Infertile Grounds Read online

  Infertile Grounds

  © 2016 - DB Carpenter

  www.dbcarpenter.com

  Cover art by Isabelle Brault

  Dedication: For Emily, your birth inspired me to write this and your life inspired me to publish it. Thanks!

  Day 1 – Sunday, June 28

  8:04 am St. Croix River, Aroostook County, Maine

  If the plane had crashed thirty minutes earlier, Chris Foster would be dead. It would have plowed him into the underbrush along the edge of the river he loved, ending his life with an incredible, almost humorous bit of bad luck.

  He was in the middle of a yearly, two-week sabbatical at his secluded cabin in Northern Maine – no computers, no employees, no wife, just his fishing rod and the last great wilderness on the east coast.

  Everything was perfect until a small yellow plane careened around the lazy bend down-river and clipped the top of a massive pine tree protruding from the eroded bank at a forty-five-degree angle. The plane dove violently, missing the water by inches. The pilot regained control briefly until a three-foot piece of tree-damaged wing snapped off, sending the plane into an arcing barrel roll. It passed twenty feet over Chris' head and slammed into the opposite river bank with a tremendous crash that silenced the engine's sputtering whine.

  The tranquility of the morning morphed into a post-near-death, eerie calm as Chris stared across the flowing water at the shattered wreckage. He had been standing in that exact spot just minutes ago. The combination of slippery river rocks, the current and his waders made it difficult to move quickly and he struggled up to the bend where the water was fast but shallow and he could easily cross over.

  The forest was unnaturally quiet – no birds sang, even the gurgling of the river sounded muted – as if nature paid homage to the recently deceased pilot.

  As he approached the twisted, crumpled fuselage Chris called out, "Hello." No response. He expected none.

  He ran his hand along the cool metal, probing small round holes punched through the yellow paint at irregular intervals. Maybe it was the fuel-fouled air, or a response to the intense adrenaline rush, or, more likely, it was knowing that he was about to come face to face with death – it was inches away, waiting to show him its glorious handiwork – but an overwhelming sense of panic gripped him. He leaned over, his lungs constricted, his heart pounding a frantic, out of control beat. The forest started a slow spin. He was going to pass out and he dropped to his knees. Bent at the waist, head down – as if he were on a mossy prayer mat worshipping Allah – an uncontrollable quaking coursed through his body as he struggled to regain control. He had never experienced anything like this before and had always thought panic attacks were simply psycho-babble-based excuses for people who couldn't deal with life but now he understood just what it meant – how overwhelming it could be.

  It took several minutes for the attack to pass and he slowly rose on unsteady feet. He peered into the cabin through the shattered pilot-side window and saw exactly what he had expected. The pilot's bloody body was unnaturally wrapped around the dislocated engine block. He was motionless. Chris stared at the horrific scene for a long moment, examining the catastrophic damage to the plane and to its pilot's mangled body. As he was about to turn away, the man eyes blinked open. His lips started to tremble.

  "Oh my God," Chris said as he wrenched the door open. "You're alive?"

  The pilot tried to speak, causing a rivulet of blood to dribble from the corner of his mouth. As Chris climbed into the crumpled compartment, the pilot slowly focused his gaze on him. Chris gave the man a quick once over – blood saturated his long sleeve denim shirt, and his hips were twisted around almost one-hundred-eighty degrees. He wouldn't be alive for long.

  "Jesus Christ." Chris said, shocked at the level of trauma this man had somehow survived.

  The dying man slowly opened and closed his mouth, struggling to get a breath before whispering, "Listen. I don't…" A spasm racked his body, spurting fresh blood from his mouth but his gaze stayed focused. "..have much time."

  "Let me help you," Chris pleaded, not able to just sit back and watch him die. He started unbuttoning the blood-soaked shirt. Maybe he could somehow stop the bleeding.

  "Don't bother," the pilot said in a gurgling sigh. "I'm David Rose."

  Chris stopped fussing with his shirt and stared into his disturbingly calm, brown eyes.

