Chapter 1

It's not uncommon for an old dog to take off and search out a place to die. I don't know if they don't want to burden their masters or if they just want to end their lives without anyone around. They may not be able to walk across the room with you there, but somehow they find the strength to make it to their final resting place, get as comfortable as they can and give up the ghost. This place reminded me of that.

I was deep inside a cave, in a kind of alcove that had widened as I crawled toward the back, exploring. Think of a king size mattress, then add another three feet to the top and you've got an idea of how big the opening was. At the edge of the headboard was a pond. I had a stick I'd been using as a crutch and it didn't touch bottom. The wall I was leaning against seemed to continue into the water but I had no idea how far out the water went in the other direction. I was far enough inside that it was pitch black. I was also pretty sure that the frostbite on my left toes and half the foot had turned gangrenous and a two inch hole I had on my right thigh was infected so I wasn't enthusiastic about doing any more exploration. As I say, I'd found my place.

The cave was a godsend. Winters in Montana are pretty raw. I figure it was somewhere between fifteen and twenty outside, not counting the rain that seemed hard enough to consider looking for an ark The first thing I noticed about the cave when I found it was the layer of sand on the floor. It went down about six inches before I hit rock. The next thing I noticed, as I dug into it with my hand was that it was warm. Thirty or forty degrees warmer than it had been outside. As I crawled inside, it smelled fresh. No animals had been in this cave for a long time, if ever. When I got to the alcove and the pond, I could feel warmth coming out of the wall and I could smell something that reminded me of our kitchen when Mom would get on one of her baking sprees. The whole experience of crawling in the cave was like coming into the kitchen in the winter and walking over to the stove to feel its heat.

My name's Val Hendrix. I'm seventeen and I was starting shortstop on our school ball team last year and am pretty much a shoe-in for this year. I'm in pretty good shape. My whole life has been spent on a ranch in Montana. We raise horses and cattle as well as a few sheep, goats, pigs and the inevitable chickens. My mom and sister keep a garden where they grow veggies for our table. We aren't completely independent, but we raise a majority of our own food. Let's just say my sister Vicky didn't sprout tits at seven because of the hormones in the grocery store food. She's a couple of years younger than I am, by the way. She's 15 now, and even though she's my sister, I can attest there's nothing wrong with her tits.

I'm not sure if I learned to shoot or ride first. I'd bagged a good half dozen coyotes before I started kindergarten. I don't know how many rabbits we've taken out when they thought they could get a free meal in Mom's garden. We've even caught a deer or two. Life on a ranch can be very unforgiving. One of the first things you learn is that it's them or us. And we did our best to make sure it wasn't us.

The Palmer ranch is due east of us. Seven miles between houses, provided you skip the road and ride straight across. They raise horses and cattle. Mr. Palmer doesn't hold with wussy animals like sheep and pigs. As far as vegetables are concerned, if he can't get it from a can, he's not interested. He also has a son and a daughter. Jimmy is a year older than I am and was my best friend until my last year in junior high when he went off to high school. Bev is a year behind me and was always trying to hang around us when we were growing up. Sometimes we let her, sometimes we took off so that she couldn't find us and other times their mother forced Jimmy to watch over her. Over the last few years, she and Vicky have been best buds.

I don't remember Mrs. Palmer real well. I think I remember her working in her own garden. She died when I was about seven. There was something going on with that; something that my parents didn't think a seven year old should hear. I wasn't allowed to ride over there for a while. I heard things when they didn't know I was around, something about a trial involving Mr. Palmer and some other man. I do know that Mr. Palmer turned mean after she died. You had to watch yourself around him to make sure he didn't blow up for no reason. He's still that way10 years later.

Jimmy and I were inseparable when we were kids. The first one done with his chores would head over to the others house and help him finish up. Then we'd pal around. I remember thinking it was the end of the world when his father took him hunting one winter when I was eleven and I was left home for a week. The next year, my father took me out, starting a tradition that's continued to this year.

The problems between us started when Jimmy went to high school while I still had a year left in junior high. He'd always been a little wild but then he went out for football and the team all just fed off each other. Most of the team thought they were gods and were due anything they wanted. Jimmy got busted for drinking a few times and was part of a group that went joyriding in the history teacher's new Lexus last Spring. The bunch of them were drinking that day and barely missed a head-on with an oak tree. There was spilled beer and vomit in the car when he finally got it back. The kids had to run a few extra laps at practice as punishment. Of course, it didn't hurt anything to have a football booster for a judge.

I know I succumbed to peer pressure a few times before he went off to high school. The elementary and junior high schools were right next to each other, so there was never that separation until he had to go a completely different direction to get to school. But while we were together, there were several times he dared me to do something I knew I shouldn't be doing. I got the "If Jimmy wanted to jump off a bridge" lecture more than once.

I saw him a few times my last junior high year. Most of the time he had one or more of his football buddies with him. I was strong enough to have gone out for football when I started high school but decided against it, primarily because of the asshole Jimmy had become. There was no doubt about it in my mind. Jimmy had definitely gone over to the dark side. We hadn't seen a lot of each other over the last four years.

