Free Burial Ground by Malcolm Shuman Page A

weakness might still cling to her.
    Now I looked down at the piece of wood that had almost killed us.
    “I didn’t hear the limb break,” she said. Then, seeing me staring at it, she took a step closer: “What’s wrong?”
    “You didn’t hear it because it didn’t break,” I said. “At least, not just now. Look at the ends.”
    They were fungus-covered. The huge trunk had been lying on the ground above, long enough to be infested with rot.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said under my breath.
    “What?”
    That was when we heard the crackle of sticks breaking somewhere on the edge of the cliff above us.
    I grabbed her hand and jerked her forward. “ Now! ”
    Soil was cascading down from where someone stood on the edge above us, hidden by the forest shadows.
    “I don’t guess you’ve got a gun in there someplace,” I said, nodding at her pack.
    She shook her head. “Sorry.”
    The footsteps were definite now, crunching the dead leaves and twigs of the forest overhead. I searched the defile in front of us for a way to go, but there was no choice except forward.
    At that second another log came crashing down from above and I grabbed P. E. and pulled her after me into the streambed. The cold water filled my shoes, but that was the least of my concerns: If we stayed close to the bluff on the right, we were prey for whatever got thrown down on us, but here, out from under the edge, we could be picked off by a gun.
    “This way,” I said, pointing ahead. We ran upstream to a place where the left bank was low and she scrambled up it easily. I followed and, touching the grass on the top, crawled behind a log.
    The echoes of our splashes died away and gradually the sounds of the forest returned to normal. I pointed at the cliff face across from us.
    “They’ll play hell getting down that.”
    “So what do we do?” she asked. “We need to get out of here and get help.”
    “Where’s your phone?” I asked.
    She fished it out of her pocket and punched in 911.
    Only static.
    I watched her put it away, chagrined. “I say we go to the island and hike out on one of the jeep roads the map shows. Whoever that was will probably go back.”
    And, I thought, we would be leaving David to whatever had happened to him. But there was nothing to be done; two lost people couldn’t help a third.
    For a moment longer I watched the leafy curtain across the creek, and then I scrambled backward on hands and knees until I was completely in shadow and got slowly to my feet, P. E. following.
    She pulled out the map tube, which she’d had slung across her back on a cord. “Here’s where I think we are,” she said. “The hills should end the other side of this ridge, and then a quarter-mile and we’re on the island.”
    I nodded. “And once we get there, there’s a trail running down the middle.”
    “Right.” She stowed the map and we started toward the edge of the ridge.
    The side sloped at about forty degrees and I started down on my seat, sliding and skidding until I hit the bottom and came up on my feet. P. E. wasn’t so lucky and rolled into an untidy heap. When I stretched out a hand to help her she ignored it and dragged herself upright.
    “I think the island’s that way,” she said, pointing ahead of us.
    We lurched through a stand of palmetto and I felt our feet sinking into the mud. We were out of the hills now and into the coastal plain. This had been an old course of the Mississippi, at a time when the first white men were taking this land from the Tunica and their kinsmen, and that was why no one really believed there was still a Tunica village to be found: The irresistible waters would have torn it away well over a century ago.
    I stole a look at my watch. It was just after ten. We’d been in the woods for an hour and the heat was suffocating.
    P. E. Courtney unslung her little backpack, reached into it, and withdrew a plastic water bottle.
    I watched, incredulous, as she took a long swallow, then offered