The man was close to exhaustion. He weaved unsteadily forward, forcing himself onwards, desperately grasping any protruding branch or foliage that was available to aid him – dragging himself up yet another interminable rise on the undulating forest floor – spurred on by a glimpsed promise of a small, rare area of clearing in the trees – a space he had spotted scant minutes earlier when they were higher up a previous slope. He reached it, finally staggered to a stop and held up trembling hands before him – he wanted to know what condition they were in. What McKinney saw made for a grim picture; they were lacerated, raw; fingers and palms had been flayed and were bleeding – the wounds on his hands mute evidence of the herculean effort to tear a path through dense copses and tangled undergrowth on a rough roller coaster terrain. Yet, strangely, despite their appearance, they barely hurt him at all.
His lungs, however, were quite another matter. A pair of shredded, fluttering balloons barely contained within the fiery cavern that was his chest. The clean, fresh smelling shirt he had put on seemingly a lifetime ago, now adhered stickily to his flesh – a stained mangy hide that he had begun to shed – comprised of filthy, ripped wet cotton infused with the pungent stink of acrid sweat and fear.
McKinney desperately needed to rest even if it was for just a few moments. He dazedly looked around at his surroundings, trying to control his ragged breathing and triphammer heart – wait! They were finally in luck! McKinney noted the tree line that bordered the small clearing in front of him. It looked manmade – a firebreak maybe? It didn’t matter – all that did matter was it revealed what looked to be a clear path leading down from the tangle. They had miraculously, or so it seemed to him at this moment – stumbled upon – or had been guided to – what must be a well-defined loggers’ trail.
His body was trembling with sheer fatigue and adrenal overload, especially the muscles in his calves and thighs. Putting out a hand, he supported himself against the nearest cedar. The bark felt rough to the touch, unyielding; yet somehow it comforted him with its ageless, solid strength. His trembling form oozed copious amounts of sweat from every pore he had, giving any exposed area of the skin an oily, unpleasant sheen. The clouds of midges and other buzzing insects – tiny, hateful denizens of the forest, closed in on him instantly now he was no longer moving, sensing a tasty salt feast.
McKinney was too fatigued to even attempt to bat the miniature whining harpies away. He just let them be. They happily fed off him.
The young girl, Bobbie, who had been several yards behind him in the tree-festooned, nightmarish tangle finally caught up to him. Noisily she staggered up to join him, coming to a swaying stop beside McKinney, and tremulously leaned her tall willowy form against his sodden back; the sounds of her breath were tortured gasps.
He was so exhausted that even this simple act of elicited comfort from the girl was almost enough to push him down to the forest floor. With grunting effort, he straightened, forcing himself away from the cedar tree’s welcome respite – in doing so he unceremoniously shoved his female companion back and away from him. With some slight vestige of chivalry, McKinney did manage to turn around in time to support Bobbie’s sagging form so she didn’t end up falling onto the moist mulch. Going down now would have meant certain death for the young woman. In his present condition, McKinney wouldn’t have been physically able to lift the girl onto her feet. Their pursuers, he reasoned, couldn’t be far behind. He glanced back and up into the forbidding timberland in the direction they came from. They had to keep moving, McKinney instinctively understood. It was their only real hope of survival.
There had been a total of fourteen people on the university field trip – thirteen men and one woman who had tried to make a stand against the horrors that had relentlessly pursued them. The others were gone now – their efforts to fight back a futility – they had been horribly killed. McKinney and the girl had only survived the massacre because he had grabbed Bobbie’s hand and they had fled for their lives.
McKinney believed in God. He did. With every fiber of his being and soul. In the Holy Father and his infinite mercy. So why had He let these appalling things happen to them? Why?
He attempted to close his mind off to block the memory of the terrible ways in which he saw and heard his fellow students and their professors die. But he couldn’t quite manage it – the grotesque images and sounds he had witnessed would not leave him. They echoed in his mind…ripples on a bottomless blood-red pool of abomination – unspeakable things that no one should ever have to see or hear. It made him glad though in a bizarre kind of way. It was that abhorrence and his utter dread that kept McKinney running on despite his utter exhaustion – desperate to try to escape – so that the others’ gruesome fate wouldn’t become his or Bobbie’s.
The light was fading fast now as it did at this latitude on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Even in the summer months the hours of daylight never overstayed its welcome.
After the daylight, such as it was, there quickly came a barely perceived twilight – then that short-lived dimming was quickly followed by a deep, stygian blackness. And within the dark, deep in the vast forests, McKinney now knew there was contained a dreadfulness – a horror no one could have ever imagined dwelled within. As the night began to swiftly creep and seep through the canopy of dense trees that surrounded them, his hopes began to wane with equal alacrity.
Oh God… he thought…they were going to die here. Screaming out in their death agonies, just like the others. He shook himself mentally to shun the feelings of defeat that threatened to engulf him…no, darn it, no! This wasn’t going to happen to them, or at least not to him. He had a home to go back to. Dear close friends in his church – people who truly loved him – mother and father, two younger sisters… he was determined that he was going to see them all again. Whatever he had to do to survive the terror that had been foisted upon them he would do. He was not going to perish here! This was not his time to be called. McKinney willed himself to believe that he was going to live. He was going to live!
As if to purge any last negative thoughts from his mind, he shook Bobbie as hard as his remaining strength would allow. As he did so, the pain finally now registered sharply in his damaged hands, making him wince. The young, tall, wispy girl merely sagged dispiritedly within his arms. The filthy and disheveled woman barely even registered his violent action. McKinney spoke roughly to her, his voice ragged with the effort – an intended shout that emerged as a hoarse whisper from a throat dried out from lack of water and excesses of adrenaline and fear.
“Come on, Bobbie, we have to keep moving! The Dinan Bay logging camp is close – must be. Only a few short miles. We’ll be safe. Don’t give up. Come on Bobbie, for Jesus Christ’s sake, and in His name – we can make it!”
His short tirade ended, and the girl finally tilted her head up, seemingly half acknowledging his presence. Bobbie’s once bright green eyes, so alluring to McKinney since their freshman year at SMU, were now dull and dispirited – lifeless in fact. Perhaps a precursor of the fate that she felt certain soon awaited her – them. No real recognition was apparent within their dim depths, only cattle-like resignation of what was to be. The girl slumped even farther forward, becoming a dead weight.
McKinney’s weakened muscles couldn’t support the woman’s burden any longer. Without him propping her up, the haggard girl slowly collapsed to the soft ground in slow-motion; a tall, yet slender young pine that had been felled.