October skies

Broken Wing snapped out something in Ute and pulled a knife from his hide belt. He pointed along the bank, and Ben understood it was the only way for them to run.

Ben bent down and pulled Keats’s hunting knife out of its sheath. The heavy blade felt reassuring in his grasp. He placed a hand on Keats’s still-warm face. He would have liked to have a moment to assure the old man that he had brought his journal with him, that he’d make it out of the woods, eventually back to London, and Keats’s name would end up in print, immortalised. That would have given the guide something to smile about.

‘Goodbye, Keats,’ whispered Ben.

Broken Wing, meanwhile, pulling Mrs Zimmerman along with him, began to make his way close to the water’s edge, keeping his eyes on the tree line running parallel to the river.

‘Come on, Emily,’ Ben said, grabbing her hand. ‘We have to go.’

CHAPTER 83

Sunday

Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

Julian stared at the row of bunkhouses. They were utilitarian but robust; almost a century of abandonment, but they looked to be firmly intact and ready to face another. Nature had made good use of the last hundred years in reclaiming the land the drab wooden huts sat on. Small Christmas-tree-sized saplings sprang out of the ground in and around the buildings, whilst patches of briar, hip-high, tangled in and out of the support struts beneath each bunkhouse, pushing fronds of green up through loose and warped floorboards.

He’d naively hoped there might have been someone here, a lone caretaker in a Portakabin, some other hardy all-year-round trekkers, a party of Japanese tourists even.

And still no fucking cell phone signal.

‘At least it’s shelter,’ said Rose, shivering. She looked at him. ‘Do you think they’re still on our tail?’

‘God knows. I’d say they’re probably still picking their way through the trees in the other valley,’ he replied, giving Rose’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘I’m pretty sure we lost ’em,’ he added, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

The sun was fast approaching the jagged line of peaks on the far side of the valley, casting long, cool shadows that were sliding across the gentle valley floor towards the river and them. It was going to be cold tonight.

‘Come on, Rose, let’s get inside. See if we can’t find a cosy nook somewhere.’

They stepped up onto a wooden porch and pushed aside a thick wooden door that creaked dryly. Skylights in the sloping roof — one broken, the other fogged with a green filter of algae and moss — provided enough light for them to find their way around the dim interior.

The bunkhouse was one long communal space. A row of coarse wooden bunkbed frames lined each lengthways wall. An iron wood-burning stove sat against the far wall. Above them several thick gable beams ran across from one side to the other, protruding metal pegs from which dangled coils of heavy rope, a loop of twine tied from one beam to another — most probably, once upon a time, a clothes line — and several rusting tools including a band saw, a rotary saw.

‘Your basic two-star accommodation,’ he muttered and managed a humourless laugh that trailed off quickly.

Rose wandered over to a bunk in the corner and hunkered down on the floor beside it, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them.

‘I’m shit scared, Jules.’

He reached up to one of the cross-beams and lifted a large, rusty canting hook off a peg. He held it by its wooden handle and examined the long, curved hook. He hefted it in his hand. It looked vicious but unwieldy. It felt good to hold.

He wandered across the floor towards her, examining the hook. ‘Yeah, got to admit I’m a little scared too.’

‘How scared? Am-I-going-to-die scared? Or just sort of a bit anxious?’

He laughed skittishly. ‘Remember the time we followed that candidate to the BNP rally?’

She nodded.

‘Or the time we got death threats from that Jihadi cleric?’

She nodded again.

‘Well, more scared than that,’ he replied, sliding down the wall to hunch up next to her.

They sat in silence a while, watching the coppery hue of the evening sun stream in through the fogged skylight windows, the shadows slowly climbing up the opposite wall.

‘Jules, when you came into my tent this morning, you definitely had something to say to me, didn’t you? But I was too busy yapping on about the photo. What were you going to say?’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘That I was beginning to have a bad feeling about things.’

Rose smiled. ‘Little earlier next time, hmm?’

‘Dr Griffith warned me about this. That insanity like Preston’s can carry down the line.’

Rose nodded. ‘I must have got it wrong, then,’ she sighed. ‘The Rag Man story, the survivor who emerged from the woods — I thought that was Lambert.’

‘Well, maybe it was.’ Julian leaned his head back against the rough wooden wall. ‘Perhaps Preston left behind some descendants in Iowa, before he set off with his followers, and Shepherd’s family link is to one of them.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’