John Saul (32 page)

Following what?

A voice inside himself, that only he could hear?

An instinct deep within him, imprinted so strongly that
he had no choice but to obey when the urge came upon him?

The madness had been in Joey since the day he was born. Even when he’d been nothing but a toddler, lurching around the yard of the house the Wilkensons had built in the valley, the man had seen the yearning in the boy as he’d watched from the ledges above.

He’d seen Joey start toward the shelter of the woods, his eyes fixed on the trees and the shadows they cast, his soul already seeking the solace that only the wilderness could provide.

The man had known what the boy was feeling, even known the cycles of his madness.

How many times had he gone down to the valley when the hunger and the thirst came upon him—in the years when the urges were still weak enough for him to control—and felt Joey’s own needs, seen him at the window of his room, staring longingly out into the night, even felt the mind of the child reaching out to his own?

Two minds, with a single instinct.

Were there more of them? How many might there be?

How many like him, prowling in the darkness, fighting the hunger, resisting the thirst, only, finally, to lose the struggle against their very nature?

People were dying now.

Was it only happening here? Or were there others like him, living in other cabins on other mountains?

In other places—in cities, where they would hide during the day in cheap apartments, creeping out only at night, foraging for food in the Dumpsters as he himself foraged in the campsites, struggling against the demons inside them?

Struggle as he had struggled.

As Joey Wilkenson had just begun to struggle.

Now the cabin had been found. He had to abandon it and find a place to hide.

To hide, before they came to kill him.

For that was what they were going to do. Surely, anyone who looked upon him would know him for what he was.

Know him, and hate him.

As they would come to hate Joey, too.

With Joey, though, it was barely beginning, the change within. No one else would see it yet; to the others, the people unafflicted with the sickness, Joey would still seem normal.

No, they wouldn’t see it until it was far too late, until Joey himself would finally be unable to resist the urges within him.

He’d closed his eyes for a moment, trying only to blot out the vision of Joey turning into the monster he himself had become, but his body, exhausted from the night before, had betrayed him. He had fallen asleep, awakening only when the wolf issued a warning growl.

It had been too late to do anything but flee, and he had been running ever since, the wolf at his side.

Now he was tired—exhaustion weakening his muscles, seeping into his bones. Soon, he would have to stand and fight.

Fight, or die.

He glanced around, his sharp eyes scanning the landscape, searching for a place of sanctuary. Then, high up, he saw it.

Above the timberline, where the granite surface of the mountains was fully exposed to the wind, he saw a cleft.

A narrow cleft, which would give him protection on three sides.

Give him protection, but trap him, too.

He stared at it for a moment, making up his mind, then began climbing, the wolf scrambling ahead of him, as if it knew where he was going.

Below him the baying of the hounds grew louder.

“Unleash one of them,” Tony Moleno said as an icy rain began to fall from the leaden sky above.

Frank Peters stared at the deputy. “You nuts? How long do you think we can keep up with him? He’ll be gone before—”

“We’re close enough,” Moleno interrupted. “I can almost feel him. He’s somewhere nearby. And if we don’t find him within the next fifteen minutes or so, we’re not going to.
This rain’ll wash away the scent faster than a jackrabbit can go down a hole.”

“Maybe we better call Rick,” Peters suggested, still unwilling to release his dogs to whatever quarry might be hiding on the mountainside.

Tony Moleno scanned the landscape that towered above them. They were just above the timberline; from here to the summit there was nothing but naked rock.

Broken rock, shattered by a millennium of rain seeping into the cracks of the mountains, then freezing and expanding through the long winters, slowly working their way deeper, until at last huge chunks of the mountain broke free, tumbling downward, clearing great swaths of timber as they fell, the masses of rock disintegrating into rubble studded with enormous boulders, piled at the bases of sheer cliffs.

Everywhere, there were clefts in the rock. In any one of them the man for whom they searched could be hiding.

A dog, though, could find him within minutes, and from where they stood, they would be able to watch until the last few seconds of the hunt.

