Ty pulled at his hand again and glanced over to where Earl and Deuce were. He pulled Zane closer and grunted, “Quit being weird.”
Zane gave him a small frown but let go of his arm. “Galloping crazies?”
“You’re the one from horse country,” Ty reminded with a twitch of his lips.
“Yeah, takes one to know one,” Zane muttered. “C’mon, partner. Many miles to go.”
Ty grumbled as he filled the last canteen. “We’re locking ourselves in a dark room for three days when we get back,” he muttered, just loud enough for Zane to hear.
“Sounds good to me,” Zane answered just as Earl and Deuce approached.
“You boys ready?” Earl asked them as he took one of the canteens and fixed it to his pack.
“Yes, sir,” Ty answered with a sideways glance at Zane.
“Let’s get moving, then,” Earl said as he turned and headed off.
THEY spent the next day and a half making their way slowly up the trail, winding ever higher, going farther and farther into the backcountry where not even trail cabins interrupted the wilderness. Earl had slowed their pace to a near crawl, being careful of the treacherous trail made slick and unreliable by the most recent storms.
Every now and then Ty would check his cell phone, noting that he hadn’t gotten even a hint of a signal since the storms had swept through. It made him a little nervous. He knew that you were pretty much on your own up here no matter what the conditions. You had to rely on yourself and your companions. But there was always that knowledge that help was just a day’s trek away—and in the last ten years or so, a phone call away.
Now they were completely cut off, out in territory none of them had ever seen before. Why Earl had picked this particular hike to go trailblazing, Ty didn’t know. He and Deuce had long ago stopped trying to figure out their father’s mind.
During a lag in conversation as they all concentrated on the rough terrain they traversed, Ty began to notice a distinct lack of noise. He frowned and glanced around for wildlife, finding only birds in the trees. No squirrels, no rodents, no deer in the distance. Nothing. He glanced up at the birds in confusion. If there were danger, the birds would have been long gone too. Deuce looked over his shoulder to meet Ty’s eyes, obviously taking note of the unusual silence as well. They both shrugged.
Deuce turned and kept going, but Ty picked up his pace, closing in on the men ahead of him. Something was setting off his warning bells, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Something just felt off. He tried to tell himself it was the sudden change in weather or the exertion after so long stuck behind a desk. Earl hadn’t stopped moving, so maybe he wasn’t noticing the unusual quiet. Ty cursed under his breath, thinking they should have just turned back when the weather broke. Just as he caught up with Deuce, Earl stopped suddenly.
“It’s quiet,” Earl said as he turned to look at them. “Must be other hikers ahead of us,” he reasoned. Ty nodded in agreement and looked back down at the trail they’d just traveled. “Damned litterbugs, is what they are,” he heard Earl mutter under his breath.
He looked up to see Earl bending to pick up a faded Coke can someone had tossed to the side of the trail, just under the brush. Ty gasped for a breath as the scene triggered a full-fledged flashback: Earl blurred into a Marine ahead of him bathed in the green tint of night vision, kneeling to pick up a piece of trash on the side of a desert road.
“Dad!” Ty shouted in warning. He rushed past Deuce and Zane, who both instinctively ducked and covered, and Ty tackled Earl to the ground just as he picked up the can. But it was too late. A string attached to something inside the can pulled and snapped as they fell, and in the brush just off the path, something clicked loudly.
“Run!” Ty cried as he pushed Earl to get up off the ground. The four of them scattered, heading for cover anywhere they could find it. Just after throwing themselves over and behind a couple of fallen logs, a small explosion rocked the mountain around them, the booming sound echoing through the trees, sending debris raining down on them.
“I ain’t seen nothing like that since ’Nam,” Earl panted after a long minute.
Deuce groaned where he lay in the dirt next to Earl. “You saying Charlie’s in the Appalachians trying to kill you?” he asked with a hint of psychiatric concern for his father’s sanity.
“Don’t be a smartass, Deacon,” Earl snapped. “I’m saying that was a trap set to kill. Only thing up here worth booby-trapping is marijuana. But I ain’t never seen marijuana growers use that kinda thing.”
Deuce rolled and flattened on his back, extracting his cell phone to check if it had reception. He cursed. “So what the hell? What are we dealing with here?” he asked breathlessly.
“If it isn’t marijuana, it sure as hell ain’t moonshine,” Ty offered as he lay on Earl’s other side, his face still pressed to the ground where he’d landed. His heart was racing, and adrenaline sang through him just like it always had when explosives had been involved back in his Recon days. His head felt swimmy, and he would have sworn that if he raised it to look around, he’d be looking through the lenses of night-vision goggles.
“Doesn’t help to jump to conclusions,” Zane murmured from his sprawl next to Ty. “With the information available on the Internet, a grade-schooler would know how to create something like that.”
“That’s not just something you come up with for shits and giggles,” Earl argued. “The Vietcong used to see how American soldiers liked to kick cans on the road as they marched through. They started setting up bombs set off by the kicks. That’s what this reminds me of. Must have been held taut by the weight of the can, and the release when it snapped triggered it. Takes a little bit a forethought, anyway, and sure as hell means they meant to kill.”
Ty swallowed hard. The Vietcong weren’t the only ones who’d used those traps. He could still smell the stench of burnt flesh and dry heat surrounding them after that Marine had picked up that can. He breathed in the scent of the wet earth beneath him to calm himself and try to force his mind into remembering he wasn’t in the desert.
“Whoever or whatever we’re dealing with,” he said slowly as he raised his head just enough to speak without eating dirt, “we need to concentrate on getting off this mountain safely and making sure the rangers close these trails off until we can get people in here and clear this shit out. God knows how many civilians come through here every year. That trap was intentionally set to kill a do-gooder.”