Monster (37 page)

A savage roar came from over Beck’s shoulder. Beck hugged the ground as the truck-sized mass of red fur sailed over her and plowed into Leah, knocking her backward. Leah recovered in only two steps, then shoved, slapped, and punched as Rachel returned blow for blow. They faced off, mirroring each other, circling, hair bristling, backs arched, fingers spread like talons, hissing and foaming through their teeth.

With Leah occupied, Beck half-crawled and limped forward, searching for that glint of yellow.

It was in Reuben’s hands. He was slinking away with it.

Beck got to her feet, yelling, displaying, then loping toward him. She leaped with her good leg, then kicked him in the side. It was like kicking a wall. He flinched a little but didn’t even lose his balance. She landed on the ground, got up again, faced him—

The slap sent her spinning. Her headdress disintegrated, the blades of grass falling like winnowed straw. The world was a blur until her hair blinded her. She hit the ground, her nose dripping, her face burning.

With one eye above the grass, she saw Rachel holding her own, not backing down, getting slapped, slapping back, exchanging threats, and circling. Leah showed no weakness. As for Jacob, he sat next to his stump, surprisingly aloof, a spectator.

Beck pushed against the ground, her body aching, nauseous. The ground reeled under her. Drops of blood glistened on the grass. She got to her feet, bent over to clear the dizziness, and wiped her face with her hands, streaking the mud, smearing the blood. She wiped her hands on her shirt and left red streaks. She straightened slowly—

Reuben’s foot caught her in the back and she went down like a limp toy, tumbling in the brush, arms flailing, until a tree caught her in the side.

Half conscious, she thought she would never breathe again.

Reed poked his head in the door of the motor home. “Everything okay?”

Sing sat at the computer, scrolling the map up and down, back and forth, retracing old possibilities, exploring new ones. The GPS system was its cold and cruel self; it had nothing to say. “It’s hard to leave,” she said.

Reed looked back at the inn, at the bench on the porch, the front doors, the door to Room 105. There wasn’t a pleasant memory anywhere, only sorrow and finality. “We have to.”

She nodded but didn’t turn the computer off. She only closed the lid, then went forward to the driver’s station and pulled out a map. “So what’s the best way to get to Three Rivers from here?”

Reuben stood a few yards up the hill, snuffing at her, acting superior and victorious, clutching the GPS in his hands, his snarl warning her to stay away, to stay on the ground, to remain subservient.

Beck rolled a painful quarter turn away from the tree, drew her first full breath, and pulled her knees up under her.

The two females faced off, daring each other to make a move. It wasn’t so much a fight as a game, a war of wills.

Beck straightened, got one foot planted, rose on one leg—

And fell again, hurting in every limb, every fiber. Reuben must have opened her somewhere; she was leaving a trail of blood on the ground.

He displayed again, snarling, stomping, coming closer. She knew he would hit her, and this time it would probably kill her.

She could barely keep the females in focus. They weren’t looking her way but glaring at each other.

If only she had won some favor. If only she was accepted.

She cried out, the best series of alarm screams she could muster, and extended her hand, crimson with her own blood, their way.

Rachel, facing Beck, saw her first. With a loud howl, she bolted Beck’s direction.

Leah opposed her—

Rachel could have been fighting the bear again. With ferocity Beck had seen only once before, Rachel forearmed Leah across the throat, knocking her back several steps, turning her. Leah leaned into a step, about to lunge, when her eyes followed Beck’s scream and Beck caught her gaze. Leah hesitated. She stretched her neck for a better view, concern clouding her face.

Beck screamed again, her hand extended.

Time stood still.

Leah was wide open. Rachel hammered her with a right to the chest, then a left, pushing, pummeling. Leah covered her head, struck back once, then backpedaled, still staring at Beck.

Beck cried out again, hand extended. Leah moaned, pain filling her eyes.

Rachel pressed her attack, snarling, hurling another double-blow.

