Memory Clouds (The Circuit Book 1) by Tony Moyle

Author:Tony Moyle [Moyle, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Limbo Publishing
Published: 2020-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

*****

The firing range was some distance from the barracks and while Holst zoomed up the hill in his Jeep, Jake wasn’t surprised to discover he’d be hiking. The walk would do him good. No doubt it would result in him being forced to attempt the world push-up record when he arrived late, but it was worth it. It gave him some time to think. At the rear of the barracks the path curved around the inviting waters of the quarry and climbed up a gentle incline towards the summit. It was probably no more than a couple of hundred metres high and tiny compared to some of the mountains he’d scaled on his visits to the White Mountains.

As he marched the image of those trips was transposed effortlessly on top of the route like a stencil. Monstrously beautiful, snow-capped mountains whose peaks were often lost beneath the sulphur clouds. The trunks of White Pines racing to join their rocky cousins and justify their right to be equal. Hiking boots squelching through the moist turf like they were walking through bowls of custard. Birds chirped in the bushes on their never-ending quest to gather food for their fledgling families. The occasional deer dashed across the path, disappearing into the ferns to cast doubt on whether you actually saw it at all. A sense of vulnerability shuddered inside him. It was driven by a vulnerability that he always experienced when he was cut adrift from his own natural environment, left to rely on whatever skill or heart he brought with him. You had to be brave to explore the wild on your own.

The memory suggested he’d done just that.

An internal shadow cast doubt on its authenticity.

Would his overprotective parents have allowed it? It didn’t seem congruous to how they acted towards him the rest of the time. Whenever he’d sought to place himself in a position of potential danger, at least in their eyes, they’d always stopped him. Would they really let him go into the wild on his own? He thought it unlikely. He stopped marching to examine the memory more closely. There was something about his body position that didn’t look right. His arm was stretched out at a forty-five-degree angle and his hand was holding tightly to thin air? It looked an uncomfortable pose to maintain. What was he holding? He shook the memory away as the purpose of his walk took priority.

The vibrant signs of life that crowded those past trips had no resemblance to his current hike. Even the vegetation struggled to survive on these fractured muddy banks. By the time he reached the apex of the hill, where the land flattened out, he’d not seen a single animal, bird or insect. Apart from Holst and the weeds, life on the island had been extinguished. If Bornholm had managed to survive the rising tide, unlike its neighbours, why had it been purged of life?

He breached the summit and saw Holst’s Jeep parked next to a massive corrugated shed.

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