Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(90)

We split up. Dalton assigns me Storm and Petra, and he sends us to check flat and open areas along the river. Meanwhile Felicity knows a half dozen spots where they camped over the years, and she’ll show those to Dalton.

We’ve been searching for over an hour when our paths cross and Dalton asks to take Storm. While he wanted her with me for protection, she’s better sniffing those old campsites to see if she can pick up a scent.

Petra and I continue hunting along the river. She’s been quiet, but now she says, “I heard you brought Maryanne to town.”

I grunt a nonreply.

“Did you get any answers from her?” she asks. “About what the hostiles are, how they came to be?”

I bend and check what looks like a boot print in well-trampled snow.

“I know you thought the council was responsible for them,” she says. “Did you find anything to support that?”

If she said it with even a hint of mockery, I wouldn’t answer. But her tone sounds genuinely curious … with a hint of trepidation. Is that fear I’ll uncover the truth? Or fear that there is a connection?

Her gaze shutters, giving me nothing.

I consider. Then I say, “Tea.”

Her brow furrows. “What?”

I twist, still hunkered down. “The hostiles consume a narcotic and a hallucinogenic tea. Same as the Second Settlement, who seem to use the latter for something that seems almost like prehistoric rituals.”

“Prehistoric people consumed ritual hallucinogens, probably because the altered state made them feel as if they were seeing and communicating with their gods.”

I nod. “Whatever the hostiles have added to the Second Settlement’s brew makes theirs far more potent. And more dangerous. Theirs is addictive, and it affects free will—they’re happy and content, and they stop thinking about their other life, eventually stop remembering they had one.”

She listens, saying nothing.

I continue. “In high doses—or maybe with an added ingredient—it induces frenzies. Heightened id, lowered superego, if you took Psych 101.”

A strained smile. “I did. Does that explain the violence, then?”

“Apparently.” I rise. “I believe it’s a natural evolution of something that began in the Second Settlement. They discover this root that makes a ritualistic tea. Someone from the settlement experiments and creates a new version and then breaks away from the group—or is kicked out—and starts their own community, which devolves into what we have today.”

I wait for her to jump on the fact that I’m absolving the council, but she still seems to be processing, so I say it for her. “A natural evolution based on natural substances, with no outside influence. I still, however, hold the council responsible for allowing the devolution. Rockton has been reporting hostiles since Tyrone was sheriff. Yet the council dismissed the claims as…” I throw up my hands. “I don’t even know what they thought people were seeing. Bears? Settlers?”

“I was told it was both,” she says, unexpectedly. “That some settlers were more violent than others, and some had ‘reverted’ more than others—not being as ‘civilized’ in their dress and their mannerisms. The more extreme accounts were thought to be wild animals mistaken for humans, probably bears.”

I wait for her to add a justification, a defense. Being a thousand miles away, the council understandably questioned the wild stories, like the tales of ancient sailors spotting manatees and somehow mistaking the ugly sea mammals for beautiful women. Isolation plays tricks on the mind, heightens fears and desires. To the council, Rockton’s hostile sightings were no different from Bigfoot sightings. Even I will grant them that, and I expect Petra to point this out. Maybe she thinks it’s obvious. Maybe now that I’ve acknowledged my mistake, she doesn’t want to rub my face in it.

When she says nothing, I continue. “The point is that with so many sightings and encounters, they should have encouraged investigation. Better yet, they should have sent a team to investigate. What they’d have found isn’t a tribe of happy former Rockton residents gone native. It was a drug-enslaved cult where at least some of the members, like Maryanne, didn’t sign up voluntarily. She was from Rockton. Her whole party was—the two men the hostiles brutally murdered and the two women they took hostage. Maryanne played along, expecting the chance to escape, and instead fell under the influence of the tea. The other woman did escape—and was hunted down, tied up naked, and left to the elements and the predators and the scavengers. This is what the council allowed.”

Petra looks as if she’s going to be sick. I don’t expect that either. She takes a deep breath before straightening with, “All right.”

“All right what?” I say, a little sharply.

Silence. Then, “All right, I understand, and I agree this has been handled badly.”

I wait for more. When it doesn’t come, I’m annoyed, and I don’t like that. Am I spoiling for a fight? My mistake with the hostiles and the council has bruised my ego, so now I want Petra to say “I told you so” so I can light into her?

Today’s hunt has me on edge, and Petra’s not giving me the response I want so I’m being cranky.

Forget hostiles and the council and Petra. None of them have anything to do with returning Abby to her parents.