Torched

  To distract myself, I picked up my binoculars and scanned the forest. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, maybe the other MEDics, or the first few loggers coming to work. But all I saw was the green of the trees and a couple of yellow, hulking pieces of equipment, silent now.

  Suddenly, in a section of the forest that was still untouched, a flash of reddish-brown caught my eye. I swung my binoculars back.

  What had I seen?

  At first I thought it was someone’s head. Then I caught a clear glimpse. Just for a moment. As soon as I saw it, it was gone, obscured by green branches.

  But I knew what it was.

  A lynx.

  And in its mouth, caught up by its nape, it had carried a squirming lighter-colored ball of fluff. A lynx kitten.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Coyote, I saw one!”

  He groaned.

  I repeated, “I saw one. A lynx. I saw a lynx!”

  Coyote sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Really?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was looking through the binoculars when I saw one walking along a branch.” The words tumbled out. Seeing the lynxes had taken me out of myself, out of the worry and speculation that had made it hard to sleep. “And it was carrying a baby in its mouth. A kit.”

  His eyes widened. They were so large and green that he almost looked like an animal himself. “Did you get a photo?”

  “No. It was just for a second, and then it was gone.”

  “Show me where you saw it.” He pushed himself up his knees.

  I knelt down beside him and pointed as best I could. The part of the forest where I had seen the lynx and her kit was untouched, a sea of dark green. He got his own pair of binoculars and began to scan methodically, back and forth. “Are you sure it was a lynx?” he asked, never taking his eyes away.

  I nodded. “I checked it out on the Internet before I came up here, and I’m sure this was one. Its back legs were longer than the front, and it had the tall tufts of hair on its ears. And it was carrying a kit by the scruff of its neck, like a cat with a kitten.” Suddenly, I didn’t care that this whole thing was a game, that I was only here under false pretenses to get evidence on MED. There were lynx in the Oregon forest, lynx where there hadn’t been any for thirty years. And I had seen two of them.

  “Get the camera, would you?” he asked. “If we can get a photograph, we can stop the logging today.”

  I handed him the camera, picked up my own binoculars and joined in the search. Coyote didn’t say anything as he swept his camera lens back and forth, but every now and then he would take one hand away and absentmindedly rub my back or touch my shoulder. His fingers felt like they trailed sparks.

  What was I going to do about Coyote? About us? Of course I wanted to continue what we had started last night, but in the cold light of day it seemed impossible. Doing that meant more than lying. Worse, it meant putting Coyote at risk.

  A half hour later, we were interrupted by a sound like distant thunder. We turned to see a big tree bounce off the ground about a mile away. The loggers were at it again.

  Coyote gave up and got to his feet. “Lynx are nocturnal, so they’re probably asleep,” he said as he stretched to get the kinks out of his back.

  “But if they’re nocturnal, what are the chances we’re going to get a picture of them?” I asked.

  “Now that we know the general area, I’ll call Blue and get her to set traps so we can get some physical proof. The lynx may leave its denning area to hunt, but it will have to come back. And when it does, one of the traps should attract her attention. With luck, she’ll rub up against it and leave some fur behind.”

  “And once we have the fur, we can prove the lynx is there,” I said. “And then we can shut PacCoast down.”

  Coyote smiled. “Exactly.” He picked up the cell phone. “First, I’m going to call Cedar.” When Cedar answered, the words poured out of Coyote about the lynx and the kit and the need for a trap. But it seemed that Cedar had news of his own. After listening for a while, Coyote said, “Okay,” and clicked off.

  “Cedar says now that we know the lynx is really here, we have to take immediate action. He wants us all at the logging site tonight at midnight. We’re going to disable the machines.”

  “You mean firebomb them?”

  Coyote shook his head. “If the wind blew a spark wrong, we could burn down the whole forest. But there are other ways—sugar or sand in the gas tanks or slashing the tires.”