  "They're coming after me," David said softly.

  "Who? Who's coming after you?"

  David's ruggedly handsome face reddened. A vein bulged on his forehead. The tendons in his neck looked like wires ready to snap under his skin as he struggled to breathe. He finally managed to gulp some air before continuing. "They knew. You need to get out of here."

  "Who knew what? What's going on?" Chris wondered if David was experiencing some sort of pre-death hallucination. He was obviously confused and undoubtedly concussed after what he had just gone through. Perhaps that, coupled with shock from the traumatic injuries was making him delusional.

  "Sar–," David grimaced as his eyes closed. "Sarah Burns."

  "Who is Sarah Burns? Why is she after you? Listen, just sit tight, let me go get some help." Chris wondered how he was going to get help from this remote spot. It was impossible but he didn't know what to say.

  "No time," David gasped pointing to his bloody chest. "She…..shot….. me."

  Chris tore open his shirt and stared at two swollen, oozing wounds - one just below his collarbone and the other several inches below his left nipple – undoubtedly bullet holes. David's eyes opened again and he focused them intensely on Chris. "Do you have kids?"

  "Huh?"

  "Stop her….," David said as his hand latched onto Chris' wet, wader-covered calf and squeezed hard in a convulsive, pain-induced reaction. "Stop it."

  "It?"

  "It can't get out," David said in soft, hitching breaths.

  "What can't get out? What are you talking about?"

  David gasped, "The virus." Tears welled up in his eyes, his lips quivered, struggling to produce words. "Soon, soon, very soon."

  "What virus? Who shot you? You're not making any sense," Chris said as he tried to process what he was hearing. This guy was borderline incoherent but who could have shot him? Who was this Sarah? None of this made sense and Chris was starting to panic again. He needed to do something, anything. David's delusional rambling was unnerving.

  "I loved her," the pilot stuttered. "I believed but Engamy was scary. Engamy…"

  "Engamy? What the fuck is Engamy?"

  Another intense shudder tore through his body, his head drooped as he fell silent. His hand slid from Chris' leg. Chris thought he had died right then and there but then David's head snapped upright and he said, "She finally did it. She's coming…..you have to go, you have to stop her. Go!" His eyes pleaded with Chris.

  Now it was Chris' turn to shudder. The wrecked plane, his own near death, and the blood-covered dying man paled compared to David's bizarre words. Was he in the throws of some sort of pre-death delirium or was he telling the truth? None of this made any sense and the panic within Chris was starting to take control.

  Their gazes locked. Seeing Chris' confusion, David nodded softly and said, "Stop the virus."

  "What can I –"

  David's eyes suddenly grew wide with fear. Chris cocked his head and listened to the faint, unmistakable hum of a small engine plane in the distance.

  "Get out!" David said in his first words above a whisper. He grabbed Chris' shirt with both hands, pulling him so their faces were inches apart and screamed in his last dying breath, "Run!"

  He let Chris go as his head snapped back, and he started to shake violently. A thick glob of deep crimson blood oozed out of his mouth and he died in a slow
exhalation – eyes wide open and mouth still formed around his final word that reverberated in Chris' mind. Run! He scurried out of the cockpit and sprinted deeper into the woods where he lay down under some brush and watched the approaching plane through the forest canopy. It passed overhead, circled, and came back again. They had spotted the downed plane.

  The plane approached, low and slow. As it crossed the river, a staccato burst of machine-gun fire rose over the throttled-back growl of the engine. The spray of bullets pummeled the fuselage, sounding like heavy hail hammering the metal roof of a building.

  It passed unknowingly over his head and he lay motionless, listening as the monotonous drone of the engine faded into nothingness.

  He was scared. His mind spinning from the surreal experience and consumed with trying to piece together David's bizarre words. Given what had transpired, he had to get out of the woods.

  As he made his way down the river to his camp, he again heard the sound of a plane approaching. It was following the river, just like David had done. It rounded the bend and to Chris' horror, he saw that it was the plane that had strafed David's.

