The dark clouds in the sky parted slightly, revealing a sliver of the waxing moon. Its cold light shone down, illuminating a vast expanse of snow. In this snowfield, faintly bathed in a layer of silver light, stood a Native American man with strange facial markings. He held a hatchet in his right hand and a still-dripping severed head in his left, raising his head to the sky and letting out a unique, piercing war cry of his people.
"Wulululu!"
As the sound echoed and faded, similar war cries arose all around the drilling camp.
"Boom boom boom boom. Wulululu!"
Jack felt as though he was hallucinating. From the distant, endless mountains, it seemed like he could hear the deep thrum of war drums, resonating with the angry shouts of Martin Hansen and the tribal police.
He instinctively shrank his neck, the scene before him stirring a deep, poignant sense of sorrow, as if witnessing the last mournful cry of a long-extinct civilization, rising from its nailed-shut coffin.
But he quickly shrugged it off. Even if there were vengeful spirits, surely they wouldn't come after someone like him, who was just there to help. After all, the saying goes, "the debt has a debtor," and he was just a "banana"—yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and someone who had soul-traveled here.
Before long, the old sheriff and his officers, who had been scattered around, began converging toward the center on their snowmobiles. Their work for the day was just beginning.
First, they dragged all the scattered corpses into the building, then they randomly fired the guards' weapons to create the illusion of a mutual massacre. Afterward, they doused everything inside and out with gasoline. The beasts had conveniently left plenty of fuel for them, and all the tribal police had to do was haul it from behind the house, pouring it in one barrel at a time.
At dawn, a column of smoke rose into the sky. The group stood at a distance, watching as the raging fire consumed everything.
Jane, who had just arrived, looked around but found that Jack, Cory Lambert, and Martin Hansen had disappeared without a trace.
"He told you to go back to the motel and wait for his call. You still have a lot to do." A tearful Arya, leaning against Braxton, said to Jane.
"Ah!"
Peter woke up in the howling wind, gasping for breath in the thin air. The freezing, biting cold air filled his lungs and turned into puffs of white mist as he exhaled.
"Do you know where you are?" Jack crouched beside him, smiling amiably.
"Don't come any closer, you devil!" Peter cried out in terror, trying to push himself away.
"Geez." Jack clicked his tongue in exasperation. He really just wanted to ask a simple question. It was Cory Lambert, a local hunter who looked exactly like "Hawkeye," who had led them here. Jack had never been this high up in his life.
"This is Gannett Peak, the highest mountain in Wyoming," Cory said as he put down his binoculars and handed them to Martin Hansen, who was sitting next to him.
"Even in August, the hottest month, there's still a foot of snow here. Today's weather is pretty good—very cold, with deep snow."
Peter's panicked eyes darted between the three of them, his expression gradually turning to despair. He didn't need any more explanations; even a fool could understand his situation now.
"Run." Martin Hansen uttered a single word. His face was still painted with war paint, and his body was covered in blood, making him look utterly terrifying.
Peter shivered, glancing down at his feet, only to find that his shoes were gone and the skin on his feet had turned blue and purple, completely numb from the cold.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
"Wasn't he clear enough? You have one chance: run or die." Jack helpfully clarified.
"Where can I go?" Peter looked around in confusion, surrounded by nothing but ice and snow.
"Over there, about six miles away, there's a highway." Cory casually pointed into the distance.
Peter struggled to his feet. "I don't... I don't understand. What do you want me to—"
"Bang!"
"I told you to run!" Cory suddenly fired his shotgun near Peter's ear. The deafening blast sent Peter running, screaming and wailing as he fled.
"Ding."
Jack found an exposed rock and sat down, pulling out a cigar and lighting it.
"This place is over thirteen thousand feet above sea level," Martin Hansen kindly reminded him.
Jack glanced at the pile of cigarette butts under Martin's feet and rolled his eyes. "How far do you think he'll get?"
Cory took aim with his gun. "Two thousand feet."
Jack and Martin both turned to look at him in surprise, not understanding how he could be so certain.
"My best record was taking down a wolf at two thousand feet."
The two of them couldn't help but smile.
Unfortunately, Peter hadn't even made it five hundred feet before he collapsed face-first into the snow. He struggled to turn over, gasping for air, but blood kept pouring from his nose and mouth.
Jack asked Cory, "Can you find this place again tomorrow? He's still useful."
"No problem. I'm a hunter. It's perfectly reasonable for me to be here, right?" Cory shrugged as he spoke.
---
How do you cover up a heinous crime? The usual approach is to turn a tragedy into a spectacle. For example, if you accidentally set off an exaggerated wildfire while trying to clear land and end up killing too many poor souls, what do you do?
Naturally, you have the media focus on how heroic the rescuers were, painstakingly pulling a kitten from the rubble.
The published photos must feature a well-endowed woman holding a cute kitten, ensuring both topicality and visual impact.
But in this barren reservation, there were no cute kittens, and it was impossible to have a pretty girl show cleavage in temperatures well below freezing. So Jack had to find another way.
Fortunately, sometimes the wilderness has its advantages. Although the drilling camp was federal land leased from the reservation, if something went wrong—like now, where the guards inside the camp got drunk and high, leading to an all-out brawl where they all ended up dead—the nearest tribal police still had a duty to help.
Especially when there was an FBI agent nearby investigating a Native American murder case. Naturally, she would take charge, bringing the tribal police along to survey the scene and determine whether the FBI needed to deploy a larger team.
So Jane, who had rushed back to the motel, barely had time to freshen up before she received a call from her superior, forcing her to turn around and head back.
By the time she returned to the drilling camp, it was already 9 a.m. The fire trucks had just finished dousing the last embers, and a Native American firefighter, sifting through the scorched ground, made a startling discovery.
In full view of everyone, one victim after another—a collection of female corpses—was unearthed from the frozen ground.
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