  “But if we leave the sits and disable the machines, isn’t that dangerous? They could arrest us. They could even chop down our trees while we’re gone.” Unconsciously, I patted the rough bark of the Old Man, then pulled my hand away. You’re not a real MEDic, remember? You’re only doing this to save Matt. Wasn’t my father more important than any lynx? But the answers weren’t as clear as when I had said yes to the FBI. It was getting harder and harder to keep track of who I was and why I was doing the things I did.

  Coyote leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Cedar says we don’t have much choice. I think he’s right. We’re saving this one tree while watching a forest across the valley fall to the saw.”

  This seemed like an opening. I decided to test the waters. But I didn’t press the button on my watch to record our conversation.

  “Maybe Cedar wants to change tactics,” I said cautiously. “When I was looking on the Internet for info on the lynx, I also found some stuff about MED. Some sites say that MED is going to turn violent because change isn’t happening fast enough.”

  “Are you worried about that?” Coyote raised one eyebrow. “You shouldn’t be. It’s just people blowing off steam because they get caught up in the moment.”

  Relief surged through me. Maybe I should have recorded the conversation, just to get Coyote off the hook. “People like Hawk?”

  “Hawk, Grizz. And Liberty. Maybe a couple more. But it’s just talk.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  Coyote sighed and looked away. “Pretty sure. It’s a long way from talking to hurting someone. I can’t imagine they would really spill blood.”

  “But what if it’s not just talk? What if it’s true that sometimes the only way to get attention is through violence? Not to just hurt the machines, but to hurt the people who are doing the bad things?”

  Even with his new beard, I saw how Coyote’s jaw clenched. “If I ever thought they were serious, I would leave the group and join another one, or form my own. We have to be true to our principles.”

  This was it. It was time to push aside my own desires so that I could save Matt. Coyote wouldn’t understand, but to get the evidence the FBI wanted, I had to make sure I was part of the group that might consider violence. Besides, the sooner Coyote separated himself from me, the better—for his sake.

  “Have you ever thought,” I said carefully, “that maybe they’re right?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The rest of the day passed very slowly. At first, Coyote tried to argue with me. Then he just fell silent. The only time he spoke was to call Blue. He told her about the lynx and asked her to set traps, but his joy at what I had seen had clearly faded. He didn’t seem angry at me, exactly. It was deeper than that. It was as if whatever was between us had died. Tears filled up my head, pressing at the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them come. I felt like I was splitting in two.

  After night fell, we shouldered our packs and Coyote showed me how to rappel down, feeding the rope through the belay device. He went first, lowering himself from the sit and shouting up when he reached the ground.

  Rappelling down was much faster than the slow, painful climb up. I kicked off from the trunk, the rope sliding through my fingers. There was a long stretch where my feet touched nothing at all. Yards down, my feet found the trunk and pushed me off again. I was weightless. It reminded me of the men who had walked on the moon, with their long, bounding leaps.

  Coyote was waiting for me at the base
of the tree. Without a word, he turned and walked away. I followed his silhouette and the bobbing light from his headlamp. We hiked for a long time in silence. Finally Coyote sighed and said, “I don’t know about this. This feels different than the Hummer dealership. For one thing, this will probably mean war to Stonix. And it’s not like they don’t know exactly where we are. If we manage to get back into the trees, they’ll have us arrested for vandalism as soon as we touch the ground again. We’ll lose any points we’ve made as peaceful protesters.”

  “But what else can we do?” I asked. “The forest is being cut down. And I saw a lynx today, Coyote. A lynx and her kit, when there hasn’t been one in Oregon in thirty years. If we don’t do something right now to stop the logging, there will probably never be another lynx in Oregon again. Ever.”

  Just then we heard the sounds of someone approaching, carelessly stepping on every dead branch. We both froze. But the small circle of light bobbing toward us turned out to be Jack Rabbit. He surprised me with a hug. “You’re lucky you’re so far from the logging,” he said. “I’m going deaf, dude. The trees scream when the loggers kill them.”

