Night Terrors: Savage Species, Book 1 (6 page)

No!

Jesse clambered to the door, but the tent zipper caught. As he struggled with it, he heard Emma’s voice, drowsy with sleep, respond, “What’s up?”

Was she annoyed? Or was there the merest come-hither lilt in her tone?

He wrenched the zipper loose and raised it another few inches before it stuck again.

“That you, Jesse?” Emma’s voice called.

He wiggled the zipper, but it was stuck fast. Damn it! He’d always been terrible with zippers. From earliest childhood, give him a coat to zip up, and he’d have that sucker broken in five minutes. He remembered a time he’d pissed himself in elementary school, six inches from the urinal and unable to open his fly.

“Come on out,” Emma said.

She sounded sincere enough. Unsurprisingly, Greeley didn’t encourage him to join them. Jesse grinned.
Don’t want me honing in on your new prospect, do you?
Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy. She’s not the one-night type. And I’m not gonna let her go without a fight
.

Emboldened by Emma’s invitation, he endeavored to slide an arm through the gap at the bottom of the tent door. It looked about a foot-and-a-half tall, but when he sought to push through, his body caught fast, only the top of his head and one arm poking out. Jesse’s grin shrank. He drew his arm in and made to push his head through the gap. He could only imagine how ridiculous he must look. Like a crowning newborn, replete with the world’s curliest head of infant hair. This time he got his face all the way out, but his shoulders lodged in the opening. His chin upthrust, he smiled at them in the guttering firelight. Emma looked amused, but Marc Greeley watched him with unconcealed disdain. Jesse pushed forward, the fabric of the tent stretching.

“Need some help?” Greeley asked.

“I’ve…got it,” Jesse grunted.

Drawing his arms as close to his body as he could, he gave one last push with both feet and tore loose from the tent.

Jesse flopped out and lay gasping in the dirt.

“That was impressive,” Marc Greeley said.

Suck it
, Jesse thought. He got to his feet and dusted himself off.

“You okay?” Emma asked. She was eyeing him with a mixture of sympathy and mirth. He permitted himself a quick glance at her body. She was still wearing the clothes she’d had on earlier. No cut-off shirt or low-cut panties.
One mystery solved
, he thought.

“Splendid,” he answered. “So…what’s going on?”

Greeley regarded Emma. “I was having trouble sleeping. You know, all that noise…” He smiled, his white teeth gleaming. “…and I wondered if you wanted to walk a little.”

Emma regarded him neutrally.

“I’m up for a walk,” Jesse said.

Greeley arched an eyebrow at him.

“Might as well,” Emma said. “I’m awake now.”

They started toward the paved road, but Emma stopped. “What about Colleen?”

Greeley gave her the dazzling smile. “She looks like she can take care of herself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Greeley started. “Oh, I only meant…well, she has a steely demeanor, doesn’t she? She’s not the type to get pushed around.”

Jesse studied Emma’s face to see if Greeley had wormed his way out. She looked skeptical, but her anger seemed to abate. They continued across the road toward the sound of bubbling water and started down a dirt path.

Emma asked, “How long have you been a TA?”

“Technically,” Greeley said, “I’m an associate professor.”

“What’s the difference?” Jesse asked.

“The difference is that I’ll be a full professor in a year. Two at the most. Clev will be retiring about that time, so it should be an interesting phase for the history department.” Greeley glanced at Emma—to see if she was impressed, Jesse was sure—but she appeared lost in thought.

The tree-lined path led to a river Jesse estimated to be about sixty feet across. Around them the winding drone of the cicadas filled the forest.

Standing on the shore, Greeley went on, “Of course, history is only one of my interests. My real love is disasterology.”

Emma glanced at him. “You made that up.”

“Not at all,” Greeley said. “There are professors of natural disasters at many major universities, and though my chosen field is Native American History, I take the study of disasters and their effects on various peoples just as seriously as do those with the title.”

