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Scorched Earth

A Dak Harper ThrillerErnest Dempsey

One

Brown’s Ferry, Kentucky

No one ever thinks they'll get lost in a forest. There are landmarks, noticeable differences in the wilderness that make it impossible to lose your way.

But the forest can be a serene and terrifying place. To a young boy, the danger never seems present until it is too late. One moment, you're walking along a trail, enjoying some laughs with your brother, taking in the sights. The next, you find yourself twisting around in circles among hills and trees that all look the same.

Jamie and Oliver McDowell were on a camping trip with their parents in the hills around Fall Rock, Kentucky. They'd been to this place many times since their younger days as small boys.

Jamie, the older of the two having just turned fifteen, felt adult enough to take his little brother, Oliver, out on the trails for a walk while their parents cooked lunch at the camper.

The two boys were a mix of their parents, both lightly tanned with a combination of their father's dark hair and their mother's sandy locks. Their mother often commented that the boys' blue eyes were going to cause problems for them later on in life, suggesting the girls would be powerless against them.

An hour after the brothers left the campsite, they still hadn't returned.

The food on the folding picnic table grew cooler by the minute and Martha, their mother, grew frustrated.

"I told those boys to be back in thirty minutes," she said to her husband.

Tim McDowell, ever patient with the two, tried to calm her down. "You know how boys are," he said, using the eternal argument of a father for his sons. "They're probably catching crawdads down at the creek. Just lost track of time, that's all."

She only partially accepted the answer. With hands on hips, she glowered back at him. "Well, the food is getting cold."

"It's slaw and brats. We can reheat the brats. Slaw is cold anyway, Martha." He touched her shoulder. "Let's eat. They can have theirs when they get back."

She reluctantly agreed, and the couple sat down to enjoy their meal. Martha must have looked at her watch a dozen times during their conversation. Something deep down just didn't seem right to her. The feeling continued to nag at her for twenty minutes after they finished eating.

When the plates were thrown away and the boys' food covered in plastic wrap, she began pacing, looking down the trail in the direction her sons had hiked.

"Tim, should we go look for them?"

Tim and Martha McDowell had been married for twenty years. He knew her like a secret handshake—every nuance, every wrinkle, every personality trait. He loved her, but Tim also knew that his wife tended to worry too much about things. He'd wondered now and then if she might have been different if their children were girls instead, but he doubted that would have changed a thing. In fact, she probably would have worried more.

He grinned at her, disarming her concerns the way he always did. "I'll go look for them, honey. I'm sure they're not far away. And I'll be sure to let those two knuckleheads know their food is cold and they can reheat it themselves."

She smiled back at him, accepting his offer, and watched as he trudged down the trail into the forest.

The dry, cool air smelled of crisp leaves and Tim took it in through his nose in huge, deep breaths. He loved fall, and this one had been particularly wonderful. He'd always considered this part of the country to be one of the most undervalued when it came to fall colors. As he ambled down the path, the surrounding trees assaulted his vision with an explosion of colors. It was fine with him if this place was lesser known. He preferred to keep it that way. Fewer tourists meant the camping was quieter, other than for the locals who frequented the wilderness at Fall Rock. This weekend, however, had turned out to be a good one. Tim had only seen a couple of other families since they arrived, which meant he could get some much-needed relaxation time.

He'd spent the last 22 years of his life working for the same insurance company. The work wasn't anything spectacular, but it was a steady paycheck with benefits, and over the decades he'd built up a solid 401k that would allow he and Martha to travel when they both retired. Her job as a high-school science teacher also had a strong retirement fund, though she often teased him about moving down to Tennessee at some point and double dipping—a term educators used to refer to earning a paycheck from one state's retirement fund while collecting full-time pay from a neighboring state.

He scoffed at the notion, knowing, or maybe just hoping—she was messing with him. Eight more years and they could hit the road. He had plans and lots of them. A new RV—a smaller one—would be in order. When the boys were off to college, they wouldn't need the behemoth of a camper they'd been using for the last ten years.

There were Europe plans too, and maybe a cruise he'd always wanted to take. He'd been on a casino boat once out of Cape Canaveral, but never on a real cruise ship.

Tim was glad he'd still be young enough to do all those things when he retired. He and Martha had made sound economic decisions throughout the years, saving as much as they could without skimping on important memories for the boys and a few for themselves. He'd seen some of his friends from high school and college go down different paths, spending recklessly on things that quickly devalued or