Primitive Weapons, page 1
Primitive Weapons
David Barbur
Cougar Rock Press
Copyright © 2021 by David Barbur
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
To Ilene, Julia, and Sara, from the Mostly Every-Other-Thursday-Night Writing Group.
* * *
This book is better because of you.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Did you enjoy Primitive Weapons?
About the Author
Prologue
The tunnel smelled of fresh blood and decades of dust and mold. Kenning leaned his bow and arrows against the wall and sat in front of the glowing computer screen. Power cables hung from the rock ceiling and snaked to a battery underneath the rickety folding table.
Behind him, Mercer was taking his last breaths. The man sat slumped against the rough rock wall of the bunker.
He would die despite Kenning’s efforts to save him. Mercer struggled to inhale, each breath coming with a long rattle, and when he coughed, drops of blood came out.
The screen in front of Kenning was full of arcane symbols. There was no graphical interface familiar to most computer users. Instead, he was typing away at a command line, entering complex code from memory. Kenning paused at the end of the line and hit the “enter” key.
Nothing. The cursor stopped blinking and froze.
Kenning fought the temptation to swear. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and tried to clear his mind. The only sounds besides Mercer’s breathing were the hum of the computer fan and the steady drip of condensation from the roof of the bunker to the stone floor.
“The satellite link you pieced together won’t work, my friend,” Kenning said. “We have to find a way to escape the island.”
Mercer wheezed. Kenning didn’t know if it was in reply. In the hours since being shot, Mercer had retreated into himself, gradually stopping any efforts to communicate. Kenning had hauled Mercer up the steep slope to the bunker. Kenning understood the futility, but despite his exhaustion, he knew he had to carry Mercer even farther before he could rest.
Kenning heard a whir, higher pitched than the drone of the computer fan. He turned off the machine. The battery was nearly dead, anyway. It took only fifteen minutes to drain the charge built up over the course of the day by the jury-rigged solar panel.
He put a finger to his lips. “Shh… The drone is back.”
Mercer gave no sign he understood. His breathing seemed quieter, but it could have been Kenning’s imagination.
The sound of the drone grew louder, then receded. Kenning had read and memorized the drone’s technical manual. He was confident he could time his movements to the drone’s search pattern.
He left the bow against the wall. Kenning was a big man. He had little interest in athletics, but he exercised religiously every day. He’d carried Mercer over his shoulder, and the bow in his hand, but there were several times he’d almost fallen because of a lack of a free hand.
Besides, he had to admit the bow wouldn’t help against what he was facing.
He donned his small backpack, checked to make sure the sheath knife rode at his side, and walked over to Mercer.
“I’m afraid this will hurt, my friend.”
1
Tye Caine found the body just before sunset. He’d been on the trail for four days. More than once, he’d thought about quitting, but it seemed wrong to give up now.
He scrambled over the jumble of rocks at the base of the cliff. The surrounding forest was quiet. Below him, Interstate 84 followed the bottom of the Columbia River Gorge. If he listened hard, he could hear the sounds of traffic. It was a clear, warm October day. The fiery glow of the setting sun reflected off the river.
Tye paused for a minute on top of a refrigerator-sized rock, fighting the temptation to hurry. Twisting an ankle or breaking a leg now would only complicate things. He picked a route carefully. He was glad he’d paid attention to his balance when the raven landed right beside him, making him jump.
The bird was big, with a four-foot wingspan. Tye felt the breeze as it flapped its wings a few times before folding them into its body. The bird cocked its head and looked at him. Tye was close enough to see his reflection in one black, shining eye.
With a loud quaork that made Tye jump again, the bird took off. It roosted on a rock, a few feet away, watching him.
Tye steeled himself, sure he was about to find the person he’d been looking for. He hopped to one last boulder, then pulled a flashlight from his pocket so he could see into the dark crevice at the base of the cliff.
The flutter of her hair in the breeze had caught his eye from above. He’d laid on his belly for fifteen minutes, looking through a little pocket monocular he carried, trying to decide if he was looking at a piece of random detritus, or a person. In his heart, he’d known he’d found her, which was why he’d spent the better part of the evening slowly picking his way down from the ridgetop above.
He shone the light around, revealing a mass of dark curly hair, a nylon backpack shredded by the fall, and legs bent at impossible angles. He shut the light off and leaned back. He’d seen enough.
