Enemy Closer Read online

  ENEMY CLOSER

  AK Weller

  Copyright © 2022 AK Weller

  Cover art by Kate Russell. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

  Dedicated to my dear friend for his encouragement, criticism, and enthusiastic hatred of adverbs.

  I hope you’re still out there somewhere, doing weird shit.

  Saturday, June 20, 2020

  Hesperus, Colorado

  I ducked into the cabin just long enough to drop my stuff inside the door and grab a few things before setting off again. I didn’t waste time hunting for the key; I left the door unlocked. I’d seen all of three people since turning onto the unpaved road leading there, and the latest had been over half an hour ago. In rural southwest Colorado, I was as far away from civilization as I’d ever been, for all the good and ill it would do me. At least I had one companion, the only one I really needed. Bounding along beside me as I walked around the backyard enclosure and onto the path behind the cabin, my two-year-old German Shephard, Dude, was wagging his tail in luxurious, unhurried arcs. I alternated between eyeing the path ahead and watching my dog bask in an environment he’d never experienced before.

  The air was crisp and smelled like pine, a balmy seventy-degree breeze kicking up every few minutes to stir the otherwise complete stillness. Though dry, the forest was a riot of life, desert shrubs rubbing shoulders with scrub oak, pinion pine, and the occasional cedar. Red earth, fallen pine needles, pinecones, and the eponymous rocks crunched under my feet. I had to stop frequently so Dude could sniff absolutely everything twice. The unencumbered joy in his buoyant body language made me briefly, perfectly happy.

  A branch snapped ahead of us, crashing noisily to the ground, and I froze in place. For a couple seconds I couldn’t breathe around my heart, lodged as it seemed to be in my throat; but I relaxed as soon as I realized Dude had barely given the sound his attention for a second before carrying on. If he wasn’t worried, I needn’t be; but that quickly, the perfectly happy feeling vanished and I was focusing on the unpleasant task ahead of me. Somewhere in these woods were answers, answers that might get me killed; and it was only a matter of time before Philip tracked me down. I didn’t even know where to start looking, and now that I’d gotten a taste of the vast emptiness around me, success seemed unlikely.

  I caught up to Dude, and we hiked for a quarter hour more until I had to stop for a break. I was breathing hard after my first real exertion at this altitude. Disappointed in my own frailty, I told myself was the thin air, not my leg muscles. In a few days I’d be used to it and ready for anything.

  We’d stopped in a grassy meadow bordered by trees to the north, east, and south, a sheer cliff face about twenty feet tall looming to the west. Above that, the mountain continued to climb to a height of about twelve thousand feet—more of a hill, considering we were already standing at eight thousand.

  The woods were as dry as tinder, making me wonder what Dude and I would do in the all too likely event of a forest fire. Where would we go? Would we be able to make it out via the endless gravel road between here and the state highway, or would the woods burn too fast, trapping us within?

  Unburdened by my dark thoughts, Dude trotted away through the tall grass. He had evidently decided to do his job, and I smiled as I watched him establish his protective perimeter. As long as we stayed in this place, he would consider it his duty to guard this imaginary line against anything bigger than a mouse.

  I strolled to the center of the clearing, evaluating. A city girl to the core, I decided I loved the serene isolation and untouched beauty of these desert woods; but I was already bored. Dude finished his patrol and came back to me, plopping down a yard away to stare at me with an expectant expression. I pulled out my cell phone and checked to see how many bars I had. The top left-hand corner of the screen said ‘No Service’.

  “Fantastic,” I sighed, slipping the useless object back into my pocket. I looked down at Dude and asked, “How about some target practice, then?”

  All those months behind a desk could not have improved my marksmanship, and it was about time I got in some practice with my Glock 29. Though my dad had gifted the handgun to me well over a decade ago, it had been locked in my closet since I moved from Texas to Washington, DC a few years ago and was no longer allowed to carry it around. That had been an adjustment.