  6:17 pm Masardis, Aroostook County, Maine

  It had taken unusually long to get down the eight miles of river because the water was low. The canoe was constantly getting hung up on the river rocks because Chris was on the lookout in case the plane made another reappearance and not focused on the river. After narrowly avoiding being seen by the first two fly bys, he wasn't taking any chances. He stowed his canoe in the woods off the river bank and hiked up to his parked car.

  After driving on the main road for about ten minutes, Chris pulled into the small general store. He checked his mobile phone but knew it was futile, there was no signal here.

  He grabbed a Coke from the vintage 1930 cooler and walked up to the cash register. The aged proprietor sat in her usual spot, reading a romance novel. A tattered, hand-knitted shawl draped around her frail shoulders.

  "Do you have a landline I can use?" He asked as he held up his mobile phone. "I got no signal."

  "No. The line was going out every time it rained so I finally said enough. Nobody calls me anyway. I hear you can get a signal a couple of miles up the road toward Ashland."

  "Damn it," he said as he looked at the useless phone in his hand.

  "Everything ok?"

  "Fine," he said as he crammed the phone into his pocket.

  "How was the fishing?"

  "Okay," Chris replied, "Caught a few this morning."

  "Water's been just right this year. Folk's saying the fishing hasn't been this good since '96." She brushed a strand of nicotine yellowed silver hair from her craggy face, tucking it behind her ear. "Leaving early, aren't you? Something happen out there?" She looked curiously at him.

  "I've got to get back to Boston. Something came up." Chris decided to avoid her questioning.

  "That's too bad."

  "I think I'll try and get up to do some hunting this fall."

  "We sell licenses you know. Anything you need. My son says it's going to be good bear hunting this year."

  "Thanks," Chris replied. "You wouldn't know where I could find a state policeman, would you?"

  Her head came up. "Something happened out there, didn't it?"

  "Everything's fine. I just saw something this morning that I think should be brought to the attention of the authorities." Chris still hadn't come to terms with what happened this morning - the plane crash, the bullets and the dying man had shaken him at a sensory level but David's unbelievable words got to him at a much deeper, more visceral one.

  Chris knew there was something to David's wild story. He had no idea who this Sarah woman was, or if she even really existed, but seeing the bullet wounds and narrowly missing being riddled with machine gun shots himself by whoever was in that second plane, something very bad was going down and the only thing he could think to do was take it to the authorities. Even if he ignored David's crazy tale, there was the plane crash and murder to be reported but how could he tell the whole story without sounding crazy? These thoughts raced through his mind as he stared at the overly curious lady. He certainly wouldn't be telling her anything about the most eventful morning of his life. It would be local news before he had breathed a word to the police. And right now he wasn't sure he could trust anybody with what he had seen. He manufactured a story.

  "What was it?" Her aged eyes, made grotesquely large by thick glasses, locked on his.

  "Poachers. Up the river. They got a moose," he said as he tried unsuccessfully to hold her intense stare.

  "Is that so?" She said glancing at her watch. "Some folks poach because they need the meat. It ain't sport. They do it to feed their own."

  "Well, that may be but poaching is poaching in my book," he said after contemplating the woman's words for a moment.

  "Well, if that's how you feel about it then you'd probably want to go to the Fish and Game station up in Ashland."

  Chris wondered if maybe she was worried it was her son doing the poaching. "No, I'd rather just deal with a cop and let him talk to the game wardens. Those Fish and Game guys are always," he paused, searching for the right word. "..difficult."

  She chuckled. The Maine Fish and Game Department were considered the enemy by most locals who wanted to be free to live off the land and fish and hunt for their dinner when they wanted without paperwork and licenses and officials.

  "Well, usually about this time of day, you can find Bert Nadeau grabbing some supper up at the Wild Bear hunting lodge. He's the local law."

  "That the big log lodge about fifteen miles that way?" Chris asked, pointing north up route 11.

  She nodded, still studying him queerly as he paid for the soda, winked and said, "Thanks. See you in the fall."

