(1995) The Oath (67 page)

M
iles away from the hectic city. Reed and Rebecca hike into the beautiful Northwestern woods. They’re surrounded by gorgeous mountains, waterfalls, and hundreds of acres of unspoiled wilderness.

But something—or someone—begins closing in on them. Something no human has ever seen. And it’s killing everyone in its path without remorse.

Be warned: this monster’s got teeth.

IN STORES EVERYWHERE

An excerpt from
Monster

one

The Hunter, rifle in his hands, dug in a heel and came to a sudden halt on the game trail, motionless, nearly invisible in a thicket of serviceberry and crowded pines. He heard something.

The first rays of the sun flamed over the ridge to the east, knifing through the pine boughs and morning haze in translucent wedges, backlighting tiny galaxies of swirling bugs. Soon the warming air would float up the draw and the pines would whisper like distant surf, but in the lull between the cool of night and the warmth of day, the air was still, the sounds distinct. The Hunter heard his own pulse. The scraping of branches against his camouflage sleeves was crisp and brilliant, the snapping of twigs under his boots almost startling.

And the eerie howl was clear enough to reach him from miles away, audible under the sound of the jays and between the chatterings of a squirrel.

He waited, not breathing, until he heard it again: long, mournful, rising in pitch, and then holding that anguished note to the point of agony before trailing off.

The Hunter’s brow crinkled under the bill of his cap. The howl was too deep and guttural for a wolf. A cougar never made a sound like that. A bear? Not to his knowledge. If it was his quarry, it was upset about something.

And far ahead of him.

He moved again, quickstepping, ducking branches, eyes darting about, dealing with the distance.

Before he had worked his way through the forest another mile, he saw a breach in the forest canopy and an open patch of daylight through the trees. He was coming to a clearing.

He slowed, cautious, found a hiding place behind a massive fallen fir, and peered ahead.

Just a few yards beyond him, the forest had been shorn open by a logging operation, a wide swath of open ground littered with forest debris and freshly sawn tree stumps. A dirt road cut through it all, a house-sized pile of limbs and slash awaited burning, and on the far side of the clearing, a hulking, yellow bulldozer sat cold and silent, its tracks caked with fresh earth. A huge pile of logs lay neatly stacked near the road, ready for the logging trucks.

He saw no movement, and the only sound was the quiet rumble of a battered pickup truck idling near the center of the clearing.

He waited, crouching, eyes level with the top of the fallen tree, scanning the clearing, searching for the human beings who had to be there. But no one appeared and the truck just kept idling.

His gaze flitted from the truck to the bulldozer, then to the huge pile of logs, and then to the truck again where something protruding from behind the truck’s front wheels caught his eye. He grabbed a compact pair of binoculars from a pocket and took a closer look.

The protrusion was a man’s arm, motionless and streaked with red.

Looking about, the Hunter waited just a few more seconds and then, satisfied that no one else was there, he climbed over the log and stole into the clearing, stepping carefully from rock to stump to patch of grass, trying to avoid any soil that would register his footprints. The truck was parked in nothing but loose soil, freshly chewed by the bulldozer, but he would have to deal with that problem later. He was planning his moves as he went along.

He reached the truck, slowed with caution, and then eased around it, neck craning, in no mood for gruesome surprises.

What he found on the other side was no surprise, but it was gruesome, and definitely a complication. Cursing, he leaned against the truck’s hood, warily scanned the tree line and the logging road, and started weighing his options.

The crumpled body on the ground was obviously one of the logging crew, most likely the foreman who’d lingered alone too long on the site the previous evening, judging from the stiff condition of his body. He lay on his belly in the dirt, his body crushed, dried blood streaked from his nose and mouth, his head twisted grotesquely on a broken neck. His hard hat lay top down several feet away, and the ground around the truck was littered with metal shreds of what used to be a lunch box and scattered, chewed-up plastic wrappings that used to hold a lunch.

I don’t have time for this!

The Hunter quickly stifled his rage. He needed to calculate, foresee, plan.

His gaze shifted to the pile of logs. That might be an option. He could make it look like an accident that would explain the bent, torn, rag-doll condition of the dead man.

Were the keys in the bulldozer?

Leaving his rifle by the truck, the Hunter ran to the bulldozer, clambered up on the big steel track, and stepped into the cab. He sank into the worn and torn driver’s seat and searched the panel for the keys. Then he sniffed a chuckle of realization: Of course. This wasn’t in town, where idle punks drifted about looking to steal anything not locked up or bolted down, and this machine was no car for joyriding. The key was in the ignition.

It had been a while since his college summers with the construction crew, but if this thing was anything like that track hoe he used to operate . . .

He clicked the key over to
Preheat
, waited, then turned the key to
Start
.

The dozer cranked to life with a puff of black smoke.

His mind was racing, still planning, as he put the mountainous machine into gear and got it moving. Reverse came easily enough. Forward was easier. With careful manipulation of the brakes and levers, he brought the dozer to the back of the log pile, then left it there, still running.

Hauling the dead man across the ground would be messy, but it was the only option. The Hunter grabbed the man’s wrists—the right arm was intact, but the left arm had been snapped above the elbow and flexed like a rubber hose—and started pulling. He tugged and dragged the body over limbs, grass, rocks, and debris. The man’s head dangled from a wrung neck and scraped on the ground. When the Hunter reached the front of the log pile, he let go of the arms. The stiffened body flopped into the dust.