  “I think I’ll aim for that stump,” I informed Dude, who’d never even heard gunfire. Something told me he wouldn’t like it.

  I drew, aimed, and fired three rounds. Even at ten yards, I missed twice before hearing the satisfying thump of lead striking the dense tree stump. Dude barked once, startled.

  “Sorry. That was loud.” I considered emptying the magazine, a mere eight more rounds, but I thought better of it. My spare magazine was in my backpack, in the cabin, and my compact 10mm wouldn’t do much to defend me against predators if I turned it into a $600 paperweight.

  It was 6:00 when I got back to the cabin, later than I’d guessed. For as long as I could, I unpacked, showered, straightened up a little—needlessly—and avoided thoughts of dinner. There would be a few frozen meals for one in the freezer, courtesy of the cabin’s owner, maybe even a bottle of wine in the pantry; but neither of those things was what I wanted. I wanted to sit down in front of a huge flat screen television and order sushi on my phone while flipping through a mind numbing selection of movies and TV shows; I wanted to hear the constant rumble of city buses lumbering past on the street below my apartment on Dupont Circle; I wanted to have to turn the volume up to drown out my neighbor Dominque’s “little get together.” I wanted the city. The city.

  Instead I had a combination VCR and 24-inch CRT TV and the endless peace of no fewer than fifteen miles of privately-owned land in every direction. I had a shooting range of sorts, a very big gymnasium for my own personal use that smelled of pinion pine instead of men’s stinky socks, and even my dog; but if I wanted to hear city sounds, I’d have to pop the right movie into the VCR, close my eyes, and fake it. And I might as well forget about sushi.

  Eventually I surrendered to the optimism required to go rooting around the tiny kitchen for this theoretical bottle of wine, and I was rewarded for my efforts by a relatively pricy bottle of merlot. Not knowing if I’d make it to the grocery store tomorrow, I allowed myself half a glass, then it was time for bed at 8:30. With no light pollution, it felt more like midnight. Giving in to my better instincts, I ventured out into the pitch-dark night a few feet from the front door to look at the stars. I left Dude inside, the better to prevent a last-minute perimeter check that would have me waiting on the porch for an hour or more.

  I craned my neck to look directly upward and gasped, hardly believing my eyes. There were so many stars, it seemed like every light in the universe was staring back at me. Some were so bright I couldn’t look directly at them. For several minutes I was able to focus on the breathtaking sight, but eventually I was distracted by thoughts of everything under those stars. Bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, coyotes, all stalked these woods, and worse things I refused to think about. As dry as it had been lately, most would be pretty hungry. I feared nothing, neither in the city nor the country, with Dude watching over me; but Dude was scratching at the door, wordlessly reminding me that all I had was my pistol and my wits to keep me safe out here. The latter sent me back inside with one last admiri
ng look at the stars.

  After feeding Dude, I scanned through the handful of books I’d lugged along, ignoring the new ones. I wanted familiarity, lines that would practically read themselves to me as I lost consciousness. I snuggled into the bed in the loft upstairs, cradling The Scarlet Pimpernel and all the hope of comfort it contained.

  I made it to chapter two before a tickling sensation on my right shoulder wrenched me away from the story. Hoping it was my hair, I turned my head just enough to see a dime-sized brown body and eight horrible, spindly little legs on my bare skin.

  The scream that exploded out of me was primal, a sound I could only make when under attack by a spider. Convulsing, I leapt from the bed and brushed myself off all over, twice. I combed through my hair, stripped naked and shook all my clothes out, and flipped through my book to check for any of the spider’s friends. It wasn’t like I’d ever encountered two spiders at once, but that didn’t prevent me from compulsively looking every time one dared to cross my path.

  The loft was out, obviously. I settled for the couch downstairs, cocooning myself in a thoroughly inspected blanket that prevented any contact with the untested upholstery.