  "You will," she said dryly, "I'm always here and if I'm not I'm probably dead."

  He could sense her watching him as he left the store for the short ride to the Wild Bear.

  It was almost seven when he pulled off route 11, wound down a short, crushed-stone driveway, and stopped outside the main lodge. Several other vehicles sat parked on the lawn – none manufactured after 1995, except for the shiny, light-blue Crown Victoria Police Interceptor with the state of Maine emblem stuck proudly on the side of the door.

  Chris climbed out of his car and stretched. He could feel the flabby looseness of his abdomen and chest as he jogged up the stairs. Too much sitting was making him soft. He wasn't fat, yet. It was definitely time to start working out and watching what he ate. Flabby didn't fit his self-description.

  The main door opened into a large, well-lit room with two groups of men in it – one near the bar and the other gathered around a pool table in front of a massive stone fireplace.

  The smell of the fireplace accented the warmth of the room. Underneath it, he could make out the homey aroma of a country kitchen – bacon, butter, beans and bread – mixed with a rich undertone of liquor and tobacco. It combined to create an air of relaxation, better than any homeopathic concoction Karen ever brought home. He could sense the ghost echoes of cards being dealt and hunter's tall-tales being told as he strode into the room and shut the door.

  The room fell silent. Everyone turned and stared as Chris scanned for the trooper. A lanky, grumpy looking man behind the bar said, "Can I help you?"

  "I'm looking for Bert Nadeau," Chris replied to the all-male audience. "The lady at the general store in Masardis said I could probably find him here."

  "That so?" The bartender said. "Hey, Bert. You here?"

  A large, barrel-chested man, who had been leaning over the pool table lining up his next shot, stood upright and said, "I think so."

  Chris had been expecting a uniform, but hell, this was northern Maine. Flannel was a uniform.

  "You're a state cop?" Chris asked.

  "I am," he replied as he returned his attention to his shot.

  As Chris walked across the room to the pool table, the silent stares continued. The man closest to him, cl
early the oldest, wore a red and black checked wool jacket. Chris nodded at him, and he simply smiled back, baring a mouthful of gold teeth – several of which were missing, but those remaining were all gold. Bizarre.

  "Nice teeth," Chris said to him, after having just about enough of his annoying grin.

  The old man brought up an arthritic finger and rapped on one of his canines with a thick, dirty fingernail. The disturbing tapping sound of fingernail on gold made Chris involuntarily grimace.

  "That's solid gold," he said in a thick French-Canadian accent. "That damn dentist up in Presque Isle. He wanted to give me silver, but I said no. That silver's poison and I know it. He was just trying to get rid of one more Frenchman. I told him to give me gold, or I'd take my sorry old ass someplace else."

  "Jesus Christ," the burly, red-haired man across the room said. "Alby's going to tell us about his teeth again."

  Several of the other men chuckled.

  "Alby. We heard about your teeth before, and I'm sure this guy ain't too interested," a man who looked like Jerry Garcia, only maybe a little dumber and shorter and definitely less successful, said.

  The sharp snap of two balls colliding silenced the men.

  "Damn," Bert said as the ten ball came to a stop on the lip of the side pocket. "Hey, Fern. You want to finish my game here?"

  "Sure," the Jerry Garcia want-to-be said as he did a well-practiced slide from his barstool and sauntered over to the table.

  Bert walked over with his hand outstretched. "Bert Nadeau," he said cordially.

  "Chris Foster." They shook. As Chris would have expected from his size, he had a grip like a vise. At six-two and about two-twenty, Chris had always considered himself big but he found himself looking up at this man who had at least four inches and a hundred pounds on him.

  "What can I do you for?" Bert asked.

  Everyone in the room watched intently. Apparently, Chris was the most interesting person to come in here in a while. Actually, that this lodge was even open in late June surprised him. Hunting season didn't start for another few months. These guys were undoubtedly all locals with nothing better to do than hang out drinking, shooting pool and passing time until they can go out in the woods and legally shoot something else.