Free The Pines by Robert Dunbar Page B

survive.”
    “Yeah, it’s like they’re alive or something.”
    “They are alive, Sandy,” Jenny sighed.
    After passing around the canteen, they started moving again, at first plodding along in a tight clump, but quickly resuming the old formation with Casey pulling ahead. For the first time, the air began to stir noticeably about them. As he walked, Casey scuffed at the sand with his boots, the gesture oddly proprietary.
    The things he could tell them. For instance, they were crossing the bed of a vanished ocean, an ocean sixty million years gone. The breeze had grown, and he savored the fleeting coolness. He listened as the gentle current of air stirred a strange whirring out of the pines, a low moan like the ghost of a lost sea, and it swept his memories to all those distant Sunday afternoons when, shin deep in collapsing mud shoals, he’d dug for fossils not all that far from here. The mud banks would crumble with soft splashings, and icy waters would ooze, bubbling up around his ankles, trickling down to join the creek, washing away the sediment of shell particles, millions of years steadily melting away beneath his feet. Innumerable generations of monsters had hunted these waters, and the denizens of the ancient seas had left their bones and shells and marks.
    The rest of the group pumped along behind him, chattering among themselves, and he moved still farther ahead of them, the familiar thrill of wonder, almost of reverence, coursing through him. He discovered, somewhat giddily, that if he squeezed his eyes half shut the blurring pines resembled a prehistoric landscape. A hairy tentacle clung to a nearby tree, the dark rootlets of the parasite vine, biting deep into the bark, coiling like some obscene, furred serpent up and around the cedar.
    Unnoticed, a moth the size of his hand settled weightless on his shoulder.
    “…had to work, and I swear to God that’s the truth. Athena?” Barry depressed the speak button with his thumb. “Athena?” He glanced up as Steve returned to the car. “Damn, that radio of theirs is a real piece of shit.”
    “Watch yourself. You’re broadcasting.”
    “Huh? Yeah, sure.” At forty-three years old, Officer Barry Hobbs was a large man, almost burly. Though the scar that slashed the bridge of his nose was the sort that fossilized a wound and kept it perpetually on display, the lines of his face, the wide, square jaw, still showed firm and handsome. Until a few years ago, he’d been a state trooper—discharged for reasons he never cared to discuss.
    “You were gone a long time. You sick or something?” While critically eyeing Steve, he continued trying to raise the ambulance. “What in hell did you do? Fall down and roll in the mud?” His own tailored uniform was immaculate. His wife pressed it every morning.
    Steve slumped brooding in his seat while static and the ghost of Athena’s voice drifted from the radio: “…and profuse bleeding…”
    “Goddamn, she’s on a call.” Barry lit another cigarette, and Steve watched, envying his steady hand. Noting the attention, Barry yawned ostentatiously. “Yes sir, real heavy night last night.” He smirked, waiting.
    Steve turned his head away, killed another warm beer and stared resolutely into the woods. A slight breeze stirred the pines. Still smiling, Barry tapped cigarette ash on the windowsill.
    Steve crumpled the empty can. “So, uh…you were with Athena last night?” he asked, trying his best to pretend only casual interest. The attempt was pathetic.
    Barry sneered in triumph. He took a drag on the cigarette, slowly exhaled, and finally started to talk. Steve gazed into the pines, letting his eyes drift out of focus.
    “…then she sort of turns on her hip and wets her fingers and…” Barry’s words drilled into his skull, stuck there and festered.
    “…holds on to it, you know, and puts her leg around…”
    Steve’s headache intensified in direct proportion to the straining against the front of