“Melissa.” He said her name aloud, somehow feeling that brought things to a close. The raven took off, circled once, and flew off silently toward the west. Tye watched the bird, silhouetted against the red sky, until it was too small to see.
Tye moved a few boulders away and sat. He took off the small backpack he wore, pulled out a bottle of water, and drank.
Melissa had been missing for six months. This section of the Columbia River Gorge, only an hour’s drive from downtown Portland, Oregon, was closed to the public since the massive wildfire that had swept through the year before. Over the last year, Melissa had been sneaking into the closed areas with her camera, taking hauntingly beautiful pictures. She’d perfectly captured the juxtaposition of death and life, with a picture of spring flowers blooming among the devastation, another of a young fawn walking through the blackened landscape.
Year after year, people died in this general area. The trails were easily accessible to urban dwellers from Portland. You could sip a latte in downtown Portland, and an hour later be in a wilderness where black bears and cougars made their home. Thousands of people came here every year. Most left with good memories and photographs. Every year the forest took a few. They died from falling or became lost within earshot of a major highway and died of hypothermia, often ill-equipped to spend a night in the woods.
Tye put his water bottle away and pulled a cell phone from his pack. If he stood on a corner of the boulder, he could get a weak signal.
“It’s Tye Caine. I’ve found Melissa Campbell.”
Tye recounted what he’d found, along with recommendations for the equipment the sheriff’s department search-and-rescue team would need to retrieve Melissa’s body. The call-taker was efficient. He repeated the information back to Tye and told him it would be a few hours.
Tye hung up. Once again, he sat in vigil over the dead.
2
Tye walked back in the dark. The sheriff’s team had arrived well after midnight. There’d been deputies, a pair of SAR volunteers, and a deputy medical examiner. Tye wanted to volunteer to help carry Melissa out, but he knew they wouldn’t let him. Taking care of her was the job of the sheriff’s department now.
Tye was just under six feet tall, with a wiry musculature. His hair was long and dark, and he wore a few days’ beard. His faded t-shirt had a logo that said “No Pebble Mine!” on the front, and his surplus fatigue pants were patched at the knees. The boots on his feet were worn but well cared for.
He set out toward his truck, walking through the quiet forest paths with the help of his headlamp. The night air was cold, and the forest was still. The silence was broken only occasionally by the sound of a big truck down on the highway.
Tye felt more tired than he should have. His side throbbed, thanks to a not-quite-healed knife wound. Only a couple weeks before, he’d nearly died at t
His feet took him to the Milton Butte trailhead, where he’d left his truck. The parking lot had been empty four days ago. Now, there were several sheriff’s SUVs, a plain white van, and there was a Subaru station wagon parked next to his dusty truck. A man leaned against the fender.
Tim Campbell was in his fifties, slender and balding. He wore outdoor clothing that looked brand-new.
He looked up as Tye approached.
“Is it her?” he asked when Tye was still a dozen feet away. “The eleven o’clock news said deputies were going up the mountain.”
“The medical examiner will have to say for sure,” Tye said.
“Is it her? Is it my daughter?” Campbell asked again, softly this time.
“I found a woman,” Tye said. “With dark curly hair and clothes like Melissa was wearing in some of her pictures.”
Campbell looked off toward the river, and his eyes teared up. “How?” he asked.
“I found her at the base of a cliff. I think she fell.”
“Quick?”
Tye hesitated. “I think so, but the medical examiner…”
Campbell cut him off. “I know. The medical examiner.”
Campbell swallowed hard, like a man trying to choke something down he didn’t want to eat.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been six months,” Campbell said. “I drive out here every day. I know it’s stupid, but sometimes I imagined Melissa would walk out of the woods like nothing happened. I’ve walked that trail so many times I’ve lost count. It’s the only hiking I’ve done in ten years. That was always her thing. I’ve been tempted to go look for her off the trail. But where would I even start?”
Tye had taken this case for two reasons. One was he needed the money. He was also afraid Campbell would start bushwhacking through the backcountry on his own, looking for his daughter.
“Tell me about it. Please?” Campbell asked. “How did you find her after so long?”
Tye shrugged. “Looking at the photographs she took was helpful,” he said. “I could think like her a little. She liked to get right up to the edge to get a shot.”
