The Shadowkiller (39 page)

T
hree hours and nearly five miles later, the three men reached a T in their path and tried to use visual clues to determine which trail would take them to the top. They had long since passed the Y where they had previously abandoned the climb. Ben's raging heart rate told him he'd better take it easy or they'd be signaling one of the helicopters orbiting five miles away for a medical evac. Ben knew he would be forced to turn around soon, whether they reached the top or not, so he decided to push it a bit further and keep the problem to himself as long as he could. But as he leaned against a tree, his deeply hitching breath drew the attention of his partners. Mac looked at Ty, who imperceptibly nodded his agreement. Mac turned to Ben and threw some weight into his words,“Okay, that's it, we're going back.”

“Mac's right,” said Ty,“you're no good dead.”

Ben wanted to fight but at that moment he just needed to sit and let his lungs catch up on oxygenating his blood. He found a large round rock by the trail edge and took the weight off his legs.

“How far to the top?” Ben asked Mac.

Mac unfolded his map and tried to decipher it. “Don't know,” he said. “The map doesn't even show this T. According to the elevation contours, we should be right below the top, maybe an eighth of a mile. Looks like not even a hundred feet vertical. Either Ty or I could scout ahead and see if it's that close.”

Ben shook his head. “We shouldn't split up, especially here.”

As Mac looked at the map, Ty shifted his focus up the trail and his eyes gave away his surprise. He pointed. “Look.”

Mac and Ben followed Ty's sight line. Perhaps fifty yards away, a few dozen trees, from saplings to second growth, were broken or torn off. Mac whistled softly at the chilling sight.

Ty unshouldered his trank rifle and turned to Ben.

“Hey Ben, do you see…” Ty trailed off, causing Mac to switch his eyes from the trees to Ben. The old man was now on his feet, squinting as if in pain, but more like he was listening intently.

Mac started, “You—,” but was silenced by Ben's quickly raised hand.

It had all become clear to Ben in a split second. His suspicions were confirmed. Just as it had been doing with its tracks, it was hiding its thoughts as well. Mac slowly drew his pistol and Ty checked to make sure his rifle was cocked. Ben knew his radar had let them down, robbing them of a warning.

“Damn…” Ben pivoted on his heels, already knowing what he would see.

Ty and Mac spun and what they saw striding rapidly down the hillside above them was staggering—a dark, shaggy titan, rage spitting from its golden eyes.

In that instant, the poison of fury in Ty's system overwhelmed his natural fear, Ben accepted what he saw, and Mac was just plain scared shitless, his policeman's brain automatically measuring the onrushing monolith against Dr. Frazier's estimate. In less than one second Mac knew he should have listened to his instincts.
Of course it was real…

With no time to react, Ty quickly raised his rifle and fired his dart—slightly wide. Mac unfroze, drew down on its chest, and squeezed his trigger. Nothing. The trigger was immobile: the safety was still on.

“Split up! Run!” Ty yelled, wanting to draw the beast away from his friends.

Mac instinctively pushed Ben toward the downhill trail, then followed the only other route, up the hill with Ty. As Ben took off downtrail, Mac hoped it would come after them.

It did.

When the old one saw him, there seemed to be less fear than recognition in his mind voice. With the other two, one felt fear, as he should, but the other had a mind voice filled with hate, strong like his own. But while his own hatred was based on revenge and drove him to hurt the small two-legs, this one had another hatred.

He turned to the hating one and his companion. The old one could wait.

Ben ran, his dream real again after sixty years. This terrain was different from his long ago encounter, but what disturbed him most was that he knew this place. It matched his dreams of the past year. His old dreams of the lush forest of Humboldt County had been alternating with the new dreams of this sparser, rockier landscape, enough so to cause him to doubt the authenticity of the original encounter and to question whether it had really happened. Now he realized this place was familiar because it was always something that was
going to happen.
Ty and Mac were being chased—just as he had dreamed—and he was on his own. Ben knew how this dream ended and he needed to change it.

Ty and Mac had no hope of losing their pursuer, given its size and speed. Sprinting away from it, Mac replayed the image of its impossible dimensions, shoulders as wide as a car, telephone pole arms and legs, and a spectacular mane framing its frightening man/animal physiognomy. Ty had dropped the dart rifle and Mac was racing to stay two steps behind. Mac still gripped his huge handgun but didn't dare stop, knowing the beast was breathing down their backs. He thumbed off the safety and visualized how he would turn and fire, but he just couldn't come up with the two seconds he needed.

