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Chapter Five - A Gentleman's Game

Louis sat under the tarp listening to the radio, idly whittling a stick, and periodically slapping one of the seemingly millions of mosquitoes that surrounded him.

Five days ago the men had torched the van, scaled the large wall that surrounded the forest, and walked into the unknown wilderness with nothing more than what little supplies they could carry. They had walked for two days, the mountains growing ever larger around them, before Collin gave the okay to set up camp. It was here that he would spend the summer. The entire fucking summer! He could be in Mexico, living like a king! Instead he was here, in some godforsaken forest living like an animal.

The woods were quite odd. He remembered learning about old growth forests as a boy, but never had he been to one. Almost all the old growth forests had been cut down, he remembered his high school biology teacher telling him. Obviously, this one hadn't. The hemlocks here were hundreds of feet tall, and possibly ten feet in diameter at the base. The trees were probably older than civilization itself. He wondered, why was this not a National Park? Surely it could attract many tourists.

There was something more to the forest, there had to be. Why had there been a fifteen foot wall topped with razor wire surrounding it? Why would the government want to keep people out of such a beautiful place? This isn't the fucking Soviet Union or Mexico, what need did they have for walls? He mulled over the thoughts as he whittled.

Collin had said that the place didn't belong to anyone. Not America. Not Canada. No one. Mike had claimed that that was fucking stupid, for the area had to belong to someone. Apparently it didn't, though. There was nothing he had seen that indicated that anyone had ever set foot there. Quite odd indeed.

He looked around the camp. They had used a large tarp and some sticks to make a lean-to, which, to the man's surprise, worked rather well at keeping the rain off. Fire was easy, seeing as all three of the men had cigarette lighters.

"God, what I would do for a pack of fuckin' smokes" he thought out loud. He had but one left. All morning he had flipped it around his fingers, the craving for nicotine all too tantalizing for the man. He had nearly smoked the confounded thing, but had withheld, deciding to save it for a time that truly deserved a smoke. On top of that, he had a mild hankering for a line of cocaine. Cocaine: the line to nirvana! His hunger only amplified the withdrawal symptoms. Collin and Mike had gone out to hunt, and he was praying they would get something.

The whole time he had been there he wished he could be back at NYU in his nice dorm room enjoying some coke and a hogie. The thoughts made his mouth water.

Just wait. he told himself. By the end of the summer he would be out of this place with a cool two-hundred thousand in his bank account. After that he was planning on making his way to Europe, France maybe. France looked nice. As far as he knew the English-Irish war hadn't yet spilled over into France, yet.

The small radio that sat next to him was picking up a signal from some station up in North Massachusetts, or Maine as it was so often called. The powerful chords of Neil Young's Cowgirl In the Sand calmed the man somewhat.

A mosquito buzzed in his ear, and stupidly he tried to slap at it, only to have it be replaced with five more.

Bug spray, he thought regrettably, Shoulda brought some fucking bug spray!

A twig snapped above him, and his head jolted up, only to see a pair of squirrels playfully chasing each other through the trees. The woods, though beautiful, scared the ever-living shit out of him. The forest was no place for some fucking kid from New York! He knew perfectly well that there were bears in the woods, but he also knew that they were a smallish breed that posed no threat to him. There were also cougars, or was that out west? He couldn't remember. Nonetheless, he kept his pistol and his machete at his side at all times if anything did try to fuck with him. That ought to stop a bear, it sure as hell had stopped the woman at the bank. Still, sitting alone at the camp made him a great deal nervous about his surroundings.

And then there was also the footprint to worry about.

He had seen it yesterday, when he and Mike had been fishing down by the large river that flowed through the notch. Mike had just caught a salmon when he saw it. In a small patch of sand between the rocks was a print. He was no naturalist, but whatever had made the print had to be big, an educated guess would place it around the size of a small horse. But this was no hoofprint. In the sand he could clearly see four toes, all tipped with what appeared to be some type of claw. The print was maybe ten inches long by six inches wide. When he had shown Mike, Mike said it couldn't possibly be bear, pointing out the fact that, at the back of the print, there was the outline of another rear facing toe.

Louis had quickly concluded that whatever had made the print was not something he would want to meet anytime soon. He wondered, was this why they had closed the forest off? Thoughts of massive beasts flashed through his mind; the kind one might see in a cheap horror flick. Instinctively his hand dropped to the pistol he wore, making sure he still had it.

