He looked down, seeing only the silhouette of the canoe against the light of the ice like a fish swimming in the depths below, and wondered how such a little thing could hide so big a secret. He clambered back down, rushing back across the frozen pool, and set the candle on the seat of the canoe. He lifted his leg, stepping over the lip of gunwale, and reached for the seat. But his back foot slipped. Peter fell forward. His stomach smashed into the thwart. He screamed into his mouth, taking the surge of pain to his ribs inside him. But no echo cracked out across the cave, and he was OK. He was OK, he kept telling himself, as he scrambled to his feet and slowly began his search.

There was nothing in the ribs of the canoe. The undersides of the bow and stern seats were empty too. He searched the underside of the gunwale, running his hand across the lip down the length of the canoe on both sides. Still nothing. He stopped. He waited. He took the candle in his hand, watching how the changing shadows highlighted inconsistencies in the panelling as the light travelled across it. To the stern of the canoe, just beside the tip of the deck, was a gap where a piece of wood had been prized away from the frame. It wasn’t wide enough to hide much in there, but Peter brought the light closer and saw that something had been wedged inside. Paper. A papered file, even. For a moment he thought it must be the assembly plans Sheriff O’Hurn had told him about. But when he tugged on the folder to release it, he saw that it was no such thing.

The dossier came from the U.S. government. A sticker as red as a branding iron, declaring Top Secret, had been stamped above the document’s title, Operation Code Name: TIMBERDARK. Peter stuffed it inside his jacket and made the climb back up to Henry’s bedroom. When he hoisted himself back out on to the floor, Teddy was still clattering about in the kitchen and there were no signs that the sheriff had come back yet. He placed the dossier on the floor and quietly opened it.

Operation Code Name: TIMBERDARK

Joint Resolution
To authorise the use of United States armed forces to destroy all persons hereby defined as being direct descendants of the Dead: ‘Returnees’

Purpose

To deter any future acts of terrorism. And to pre-empt any existential threat posed to humankind by the Returnees either through their violence or evolutionary replacement.

Whereby such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect its citizens from grave acts of violence and their future extinction.

Warnings Overruled