The Spirit Survives (14 page)

He turned to go back to his SUV when a female voice startled him.

“What are you doing here, sir?” Officer Tammy Terrell said in a firm voice, “And what is that you picked up?”

Bo turned and saw an attractive and sensual young woman, who looked amazingly like Jennifer Anniston. She wore a police uniform with a shoulder holster containing a weapon. “I’m just a tourist looking around.”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to show me what’s in your hand.”

Bo opened his hand, revealing the cell phone. “It’s just my phone,” he said.
 

Tammy walked to the rear of his SUV and wrote down his license number. “Is this a rental car, sir? Where are you from and where are you staying?”

Bo knew he was in deep shit. When she checked the license number, she could uncover his name. He couldn’t reveal to her where he was staying because that would make her even more suspicious. He had no options now.

“I have the car rental contract in the vehicle along with my hotel receipt. Let me get it for you.” He walked to the SUV driver’s side and opened the door. Bo reached inside and took the car rental papers from the glove compartment. He walked to Officer Tyrell and handed them to her. As she reached out to take them, Bo lunged and hit her squarely in the nose. Blood gushed as she fell. Bo placed his foot on her head and pulled the revolver from her holster and threw it aside. He grabbed her arm and pulled it hard while applying as much pressure to her neck as he could. He heard the bones crack in her neck. He dropped her arm and removed his foot.
 

Officer Tammy Tyrell lay dead, her neck broken in three places.
 

Bo picked up the police revolver, placed it in his pocket and replaced the car rental papers in the glove compartment. He removed the note pad with the license plate number from Tammy’s dead fingers, got into his vehicle and quickly left the scene.
 

Chapter 34

I awoke from a stupor, massaged my dirty face, trying to remember where I was and what I was doing. The beard I had grown during this ordeal was getting longer. My body felt like a disaster from dehydration and hunger. My mind was losing its ability to function properly. I looked around at the interior of the cave. Boulders and rocks were scattered on the ground. The slate grey walls gleamed from the sunlight streaming from the hole in the top of the cave. My meticulously protected inventory was directly behind me. The beheaded bloody body of the snake lay at my feet. The wolf was bound about ten feet from the decaying body of Cherokee Alverez. I wouldn’t be able to survive much longer. The only thing that was keeping me alive and semi-sane were the thoughts of Leah and getting back to her.

I heard an almost human moaning coming from the wolf. I glanced over, and he was salivating and looking at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen. He wasn’t struggling with the ropes, just lying there moaning. I had no water for him, but I cut a generous piece of snake meat, walked to his side and put it alongside his mouth. His teeth clacked as he tried to get to the food. I cut the meat into three small pieces and fed it to him until it was gone. At least he wouldn’t die hungry. There was enough snake to go around. I chuckled at the irony of the situation, and instantly recognized the laugh as that of a deranged man. It scared the hell out of me. I stumbled past Cherokee’s foul-smelling corpse back to my base.

I surveyed the inventory for the makings for a fire. I had the cigarette lighter and a small quantity of alcohol from my first-aid kit. The two paperback novels would make a good starter, but they would burn quickly. My backpack was made of nylon so that wouldn’t burn. The only thing, other than the books I had to burn was my cotton clothing. I looked over at the lifeless body again and reckoned that Cherokee didn’t need his clothes. I walked to his body and gagged as I cut off what remained of his shirt. His denim jeans were tough to cut, but I managed to get most of them. I picked up large rocks and formed a circle for my fire and ripped the pages from the books and piled them in the center. I was glad that Stephen King writes long novels.
It
provided a lot of paper for the fire. I ripped Cherokee’s shirt and jeans into shreds and pilled them on top of the paper and removed my cotton shirt and placed it on top. I recalled from Navy Seal training that snake bile was drinkable and that Asians made wine from it. I took my empty sardine can and the two empty Vienna sausage cans, made an incision in the stomach area of the snakes’ body and squeezed out the bile. Blood and bile spurted from the snake. There was enough the liquid to fill all three containers. I sucked the remaining bile and blood out of the incision and almost gagged from the rancid taste. I set the three containers aside for later. I meticulously curled the snake’s body on top of my creation and poured the alcohol on top. I grabbed the cigarette lighter and lit the edges of the paper at the bottom of the fire pit. The dry paper ignited immediately and produced a blaze and smoke. When the flame hit the alcohol and the clothing, the density of the flame and smoke increased.
 

Almost like a smoke signal, the smoke ascended and exited the hole above my head. After a few minutes, I heard the meat sizzling and the scent of the cooking rattlesnake filled the air.

It took the flames about ten minutes to die down but there was still a lot of smoke. The upward draft rapidly took most of it out the hole. I sat patiently and waited for the meat to simmer.
 

After an additional twenty minutes, I dragged the snake out of the embers to let it cool. I didn’t even feel my fingers scorching from the hot meat. The skin was coal black from the flames and the alcohol. After a few more minutes I couldn’t wait any longer. I gingerly cut a large piece of the meat and pealed off the charred skin. The meat was white and actually looked tender and edible. I took a large bite, chewed and found the meat a little stringy but it tasted a little like a cross between a Cornish hen and shark steak. I gobbled up the first piece and cut another. I skinned it and dived in again as my hunger overwhelmed me. I decided to slow down when I consumed the second piece out of concern of vomiting. The snake meat gave me a new lease on life.
 

I cut a generous portion of the cooked snake, went over and fed it to the wolf. He no longer growled at me, and I think we were becoming surviving friends. After all, he was the only friend I had in this desolate hole.
 

My head ached from the gash and my leg was losing feeling in it from the snakebite. My body should be in the healing process, but I didn’t know whether my mind
was playing tricks on me
.
I moved back to my base, laid my head on the backpack and drifted off to sleep with a full stomach for the first time since I had been trapped.

