Chapter 22: The Ocala Woods

The engine hadn't even finished ticking cold before David stepped out into the pre-dawn bite of the Ocala National Forest, the frost crunching like broken glass under his boots. He didn’t look back to see if Marcus was following. He knew the kid was there because he could hear the frantic zip of a high-tech parka and the rhythmic tapping of fingers against a device that had no business being in the scrub.

"Leave the tablet in the glove box, Marcus," David said, his voice low, barely a vibration against the stillness of the pines.

"I’ve got the topographical overlays synced to the satellite feed," Marcus muttered, his breath blooming in a pale cloud around his head. He looked absurd—a creature of silicon and glass standing in a cathedral of sand pines and saw palmetto. "If the cellular geofence drops, the local cache handles the dead reckoning. We won't get lost."

David turned slowly. He didn't look at the screen; he looked at the way Marcus’s fingers were trembling, not from the cold, but from the lack of a keyboard. "The woods don't care about your dead reckoning. Put it away. If you’re looking at a screen, you aren't looking at the ground. And the ground is the only thing that’s going to tell you the truth today."

Marcus hesitated, the blue light of the tablet reflecting in his glasses, making him look like some panicked deep-sea fish. Then, with a sigh that bordered on a groan, he leaned back into the truck and shoved the device into the center console. He slammed the door. The sound echoed through the trees, sharp and intrusive.

"Sound travels three times as far in the cold dry air," David said, already moving toward the tree line. "You just told every buck within five miles that the tourists have arrived."

The Ocala wasn't like the rolling hills of the north or the deep hardwood forests of the Smokies. It was a prehistoric place, a landscape of ancient sand dunes covered in thickets of scrub oak and pine so dense a man could vanish ten feet off the trail and not be found for a century. The air smelled of damp earth, resin, and the metallic tang of the coming light.

They walked for an hour in silence, David leading the way with a rhythmic, rolling gait that barely disturbed the leaf litter. Behind him, Marcus stumbled over every hidden root and snagged his expensive gear on every briar. He panted, the sound wet and heavy in the quiet. 

David stopped abruptly near a cluster of turkey oaks. He didn't turn around; he just raised a hand, palm flat. Marcus nearly ran into his back, his nylon jacket screeching against David’s canvas coat.

"Look down," David whispered.

Marcus peered at the dirt. "Sand. Lots of it. Very impressive."

"Look closer. Stop thinking about the data points and start looking at the disruptions." David knelt, his knees cracking—a sound he felt in his teeth these days. He pointed to a shallow, heart-shaped depression in the grey sand. It was soft, the edges slightly blurred by the night's wind, but the weight of the animal was still written there. "Whitetail. A doe. See the way the strike is deeper on the front? She was moving at a trot, probably heading toward the cypress head for water."

Marcus leaned in, squinting. "How do you know it’s a doe? Couldn't a buck have the same weight?"

"A buck carries his weight differently. His chest is broader, so his front tracks will be wider apart than his back. And this late in the season, he’d be trailing. He wouldn’t be leading the way unless he was pushed. This is a clean walk. She wasn't scared." David moved his hand six inches to the left, brushing away a layer of pine needles to reveal a smaller, sharper set of marks. "Yearling. Following her."

Marcus reached out as if to touch the track, then pulled his hand back. "It’s like a record. A physical log of a transaction that happened four hours ago."

"It's a conversation," David corrected. "The woods are always talking. Most people just don't have the vocabulary to listen. You spend your life building systems to catch signals, Marcus. This is the oldest signal there is. Step in the wrong place, and you break the circuit."

They moved deeper, the sun finally cresting the horizon. It didn’t bring warmth, only a harsh, slanted light that turned the shadows into long, jagged knives across the forest floor. David felt the familiar ache in his lower back, the one that usually signaled a change in the weather, but he pushed through it. He needed Marcus to see this. He needed the boy to understand that the world didn't begin and end at a server rack in a climate-controlled room.

As they reached the edge of a palmetto thicket, David caught the scent—the musky, heavy aroma of a buck in the rut. It was thick enough to taste. He dropped to a crouch and pulled Marcus down beside him.

"Stay still," David breathed. "Don't blink if you can help it. Movement draws the eye, but the mind fills in the blanks for anything that stays still."

He watched Marcus's face. The kid was vibrating. His eyes were darting everywhere, his brain clearly trying to process a billion blades of grass and a thousand flickering shadows. 

"Close your eyes," David commanded softly.

"What? Why?"

"Do it. Your eyes are lying to you. They're looking for what you expect to see. Listen. Tell me what's moving."

Marcus shut his eyes. His face scrunched up in concentration. For a long minute, there was nothing but the wind in the needles. Then, Marcus’s head tilted slightly to the right.

"Something... heavy. Slow. It’s not a bird. It’s rhythmic, but there’s a pause."

"Where?"

"Two o'clock. Behind that big clump of... whatever those spiked leaves are."