Seated once again in the dozer, he edged the machine forward, reaching under the logs with the bucket. With a calculating, steady pull of the lever, he raised the bucket, lifting the logs, lifting, lifting, until . . .

The pile upset. The logs rolled and rumbled down, bouncing, tumbling one over the other, drumming the ground, kicking up dust.

The dead man’s body disappeared beneath a jackstraw pile of logs.

No time, no time!
The Hunter eased the dozer back to its resting place, switched it off, and leaped to the ground. He ran back to the idling truck and pocketed every metal scrap, every torn plastic wrapper he could find. Then, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he spotted and grabbed a broken-off evergreen bough and went to work, retracing his every step, brushing and erasing each footprint with rapid side-sweeps as he backed out of the clearing.

As expected, he heard the slowly rising sound of a vehicle coming up the logging road, climbing switchbacks, lurching through gears, rattling over potholes, and growling over gravel.

He crouched and headed for the trees, tossing away the branch. Just as he slipped into the forest, a truck pulled into the clearing on the other side. He stole through the crowded timber, planting every footstep silently in the soft, pine-needled ground. Truck doors slammed. Voices lifted, followed by cries of alarm. Those loggers were going to have quite a morning.

“So we stay on the Cave Lake Trail for 3.4 miles, and then we come to this fork where the Lost Creek Trail branches off to the right— Beck? Are you following this?”

Rebecca Shelton, twenty-eight, looked up from her compact, unhappy with her clumpy mascara but resigned to leaving it as it was. “W-which trail?”

Her husband, Reed, a six-foot hunk and very aware of it, was trying to be patient, she could tell. She’d seen that understanding but slightly testy expression many times over their six years of marriage. He pointed once again to the map he’d spread out on the hood of their Ford SUV, their route boldly marked with orange highlighter. “This one. Cave Lake. Then this one. Lost Creek.”

“Mm. Got it.”

She’d been trying to pay attention and even scare up a little enthusiasm all during their long drive, or as Reed called it, “Insertion into the Survival Zone.” They’d had a nice picnic lunch—“Preexcursion Rations”—on a log, and even now—at “The Final Briefing” on the hood of their car—she was doing her best to match Reed’s excitement, but it was hard to be interested in how many miles they would hike, the hours it would take to get there, the trail grades they would encounter, and their available physical energy. This whole adventure was never
their
idea in the first place, but
his
. He was so
into
this stuff. He’d picked out all the gear, the boots, the backpacks, the maps, the freeze-dried apricots and trail mix, everything. He let her choose which
color
of backpack she wanted—blue—but
he
chose which
kind
.

“If we average four miles an hour, we can be there in . . . three hours,” he was saying. There he went again. Beck sighed, and Reed stole a sideways glance at her. “Uh, but considering the rough terrain and the two-thousand-foot climb, I’ve allowed for six hours, which will still get us there before dark. Got your canteen?”

“Chh-ch-check.” Well,
check
was supposed to sound cool, but the word made her stutter flare up, especially now, when she was upset.

“Potable water only, remember. Treat any water you collect before you drink it.”

“B-beaver fever.”

“Exactly.”

Beaver fever. According to Reed, beavers pooped and peed in the creeks, so they weren’t supposed to drink the water or they’d catch whatever contagion the beavers were passing, something she wouldn’t even try to pronounce.

“Beaver fever,” she repeated, just for the satisfaction of saying it clearly.
B
’s didn’t bother her much, especially when she was alone with Reed.
W
’s and
s
’s were the toughest, especially around people or when she was on edge.
R
’s and hard
c
’s made her nervous; that was why her name had shrunk to Beck—she didn’t have to say an
R
, and once she got the
c
out, the task was over.

“Now, you’re going to need a minimum of two or three quarts of water a day,” Reed said, “and that’s if you aren’t exerting yourself, so don’t push it too hard on the way up there. And pay attention to your urine output. You want at least a quart in a twenty-four hour period.”

“R-r-reed!” She was incredulous.

“Hey, you’re looking out for dehydration. If enough water’s going out, then you know enough’s going in.”

“Sss-so are there any b-bathrooms up there?”

Reed smiled playfully. “Honey, what do you think your camp shovel’s for?”

Oh, right. Those little collapsible shovels hanging on their packs. Wonderful.

“You did bring toilet paper, right?”

She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Yes. I’ve got s-some in my pack and some in my pocket.” It was the first thing she packed, and she brought extra. It was the last vestige of the decent, civilized, sensible life she was being ripped away from—besides a folding hairbrush and a small makeup bag.

“Ah, good. Leaves and grass can get a little itchy.”

She’d worked up the perfect angry wife look over the years, and now she gave him a good dose of it.

But it didn’t faze him. He laughed and gave her a playful rub on her shoulder. Her tension eased. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Once you get up in those mountains and start learning how to survive, you’ll wonder why we never did this before.”

“I’m w-w-wondering why we’re doing it
now.
”

Reed studied her face a moment. “Because it’ll be good for us.” She was about to counter, but he headed her off. “No, now, it’s something we need to do. We need a week away from the grind, away from TV and cell phones and the little holes we’ve dug ourselves into.”