Hacks

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Devil’s Tail

Aptly named, The Devil’s Tail twisted through some of the roughest country the Blue Mountains had to offer. It was a narrow, stony whip crack of a road, thrown into constant darkness by old, leaning fir and pine trees. Ten miles from where The Devil’s Tail split from the main forest service road through The Blues, it ended abruptly.

There was no warning, no Twilight-Zone-Sign proclaiming The End Draweth Nigh or Here There Be Monsters. Just more of the same; a narrow dirt road embedded with stones like small mountains and valleys forged by years of runoff from the spring thaw, the forest’s perpetual darkness, and what might be a thousand hidden eyes watching your passage.

And after a last bracing turn of the goat path the forest service called a road, a new world opened up. A vista of open sky, powder blue from horizon to horizon, and the distant green and gray of the mountains on the other side of a deep dark pit that may very well have been a bottomless canyon.

On the flat before the canyon, a half-dozen small cabins stood flanking a larger cabin, three on each side, like old weather-beaten soldiers in line with their commander. The large cabin, a service station fire lookout until the tower two ridges to the west made it obsolete, had been fighting its battle against The Blues for half a century. The smaller cabins had stood beside it a mere thirty years, but were no less eroded by the passage of twenty harsh winters, and eighty seasons of disuse. The forest service turned the old lookout into a lodge, built the smaller cabins around it, and rented them out during the summer.

No one had used them in twenty years.

This mid-July day, comfortably cool in the high mountains, a dozen men were at work undoing twenty years of neglect.

Two men crouched on the roof of the lodge tearing out rotted shingles and replacing them. Another cleared seasons of debris from a large, sunken stone fire ring.

Gasman #1, Galen, stood idle while the hose trailing from the back of his truck pumped propane into an underground tank, while gasman #2, Erick, inspected the copper fuel lines and fittings running to each cabin.

“Is it shut off yet? Drew?” Erick had to shout to be heard over the pumping fuel truck.

A man in forest service green poked his head through an open window a few feet away. “Yeah,” he shouted, then nodded for good measure. “That’s all of them except those two.” He pointed toward the last two cabins to their right.

“Thanks,” Erick shouted back. “Let me know when you have the rest shut off.”

“Will do, boss,” Drew said.

What a f*****g week, Drew Williams thought as he pulled his head back into the cabin; unexpected holdups every day, that noisy f*****g truck pounding his brain to mush, the forced overtime.

No way in hell the place would be up to snuff by Friday evening. Might as well kiss that goddamn fishing trip he’d planned for this weekend goodbye.

The worst of it was that f*****g road. That rutted, rocky bastard would tear his truck apart before this was over, not to mention what it was doing to his back. He hadn’t been in this much pain in years, not since the accident had landed him in a hospital bed for a month, and left him pulling light duty for the rest of his working life.

Of course, he was only supervising the work here, but that god damned road was going to kill him.

And all because some rich city cunt decided she had to have this place. How the hell did she even know about it? No one came here anymore.

Drew bent, gasping at the flare of pain in his back, and double checked the gas shutoff valve behind the heater. Closed. Good. Five cabins down, two to go. He wanted nothing more than to lie down on the new bed they’d installed at the insistence of that rich city b***h, pop one of his pills and sleep until it killed the pain. But if he didn’t hurry to the next cabin and shut off the gas line ASAP he’d have gasman Erick all over him.

Erick had given Drew hell about having to come out this far on such short notice, and had added a substantial trip charge for his trouble. His disposition had not improved one whit since he’d arrived.

Fucking government contracts, Drew thought. If not for some contract that had probably been negotiated from a comfortable office somewhere in Olympia, he’d have told gasman Erick where to stick it and found someone else to do the job.

“Hurry up,” Erick yelled, for what might have been the hundredth time that day. “We have a half-hour to finish this leak check or we’ll go into overtime!”

“You poor overworked baby,” Drew said, but not loud enough to be heard over the pumping truck. “Wouldn’t that be a damned shame.”

Drew hurried to the next cabin.

Leak test complete, propane tank filled, Erick shoved a bill into Drew’s hand and gave a curt goodbye. Drew gave the propane truck the bird as it vanished around the corner onto The Devil’s Tail.

His crew, plus the two carpenters they’d contracted to repair the cabins, were sitting around the stone ring having a break, and a break sounded just fine to Drew. He’d have a piss and a smoke, in that order, then maybe sneak away for a lie down in one of the cabins.

He’d rather have a Percoset and a cold beer to wash it down with.