My father came to me at the end of the summer and told me about a course that was offered once a year. He pointed out that with the winters in Montana and the way the government was going, learning to live off the land could be valuable. The course consisted of a couple of four hour lectures and then a practical. Teams of two people from the class would be dropped off at the edge of the forest. They would have five days to go eighty miles in the wilderness. They could take anything they could carry, the only exception being no weapons other than a knife. Once they got started, they could make spears, bow and arrows or anything else. Guess who showed up for the first lecture? You guessed it. Jimmy Palmer. We were teamed up, much to my dismay. Our two lectures were on the first two Saturdays in December. The actual trip took place the week between Christmas and New Years. There were five teams; each had different starting and ending points.

Mom drove us to the starting point on Sunday in her Suburban. It was about an hour and a half drive. Bev and Vicky were with us, talking about guys in the back seat the whole time. Jimmy and I were in the middle seat but we didn't talk about a whole lot other than what we brought with us.

Mom pulled off the freeway into a rest area. This was our designated starting point. The girls got out and we got our backpacks on with their help. Mom brought out a couple of transponders and flipped the switches, turning them on. That was the signal that we were starting our trial. She clipped one on each of our backpacks.

"OK, Boys," she said. "It's 1:18, Sunday afternoon." There was $200 for any team that made the 80 miles in less than five days. The winning team got the first prize of $500.

The transponders were a big selling point on the course. We were allowed out on our own to fight nature because of them. Through the wonders of GPS technology, we could be spotted to within a meter of our location. If something happened, it would be a piece of cake to find us. No three day searches with a posse and a pack of dogs. They also made it difficult to cheat.

Mom hugged both of us. She's big on hugs and can make us enjoy it no matter where we are. I could see Jimmy struggling with it but he let her go through with it. I swear, she could get away with hugging me and my date at the prom if she wanted to. You just can't say no to Mom.

Vicky hugged me while Bev attempted to hug her brother, only to get pushed away after a second or so. She moved over to me and jumped at me, wrapping her arms and legs around me, squashing her body as close as she could, resting her head on my chest for a few seconds. Without thinking, I grabbed onto her to keep her from falling.

"You better come back to me," she said, sniffling and swiping at her nose with the back of her mitten.

Now, you've got to realize, this came totally out of the blue. Bev and I have had almost nothing to do with each other our whole lives. When we were younger, she was with Jimmy, even if I was right there with them. Nowadays, she was with Vicky all the time. We said Hi when we saw each other but that's about as far as it got. I mumbled "OK" and she let me go, running back to the car. I wasn't so far out of it that I didn't recognize there was a real woman under that parka, not the skinny little girl I always thought of when I thought of Bev. She turned and waved hesitantly, then got into the car.

It was 100 yards from where we parked to the first trees of the forest that was going to be our home for the next week. Jimmy had taken off and was halfway there. I smiled and gave a quick wave at the faces looking at me from the car, then hustled to catch up.

He slowed down enough so I could catch up but I was still a good fifty feet into the woods before I did. "Wait a minute, let me check out the map, will ya?"

"Whatever." He sat down on a fallen tree.

I reached back and pulled out my waterproof map and my compass. Just as I thought, the path we'd been taking was almost thirty degrees off. I pointed to the left. "We need to head in that direction."

"Whatever you say, Columbus."

As Jimmy talked about himself, which, by the way, is his favorite subject, I was glad he and I went our different ways back then. I matured on my own, without his influence. I had my share of girlfriends and I'm happy to say I treated every one of them with respect. We messed around and a very good friend and I gave our virginities to each other last summer. There have been others since but there have also been girls I didn't take all the way. Each girl was an individual to me, with feelings. I don't believe I forced anyone into doing something she didn't want to do and it makes me feel good to be able to say that.

Jimmy, on the other hand, seemed to think that females were receptacles for his and the rest of the team's sperm. Once they'd fulfilled that function, they were discarded until the next time they were desired. And once they were used, they were always considered available, no matter how they felt about it.

He referred to them as cunts or whores or bitches, never as girls or women. It was all bad but I think the story that pushed him beyond redemption as far as I was concerned was about a girl a year behind me in school. She was always trying to be popular but never quite making it. There were a lot of jokes made about her by the in crowd. Somehow she ended up in the football locker room with one of Jimmy's buddies. She was bent over, holding onto one of the benches while he fucked her from behind. Jimmy decided he was ready for some fun and stood in front of her, dropping his pants. He held his cock in front of her face.

"OK," she said. "Just tell me when you're gonna come. Please?"

"Yeah, sure, Baby," he told her as he stuck his cock in her mouth.

Jimmy went on to explain how he and his buddy made it a game, his buddy slamming into her, pushing her forward, then Jimmy thrusting till she gagged and pulled away from him. He had two fists full of her hair so she couldn't get get completely away. He kept pushing harder and harder each time until he felt the blockage at the back of her mouth give way a little. By now he was almost ready to come and kept it up, pushing a little further each thrust. He put his hands behind her head, wrapped the fingers together and yanked her head towards him on his next thrust. As he felt her defenses give way and plunged down her throat, he said, "Here it comes, Bitch."

They left her lying across the bench, a puddle of vomit in front of her and a combination of blood and semen leaking out of her. They headed out to smoke a joint and sent a trio of players in after her. What Jimmy didn't mention was that she never came back to school. I recall hearing rumors that she'd tried to kill herself around the time he was talking about. There were also rumors that her parents had sent her away to finish school somewhere else when she got out of the hospital.