Leah ducked, arms over her head, as Rachel delivered a steady and violent drumming. Then, at long last, her will broken, Leah turned tail and ran into the shelter of some trees.

Reuben’s bravado drained in an instant. He whimpered, looking at Beck, then up the hill toward his mother.

Finish it!

Beck noticed she was on her feet. It hurt like crazy, but she was standing. A good-sized stick lay only two steps away. She took those steps, grabbed up the stick, raised it high, and climbed the hill, closing in on Reuben one last time. He was looking for his mother when Beck brought the stick down on his shoulders, raised it, brought it down again. Again! Again!

He flinched, ducked, put his arms over his head, then started up the hill, retreating, ducking, whimpering.

Again!

The GPS bounced onto the ground and came to rest in the shards of a rotting log.

Reuben ran, disappearing into the same trees that concealed his mother.

Beck teetered but remained standing, her fist still clenched around the stick, not sure it was over. Her upper lip and chin felt cold and she tasted blood in her mouth. She wiped her sleeve across her mouth and it came away red.

Rachel was coming to save her.

No, please, not yet. Where’s that GPS?

It was close enough to grab just before Rachel enfolded her in those huge arms. Rachel settled to the ground right there, cradling her, licking the blood and mud from Beck’s face with her big tongue, poking with grave concern at the weird stuffing inside Beck’s shirt, yanking and tasting the grass that protruded from Beck’s sleeves.

Beck held that GPS close, trying to find the on switch in between swipes from Rachel’s tongue.
Lick!
She found it.
Lick!
She pressed it.
Lick! Lick!
Nothing happened.

She almost felt a wave of despair, but another thought held it off:
Check the batteries.

The licking had stopped. Beck tried to open the back of the GPS, but her fingers were slick with mud and blood, and now the GPS was smeared with it. She pulled her handkerchief from around her head and wiped her hands, then the GPS.

Rachel was poking her, humming with concern. Beck nestled in close to let her know she was all right and, using her fingernail, wedged the battery compartment open.

The batteries were there, the ends blocked with a piece of paper. Clever! A safeguard, no doubt, to make sure only a human could turn it on. Beck pulled the paper out, closed the cover, and pressed the on button again.

A little light came on. The LCD screen came to life.

Reed spoke into his handheld radio as he sat in his SUV just outside the Tall Pine. “Okay, 450 point 45. Hello?”

Sing came back from inside the motor home: “Gotcha loud and clear.”

“All buttoned up?”

“Three Rivers, here we come. Oh. Sorry. Got one more thing.” Sing set her radio in its rack on the dashboard and hurried back to secure the bedroom door. On her way, she remembered one more thing: the computer. Okay. It was time to turn it off.

She raised the lid and the screen came to life, the same old map of the surrounding forest with nothing showing but— Something new caught her eye as her finger poised above the keyboard.

Was that . . . ?

No. It had to be dust on the screen, a bad pixel, the mouse pointer . . .

It was blinking.

She leaned in to make sure.

Yes, it was blinking.

She rolled out the computer chair and sat in it, digging her glasses from her shirt pocket.

The radio on the dash squawked, “Sing? Any problems?”

She put on her glasses and leaned close.

The blinking blip was labeled with a number 6.

“Reed . . .”

The radio squawked again. “Hello? Sing? You copy?”

“Reed . . . !”

Number 6. The GPS they’d left at the baiting site.

The Last-Ditch Attempt.

“Reed!” Sing bolted from her chair, ran to the dashboard, grabbed up the radio. “REEEEED!”

fifteen

Cap drove up the Skeel Gulch Road, past quaint homesteads and run-down barns, freshly mowed hay fields, and a huge pond where a moose grazed on water cabbage. He found the bridge just as Mr. Dinsley had described it, a squatty rectangle of logs and rough-hewn planks with red reflectors tacked to each end. After the road took a left turn, Dinsley’s directions ran out, and Cap was left to do the best he could with the man’s broad-sweeping description, “It’s up in there somewhere.”