The lodge’s septic tank was full, years of snow runoff and rain had managed to fill it somehow, and the crap man wasn’t due for another day. Probably a cracked line from one of the cabins. Hopefully just a cracked line. If the tank itself was compromised, there was a whole new set of problems that would probably include the EPA. The toilets in the cabins and lodge were off limits for now, so Drew took the trail through the woods toward the lake, and the only outhouse.

The lake was small and clear. Constant flow from the underground spring that also fed the lodge’s well kept it from stagnating. It even had a healthy population of trout. Drew had considered bringing his fishing rod if they did have to work through the weekend, maybe sneak off and throw a line in while the others were working. It wasn’t worth his job though, or his retirement. Five years to go now. Just five years and the forest service could take their job and cram it.

Something moved in the trees to his right, and Drew jumped, sending a new lance of pain up his throbbing spine. He scanned the trees before moving on, but saw nothing. Being this far out in the Blues made him nervous as hell. The Devil’s Tail belonged to beast, not man, and though it was probably just a startled deer, or maybe a branch-hopping squirrel, mountain lions and bear were too plentiful out here. The bigwigs in Olympia were pushing to reintroduce wolves to the area too. Damned if they weren’t bound and determined to kill him before he retired.

When they’d first arrived, this trail had been almost completely swallowed up by the forest. Clearing it so they could take a crap safely had been the first order of business. Other trails led into the woods around the small lake, but he’d steered his men away from those. He did not want anyone going down those trails, specifically the one at the far end of the lake. There were things down there better left unfound.

Let the woods keep them, he thought.

There was another burst of movement in the trees to his right, but Drew ignored it. He unbuckled his belt with one hand while reaching for the outhouse door with the other.

A loud grunt from inside the privy stopped him. The grunt was followed by an explosive, splattering fart.

“Christ, put a muffler on it,” he shouted at the outhouse door, then turned back up the trail, the pressure on his bladder growing insistent.

When Drew reached the lodge, the carpenters were back on the roof, but his crew still sat around the stone ring.

Lazy bastards, he thought.

“Drew!”

He turned, and cursed.

“Wadaya, want, Yohan?” He knew what Yohan wanted though. He’d been expecting the man to show up sooner or later.

“Story is someone is renting this dump,” Yohan tipped his big John Wayne meets the Great White Hunter hat back and surveyed the area. “Looks like I heard right.”

Drew grunted. “How’s business?”

“Slow. Who is it, Drew?”

“If I tell you, will you get the hell out of here and let me work?”

“Whatever you say, partner.” He tipped Drew an obscene wink. “However you want it.”

Drew fished his wallet from his back pocket, withdrew a business card, and handed it over. “That’s the lady you want to talk to. She’s staying at the Red Lion in Lewiston, but you can reach her on her cell phone.”

Yohan smiled, gave Drew a nod. “Thank ya’ kindly. It’s nice to know some folks still look out for their own.”

Their own, Drew thought with disgust.

But he knew Yohan was right. They hadn’t been friends in a long damn time, but they did still share one interest, and it was in that interest that Yohan had come. Not just a job, but insurance.

He and Yohan had killed a man once, not far from here, and the evidence of that crime was still out there. Waiting for the wrong person to come nosing around.

Having Yohan on the job was the best insurance against that.

Drew stalked to the far end of the clearing, to the edge of the canyon. His irritation faded as he drew closer to the edge. The view was dizzying, incredible. One of the best The Blues had to offer.

How many hundreds of feet to the bottom?

He had no idea, but the wonder he felt standing over the drop, right at its edge, was laced with a nervous fear.

All it would take was one strong gust, he thought. Put me right over the edge. I’d die of a heart attack before I came close to hitting bottom.

Far below where he stood, facing the beautiful abyss, an eagle sailed the wind, letting loose a cry that echoed between the canyon walls.

That, Drew thought as he unzipped, is not something you see every day.

He imagined nailing it with a stream of piss as it passed below, chuckled, and let flow. The stream of urine arched out over the impossible drop like yellow rain.

A crunch of footsteps in dry grass startled him from his happy thoughts, and he turned.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Can’t I take a leak without …”

Drew’s next word caught in his throat.

A quick glint of sunlight on steel blinded him. A swishing sound, followed by a wet rip.

There was no pain, only a moment of disorientation as the world spun around him, and as Drew fell, he caught a glimpse of his headless body standing on the ledge, d**k still in hand. His headless body, and the man standing behind it.

The last thing Drew saw as his head tumbled into that beautiful abyss was his own body leaning forward and following in an ungraceful, flailing swan dive.