For the first time, Jesse spotted the glowing red eye of the Dictaphone poised at Emma’s side. If Greeley had noticed it, he wasn’t letting on. Jesse paused, looking around. Beyond Emma and Greeley, the moonlight reflected on the moving water and tossed brilliant white spangles into the air. Jesse’s gaze moved over the river’s surface, along the trees that had been inundated by the high water. From downriver some enormous bird came winging in Jesse’s direction. He glanced down the bank at Emma and Greeley, but they were lost in conversation, oblivious of the huge shape winging their way. Jesse squinted into the darkness, amazed at the bird’s size. Its wings looked ten feet across. Maybe even fifteen. Just when Jesse began to worry it would swoop down and snatch one of them into the night sky, it rushed over them, veered west and headed upstream.

Jesse watched after it, uneasy. The damn thing looked prehistoric. Chilled, Jesse hurried down the bank after Emma and Greeley.

“Kind of an odd pairing, don’t you think?” he heard Emma remark. “Native American History and disasters?”

Greeley permitted himself a grin, as if relishing some secret. He said, “Ordinarily I’d agree with you, Miss Cayce, but in this instance I find the two share a rather fascinating…convergence.”

“And what is that?”

He favored her with a speculative look. Bending over and picking up a smooth stone, he said, “Much is made of the systematic extermination of the Native American peoples. Westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears.” Greeley paused and glanced down at Emma’s Dictaphone. “Can that thing pick up what I’m saying?”

“It can.”

He nodded. “Good. Now, popular thinking places blame on the white man. Europeans raping the virgin forest, killing indiscriminately, destroying the idyllic existence of the natives.”

“You disagree?”

“Not at all, Miss Cayce. To the contrary, our nation’s treatment of Native Americans is far more reprehensible than even the most graphic accounts have depicted.”

“So you’re categorizing the genocide as a natural disaster.”

“Oh, it was a disaster all right, but hardly a natural one. No, utterly preventable, which makes it all the more tragic.”

“Then I’m afraid I don’t see the connection.”

“Have you ever asked yourself,” Greeley asked, rubbing the wet sand from the stone until it gleamed in the starshine, “whether or not it was
all
really attributable to the white man?”

“Of course. Are you denying it?”

Greeley shook his head and skipped the stone along the surface of the water. It deflected three times before sinking with a muted plop. “No, Miss Cayce. Let’s take the Algonquin tribe that migrated here and tried to make its home on this land as an example. Because the abhorrent treatment of the Algonquins was so endemic to that period of time, everyone assumes that the people who inhabited this valley were subjected to the same treatment.”

“Weren’t they?”

Greeley became animated. Raising an index finger, he said, “There isn’t one account of an Algonquin being mistreated in Peaceful Valley. Further, there isn’t a single recorded battle between settlers and the Algonquin people within a fifty-mile radius.”

Emma shrugged. “That was a different time, very little technology. Word traveled slowly.”

Greeley smiled and nodded as if he’d expected that. “Yet in every other ‘forced resettlement’, there were numerous eyewitnesses and second-hand accounts of skirmishes, scalpings, wholesale violence. So why,” he asked, eyebrows lifting, “is there such a paucity of evidence with regard to what happened here?”

“You think there was a natural disaster, a flood or something?” Emma asked.

“There was indeed a flood, but why wasn’t the land resettled after that?”

Jesse waved a hand over the river. “Because it’s surrounded by marshland. The state had to build up the road in half a dozen places to make sure people could get in and out.”

“Ah,” Greeley said, “but people are here now, aren’t they?”

Emma frowned impatiently. “What are you saying, Mr. Greeley?”

“I’m saying that something other than the white man killed the natives. I’m saying that whatever it was—and I’m not talking about
marshland
, Mr. Hargrove—slaughtered the whites who ventured into this valley, as well.”

Emma leaned forward. “And that was…?”

