The Silent Ones by James Hunt

Author:James Hunt [Hunt, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-25T22:00:00+00:00

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Isolated on a platform three stories up from the forest floor, Michelle Bentz had a three-hundred-sixty-degree bird’s eye view of the dense forest landscape that engulfed the ranger station where she was located.

At fifty-two, Michelle was a seasoned veteran, with almost thirty years on the job, and she still wore her uniform with pride. She kept her shoulder-length gray hair pulled tight in a top knot bun, which was concealed beneath the fedora she wore to protect her from the elements.

Years of working outside had left Michelle with plenty of wrinkles, but she kept in shape from all of the activity of patrolling the massive park. During her career patrolling these woods, she had seen her fair share of predators. But when the call came in over the radio from the park’s headquarters about Dennis Pullman, it was the first time she had been afraid of the wild that surrounded her.

The police had told her to stay put, to lock the door, stay in the shelter, and keep away from windows until the helicopter arrived to airlift her out. But as Michelle lowered the binoculars, finding nothing in the dense foliage to the east, she walked to the window facing the west, struggling to grasp the reality of what was happening.

Ten years ago, she and a jury of her peers had found Dennis Pullman guilty of murder in the first degree on all twelve counts that the prosecution had charged him with. She sat in that courtroom, watching that animal smirk as they laid out all of the evidence, reveling in gruesome detail how he killed his victims, how he scalped them when he was done and kept the skins as trophies.

Michelle turned away from the window, lowering the binoculars as she pinned her back up against the wall. Her pulse raced, and her breathing had suddenly hyperventilated. She shut her eyes, reminding herself that help was on the way.

But the images from the courtroom flashed in her memory. She saw the bruised and bloodied bodies, contorted in the small, shallow graves that Dennis had dug for them. The way that he discarded those people like they were nothing but trash. She didn’t want that to happen to her. And she wasn’t going to let that happen to her.

Michelle mustered enough courage to push herself off the wall, keeping low and now avoiding the windows as she returned to the radio. “Station one, this is station seven, do you have an update on my evacuation?”

She released her hand off of the talk button, and static blew through the speaker. She waited, growing more anxious the longer the silence lingered.

“Station one, this is station seven, do you copy?” Michelle spoke with urgency, hoping it would propel her message toward her rescuers. But again, only static answered. She slammed her fist onto the table, knocking over the receiver.

Sweat dampened the undershirt of her uniform, and Michelle paced the center of the small station that was feeling more and more like a coffin the longer she was forced to stay.

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