Page 11 of After the Fall

Beams of sunlightfiltered through the giant fir trees. There was nothing better than a crisp fall day, but a chilly October, complete with sunshine, was my version of heaven. I closed my eyes and let the sunbeams light up my lids until we turned onto the side road.

Atticus held a firm grip on the steering wheel as we bumped up and down over the rough pathway.

“Where did we lose the scent?” I asked.

“Somewhere just past the trailhead.” Atticus pulled the car into our secret parking bunker. The beep of the mechanism as it lowered the car into the bunker in the ground, released a foreign chirp next to the croaks of the ravens.

The black birds were our friends. Or at least they knew that we had no intention of harming them. Fiona and a few of the other women from the community had befriended ravens over the years. A particularly special raven named Temperance left Fiona anything sparkly that it found in the woods. Her dish of sparkly treasures sat next to the door to her house.

If Harper’s father was nearby, the ravens would let us know.

I paused to listen to the birdsong. The forest became eerily quiet when there was a predator nearby, and the trills of the juncos and chickadees told me that there were no immediate threats in our vicinity.

I checked the magazine in my pistol and returned it to its holster on my belt. Atticus did the same, and then slung the crossbow strap over his chest.

“Do you really need that?” I asked.

Atticus tossed some branches on top of the secret garage. “You’ve given the order not to kill this thing, and I will honor that command. But if that fucker comes at me, it might take more than a few bullets to stop it. We don’t know its capabilities.”

Bristling at the wordit, I held my tongue. I was guilty of it too, referring to Harper’s father as a thing, a creature. And while I still found him repulsive, he was also the father of the woman I loved. I needed to see him as such, or else I would also want to pump him full of crossbow arrows.

“Come on.” I ducked under a tree, its orange leaves trembling as they clung to the branch, their days limited.

Nature was resilient as fuck, and each day, I noticed the beauty of the world around me. Even in the city, I was able to find pockets of mother nature’s artistry.

Atticus followed behind, sniffing the air. He’d gone a little heavier on the red moss tea on the drive deep into the county. I’d held back, knowing that I would need to have as much of my rational mind as possible when we found Harper’s dad. Our plan was to figure out where he was hiding, or at least find the boundaries of his territory, and set up some traps and snares to capture him alive. The straps of the backpack stuffed with our trapping supplies cut into my sore traps.

The leaves on the ground were soft with all the recent rain. As we hiked further into the forest, the temperaturedrop was subtle, but we picked up on everything. The sunlight didn’t penetrate as far and the lush moss acted like insulation, softening our steps. “I’m not getting anything.” Atticus hopped onto a rock and tilted his head back, sniffing the air. “That fucker was rank. If he’s anywhere upwind we should be able to smell him at least five miles away.”

“He’s experienced.” I continued walking and Atticus leaped from the rock to fall in line behind me. “He disappeared ten years ago. This is the first we’ve seen of him.”

“That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. There’s no way in hell he’s been living in Stirling County for the last ten years, playing hide and seek with the ultimate hide and seek masters.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. The novelty posters and T-shirts with our likeness often referred to our stellar hiding skills. My favorite was the ‘Hide and Seek’ Ultimate Champion T-shirt with the shadowy figure that wasn’t too far off from what our silhouettes looked like when we were totally wild.

“You’re right.” I held a branch so that it didn’t smack Atticus in the face. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s why we need to find him.”

“What do you think he is?” Atticus grabbed the branch and let it spring free behind him.

I shrugged. “I’ve been racking my brain over this. He’s human, but he’s also one of us.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I know.” I shifted the heavy pack as I hopped over a fallen tree. “There’s no record of a human and one of us procreating. It’s impossible. And from what Harper has told me, her dad was an ordinary man.”

“Then how did it happen?” Atticus’s exasperation was evident as he puffed out steamy breaths. The temperature was dropping quickly. “We’re not fucking vampires. It’s not as though he got bit by one of us.”

“No.” I stroked my beard and paused to smell the air. The birds had stopped chirping. I held up my hand. The river, which rushed in the spring and was usually more of a babbling brook at this time of year, had practically dried up. The trickle of water as it made its way through the county was the only sound that cut through the damp forest.

I waved for Atticus to follow me. The riverbed was wide and surrounded with deep muck. The soft ground swallowed up my foot as I made my way to the running water. By the time I reached the trickle, the mud was mid-shin and squelching as I fought for each step, the suction of the ground threatening to pull me in and not let me go.

When I reached the water, I saw what I had suspected – faint impressions along the riverbed. “That’s how he’s traveling,” I whispered.

“No wonder he stinks so bad.” Atticus wrinkled his nose. The area was a spawning ground for Chinook salmon.

“He’s probably been living off the fish.” It would explain the smelly and oily condition of his body and tattered clothes.

“And fighting off the bears.” Atticus stepped into the footprints. “He must have been running here. The footsteps are far apart.” He ran a few strides to figure out the pace.

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