“Let Rick sleep,” Tony replied, making his decision. “He’s not here, and we are.” Reaching down, he unsnapped the leash from the collar of one of Frank Peters’s hounds. The dog leapt forward, his eager baying rising to echo from the cliffs as he followed the scent of the creature he was tracking.

The hound moved quickly, for the scent was strong and unlike anything it had smelled before. There were no false trails, no similar odors mixed in with the pungent aroma it had picked up from the bed in the cabin.

His head low, he bounded up the mountainside, a flash of brown and white against the gray of the rocks, disappearing for a few seconds as he scuttled around the huge boulders, only to reappear as he scrambled up the rubble that would soon be covered by yet another layer of snow and ice.

The man braced himself.

One of the dogs was close now, very close.

The men had unleashed it, which was good.

It meant he’d have time before they got here, for while
the dog would leap and scramble along the shortest route once it caught his scent, the men with the other dog would have to pick their way slowly, searching for the path that had led him up here, struggling to find each foothold.

The rain was coming down harder now, but it was too late for it to do him any good, for the wind was gusting down the mountainside as well, sweeping down on him, chilling his skin and stiffening his fingers.

And picking up his scent, to carry it to the dog below.

The tenor of the baying changed suddenly, and he knew that the time had come. The hound had his scent now, and would charge up the hillside, no longer confined to the trail he himself had left.

But he was ready—as ready as he would ever be.

As the wolf snarled a low warning, the man dropped his hand to her head, quieting her.

Suddenly the dog was there, silhouetted in the opening of the cleft.

It stopped dead in its tracks, silent for a moment, as if surprised to have come upon its prey so quickly. Then it let out a howl of victory as it leaped toward him, its jaws wide, saliva dripping from its tongue. From its throat, yet another round of baying rose, its signal that its prey was cornered and under attack.

But the baying was cut short, its echoing note of victory changing in an instant into something else.

The valley was filled with a wailing scream of agony as the wolf leaped forward, catching the bloodhound in the air, her jaws closing on the dog’s throat, her fangs sinking deep into the dog’s flesh.

“W
hat the hell happened up there?” Frank Peters asked as the last terrified yelp of his best hound died away.

Tony Moleno’s eyes narrowed. “I’d say whatever’s cornered up there just killed the dog. Come on.” Turning away from Peters, he started up the steep slope, picking his way carefully in the loose rubble that was scattered at the base of the cliff, wondering how long he could fight off the exhaustion his three scant hours of sleep had failed to put at bay.

The wind, which had been growing steadily out of the north during their long climb up the face of the mountain, was howling across the peaks now. As the temperature dropped, the icy rain that had begun falling a few minutes before quickly turned to sleet.

Frank Peters stared at the deputy. “Are you nuts? If we don’t get down from here right now, we’re going to get stuck! Look at that!” He pointed up into the sky where roiling black clouds were already beginning to darken the day, though the afternoon had barely begun.

“We’ve got time!” Moleno insisted. “We’ve got a chance to get this guy right now, and if we blow it, he’ll be gone! We’ll never find him again!”

“Son of a bitch will freeze to death if we just leave him where he is,” Peters countered, but when Tony Moleno ignored him and started working his way up the slope, Peters followed, clutching at the lead of his remaining dog.

Reaching the boulders piled at the base of the cliff, Tony Moleno waited for Frank Peters to catch up. “How the hell did he get up there?” Peters complained, turning his back to the driving wind and wiping the sleet from his face with the
sleeve of his parka. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of heavy gloves, and shoved his hands into them.

“Looks like he must have gone up over there.” Moleno pointed to a place twenty yards to the right, where a jagged gash in the granite bluff seemed to lead the way to a wide ledge above. Somewhere on that ledge, the cleft that concealed the mountain man lay. He began working his way around the boulders, envying the dog who only a few moments ago had dashed into gaps far too small for Moleno himself to wedge through. He moved slowly now, for below him the ground had sheared away into a steep slope that ended at the lip of one of the stone ramparts that reared above the treetops like the lookout tower of some great castle.