  “Are they gone for the night?” Coyote asked.

  “I watched them all leave around six,” Jack Rabbit said as we came to the muddy clearing where the machines slept. “Nobody here but us MEDics.”

  I felt tiny as we approached the feller buncher, two bulldozers and three hulking yellow machines I couldn’t identify. Grizz leaned against a tire nearly as tall as he was. Liberty and Meadow were standing next to the feller buncher, arguing in whispers about the veganness of various food items. Liberty claimed that Heinz ketchup contained cow’s blood, while Meadow countered that Guinness beer contained lard and fish scales.

  “Really?” Seed asked in a horrified tone, and was shushed by everyone, including Liberty and Meadow. Then Seed saw me.

  “Oh, my God.” She rushed over to us. “Is it true? You guys saw a lynx and a kit this morning?”

  Coyote looked at me directly for the first time in hours. “It was really Sky who saw it.” His voice was sad, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “Really?” Jack Rabbit punched me on the shoulder. “Dude, that is so awesome! Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “Did you get, like, a photo?” Grizz asked.

  I shook my head, wishing again that I had thought to grab the camera.

  “That is so great,” Meadow said. She gestured at the machines. “So even this hasn’t driven them away?”

  Just then, Blue walked into the clearing. “Do any of you know about this?” she demanded, holding out a piece of paper. “It was stapled on every telephone pole back in town.”

  I took the paper from her and read it in the circle of my headlamp. Coyote leaned over my shoulder, but I noticed he was careful not to touch me.

  At the top of the paper was the MED logo, a series of linked figures encircling the Earth. I had always thought they looked like a chain of paper dolls, but the words underneath were anything but childish.

  I hit the record button on my watch as Coyote read aloud.

  BEWARE!

  We are issuing fair warning.

  At the urging of the Stonix Corporation, PacCoast Logging

  is destroying old-growth forest that is pristine lynx habitat—

  just when lynx have made their way back into the state after

  an absence of thirty years. If Stonix continues down this path,

  the lynx will soon vanish, not just in Oregon, but from Mother

  Earth Herself. The situation is desperate. We will no longer

  hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice and provide

  the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal

  battles, pleading, protest and economic sabotage have

  failed so drastically to achieve.

  You have been warned.

  So it was beginning, just as Richter had said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Who wrote this?” Coyote demanded.

  “Don’t you think it’s pretty obvious?” Blue asked as the others crowded around. “It sounds just like Hawk.”

  “Is that what you think, Blue?”

  At the sound of Hawk’s voice, we all jumped. I wondered how long he had been watching us. Blue met his glare directly, but most of the other MED members looked at each other or the ground, anywhere but at Hawk. They were like children caught doing something naughty.

  “So you’re saying you would hurt someone?” Blue demanded, her hands on her hips. “Don’t you know these loggers are only just trying to feed their families? Harming one of them isn’t going to accomplish anything except to turn people against MED.”

  Cedar entered the clearing. “Let me see that.” He took the paper from Meadow. As his eyes quickly scanned the words, they narrowed to slits.

  “Hawk,” he said quietly, “we have been over this. We cannot advocate violence. And if you are, you need to leave. Right now. We need pure hearts, especially at this time.”

  “I didn’t write that!” Hawk protested. “I don’t know why everyone thinks this is from me!” Even as he proclaimed his innocence, there was still a smirk on his face. “All I’ve ever said is that we need to keep our options open. But you know what? Maybe that MEDic is right, whoever he is. There’s a lynx and a kit less than two miles from here. After thirty years, a miracle has happened, and we need to do whatever needs to be done to protect it.”

  “And that’s why we’re here tonight,” Cedar said calmly. “Not to harm people, but to harm the machines. We must disable this equipment before they ruin the last, best chance the lynx have. The ones Sky saw were on the opposite side of the parcel, closest to Liberty and Meadow’s sits. When we get back in the trees, you two are going to have to try to get photos. With any luck, you might even get one tomorrow morning.”

