Yellow Mama E zine

The Signal

 

by John A. Tures

 

          The park ranger scanned the snow-covered horizon. “It’s tough out here between Blood Mountain and Slaughter Mountain in the offseason, trying to find folks who don’t want to be found,” she said.

          Tripp Bridges gritted his teeth. This place is beautiful in its landscape but terrifying in its harsh features. It’ll take my Green Beret training to make it.

          “Just because they’re ‘off-gridders,’ that doesn’t mean they know anything about wilderness survival,” he grumbled.

          The ranger, who introduced herself that morning as Erica, nodded. All Tripp had told her was that they were looking for four missing people.

          Erica expelled her breath into a fog as they stopped at a level spot before it steepened again. “How did you know to start looking for them here?”

          “Law enforcement found their car in an Atlanta chop shop,” Tripp said, motioning for them continue. “In exchange for a reduced sentence for stealing the car, the auto thief told us where he boosted it around here.”

          “So why do you want to find these people so badly?” She couldn’t resist asking.

          His reply was curt. “They’re my family.”

           Tripp explained. His ex-wife Bonnie, Kit, and in-laws Frank and Faye did not come to the area to see De Soto Falls and Helen, Georgia. They went to the wilderness to disappear.

          He gave a long exhale. “We’d better find my family before we lose the light.”

          Erica nodded. “No one’s booked a campsite here since the snowfall.”

          She looked around anxiously. “Didn’t you say they were trying to go off the grid? Maybe they’re armed?”

          Tripp nodded. “We’d better keep our voices low, in case Frank or Faye are trigger-happy.”

          He carefully swept away the top of the snow, showing footprints.       

          “Right,” he whispered. “Heading Northeast.”

          Erica fiddled with some device. “Cell signals there are even worse than here.”

          Now that they had their first confirmation of a human presence, it became easier to spot the telltale signs.

          “Any idea why your family came out here?” Erica couldn’t resist another question.

          Tripp suddenly stiffened. “Frank and Faye, my sister-in-law and her husband, have soaked up conspiracy theories since high school. They believe vaccines made them sterile.”

          Erica looked grim at hearing the tale.

          They headed toward a bend lower on the ridge, where few hikers traveled, away from the designated path.

          “And your ex-wife?”

          “Bonnie used to laugh at them until the Great Recession. Then she sponged everything off the Internet. She wanted me to leave the military, keep Kit out of public school. The three went well beyond Bigfoot sightings and fake Moon landings.”

Tripp looked for clues that could reveal his family’s whereabouts. “Now it’s about human trafficking cults and New World Order on the web. The final straw came when I found out Bonnie forged Kit’s vaccination records. She returned the wedding ring. Bonnie gets custody when I’m deployed, and I get him the rest of the time. She doesn’t let him have friends in person or online.”     

He spotted another mark left behind by a human and pointed toward the ridge.

          Erica cocked her head and followed his gaze. “I see it too.”

          They exited the tree line and headed for the rocky ridge.

          On the other side of the ridge, there it was. For amateur survivalists, they had concealed their location well. Their gray tent was camouflaged among the large rocks. The rocky formation would shield any smoke from the main path. And the lean-to made from logs, near the tent, blended with the forest.

          But was it enough to help them survive out here?

 

          “I don’t see any fire or movement.” Erica’s voice contained a note of fear. “And it’s almost dark. They’ve got to be freezing now.”

          But Tripp sprinted toward the campsite, caution now thrown to the winds whipping above them in the December air.

          Tripp chucked his backpack and charged toward the dwellings.

          As he reached the lean-to across from the tent, he let out a strangled cry.

          Faye looked barely human. The coyotes had left her hair and parts of her body that probably didn’t taste good.

          In Faye’s arms that were gnawed to the bone, a rifle was cradled. The lack of blood next to her told him the pack’s feast occurred post-mortem.

          Erica gasped, then whispered. “I’ve never seen anything so ghastly in my life. Is she…?”

          “It’s Faye, my sister-in-law,” Tripp began. “She starved to death before that. I can tell from the lack of blood, the bones and what’s left of the skin.”

          Both pairs of eyes slowly turned toward the gray tent. Like a condemned man’s steps to the gallows, Tripp walked toward the tent. He fumbled frantically for the zipper and almost ripped it from its path to reveal….

          A pair of bundled sleeping bags remained inside. Around them were a few old wrappers. Tripp muttered a prayer and unzipped the smaller sleeping bag.

          His jaw dropped in shock. It was Kit…barely. The teen had ribs poking out of the skin, eyes sunken in their sockets, his skin resembling the pallor of Faye’s.

