"Bill is gone."
I shot to my feet before I was really awake, wobbling on unsteady legs in the predawn light. "Huh?" I asked as I tried to keep my balance while wiping at my blurry eyes. I hadn't been asleep for long, a couple of hours at most, and I was still out of it.
"Bill is gone, " Shawn repeated, gesturing through the gloom in the direction of the fresh grave that we had just filled the day before. I couldn't really see to where we had buried Maya, but I squinted in that direction anyhow. "I went to check on him and he's not there. I've looked around. I can't find him anywhere."
Sam appeared next to us. "I didn't find him either," the guy said, looking around himself with a frown.
"You didn't see him leave?" Shawn asked him.
"No. There hasn't been any movement out there at all. I thought that he was still sitting up there, you know... by the grave."
Awake now, I felt the need to go see for myself. When I hurried off into the tall weeds, Rex jumped up from where he had been laying next to me while we slept, and jogged in ahead of me. The dog seemed to know where I was going, and led the way through the dark right to the flattened area around Maya's final resting place.
I already knew what I was going to find before I got there, or rather, who I wasn't going to find. Abruptly, I felt silly for having to see for myself that Bill was no longer sitting by the grave. Spinning around, I tried in vain to see our friend.
"Where would he have gone?" I asked out loud.
Down on the road, I could just make out three shapes moving around the area that we had camped. Standing there on that little hill, it struck me just how cold it had gotten over night. My clothes were so damp from the heavy dew that the cold was seeping through them and making me shiver. While I had been sleeping, with Rex on one side of me, and Shawn on the other, I hadn't noticed the temperature. But I was feeling it now. Rubbing my arms in an attempt to warm up, I followed the path that we had started to wear through the weeds back down to the road.
"It's cold," I said when I drew within earshot of the others again. "He can't have gone too far. Bill's stuff is still over there." I indicated where the bags that both he and Maya had been using were sitting on the side of the road. "Maybe he just needed some time alone?"
"Yeah, maybe," Shawn answered me, looking around himself with a frown on his face.
There was no way that I was getting back to sleep even as tired as I was, so I went over to where we had been sleeping, gathering up my things and stuffing them back into my bag. Pulling my dry shirt over top of the damp one helped with the shivers enough to keep me from feeling like hypothermia was about to set in, even if it wasn't the most comfortable solution. I didn't feel like stripping out of my wet clothes in front of two of the men who were present, and there wasn't any place to find privacy in the middle of the road, so it was the best that I was going to get.
I thought over the situation while I worked. Shawn and I had taken first watch, and we had checked on Bill before going to sleep. The man had still been sitting silently beside his wife's grave, ignoring everything around himself. Sam and Marcus had taken over then, and I'd already heard Sam say that he hadn't heard anything in the night. That had to be good news, right? If something had attacked Bill, surely someone would have heard the commotion. I glanced down at Rex. I was sure that the dog, at least, would have noticed.
Deciding that Bill must have just gone for a walk, I wandered back over to the others. There wasn't much to say, and we stood around in uncomfortable silence as the sun slowly made it's presence known in the east. The vaguely ill feeling that had began in my gut only got worse as I tracked the approach of morning. By the time that the fiery ball was full up in the sky, anxiety had me chewing on my dirty fingernails.
"He should be back by now," I muttered.
Getting up from where I had been sitting, I wandered around on the empty road for a few seconds, looking this way and that for our missing friend. The crow from the previous day was back, screaming at us again from nearby treetops. Fortunately, that chilly wind hadn't started back up again, because it was already cold enough in our damp condition, so the world around us was still and mostly silent. My hope that I would catch sight of Bill walking back to us somewhere in the distance did not come to pass.
When I wandered back to the group, Marcus and Sam stood together, looking like they had been having some sort of private conversation. Shawn was up on the hill, looking down at the ground. I figured that Rex must be with him because the dog was not with me. When the two men nearest to me noticed that I had returned, Marcus glanced my way with an unreadable expression on his face, before saying something to Sam that I couldn't hear. I felt myself get instantly irritated by the pair, but before I could say anything a sharp whistle cut through the air.
Shawn was waving at us, gesturing to come to him. Sending one last dirty look to the men, just to let them know that I saw them whispering together, I whirled around and jogged into the grass.
"Look at this," Shawn said as I made it back to the grave.
It took me a second to see what he was pointing to, but then I saw it. There, in the tall grass, was a faint trail leading away from the grave. The browning grass hadn't sprung back after someone pushed their way through it. I would have dismissed the trail as being created by the dog on one of his many trips into the weeds to sniff around, but one tall weed along the trail was nearly as tall as I was, and the top of it had been broken off. It was way too high to have been snapped by the dog.
A person had walked away from the site, going in a straight line through the weeds, toward the edge of the forest.
Marcus and Sam had followed me to the grave, and they both figured out the same thing that Shawn had when they saw the faint marks in the grass. "He must have gone that way." Marcus said unnecessarily.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "We should go look for him."
"Yeah," Shawn agreed. "He may have run into trouble out there."
"Wait a minute," Marcus cut in. "Wandering off into the woods is not a great idea. Besides, we have to get to DC, or have you both forgotten?"
I must have been getting used to him saying things like that, because I suddenly found it really easy to just ignore the guy. Pretending to not even notice him, I nodded to Shawn and followed him into the grass. Marcus muttered something under his breath angrily and stomped off back in the direction of the road, but Sam silently fell into step behind me after only a brief pause.
Following the trail that Bill had left was easy enough now that we knew what to look for. He had walked in a perfectly straight line, heading diagonally away from where we had camped on the road, and toward the trees. It was easy enough, at least, until we actually hit the treeline.
As the heavy brush and grass gave way to forest, the trail disappeared. The tall trees blocked most of the sun from reaching the ground, meaning that the vegetation changed. Within a few yards of entering the trees, I couldn't tell which direction Bill had gone anymore.
The others seemed to be struggling to tell which way to go just as much as I was. They circled and peered around themselves. Shawn bent to study the ground for a second. Sam turned in a slow circle, looking off in every direction intently. But neither of them had any more clue where Bill had gone than I did. After I wasn't sure how long of the three of us floundering around, I heaved a sigh and had to admit that I had no idea which way to go next.
"What do we do now?" I couldn't stop the note of frustration that I heard in my own voice.
Shawn looked as frustrated as I felt. His hair was messed up even more than normal from him running his hands through it. He cursed, but didn't have any other answer to give me.
Sam had been a ways away, and he made his way back to us when he heard us talking. I looked at him hopefully when he came back into view, but he just shook his head and walked over to stand a few feet away from us. After a second he spoke up, "I hate to say this, but Marcus is right about something." He paused as if gauging how his words were going to be taken, before plunging ahead. "We can't just go wandering off in some random direction hoping to run into your friend. He could be anywhere."
Shawn tugged his hands through his hair again, looking around himself again. He sighed when his gaze finally came back around to land on me. "He's right, Bri. Bill could have gone anywhere once he got to these trees. Without an idea of which way he went, we aren't very likely to just stumble across him."
I didn't like it. But I knew that they were right. Bill had walked away from the group, disappearing quite effectively into the forest. It would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack to randomly find him among all of the trees. If Bill was going to come back to us, he was going to have to manage it on his own.