Beside him, the music suddenly cut out, being replaced with the static-filled voice of Collin.

"Lou, you there?"

Annoyed, Louis grabbed the mic.

"Yeah, I'm here. Where you at, man?" he grumbled.

"We're just over the ridgeline, about ten clicks north of base." Collin replied, his use of military terms greatly confusing Louis.

"How far? Use miles for christ's sake!"

"Oh, uhh, roughly seven." Collin amended, "That ain't important though. Listen, man, we just got a deer! It's gonna take us a fuck of alotta time to haul this motherfucker down there, expect us to be back late in the afternoon."

"Thank god, I'm fucking starvin'."

"Damn straight! Over and out." And with that, Collin's transmission went dead.

Louis smiled to himself as he switched the radio off, his ears ringing in the sudden silence.

---

It's important to note that, despite his current situation, Louis Bekker had not always been a criminal. He had really never seen any need for criminal activity, aside from buying pot. Buying pot, that was the only crime he was guilty of!

His troubles had found their start when he met Collin and Mike at a frat party.

At first they had just been casual friends, playing poker and sipping brandy on friday nights. Collin was thirty, and claimed he was only got into the school because of the his service in the military, but Louis knew a corrupter when he saw one. Collin obviously had connections of some-sort, for servicemen never got into the college. The man had been shot twice and, as he had later learned, was involved at some level in the Irish Republican Army, but he had never asked him about it.

Mike was nineteen, from Texas, born dirt poor, and a child prodigy. The man had gotten a scholarship to the college when he was seventeen, thus ending the long line of drop-outs and meth-heads that seemed to make up his family. Mike didn't deserve to be here.

The two had seemed nice enough, that was, until Collin had gotten The Plan.

It had been a normal friday night when Collin had suggested robbing the bank. The Plan, he called it. The Plan would end all their troubles. The Plan would be easy.

Times were tough, it didn't take a genius to tell you that, but never had Louis even contemplated robbery. At first the two younger men had just passed Collin's suggestions off as nonsense, but by the end of the poker game Collin had convinced them that robbing the bank would make them millionaires. Millionaires.... it was all too enticing for the two young men.

But it had all gone to shit.

Four innocent people dead and only seven-hundred thousand dollars to show for it. If only the teller hadn't pulled the fucking alarm! No one would've gotten hurt if the dumb fuck had just stayed down. He just had to be the fucking hero. And he was, until Collin had ended the hero's life with a shotgun slug to the temple.

All of this had happened to the twenty year old in the past month. He had thrown his whole life away, and was now sitting on his ass in some godforsaken forest. He wondered, would he ever see his family again? His nice home in Brooklyn?

---

He put the knife down and admired the small figurine that he had carved. It was a knight; one of many that he would have to make if he wanted to play chess. Odd game, chess, thought the man. A game that, through the ages, had been regarded as a gentleman's game, played by kings and nobles, and now, in the year 1974, a killer and a thief desired to play the game. One would think that card games would better suit a person of Louis Bekker's nature. Indeed, he did carry a pack of cards in his breast pocket, but rarely did he use them for anything other than cutting lines of coke. No, Louis fancied a game of chess, and he was determined to have that game, even if it took him a month to carve the various pieces.

Finding the wooden knight to be satisfactory, he placed the small figure next to its two comrades; a king and his queen. He then brushed the wood shavings from his lap and stood, neck and fingers sore from the intricate work.

Suddenly he heard something.

It was brief and barely audible, but he had heard it. He had heard the unmistakable sound of voices fluttering on the breeze.

Louis froze, all senses alert and ready. He held his breath and focused his ears, hearing the voices once more. They were near, down by the brook it seemed. The law was coming to get him! They had come, despite Collin's reassurance that they would not, and they would drag him back to New York and throw him in a prison to rot.

He wasn't going to let that happen.

Pistol in hand, he crept behind a large boulder. The leaves beneath his feet sounded tremendously loud in his ears, like some heavy-metal drum solo. With the law drawing near, he supposed he should call Collin and Mike on the radio, tell them to get the fuck away from here, but there wasn't the time.

He reached into his pants pocket and fished out his wallet. The faded leather felt cool and familiar to the touch. With trembling hands he placed it gently on the ground beside him.

Sitting back against the stone, he flipped the little switch on the side of the pistol from 'safe' to 'fire'.

Then, he waited.