“Not over there,” Maddie shot back, making a disgusted face. “You’re gross, Dante.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean right here.” When he dropped his knees a little to zip up and looked down past the blackberries, a glint of silver struck his eyes. He craned his neck to see better.

“Maddie,” he said, turning to face her, “there’s a pickup truck down there. Let’s go check it out.”

It wasn’t Bigfoot, but it was something more interesting than just standing around waiting for something to happen, so Maddie agreed.

“Maybe someone junked it here when the logging stopped?” she offered.

“Sounds reasonable,” he said, as they slid down the ravine.

As they got closer, Dante could make out the tailgate.

“It’s a GMC,” he said. “This truck’s only a few years old.”

He started pulling off branches.

“Someone ditched it here,” she said.

“Wonder why? Better than my POS of a car.”

“No argument there, Dante.”

They walked around the vehicle. It was blackened by fire and the windows were broken out. Driver’s door hung open. In the truck bed, a mishmash of carpet and paint cans.

“Remodeler’s truck?” Maddie suggested, flicking away a yellow jacket.

Dante assessed the contents and gave her a quick nod.

“Stolen,” she said.

“Yeah, someone took it for some fun up here and ran it off the road.”

Maddie poked at the contents in the truck bed with a stick.

“Nothing to salvage here,” she said.

All of a sudden, her eyes locked on something in the truck bed. She stood frozen for a beat. Her eyes locked. She started to scream. It was a horror movie scream, the kind that slides up and down in volume and doesn’t seem to stop.

Dante, who was looking for a registration to see who the truck belonged to, hurried to where she was standing.

“You okay? Did you get stung?” He wrapped his arms around Maddie and tried to calm her.

Maddie stepped away from the truck; though her mouth was moving, she remained mute. All she could do was point the stick at something in the back of the truck.

He drew closer.

“What is it?”

“There,” she said, taking the stick and tapping against what she wanted him to see.

A desiccated human hand protruded from the carpet scraps. It was small, a child’s or a woman’s. The fingers were curved and crab-like.

“Holy shit,” Dante said looking at his girlfriend as she leaned into a sword fern and vomited.

Nine