  Sunday, June 21, 2020

  Hesperus, Colorado

  I rose with the sun, blinking back rays of light that pierced the thin curtains over the east-facing windows. First on my to-do list was a trip to the store for groceries, at least until I stood up and, naked as a baby, remembered the little episode from last night. I streaked into the bathroom, found the old clothes some previous guest had left in the linen closet, and threw on a men’s extra-large t-shirt. Breakfast would have to wait until after I’d de-spidered the loft. I let Dude out to do his business and then had to face facts: There was a spider in the cabin.

  “You knew this would happen, dummy,” I mumbled to myself, rooting around in the kitchen for a weapon. “It’s the fucking wilderness.”

  Some kind soul had left a can of arachnid spray under the sink. I hesitated to pick it up, repulsed by the villainous-looking spider, tick, and scorpion on the label. Did Raid not know what kind of people resorted to chemical warfare just to kill a tiny bug? I pushed past my discomfort and grabbed the can. Armed with this and a vacuum cleaner, I cleaned and sprayed the entire loft, stripped the bed, and dumped the linens in the washing machine. A part of me knew this was all pointless—the spider had probably hitched a ride in my braid from the hike yesterday—but I had to do it. This was my kryptonite, my Achilles heel, my absurd arachnophobia; but I had to admit, it had turned me into one hell of a maid.

  By the time I was satisfied the loft was inhabitable, it was already noon. I threw on the first clothes I found and jumped into the car, absurdly eager to go grocery shopping. Breakfast on the way was Durango Joes, which was pretty much my only option unless I wanted wine for breakfast. I had to leave Dude in the cabin; and as soon as I got on the road, I felt a stab of lonely regret.

  Like a lunatic, I had kept up a steady, one-sided conversation with Dude on the interminable drive from Washington, DC to Hesperus, Colorado. Aside from occasional wild-eyed glances from the passenger seat, he had ignored me in favor of watching the scenery race past the truck’s windows, transforming from lush swamps to misty mountains, from dense forests to rolling hills to plains, and finally from fertile mountains to desert wilderness. But he had drawn so much out of me, fecklessly helping me piece together the disparate threads of my life into something I could actually cope with, mostly. Without my loyal pooch, I was just a 33-year-old, nominally unemployed, single woman in a black Dodge Ram, driving forty minutes one way to buy a month’s worth of groceries at the Walmart in Durango. I didn’t even know how many times I’d have to do this.

  * * *

  I returned to the cabin at a quarter to three, a couple hundred dollars lighter and bearing enough food and other supplies to get Dude and me through more than a month of total isolation. The June day was deliciously warm, dry as the inside of an oven and perfectly, utterly still. I could scarcely stay inside long enough to put away the perishables before heading out again.

  With Dude at my side and the basics in my backpack, I set out to explore the woods immediately around the cabin. I had to adjust my holster from my right hip to the front of my waistband because of the straps of the backpack; and as we hiked, I practiced my draw again and again until it felt good. Everything I missed while preoccupied with this task was thoroughly inspected by Dude, who guided me on a meandering but generally upward path.

  I let Dude lead me for a good hour, long after I was satisfied I would be able to get my sights on target in under one second without accidentally clipping my femoral artery in the process. Guessing we had about four hours of daylight left, I stopped and sat down on a fallen log. A minute later Dude realized I was no longer behind him and came trotting back, allowing me to serve him some water in his collapsible dog dish. I nursed my own bottle of water, munched on a granola bar, and contemplated my existence as it currently stood.

  I had no real neighbors here. A retired couple named Ernest and Doreen Perkins, the cabin’s owners, and their cows lived on the closest adjoining property; but they were normally miles away and, for the rest of June, in Ireland. My boss had rented the cabin from Doreen, and she’d handled everything from Ireland. Chances of running into any other people were pretty low. The land had been settled in the early eighteen hundreds, though, so remnants of human habitation over the past two centuries were bound to crop up if I kept hiking and looking hard enough. Perhaps I would, just to give myself someplace to start. But today, my dog was leading me toward the summit, and I was feeling brash enough to try to get there and back before dark.

  “What are we, about halfway up?” I asked Dude, who cocked an ear at me. “Probably less, the way you hike.”