          No no no no. His military training as the unit’s medic took over. “A” for airway, yes. “B” for breathing, no. “C” meant check for pulse. Was there was a faint one or that just my wishful thinking? He began CPR in earnest after ripping the sleeping bag nearly in half.

          “I’ve got Bonnie…” Erica called out. “I’m giving her mouth-to-mouth too.”

          But Tripp could not hear her over his frantic attempts to save his son’s life. It feels like Kit is slipping through his fingers. On and on, he struggled, hoping against hope, until…

          Suddenly, a person tried to pull him off his son, but Tripp shoved that individual aside. Another pair of arms pinned him temporarily, but he hurled that intruder across the tent. It was some guy in a red uniform.

          “Tripp!”

          The sharp words from Erica halted him.

          “Who…what….

          “They’re rescuers!” She screamed. The guy in the uniform had a white circle and a red cross in the middle of his back.

          “My son…”

          “You’ve done all you can do, sir.” A third man clasped him on the shoulder. “It’s our turn now.”

          Where did these people come from? He could hear a helicopter, which must have found another clearing.

          “But there’s no cell signal,” he wondered aloud to Erica. “How did you…”

          “I have a Garmin,” she said. “It can send texts.”

          He could see the lights on the chopper contrast with the oncoming dusk, illuminating a pair of bodies on stretchers being carried to the aircraft.

          “We’ll catch the second bird,” Erica promised.

          “Did they make it?” Tripp spluttered, wishing he was on the helicopter. Already he could hear the whump-whump off in the distance. “Where’s Frank?”

          “Tripp, let’s talk about that later,” Erica said.

 

          On the flight to the nearest hospital in Habersham, a medic filled him in, as someone in the helicopter offered him something to drink. “We hope they’ll make it. Both lost an incredible amount of weight, according to the doctors.”

          Tripp’s shoulders slumped; the can-do attitude of the Green Berets almost completely evaporated from his body and mind.

          “What about Frank, Faye’s husband?” Tripp asked.

          Erica put her hand on Tripp’s. “Your son made a diary of what happened. Frank didn’t make it.” Erica said.

          He drank the liquid. “How did it happen?”

          “Let’s not talk about that right now.” The medic broke in. “You’ve been through a lot, emotionally and physically. You need rest.”

          Tripp felt his strength ebbing until he slipped into unconsciousness.

 

          “You must understand, Mr. Bridges, that Kit drank contaminated water. He hasn’t eaten in…” The doctor from the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Habersham explained the dire situation, but Tripp could barely follow it. He said a silent prayer, more of a plea.

          “….so that’s where we stand. We don’t know.”

          Tripp nodded, even though he missed many details.

          “Can I see him now?”

          “I’m sorry. We need every available space to save your son. You can view him on the monitor, though,” the doctor said.

          There was a pause in the adjoining room. “I have some good news. Your wife, Bonnie, has regained….” The doctor said.

          “She’s not my wife anymore,” Tripp snapped.

          “Anyway, she’s in recovery” the doctor said. “You could see her if you want.”

          “And get some answers,” Tripp growled.

 

          Bonnie was sitting in her bed, propped up by pillows, an IV drip going into her arm, and a monitor attached to several nodes. Upon his entry into the room, she asked “What day is it?”

          Taken aback, he managed, “It’s December 6th. Why does that matter?”

          “Kit and I need to leave.”

          “He’s barely clinging to life, no thanks to you! And you’re in no condition to travel at all.”

          Bonnie rolled her eyes. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

          “I understand that you, Faye, and Frank took my son to the middle of nowhere and nearly starved him to death, thanks to some conspiracy theory you read on the web. He may not make it, you know.”

          Her shrug infuriated him. “It’s a better fate than what awaits him tomorrow.”

          “What the hell would that be?”

          “Haven’t you ever wondered why I never vaccinated him?” Bonnie said. “That so-called National Emergency Broadcast Test tomorrow is why we tried to protect ourselves, and our son, from you.”

She sketched out a wild plot involving those vaccinated turning into mind-controlled pawns for some global elite, forcing the unvaccinated to submit or die, as part of their plot for world domination.

          “And it’s set for December 7, a second Pearl Harbor Day, another sneak attack on America and her true believers,” Bonnie said.

          “That’s bull!”

          “You don’t get it because you’re part of it. You’re military so you’ve been vaccinated and chipped. My sister, her husband, and I had to protect Kit…from you.”

          Tripp wrung his hands in frustration until an idea came to him. “This is another of your Internet conspiracies. Don’t you realize that the U.S. military built the net? How does that fit with your so-called evidence?”

          Like a caged rabbit, Bonnie’s eyes nervously darted back and forth, desperate for an escape. Then she smiled.