Campbell nodded. “That she did.”
“I suspect she did some stealth camping on that trip,” Tye said. “I found a scrap from a wrapper of one of those energy bars she likes in an old campsite, about fifty yards off a trail.”
“It must have blown away from her. She was usually careful about litter.”
“She was. I looked for spots where I thought she might like to take pictures. I walked out on one ridge near Milton Butte. They searched it back in April, but I found a spot near the edge where a rock was knocked out of place.”
“After all this time?”
“Yeah. I got down on my belly and looked over the edge. I saw something purple.”
“Her jacket.”
“Her jacket.”
“Thank you,” Campbell said. He opened the door to the Subaru. He pulled an envelope off the passenger seat and handed it to Tye.
It was full of cash.
“That’s what we agreed,” Campbell said. “I appreciate it.”
Campbell wasn’t rich. He was a music teacher. His wife had been dead ten years. Cancer. His car was old, and every dime had gone to Melissa’s community college tuition. When Tye had visited the house, it was neat but in need of updating. The edges of the envelope were crinkled and worn. It had the look of something kept in a drawer, with twenty bucks here, a hundred bucks there added each week until Campbell could afford a private tracker.
“I don’t want to take this,” Tye said.
Campbell waved him away.
“Please. At least I can bury her now.” He pulled his car keys from a pocket and opened the door of the Subaru.
“I’m sorry,” Tye said to Campbell. “She was a good person.”
Campbell turned. Tye would remember that look of mixed gratitude and grief for a long time.
“Yes. She was a good person. Better than me.”
Campbell got in the car and shut the door.
Tye always struggled with moments like these. He felt like he should give the money back, that he should do this for free. But he was down to his last fifty bucks, and lately his life had grown much more complicated. Finally, he stuffed the envelope in his pocket and walked over to his truck.
He sat behind the wheel for a minute, feeling the exhaustion from the last few days settle over him. It was time to go home.
3
As he drove home, Tye tried to focus on the scenery rather than the Campbell case. It was a weekday, so there was little of the traffic from the weekend hiking and backpacking crowd. He tried to force himself to let the Campbell case go, to just enjoy being in his truck driving through the forest on an early October day. Soon he knew the days would get shorter, the sky would darken, and the rains would start.
He was partially successful. A native of Appalachia, Tye had arrived in the Pacific Northwest and immediately felt like he’d come home to a place he’d never been. He still marveled at the dense forests full of fir and hemlock trees, so different from the hardwoods of his home state.
He passed a half dozen elk lounging by the side of the road, far enough away to stare at him mutely as he passed instead of bolting away. He made a mental note. He had already tagged a deer with his bow, but it wouldn’t last the winter, and he hoped for a freezer-filler of an elk when that hunting season started.
As he drove, his eyes watered against the now too-bright light, and a familiar metallic taste filled his mouth. The skin on his head tingled and felt too tight. These were familiar signs of an incipient migraine.
Tye hoped he could hold the headache at bay long enough to drive home. He swallowed a couple of ibuprofen and chugged water, but he knew this was no mere headache brought on by dehydration and heat. Tye had suffered from migraines for as long as he could remember, and no tests, drugs, or therapy had helped.
He crossed the river into the state of Washington, and passed through the towns of Vancouver, then Battle Ground. He turned to follow the east fork of the Lewis River. The land here was mostly steep, densely forested ridges and valleys, with homes on five- and ten-acre plots scattered here and there. Some houses were immaculately tended mansions, some of them were mobile homes that had seen better days.
A mile from the border with the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, he turned left up a steep driveway. The truck’s engine strained to make it up the pitch, then it leveled out after driving through a quarter-mile of trees. He was home.
The twenty acres were mostly forest, a mix of red alder, big leaf maple, and Douglas fir trees. He passed a patch of freshly dug earth, the site of their malfunctioning septic fields.
By some standards, it wasn’t much. The land was steep, some of it inaccessible. In the occasional flat spots, they’d built garden beds, a chicken coop, and a goat paddock. Gary and May shared the ramshackle mobile home, and Tye lived in a yurt tucked among the trees.
The ever-present hiss of the river at the bottom of the valley greeted his ears as he stepped out of the truck. He stretched out the kinks caused by an hour of driving.
