Chap 2
A voice gasped and exclaimed "John, it's human!"
"What?" John exclaimed as he about jumped out of his skin. He didn't know where to focus his attention, on the body or the voice. "Who's there?" he shouted as he shined the light in the direction of the voice.
"Just little ole me," said Susie as she walked into the light.
"What are you doing out here? You said you didn't want to go."
"I just wanted to check you out mister," she said playfully. "Now you've gone and killed someone I see."
"I didn't …" he started to defend himself but realized she was joking. It bothered him that she had followed him for two hours and he didn't even have a clue. He had been all worked up that she wouldn't come, he had been oblivious to someone following him. It could have been fatal if a big cat had been stalking him. He made a personal note to be more careful and observant in the future.
"It is human," John responded quietly and felt for a pulse. "No pulse, so that rules out the need for medical care. Wouldn't be easy to get a doctor out here, two hours into the wilderness."
Susie was stunned, but not paralyzed with fright. Not every day you find a body in the dark.
"You doin' OK?" John asked with concern.
"Sure," she responded with strength in her voice. "I'm on the Sabattis Search and Rescue."
Cool, thought John, she's my kind of special.
"Not the first time I've pulled a body out of the woods," she continued. "Give me the light and let me have a look at him. I want to see if what killed him is obvious."
Susie took the light and went over the body inch by inch, looking for external signs of trauma. He was face down with one side of his face to the ground. Following her Search and Rescue training to observe, she noted the basics as she looked for a cause of death. "Dark man, probably Arabic by my guess," she tabulated out loud. "Looks like six foot, heavy set, maybe 250 pounds. He's not dressed for wilderness hiking. Shorts and tennis shoes aren't enough even in the summer. No shirt but nothing looks out of the ordinary. Here, give me hand and help me turn him over."
John grabbed a leg while Susie grabbed an arm and together they muscled him over on his back. They saw it at the same time. The light revealed four thin wires leading from an ugly wound below his left ribcage. Each wire had a different color insulation and led to a small box clipped to his shorts. The box had a tiny red light blinking about once a second.
"I know enough about electronics to know that's a transmitter," explained John. "It didn't kill him. It's just a monitor. The short black wire out of the bottom of the box was transmitting information. Could still be transmitting. Like a wireless microphone."
"Well, whoever did this to him is probably looking for him," Susie said with concern. "We should get out of here and call the authorities."
"We're too far in to get back out tonight," calculated John. "We should go on to the cabin and deal with it in the morning."
"What about the body?" asked Susie. "The wolves will eat it."
"It's too heavy for us to get it very far without a litter, so I suggest we protect it as best we can and leave it at that," John stated. They spent 20 minutes in silence looking for large rocks and piling them on the body like a large cairn.
"Looks good to me," John said with fatigue in his voice. "Let's head out. Still an hour to go."