The speculative look returned to Greeley’s face, and with it a shrewd gleam that Jesse didn’t like. “Let’s save that for later, Miss Cayce. You’ll be staying through the weekend, won’t you?”

She clicked off the recorder. “We leave first thing Sunday.”

They moved back toward the road, Greeley producing and holding aloft a glowing iPhone. “I know we’re in the lowlands, but this is ridiculous.”

Emma regarded him sourly. “What a shame.”

Greeley went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Another sign that they rushed this place.”

Jesse glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“The road into the park has already started to dimple, a sure sign it’ll crumble into the marshes within the next few years. There’s no first aid station and only one bathhouse. And to top it all off, they didn’t even bother to put up a cell phone tower to make sure people could stay connected to the outside world.”

Jesse shrugged. “I’m sure there’s a landline in the check-in booth.”

“Doesn’t help me a bit,” Greeley muttered. He shook the phone again as if it would respond to physical abuse. “Damn thing. Come
on
.”

Emma said, “Guess you’ll have to interact with us.”

Greeley looked at her dubiously. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a prejudice against modern technology.”

“Maybe I think people should spend more time with each other and less time gazing blankly into machines.”

They reached the road, and as they did Jesse spotted several figures forming in the darkness. He heard laughing voices, perceived the glint of bottles reflecting the starlight.

“That Greeley?” one of the figures asked. There were seven or eight of them, and as the group neared, Jesse realized a few of them were wearing skimpy bikinis.

“Hey, Marcus,” one young man said, his handsome face grinning over a beer bottle. Jesse took in the guy’s spiky blond hair, his washboard stomach, and felt his insecurity flare. “What’s going on? You leave Cavanaugh back at the campsite?”

“Done swimming already?” Greeley asked.

“Gotta be fresh for breakfast club,” another guy said. This one had shaggy black hair and a goatee.

“What’s breakfast club?” Emma asked.

“Everybody wears costumes and gets drunk,” Jesse explained. “They had it at WIU when I was there.”

A small smile. “You ever go?”

“Once,” Jesse said. “Most of the time I slept in on Saturdays.”

One of the girls asked Greeley, “You’re coming, aren’t you?”

Greeley shook his head matter-of-factly, as if big-breasted coeds flirted with him every day. “I doubt it.”

“We’ll be at the playground,” the goateed guy said.

Another guy stepped forward from the darkness. This one was strong as hell, his crew cut giving him the look of a soldier or a professional fighter.

“What about you?” he asked Emma. He took a swig of beer, grinned.

“We might,” she said, “after we do an interview.”

The muscular guy stepped closer. “You can interview me.” An aroma of beer attended him, and he wobbled as he spoke.

“We better get going,” Greeley said, reaching for Emma’s arm.

“What, she yours or something?” the guy asked.

Jesse’s flesh tingled. An atmosphere of violence had arisen around them, and he suddenly longed for the quiet of his stinky tent.

But Emma surprised them all by taking Jesse’s arm. “I’m with him,” she said.

Greeley stared at them in stunned silence. Jesse tried to remove his amazed look, but didn’t succeed. Emma’s warm body pressed against him. The grip of her fingers sent delicious ripples of heat up his arm.

And with the rest looking on, Jesse and Emma headed toward the campsite.

Chapter Six

Charly rose through the fog as if on a slow-moving conveyor. She listened for Jake’s screaming, and sure enough, there it was: shrill, heartbreaking, endlessly grating. She opened her eyes and turned her head on the off chance Eric had come to bed, but of course he hadn’t. There were nights lately he’d never come to bed at all, instead crashing on the basement sectional. While she walked the carpet between the master suite and the nursery until she finally gave up and took Jake into bed with her.

And when Eric did sleep in the same room, he invariably crammed fluorescent orange plugs in his ears to muffle Jake’s cries. She asked him once if he felt guilty that she did all the work with Jake.