  “I already set the traps to try to snag some fur,” Blue said. “Once we hand it to the EPA, they won’t be able to deny it.”

  Cedar nodded. “But that may take some time. So no matter what, we still need to give this lynx some breathing room. Jack Rabbit, I want you to patrol the perimeter. The rest of you—cut hoses, slash seats and smash gauges. Pour honey or sugar or dirt or whatever you’ve got in the fuel tanks and radiators. But do it fast. I want us all out of here and back in our sits in the next three hours. It’s more important than ever that we hold our ground.”

  As I took a knife from my backpack, I found myself back in the space I had been in when we firebombed the Hummer dealership. The place where it was okay to destroy, to break every rule I had spent sixteen years obeying. Around me, I heard the others laughing as we got ready to ruin thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment.

  The knife I had brought from the sit flashed silver in the moonlight. I clambered up the feller buncher, swung open the door and plunged the knife into the seat right at the greasy spot where the driver’s head would be. I dragged it down, the vinyl only reluctantly giving way. Stuffing leaked from the gash.

  Meadow was in the bulldozer next to me. She unclipped the fire extinguisher from the wall of the cab and aimed the nozzle at the dashboard. White foam billowed everyplace. Meanwhile, Coyote tried to hammer the end of a screwdriver into one of the bulldozer’s huge tires. Grizz climbed into the other side of the feller buncher and crouched next to me. He had a hammer, too, and he brought it down hard on the dash, shattering it into tiny shards of plastic that pricked my face.

  I jumped down from the machine. Liberty was spray painting CUT IN HELL! on the side of the feller buncher. I looked around for something I could still cut with the knife, which now had a broken tip. I had just decided to cut the wires in the engine when a shout tore through the night.

  “Cops!” Jack Rabbit yelled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Run,” Cedar yelled. “Run!”

  I turned off my headlamp and sprinted with my arms outstretched, trying not to slam headlong into something. As I scram
bled past one of the bulldozers, Meadow jumped down from the cab. She landed wrong, and I heard her groan as she went sprawling. I hesitated for a second but then kept running. I had to dart around Seed, who seemed rooted to one spot. She had her hands pressed over her mouth, but it didn’t muffle her screams.

  A voice on a bullhorn growled, “Stop! Police! You are all under arrest for trespassing.”

  Still making for the shelter of the trees, I veered away from the sound. Lights from powerful flashlights sliced through the night behind me. I half turned as a dozen cops dressed in black Windbreakers ran into the clearing. Instead of eyes, they had long black telescopic lenses—night vision goggles that could see our body heat. They looked like cyborgs out of a horror movie.

  Grizz ran at the cops with his hammer raised and was jumped by two of them. Another cop pulled Seed’s hands behind her. Everyone else was running, chasing or being chased. I didn’t see Coyote anywhere.

  I ran faster, reaching up to switch back on my headlamp. As I did, I tripped over a root and went flying. I landed before I could get my hands out, but I was up and on my feet in a second, like a blow-up clown toy.

  The next second, a hand grabbed the back of my T-shirt. “All right. You’re under arrest.” I tried to twist out from the cop’s grasp, but he yanked both my wrists behind me and bound them together with what felt like a thin plastic tie. When I twisted my wrists, it was impossible to get free.

  Mumbling the Miranda warning, the cop steered me back to where I had come from. Seed still stood in the same spot, except now that she was handcuffed there was nothing to stifle the sound she was making, half scream and half sob. Cedar, Liberty, Jack Rabbit and Blue had all been cuffed and were standing in a line with Seed. A cop stood in front of them, and when Jack Rabbit started to say something, the cop yelled, “Shut up!”

  I turned in a circle, looking frantically for Coyote. Had he managed to outrun them? One cop stood with his foot on Grizz’s back. His hands were cuffed behind him with another white plastic tie. Meadow sat on the ground, her face twisted with pain. A cop knelt in front of her, examining her ankle.