Back of Beyond

“Look,” Jed said, chinning behind him toward the hidden fuselage of the plane, “I’ve been down there and it ain’t pretty. The pilot and copilot are long dead. They’re suspended from their seatbelts and the scavengers have been working on them for months. Worse,” he said, looking directly at either the muzzle of the gun or Rachel’s eyes or both, “the birds and mice have shredded whatever money is left. I haven’t been able to find a single bill that isn’t chewed up. That isn’t to say maybe if I keep digging I might find a bundle of cash somewhere the rodents haven’t chewed through, but I’ve been at this twenty minutes and I’m discouraged as hell.”

Gracie glanced over at Rachel. Her face was frozen into a porcelain mask of rage. Her lips looked almost blue. Her voice was tight and threatening when she said, “I don’t believe you.”

43

Cody spurred his horse wildly up the mountainside on the well-trod trail in the dark. He felt out of control because he was; he’d lost his balance once and slipped down the side of Gipper and nearly tumbled to the ground under his hooves but managed to pull himself upright. A few minutes after, he’d been swept out of the saddle backwards by riding under a low-hanging branch he couldn’t see in the dark. Cody’s shoulders and back ached where he’d hit the ground and the branch left a gash across his nose that oozed blood. He felt his ear burning where he’d been injured and realized he’d probably left the scab from it back on the branch. Ted Sullivan had done no better, and he’d fallen straight off the back of his horse and said he was pretty sure his tailbone was broken.

Cody relied on his horse to find the rest of the herd up ahead. That, and there was nowhere to go but up.

It was full dark in the trees now except for the perfectly blue-white orb of the full moon that winked down through openings. Cody was astonished how bright it was in the clearings now that the moon was up, and how the stars lit the ground as well, like an upside-down city illuminating overhead clouds. Without electric lights around for dozens of miles, the forest was capable of lighting itself, he thought. Who knew?

He was starting to question himself if they were on the right path when he saw a gold splash of light up ahead on the side of a tree. The top of the J-shaped glacier came into view and Cody heard a sharp voice, then another.

Cody pulled to a stop on Gipper and Sullivan’s horse slammed into him and both horses crow-hopped away from each other. He held on to the saddle horn and kept his head down but heard Sullivan fall heavily behind him with a grunt. Gipper calmed down, and he looked back, making sure Sullivan’s horse was in its proper place and not crowding him again. “Horses, Jesus,” Cody said under his breath. “They’re worse than kids.”

When he dismounted after clearing his rifle from the sheath, he heard rather than saw the thundering of Sullivan’s horse running away back down the mountain. Sullivan lay in a heap, writhing. Cody tied off Gipper to a tree trunk and crab-walked up the last twenty feet of the trail before it leveled. As he neared the top the voices got louder.

Painfully, he straightened his legs and rose up until he could see over the lip of the flat rocky bench. Horses blocked his view, but between their legs he could see four people standing side by side with their backs to him. Beyond them was the tail of an airplane and Jed McCarthy’s hands waving around in a beam of light as he talked. He appeared to be mostly underground, with only his head and shoulders visible. The dented white metal of the tail stood out in bizarre juxtaposition to the rock and trees that overwhelmed the area, but Cody instantly could see why it hadn’t been spotted from the air.

Justin was there. He recognized him because his son towered over the others. Justin held hands with a girl with long dark hair. He could tell by their rigid grip that the situation they were in was tense. A woman he couldn’t yet identify but guessed was Rachel Mina was next to them pointing a handgun toward the aircraft. Next to Mina/Chavez on her right was a slim younger girl shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot.

Cody spun and ducked back down and jogged down the trail to where Sullivan was. The man had managed to sit up and rest his back against a trunk. His face was contorted with pain.

Cody leaned in to him and whispered, “They’re up above. All of them. I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but I need you to stay here and not make a sound.”

“Are my daughters there?”

“I’m pretty sure. There are two girls, but I can’t see their faces. But it looks right. My son’s there, too.”

“Don’t let anyone hurt them.”

Cody reached out and squeezed Sullivan’s shoulder. He noticed how the man was positioned by, in effect, holding his buttocks in the air by digging in his bootheels and flexing his legs to avoid contact between his tailbone and the ground.

“Must hurt,” Cody said.

Sullivan nodded frantically.