you all the best of luck.”

“Thanks. We’ll try to keep in touch with you on the radio.”

“Steve, I hope you can. And if I should hear anything that might benefit you all, I’ll do what I can to pass it along to you.”

Everyone shook hands with the smartly dressed man, watching him as he climbed back into his unlikely vehicle.

“Listen to this,” he called, beaming with delight from the driver’s window.

A silver trombone came creakily out of the heart of the huge ice-cream cone, while a hidden speaker blew a tinny fanfare. And a trilling chorus opened up with: “Tinklabell, Tinklabell, the best for you and me, Tinklabell, Tinklabell, for all the fami-leeeee.”

Sly clapped his hands. “Can me have a triple Rocky Road, please Dad?”

“It’s not a real ice-cream van, son. Sorry. Not many places selling that sort of stuff nowadays, I’m afraid.”

Joe Sirak waved a friendly hand and set off toward Barstow, moving, as before, at a very steady fifty-five miles per hour, never to be seen by any of them again.

Thanks to his help with the pickup, they were able to get well on their way without further incident, looping around Joe Sirak’s hometown and heading on toward Bakersfield.

Night was falling and the weather was deteriorating when they came around a bend in the highway, straight into the roadblock.

Chapter Twelve

The stone was simple, carved by Henderson McGill himself, using one of the old paving slabs that had lined their backyard in Mystic.

The lettering wasn’t that regular, and the spacing was shaky, but the message was all too clear and readable.

Helen McGill. February 14, 2031-November 19, 2040. Beloved daughter of Angel and Henderson. We miss her so much.

It had been pneumonia.

They had a good stock of assorted drugs, but the young girl had failed to respond to any of them. One of the antibiotics that they tried had produced a violently reactive side effect. Helen’s lips and tongue became swollen, and the inside of her mouth had peeled so that shreds of skin hung like yellowed lace.

The fever consumed her, though they’d swaddled her in blankets doused with snow. Helen had lapsed into unconsciousness on the third day of her illness and slipped away from them at two in the morning on the fourth day.

Angel took it hardest. “We’ve come through so much,” she said after the dismal funeral, dry-eyed, tight lipped. “So much and we still managed to stay together.”

“There wasn’t anything we could’ve done.” Mac held her hand while all of the family sat around the shadowy living room.

“No. I know that. But our little girl’s gone. My firstborn child, Mac. Sounds Biblical, doesn’t it? Taken by the plague. Those cold-hearted scientists—no conscience, just damn stupid arrogance. Sitting around in their clean white coats and their sterilized laboratories. Playing their clever, clever games in glass tubes and microscopes. What they did killed Helen. Not the pneumonia. Two years ago we’d have taken her to the hospital, and they’d have saved her.”

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