Page 43 of Eternally Devoted

Juniper, dressed in blue jeans and aJuni’s Jamscrewneck, her hair braided, leans forward, bracing her hands against the dashboard. Following the headlights, she peers out over the ravine before saying, “It was a little farther down.” She wags a pink-painted fingernail up the road where the back of a truck is barely visible. “There it is, right up there.”

“We don’t want our tracks near his,” Dash explains, reaching into the back to snatch the bag of supplies we loaded at our place. We have a plan I feel great about, and I think Dash does, too.

Unclipping my belt, I twist to face Juniper in the cab, turning the truck off so that we’re in complete darkness. “Sweetheart, wait here for us, okay? If anyone comes by, you tell them that we swerved, thought we hit a deer, and that your friends climbed down to make sure that we didn’t. Okay?”

Eyes wide, glittering in the dark cab, she nods. “Okay.”

“It may be an hour, so keep the doors locked, and keep the keys in your hand, okay?” Dash says, reaching back again for the second bag.

“Okay,” she says again, but once we open our doors, she reaches for my wrist, then Dash’s too. Glancing between us, she whispers, “Thank you.”

“Lock the doors,” Dash reiterates, slipping his hand from hers. His nerves are made clear by his hesitancy; he’s usually the last one to call it a night, the one of us who holds his hug with Juni a few seconds longer. Now, though, he’s eager, alreadytraipsing off toward the truck while I’m slipping the bag over my shoulders and quietly closing the truck door.

I know I should be nervous. I should be a lot of things. Scared. Worried. Concerned. Depressed.

More than anything, I’m eager to get this done, and in a twisted way, glad to be doing it with Dash.

Meeting him at the passenger door of the abandoned truck, I peer into the cab as he shines his cell phone light through the window. The cab is pretty empty, thankfully leaving us to set the stage. “On our way back up,” Dash says, nodding to the cab where we plan to stash a few items.

Nodding, I agree. “Right. First things first.”

In unison, we turn and stare down the expansive ravine, nothing but vast darkness staring back. Dash shines his light on our feet, both of us wearing sneakers. Boots would’ve been better for getting both down and up the ravine, but police boots leave a distinct print. We went with sneakers. I follow his gaze as Dash points down a few hundred feet, to a place where the brush looks disturbed. It could be in disarray from animals or nature, but with limited light, it’s our only lead.

“Down there. I think we head that way based on where he could’ve rolled.”

I nod, and together we start the tedious descent.

In daylight, I could hike up and down this ravine no problem. But as night envelops us in darkness, each step becomes crucial and dangerous. We told Juniper one hour having factored in our climb with the retrieval.

At one point, Dash groans, and a slew of pebbles and earth come down around my neck and shoulders, causing me to duck my head, diverting my eyes. “You okay, man?” I groan, shaking my head to free myself of the debris while trying not to lose my footing, the bag on my back growing heavier with each movement.

“Fucking almost slipped,” he grunts, finding his footing on a small piece of granite jutting from the hillside. Sweat shines on his forehead and above his top lip as he stops next to me, catching his breath.

“Just a few more feet. We’re almost there,” I reassure him. His eyes tangle with mine as a chilled breeze sweeps between us, making my words turn to puffs of white. The tip of his nose is pink as he nods his head. “I’m ready.”

We make our way down, stopping at the very bottom to look back up at my truck. “Fuck,” Dash groans. “The hike up is gonna suck.”

I blink up at my truck, looking a quarter of its size. “Let’s not focus on that. Let’s… start looking,” I reply, digging out my phone to use its flashlight, too. Gravel crunches beneath our feet and in the distance, a wolf belts his nighttime warning song. We look, moving rocks with our hands, our backs sweating beneath our packs. After ten minutes, a slow panic creeps into my nervous system.

“What if someone already found him? There’s no way he didn’t have a hair or fiber or fucking molecule on him that could be traced back to her,” I breathe, walking toward the only large rock in the area I haven’t searched behind. Dash follows me.

“Nobody found him. I would’ve heard. C’mon, we just need to keep looking, maybe an animal moved hi—” Dash’s sentence falls off a cliff.

At our feet rests a dead man, his face so bruised and stained with blood that features are completely unrecognizable. Dash nudges him, and something scurries from beneath his body, making us both jump.

Dash shines his light over the man’s body, and silently, we take it in for a minute.

He’s covered in blood, jam and dirt, but his face is so swollen, he’d be unrecognizable no matter what. I take a step back andsuck in a deep breath of fresh, Bluebell air, trying to find a sliver of calm.

I didn’t think I’d feel any type of way, but I do. Uneasy and nauseous, I stare at the sinking moon until my mind feels right. When I drop to my knees and sling off my bag, I notice Dash doing the same.

“I stashed a few neck gaiters in my bag,” he says quietly. He opens his bag and tosses me one. I watch as he slides his over his face, only his eyes exposed as he says, “Helps with the smell.” I realize then that part of my nausea came from the lingering stench.

“Thanks,” I reply, tugging mine down, taking small, shallow breaths from my mouth to avoid the smell as much as possible. As planned, we put on our gloves next. After wrapping the man in a tarp, we drag him half a mile down the ravine, collecting scrapes and bumps as we go.

After what feels like too long, Dash stops, the tarp crunching as we release our hold. “Here,” he says, his voice muffled through the gaiter as he nods toward a smattering of tumbleweeds clinging to a large rock. He kicks some away, and grabs others, tossing them aside, exposing a very worn, wooden door. It looks like a storm hatch to a cellar, but I know it must be the mineshaft.

“You get the stuff out and I’ll work on getting it open,” he says, lifting a small combination lock, the moonlight reflecting off the metal. He pulls a crowbar from his bag, and while he starts prying open the abandoned shaft, I unpack my bag on the ground, making sure to place things logically.

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