Cap drove two miles up the road, looking for anything that might be home to a scientist detached from reality. When he noticed recent tire tracks turning onto the road from a gravel driveway, he was desperate enough to check it out.

The driveway wound back through the trees for several hundred feet, then ended abruptly at a small, metal-roofed cabin. The parking lot was empty, so Cap felt safe pulling to a stop and climbing out for a look-see.

Just a few paces up from the parking lot, Cap could see past the cabin and into the trees beyond. The owner had added an outbuilding, a metal structure the size of an aircraft hangar.

Dinsley said Burkhardt had built a shop a few years ago. Cap may have come to the right place.

In an instant, Reed’s entire universe had compressed to the size of a tiny blip on a computer screen. The blip was moving north, pulling the moving map downward across the screen pixel by pixel, blinking as it went, a little number 6 at its side. Reed didn’t dare believe what it could mean; his nerves wouldn’t be able to take it. “You double-checked?”

Sing, at the computer, was wiping tears from her eyes. “I cycled through all the GPS codes and every unit is accounted for, including this one: 1 through 5 are in their cases right here under the bench. Number 6 is out, and it’s broadcasting—” Her voice tightened into a weeping squeak. She took a deep breath to clear it. “I tested it before you guys left it at the baiting site. This is it; this is the one!”

Pete, at Reed’s side, couldn’t have looked more intense if he’d been staring down a cougar. “You sure you wrapped those batteries?”

Reed was trying not to hope too soon. The whiplike reversal would snap his mind for sure. “I made double sure. Only an intelligent human being would have pulled that paper out of there and reset the batteries. This isn’t an accident.”

“What if it’s a hiker who found it?” Sing ventured.

“The trails are closed,” said Reed.

Pete pointed. “It’s not on a trail. And look how fast it’s moving. That’s no hiker.”

“ATV?” Reed suggested.

“Not in there. It’s nothing but steep slopes, heavy forest, and no roads.” He watched it a moment. “But something with eighteen-inch feet could move that fast.”

Reed nodded, remembering that moment below the waterfall on the trail to Abney. “It’s still carrying her.”

Pete cautioned, “We don’t know for sure.”

“Right.” Reed reined himself in. “What about radio contact?”

Sing replied, “I’ve tried to raise whoever it is, but the unit radio doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve got GPS locating, but that’s it.”

There was a rap on the doorpost and Max Johnson stuck his head in. “Hey, we’re all here!”

Reed went to the door. Max, Steve Thorne, Sam Marlowe, and Wiley Kane stood there, a firm set in their faces that almost overruled Reed’s doubt. He still needed to be sure. “I need to know you guys are with me.”

“I’m in,” said Max. “Always have been. I want to finish this, Reed, and finish it right.”

Reed wasn’t satisfied yet. “Steve?”

“I don’t care what’s up there, and I’m not going to bicker about it,” Thorne replied. “Whatever it is, if it comes between us and your wife, I’m prepared to take it out.”

“Sam?”

Sam seemed so young, but the grim look in his eyes came from the heart of a man. “I know I’m the rookie here, but I’ll give you my best and that’s a promise.”

Reed still couldn’t address Kane by his first name. “Kane? Do you think I killed my wife and made up a story to cover it up?”

Kane sniffed a chuckle and wagged his head shamefully. “I’ll wash my mouth out if that’s what you want.”

“I might.”

“Fair enough.” Kane grinned. “I just got me a record-breaking bear. Getting a big old Sasquatch, now, wouldn’t that be something?”

Reed asked Thorne, “Think you can keep him in line?”

Thorne nodded.

“All right, then.”

“What about Jimmy and the others?” Kane asked.

Max piped up, “We don’t need the others. We know where your wife is.”

“There isn’t time,” said Reed. He stepped back from the door to make room. “Come on in. Let’s get organized.”

The hunters climbed in and squeezed around the computer station, marveling at the sight of one little blip.