"Palmettos," David whispered. "Good."

David looked. He saw nothing at first. Then, a branch shifted. Not from the wind—the movement was too deliberate, too vertical. A ghost emerged from the grey-green blur. A six-point buck, his neck swollen, his coat a dull, winter tan that blended perfectly with the dead scrub. The animal stepped into a patch of light, its nostrils flared, testing the air.

Marcus opened his eyes, and his jaw literally dropped. He started to reach for his pocket—the phantom limb syndrome of the digital age—searching for a camera that wasn't there.

"Don't," David hissed.

The buck froze. It didn't look at them, but its ears swiveled like radar dishes, locking onto the sound of David’s whisper. The tension in the air became a physical weight. David watched Marcus, seeing the exact moment the boy realized he was in the presence of something that existed entirely outside of human utility. The buck wasn't a resource; it wasn't a data point. It was a living, breathing sovereignty.

The deer stood there for what felt like an eternity, a statue of muscle and instinct. Then, with a flick of its white tail, it vanished. It didn't run; it simply stepped sideways and was consumed by the forest. 

Marcus stayed frozen for a long time after the buck was gone. When he finally spoke, his voice was thin. "I didn't think... I thought it would be louder. I thought I’d see it coming from a mile away."

"That’s the mistake everyone makes," David said, standing up and brushing the sand from his trousers. "They think nature is a spectacle. It’s not. It’s a secret. If you want in on the secret, you have to be quiet enough to hear it."

They began the hike back as the sun climbed higher, burning off the frost and turning the sand into a reflective white glare. Marcus was quieter now. He wasn't stumbling as much. He was watching where he placed his feet, looking for the disruptions David had shown him.

"My dad never took me out like this," Marcus said suddenly. The admission was jarring in the silence. "He took me to theme parks. We waited in lines to see things that were built to be seen. Everything had a railing. Everything had a ‘you are here’ sign."

David adjusted the strap of his rifle. "Railings make you lazy. They make you think the world is safe as long as you stay on the path. But the path is just a suggestion. Reality is what happens when the path ends."

"Is that why you stayed here? In Cypress Bend?" Marcus asked. "You could have gone anywhere after the service. You had the cleared personnel files. You could have been a consultant in DC, making three hundred an hour just to sit in meetings."

David stopped and looked up at the canopy. A red-shouldered hawk was circling, a tiny black speck against the vast, indifferent blue. "In DC, everyone is trying to build a louder voice. Everyone is trying to be the most important thing in the room. Out here..." He gestured to the endless stretch of pine. "Out here, you realize you aren't important at all. There’s a peace in that. A clarity."

Marcus looked down at his boots, now coated in the fine, grey dust of the Ocala. "I think I'm starting to get it. The code I write... it's all about control. Predicting what happens next. But that buck... you can't code that. He didn't follow an algorithm."

"He followed a billion years of survival," David said. "That’s better than an algorithm. It’s the truth."

They reached the truck as the midday heat began to settle in—that strange Florida winter heat that felt misplaced against the dry air. Marcus reached for his door handle but hesitated. He looked back at the tree line, his expression unreadable behind his glasses.

"David?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for making me leave the tablet."

David nodded once, a sharp, professional acknowledgement. "Don't get used to it. We’ve still got work to do, and your 'dead reckoning' is the only thing that's going to help us map the drainage patterns near the old tannery."

Marcus climbed into the passenger seat, but he didn't reach for the center console right away. He sat there, staring at the dust on his fingernails, watching the way the light played across the dashboard. 

David started the engine. He glanced at the rearview mirror, checking the trail behind them. For a split second, he thought he saw the flick of a white tail near the edge of the turkey oaks. 

"Ready?" David asked.

Marcus finally reached down, pulling the tablet from the console. But he didn't turn it on. He just held it, the screen dark and reflective. "Ready."

David shifted into gear, the truck lurching through the deep sand. He drove with a renewed focus, the weight of the forest pressing against his back like an old friend. He knew the peace wouldn't last. The town was changing, the pressures of the outside world were leaking into the Bend like tea into hot water, and soon, Marcus’s screens would be the only thing that mattered again.

But as they hit the asphalt of Highway 40, David noticed Marcus looking out the side window, his eyes scanning the passing trees not for a cell tower, but for the subtle, grey-brown shape of something moving in the shadows.

David pushed the accelerator down, the hum of the tires on the road replacing the silence of the woods. He reached over and tapped the dashboard. "Hey. Remember that feeling. When the deer looked at us."

Marcus turned, his face more animated than David had seen it since the kid arrived. "The stillness?"

"No," David said, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. "The realization that he knew exactly where we were the whole time, and he only let us see him because he was done with the conversation."

He saw Marcus’s grip tighten on the tablet, his knuckles white.

The truck sped toward the horizon, leaving the Ocala behind, but the silence of the woods followed them, a cold, persistent passenger in the back seat.