Chapter 86 - Ghost Signals in the Valley
The descent through the old timber flume was a harrowing journey through pitch-black forest and knee-deep powder.
The flume was a rotting wooden trough, half-collapsed under decades of deadfall and snow, but it provided a straight, sheltered route down the vertical contours of the ravine that prevented the helicopter's infrared sensors from spotting us beneath the thick canopy of spruce and hemlock.
Lily didn't complain once. She gripped the back of my coat, taking two strides for every long, lunging step I took through the snowdrifts.
Above the trees, the storm raged unabated, but every few minutes, the rhythmic *thump-thump-thump* of the helicopter blades echoed across the ridge, circling lower now, searching the lower valleys like a hawk hunting mice in the dark.
At four in the morning, the dense forest suddenly opened into the clearing of the abandoned Peabody timber mill.
Rusted corrugated iron roofs sagged under mounds of snow. Broken flatbed trailers lay scattered across the clearing like prehistoric skeletons. Through the driving snow, fifty yards down the gravel service road, sat a battered, dark green flatbed truck, its engine idling with a deep, mechanical rattle that was barely audible over the wind.
*Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeep.*
Two short honks. One long.
I held Lily’s hand tightly as we broke from the tree line, sprinting across the open snow toward the passenger door.
The cab door swung open before we even reached the running board. A burly man with a grizzled gray beard, wearing an oil-stained canvas work jacket and an orange wool cap, leaned across the bench seat, extending a massive, calloused hand to haul Lily inside.
"Get in! Get down on the floorboards!" he barked, his eyes scanning the tree line behind us with practiced paranoia.
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I clambered into the cabin, pulling the heavy steel door shut behind me with a solid thud.
The man didn't waste a second. He slammed the floor shifter into first gear, popped the heavy clutch, and the old truck lunged forward, its snow chains biting viciously into the unplowed gravel as we accelerated into the blinding dark of the mountain pass without headlights.