The rock glistened. Already the sleet was forming a thin layer of ice that would be even slicker than the mossy rocks lining the bottom of Coyote Creek. A slip here would lead to far worse than the sprained ankle Tony had suffered the previous spring on his first fishing expedition of the year.

Steeling himself, he edged around one of the boulders, feeling for secure fingerholds before groping with his toes for the narrow ledges that would bear his weight. After what seemed an eternity, but was no more than a minute, he ducked into the relative shelter of the great gash in the face of the cliff, and waited for Frank Peters to catch up.

For Peters, the going was even rougher, for he realized too late his mistake in pulling on the thick gloves. He edged around the boulders slowly, warring against the temptation to look down the steep slope that yawned below him, knowing that if he so much as glanced at what lay below, a wave of dizziness could destroy his already precarious sense of balance. Suddenly he felt a tug at the hound’s leash. He dropped it instantly as the dog, far more sure of its footing than Frank himself, leapt from one boulder to another, then scrambled the last few feet, its claws finding a purchase on the bare rock where Frank could see no crevices at all.

Turning his back to the steep grade, he pressed close to the boulder, knowing he should take the thick gloves off before proceeding to scuttle crabwise around the great rock,
but his fear of heights began to close in on him. Still, with the gloves hindering his fingers, he’d never be able to find a purchase on the increasingly slippery rock. Finally he released the grip his right hand held on one of the boulder’s protrusions and began pulling the glove off with his teeth, finger by fìnger. As soon as his hand was free of the constricting object, he spat it out, then went to work on the other.

“Okay,” he yelled to Tony Moleno, whom he could no longer even see. “I’m coming!”

He stretched his right hand out as far as it would extend, feeling the stone cold against his fingers. At last he found a tiny crevice, slid his fingers in, and curled them tight. His right foot was next. He moved it slowly, probing for a purchase, found one, tested it, then began easing his weight from his left foot to his right.

He had just released the grip of his left hand when he felt something give beneath his right foot, and suddenly he lurched, his fingers slipping out of the crevice.

Instinctively, he dropped into a crouching position and rolled over onto his back, bending his knees to try to use the soles of his shoes as brakes, but the rubble beneath him began to move. All at once he was sliding toward the precipice forty feet below. “Tony!” His shout for help dissipated instantly into the wind. He rolled over again, scrabbling against the broken rock, searching in vain for something—anything—to hang on to.

From above, Tony Moleno watched in hopeless horror as Frank Peters slid downward. The whole hillside seemed to be moving now, and Peters almost seemed to be trying to swim upstream against a river of pebbles.

“Tony! Do something!”

But it was far too late. Even if Moleno had brought a rope with him, he wouldn’t have had time to throw it to his friend. Unable to tear his eyes away, he watched as Frank rolled over one last time, tried to stand, finally managed to lurch to his feet, only to plunge over the edge of the cliff. His scream of terror as he fell rose above the wind for a moment. Then it, like Frank Peters himself, was gone.

Tony Moleno took a deep breath. Still staring at the spot
at which Peters had disappeared over the abyss, he took his radio from its holster and flipped it on. Shouting to make himself heard over the steadily growing wind, he reported to the dispatcher in Challis what had just happened, and described the cliff upon which he stood.

“I’m not sure I can get back down,” he finished. “So I’m going on up.” At last he turned away and started grimly up the rock face at whose base he now stood. Above him the second hound was baying excitedly. Tony redoubled his efforts, scrambling up the slippery rock, finally coming to the ledge that formed a narrow shelf running for a hundred yards along the sheer face of the slope. At a sudden change in the tone of the hound’s baying, he dashed forward, his gun drawn, but he was still ten yards away when the dog darted into a cleft in the rocks and a moment later uttered the same brief howl of pain that Moleno had heard only minutes before.