  I checked the altimeter on my watch and was dismayed to see we’d only gained 900 feet in elevation, leaving over 3,000 between us and the summit. Dude had been meandering more than I realized. I glared up at the sky, reevaluating. Maybe I would start again tomorrow and try to carve a more logical path from the cabin to the summit. I stood, stretched, and packed Dude’s water dish into my backpack. I met his eyes and said, firmly, “Haus.”

  He set off at once, confidently cutting an easterly, downhill course. Though it was instantly obvious we weren’t returning by the way we’d come, I had no doubt his nose would get us back to the cabin.

  After an hour and a half of hiking, however, I had to ask myself: Was Dude trying to get back to the cabin, or to Washington? After another hour and a half, I had my answer. One look at the mountain ridge across the valley told me we were too far north and, very likely, already east of the cabin itself. Though I’d been fighting defeat for the better part of an hour, I groaned and sat down, calling Dude back to me.

  “Well, this is perfect,” I announced. No sooner had the words left my mouth than I felt rather than heard a long, low rumble to the north. A moment later I heard a rush of water nearby, no more than a stone’s throw to my right. I got up and edged toward the sound, pushing apart a thick clump of scrub oak to reveal a sharp drop on the other side. Roughly twenty feet below me, a deep creek bed had been transformed into a stream, which was quickly gaining volume and speed as rain from the north fed into it. If I followed it south, chances were I’d come to the bridge I had crossed to get from the gravel road to the cabin. I had no idea how long that would take.

  “Thanks a lot, Dude,” I snarled.

  The sum of my supplies—phone, map, water bottle, fire starter, first aid kit, spare magazine, collapsible dog dish, flashlight, jacket, key to the cabin—fit in a backpack I’d had since high school. I was hungry, tired, and furious at myself for being such a ridiculous city slicker. Would it have been so hard to put down a cairn or two on our way up, or to pack some food? Why would I think Dude would suddenly consider the little cabin our home, when the apartment in Washington was the only home he’d ever known?

  The rain came around the time the last ray
s of the sun disappeared from the tips of the highest trees across the valley. It was light but cold, and as it fell the surrounding woods began to emit the sweetest smell I’d ever smelled, so delicious I stopped to take it in. My anxiety about being lost in the woods started to slip away with each breath, until I realized I was actually glad to be outside, glad to be alone, even glad to be tired and dirty. I closed my eyes, leaned back, and let the rain tickle my face until the sensation caused an involuntary shudder to rack my body. Laughing, I shook my head to get rid of the excess water; and Dude, not to be left out, vigorously shook the water out of his fur and onto my clothes. Finally, the smell of wet dog broke through my lack of motivation. We set off south, following the creek.

  As the light faded, the storm picked up until the sound of the stream rushing along at our left was nearly lost in the cacophony of raindrops. I fished the flashlight out of my backpack, clicked it on, and the last dregs of the happy feeling from before finally drained away. It was fully dark, and we should have gotten to the bridge already. Even Dude had stopped wagging his tail and was merely plodding along at my side, periodically huffing.

  “This isn’t so bad,” I reassured him with forced cheerfulness. “Just think how good it’ll feel to curl up in front of the TV and watch a movie when we get home.”

  A piercing bark erupted from beside me and Dude shot off like a cannonball, crashing through the scrubby bushes ahead and vanishing into the darkness. I heard a few more barks, a splash, a growl, and then the sound of the rain took over again.

  “Dude?”

  Creeping forward, panic welling up inside me, I directed the beam of light from right to left and back again. Dude was nowhere to be seen. The bushes through which he had disappeared were dense and tall, and they stretched from the steep bank of the creek on the left as far as the light would shine on the right. I had to pocket the flashlight, lean forward, cover my head in my hands, and force my way through with sheer inertia. Scratched and probably covered in angry spiders, I emerged on the other side, fumbling in my pocket to retrieve the flashlight. I clicked it on and panned around again.