39
The forest was so quiet.
Bob Wang’s ears rang with it. His own passage silenced any bird song.
There was a distant buzz, too minor to be noticed if he hadn’t heard it a thousand times. The helicopters at the airshow. He was too far away to hear the Little Birds at all. The Black Hawks were no more than an occasional thudding sound at this distance.
Finally, the bass note hammer—more felt than heard—that was a part of his blood. So low, it barely carried through the dense pine trees.
It wavered along the edge of hearing as he dug himself a pit in the forest detritus. The sharp scent of pine needles and loam filled the shadowed cloister.
The sound built briefly as he lay down and swept the brush and branches over himself. Here, beneath a snarl of blackberry surrounded by scrub alder