          “That’s what you’ve been. But it was secretly created by military rebels dedicated to exposing the truth about the socialist takeover. Our freedom fighters can combat government censorship.”

          Tripp returned his hard gaze. “Well, Faye and Frank are dead. Kit is in intensive care, and you’re not pulling him out of anything. You could be prosecuted for child endangerment.”

          “If you love him, you’ll let him go with me.”

          “He’ll die,” snarled Tripp.

          “Dying would be better than becoming a zombie to the global cabal.”

          He resisted the urge to hurl something across the room in anger. “I don’t understand you, Bonnie. You’re on a building ledge, and I’m reaching out a hand, trying to pull you to safety, and you won’t take my hand.”

          “Funny,” she shot back. “That’s how I used to feel about you.”

 

          Tripp returned to where Erica was sitting, near Kit’s room. “Do you have my son’s diary?” he asked Erica.

          She pulled it from her backpack. “It’s pretty dark. It covers some of what he was thinking but also what your ex and the in-laws did to him.”

          The pages began with some typical material for a young teen, which eventually evolved into a situation where his mom, his aunt, and her husband tried to increasingly control his life, especially during Tripp’s last deployment. Kit wrote about how the three sold nearly everything they had to buy camping supplies and then took off one night. A promised exciting trip to see the Oktoberfest in Helen was replaced by a slog up somewhere between Slaughter Mountain and Blood Mountain.

          Additional entries documented how Frank nearly went insane after the car was stolen. He was later killed trying to take on a bear with a gun. Kit’s bow-hunting skills brought down a mule deer. That saddened his sensitive son. Coyotes dragged off the carcass before they could get more than a second night of meat. Rodents evaded his deadfall traps while stealing their food. The fish weren’t biting. All three suffered from massive stomach aches and struggled to keep any food they did eat down, leading Kit to wonder if the special water filtration straws were working. Kit had stopped writing two weeks earlier.

          Tripp woke with a start. How long had he been sleeping? He looked up to see Erica, gently tugging on the edge of his sleeve. The doctor in front of him was not smiling. Tripp sprang to his feet.

          “Please sit down, Mr. Bridges.”

          “I know what that means,” he gasped, having delivered bad news before in the military.

          “Against all odds, he…”

          He knew what this meant as the doctor continued his…Wait…

          “He’s going to make it?”

          “Isn’t it great news?” Erica gushed.

          “Thank you so much!” He hugged Erica, a flood of emotions overtaking him.

          “If she hadn’t been able to contact us, Kit wouldn’t have made it,” the doctor said. “However…”

          “However?”

          The prognosis was grim. “Your son is going to need to stay in the hospital for a long time. He could be wheelchair-bound for years, if not for the rest of his life.”

          “It’s okay,” Tripp said, a flood of emotions bounding out to the entire room. “He’s alive. I’ll make it work.”

          “I’ll help,” Erica promised.

          “But there’s an incident involving Kit’s mother.”

          Both looked at the medical official with puzzled expressions. A security officer stepped into the room.

          “Bonnie has escaped. She incapacitated the nurse and stole her uniform. That’s how she slipped out of this hospital undetected.”

          “My God!” Erica gasped. “Will the nurse be okay?”

          “She’ll recover.” The doctor extended a calming hand.

          After looking out the window at the snow, now falling with greater intensity than when they arrived, the security man continued his report. “Bonnie took the nurse’s keys to a Hyundai. We found it abandoned near the edge of the Brasstown Bald. There was a note on the back of an envelope in the car. It said, ‘Don’t follow.’”

          “What day is it?”

          “December 7,” the doctor said.

          “Did an Emergency Broadcast Test go out?”

          “Yeah, about an hour ago,” Erica said.

          Tripp laughed. “Guess I’m not a mind-controlled zombie.”

          The security officer looked out the window. “With this thick snowfall, plunging temperatures, and no supplies, Bonnie’s unlikely to survive the weather conditions for long.”

          “It won’t be the storm that takes her life.” Tripp disagreed sadly. “It will be what’s on the web that doomed her.”

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     Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and raised in El Paso, Texas, John A. Tures began writing sports for the El Paso Herald-Post. In college, he worked for a radio station. He worked his way through graduate school in education outreach for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He earned his doctorate in political science at Florida State University, analyzed data on foreign policy in Washington DC, and is now a professor at LaGrange College in Georgia. He writes columns for a number of newspapers and magazines and has published several short stories in various genres, from thrillers and mysteries to nonfiction and flash fiction. 

     He thanks his family for their patience in listening to these stories and for Sharon Marchisello, Ann Michelle Harris, and his sister and mother for their editing help.

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     Asher Tures is a Georgia-based artist and writer with a passion for art history, disability studies, and math. He primarily works with colored pencil and marker.