Chapter 35

Rex Herns was a twenty-year veteran of the police department. He worked his way up from street patrol to assistant chief. When the current chief retired, he expected to be named chief of the Chicago police department. His reputation was unblemished and heroic. Rex was married to Layla Steward, a former beauty queen from St. Charles, a community north of Chicago. They had one son, Josh, 18 years old. He came from humble beginnings and worked his way through high school and college, laboring at various construction jobs. He made decent money with the police department but his wife had expensive taste. He did his best to keep her happy.

The Ben Harris case had troubled him because he had come to know and like Ben when Harris was sent to Chicago on special assignment. They worked together in a drug cartel investigation until Ben’s unexpected resignation. Now Ben had disappeared along with his girlfriend on Lookout Mountain during the same time period that a suspected Russian Mafia boss’s daughter had been murdered. Rex knew there had to be a connection. There were no coincidences when the Russian Mafia was involved. He had persuaded the chief to allow him to take a few days to look at the situation, working with the Tomahawk police department.

After dropping off Officer Tyrell, he drove up the only highway on Lookout Mountain, unhurriedly looking at the terrain. The clear blue sky contained scattered white clouds and a pleasant breeze was blowing. Rex was amazed by the beauty of the landscape and the contrast with the devastation in the tornado’s path. Many of the stately maple trees lay in splinters on the side of the road. Like any tornado, everything in its way was obliterated, but things on either side if its path were normal. The course of the tornado was easily discerned as Rex observed the boulders, rocks and branches of trees, which were scattered randomly.

As he scrutinized the horizon, he noticed what appeared to be smoke coming from a location about halfway up the mountain, which had been in the path of the tornado. He thought for an instant that it might be a low hanging cloud, so he stopped his car, got out, and fetched his field glasses for a better look. He focused the binoculars and detected a hole in the side of the mountain. The smoke was coming from the hole. He focused again and his conclusion was absolute.
A fire can’t start inside a mountain. It must be man-made
.

The pitch of the boulders surrounding the hole was far too sheer for him to climb there to investigate. The helicopter could hover and take a closer look. He noted the location and got back into his police car to return to the spot where he dropped off Officer Tyrell and instructed the two deputies to meet him. He could direct the helicopter from that location. He turned the car around and went back to the meeting spot.

As he approached the rendezvous location, he saw an object on the pavement in the corner of the parking area. He floor-boarded the gas pedal, and as he came near, he recognized the blue uniform and knew that it was Officer Tyrell lying there. His tires squealed as he swerved into the parking area. He threw open the door and ran to the body. Her head was in an irregular position, almost parallel with her shoulder. His hand went instantly to her neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing. He immediately concluded that her neck had been broken with brutal force. He sprinted back to the police car and dispatched an emergency call for help. “Officer down, Officer down!” he shouted into the microphone. He provided his location and returned to the body. What a waste. “What in the hell happened?” he said aloud.

Within minutes the deputies arrived and raced to his side. He was sitting there holding Officer Terrell’s lifeless head in his arms. Within another five minutes two additional police cars arrived with the rescue squad. Chief Henry brought his forensic team with him. Rex gently laid her head on the ground and got out of the way. “She’s dead,” he murmured, but the paramedics strapped on an oxygen mask and attempted to revive her. After only a few minutes they accepted the inevitable: Officer Tammy Tyrell was dead. They carefully placed her head back on the ground as the forensic experts took over, taking pictures and recording their descriptions of the scene.
 

Rex moved to his car and sat down. Chief Henry joined him in the vehicle. Rex recounted in detail what had transpired to the Chief. He felt responsible. He shouldn’t have left her alone.
 

The sun was setting and an eerie calm set in on Looking Mountain. The sunset was pinkish-red and the breeze rustled the trees. Rex sat there until the forensic team had finished their work and the corpse was placed in a body bag and taken to the morgue. Chief Henry had surrounded the murder area with police tape and told Rex that it was time to go, and that they would return to the spot as soon as sunrise lighted up the scene tomorrow. Rex refused to leave; he wanted to look at the area again. When everyone departed, he took his flashlight and meticulously inspected the crime scene.

He tried to visualize what had happened, but since there were no clues, it was impossible.
 

He had momentarily forgotten about the smoke he had observed earlier.

Chapter 36

The stale odor of decaying flesh permeated the air, mixed with the smell of cooked snake. Smoke lingered from the smoldering fire as the sunlight danced off the slate grey walls of the cave.
 

A whimpering sound from the wolf awakened me. My mouth was so dry I could hardly breathe. I lifted the sardine can filled with snake bile to my parched lips and drained it. I had totally disassociated my mind from my body and delusions and insanity attempted to take over my consciousness. I was extremely weak and the life was slowly draining from my body.

I heard the whimper again and glanced toward the wolf. He was struggling against the ropes, which must have been causing him considerable pain.
What the hell!
I thought as I crawled to his side. My unstable legs would no longer support me, so the only way I could get around was to crawl. When I arrived at his side, the whimpering stopped, and he watched me with sad, watering eyes. I thought for a moment and made my decision. I untied the robes from his feet and threw them aside. The wolf actually licked my hand as I took off the last rope binding him. I patted him on the head and crawled back to my space. To my surprise, the wolf hobbled after me and lay down by my side. I took the knife and cut him a piece of snake and put a Vienna sausage can full of snake bile in front of him. He lapped up the bile, ate the meat and laid his head on my snake-bitten leg.

Ironically, I had made a friend in my dying moments. Our spirits must have bonded in this god-forsaken hell-hole. We would perish together, trapped and alone.