“Thank you,” Green said. His voice shook. His adrenaline was starting to flow at the simple prospect of being alone in the dark woods.
He didn’t want her to go. He fumbled for something to say.
“Oh, Alf and Jerome say hi.”
“Them those kids from the gas station?”
“Yeah. I just met them.”
“Huh. I’m a little surprised they remembered me out here. Folks will surprise you, won’t they?”
Green didn’t answer. He was distracted, staring out the windshield at the formidable patch of night meant to be his new home. His fingers crept to the acorn in his pocket.
Dancer smiled and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll settle in. The most dangerous thing in the world is people and there are blessedly few of them around here. All the other things in these woods will mostly just be curious about you. Can’t much fault them for that. Well, have a good night. Welcome. I’ll expect your next payment when you deem the time to be appropriate. I’ll let you know when we’re having our next camp community meal. Come see me anytime, but I gotta warn you up front…”
Dancer paused for emphasis and Green’s eyes widened.
Serial killer. Serial killer. Serial killer.
“One hat per customer.”
With that, Dancer hopped out of the car, quick as a cat, and was swallowed up by the darkness. He imagined he would hear her footsteps trudging back down the road. He imagined wrong.
He gathered the courage tostep out of his car soon after Dancer left and he stood in the dark trying to acclimate himself to his new surroundings.
A memory surfaced.
Years ago, while working a temp job at a call center, Green had a supervisor named Dylan who said he had been in the U.S. Navy SEALs. Dylan was a thoughtful, quiet type. One day, on a lunch break, Dylan broke the customary silence and told a story of his time in the Navy. He had been called on to do dive work at night, removing communications cables. It wasn’t far from shore, but still the kind of deep that meant you couldn’t ascend too quickly without inviting decompression sickness. While working, slicing wiring, Dylan had cut himself badly.
“I nearly lost my thumb to that cut,” he said. “Thankfully, surgeons saved it.”
He showed off the puckered scar at the base of his thumb. It looked like a wad of chewed bubble gum.
“And that wasn’t the worst part of it,” he said. “There I was. Deep underwater. Pitch-black. Trying to hold pressure on the cut. Shit, trying to hold my thumb on for all I knew. I was bleeding out into the open water. And I had to take my time surfacing. Wouldn’t do me much good to rush up and die of the bends. And, all the while, I could just imagine how far my blood was traveling into the water, billowing out into the blackness. I could imagine what might be smelling my blood, tasting it, tasting me. How far would the blood travel before I surfaced? It was a breadcrumb trail leading straight to me, wounded, helpless, and blind. An easy meal. What was nearby? What was hungry? Most of all, if something did come for me, I knew I wouldn’t even see it before I felt its teeth. Sure, I knew there were sharks. Even a small shark can take you apart. I also had absolute faith that there were things worse than sharks. Things that have never been photographed, never described by science. And I knew, just knew, that they were looking at me. I can’t explain it, but they were there, watching me. Things I couldn’t comprehend were deciding if I would ever make it back up to the open air. And their decision, their risk-to-reward analysis, was gonna be based on stranger things than just hunger.”
At the time, Green just thought Dylan was pulling his leg. He only half believed the man was in the SEALs. After that conversation, Green started taking his lunch break in his car.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He stood in the cold air, holding his flashlight in both hands, looking at the little footpath that led to his campsite.
Just fifty feet that way.
A puff of breeze tumbled the dry leaves at his feet.
Something that might have been an owl called in the distance.
He licked his lips and got back in the car.
Tomorrow. I’ll set up camp tomorrow.
He wasn’t going to learn the ins and outs of his new camping equipment in the middle of lightless woods surrounded by unknowncreatures with unknown business. It was reasonable to sleep in his car. Perfectly reasonable.
Dylan smirked from the past and took a bite of his vending machine sandwich.
Green rested a hand on the steering wheel. He thought about hard metal doors and nice predictable locks. He thought about engineers and safety tests. Stamped metal and molded plastics, all built by human tech with human purposes. His car was a tiny embassy of the known world amid the nations of wild things.
