I felt unbalanced. A third of my life was missing, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
It was a miracle that Magnus and I managed to retire at the same time, but I couldn’t help being greedy and wishing that Creed could have come with us as well.
I was pulled out of my thoughts by the sound of sudden shouting. One of the other machines up ahead had come to a sudden stop, and at least a dozen people were running around in all directions.
Sighing, I turned off my own machine and jumped down from the controls to see what the problem was. I grabbed one of the more experienced lumberjacks as he was running by and demanded to know what was happening. This man had spent most of his life working as a logger. He’d seen just about every emergency this job could dish out.
Yet, there was fear in his eyes now.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded again when he didn’t answer me the first time.
“We didn’t…” He pointed out past the line of freshly cut trees. “We didn’t know anyone was there.”
I started running, dragging the other man along with me.
He tripped over his feet as he tried to stay with me while also continuing to explain. “They must have been camping out here illegally. The whole area is restricted. No one’s allowed out here. We had no reason to double check.”
Charging through mud and vaulting over fallen logs, I quickly arrived on the scene. Several people stood at the edge of a small cliff, about thirty feet high. We were working on a slope, and just as I’d predicted earlier, some of the fallen trees rolled downhill once cut. It shouldn’t have been a problem since all our workers were carefully stationed uphill, but one of the logs had slid far enough to tumble right over the edge of the cliff.
Down below, I could just see the colorful canvas of a smashed tent sticking out under the body of the fallen trunk.
“Fuck! What are you all just standing around for?”
Grabbing onto the lip of the cliff, I swung my body over the edge.
Several hands tried to grab me at once.
“What are you doing?” someone shouted.
“Climbing down there. What’s it look like?”
This deep into the forest, the ground was always a little wet, but it hadn’t rained recently, so I still managed to find some decent handholds on the sheer surface.
“We’ve sent someone to fetch climbing equipment,” another person called down after me.
“That’ll take too long,” I called back, keeping most of my focus on the placement of my hands and feet as I carefully climbed my way down. “This is faster. I’ll go take a look and see if anyone needs help. Make sure someone calls emergency services.”
I’d scaled plenty of tall cliffs before, and often without proper climbing gear, but that had been in my youth when I was at the peak of fitness. This climb was harder than it should have been, and as I felt the strain in my arms and legs, I vowed to double my usual workout time.
I was running before my feet even hit the ground. The fallen tree and the smashed tent were farther away than it had seemed from the top of the cliff, but the distance practically disappeared under my feet, and I was soon kneeling beside the wreckage.
There wasn’t much left of the tent. It was just a mess of broken poles and ripped canvas. I riffled through what little I was able to reach but didn’t see any evidence of a body.
My relief was short lived.
Near the top of the fallen tree, a leg was just visible between the branches.
I cursed again and pulled the knife from my belt to start cutting away the smaller branches in order to see what I was working with.
Ordinarily, we’d trim more of the branches from the trunk of a tree we intended to cut, but we’d been rushing, and some of the preparation steps had been skipped. I wasn’t even sure who to blame.
The higher-ups for rushing us?
The person running the rig that had cut the tree?
Mostly, I blamed myself. I should have put up more of a fight against the impossible orders we were given. I should have insisted that we start on the south side of the area, whereit would be safer to work, and double checked that all safety measures were being followed to the letter.
I wasn’t the manager. Assuring these things wasn’t my job, but that would be little comfort to the person who’d been hurt.