The lumbering giant was not ten yards behind, its steps measured and patient. Mac knew it was just toying with them. Flashing on Ben's saying how some could feel your thoughts, he felt sure that what he felt in the forest the other day was definitely this thing. Mac quickly resigned himself again—if it came to that—to go down in a blaze of fifty-caliber gunfire.

Trotting behind, ready to strike when he tired of the chase, he kept them a few paces away. The other reason he held back was that he felt one of them carried the thunder. He was not sure how they let it loose, so he stayed just behind them, biding his time.

He thought the one closest, the frightened one, might have it. He could easily reach out and end him but did not know if that would unleash the thunder. He realized from its mind voice that this was the same one who had had the thunder before, below on the trail.

Then that power feeling of hatred from the mind voice of the one in front welled up and taunted him, so he decided to strike. They were defying him, which summoned his own power feeling and rising hatred. He feared nothing, not even the thunder.

Ty was furious they'd been ambushed despite all the preparation. He couldn't believe the déjà vu: he was helpless once again, only this wasn't a playful teenager. This malevolent giant was going to kill them in an unspeakable way. His anger over that prospect drove his legs faster.

As he crested the summit, Ty had a split second to choose between two descents, one bad, the other worse. To one side was the rocky, stump-clustered clear-cut where Skip Caldwell and Kris had met their deaths. To the other was a ragged precipice.

Knowing they were no match for the beast on a reasonable downhill, Ty picked the cliff and went over the edge, with Mac following. Both men assumed they were about to die as they ran down an almost-vertical rock face that on any other day they would never have attempted to even crawl down. An eons-old remnant of a landslide, the incline was pocked with stones and boulders and its countenance had been scoured of most vegetation by unrelenting north winds. Ty fixed on the river coursing at the cliff's base far below. Their speed increased too quickly and Ty and Mac simultaneously realized they were out of control.

Mac fell first, his toe catching a crevice. He went over, hitting his side hard and continuing his tumble, the gun flying out of his grip. Ty, in the lead, heard Mac fall and lost it a second later, unable to brake his forward momentum. He took the spill better, slipping onto his butt and bumping up and over some rocks only to find a sort of natural chute, which he rode for a good thirty yards before stopping. They had no idea if they were still being pursued, and Ty's only consolation in falling was that he didn't think it could possibly be behind them.

Ty turned to see Mac falling toward him. He tried to catch him but missed, then saw the gun skitter by just within his reach and grabbed it. Ty looked up and saw the beast leaning over the ridge, apparently sizing up the feasibility of pursuit. Before he lost sight of it, Ty steadied and aimed. Squeezing the trigger, he felt the huge gun explode with a kick he hadn't anticipated, sending him over sideways, the gun slapping a rock and leaping from his hand. Ty skidded and bounced another fifty yards, then managed to stop. Several feet below, Mac had come to rest. A few rocks peppered by, following him from the top. Ty slid down to Mac. One look into his chalky face told him the man was hurt and in shock.

“I think I busted my leg,” Mac gritted.

Just below the knee of Mac's jeans, the blood-soaked fabric bulged ominously. Ty recognized a compound fracture and queasily looked away to scan the ridge a hundred yards above. Nothing. The slope was so barren he could have seen a cat moving, let alone their monster.

Mac turned to look, paying with brief but blinding pain. “Ohhh. You hit it?”

“Don't know,” answered Ty. “The recoil knocked me off balance. It was a long ways off. I doubt it.”

“Where's the gun?” asked Mac.

“Lost it,” said Ty, pointing,“Down there. Sorry.”

As Mac's pain subsided to a dull blur, he voiced another worry, “Ben.”

Ty pulled out his phone and punched in 911, trying to put Ben out of his mind. No signal, out of range. He folded the phone and looked around. “We've got one way out of here.”

They looked down from their rocky perch to the river, several hundred yards below. Ty gestured at Mac's leg. “You've got a compound break. I can help some, but you're probably going to have to walk on it.”

Mac laughed. “Walk? Shit, it'd be a lot easier if I just fell the rest of the way, less weight on it.”

Ty admired the man's guts. It took courage to face death with a hearty chuckle.

“Or I can get out of here and call for help,” Ty offered.

Though agonized, Mac smiled. He shook his head. “And I sit around and wait for Junior to come eat me? I'll goddamn flap my wings and fly before that happens. Let's go.”

The small two-leg's thunder had lashed out and hurt him, like the claw of a bear. It had cut into his shoulder, not deep but the red flowed, like the red he saw from those he killed. He now knew the thunder attacked like an animal and could wound but not necessarily kill. He respected the thunder but did not fear it.

The place where the two escaped him was steep. He could have followed them but the effort would have been high and the threat of the thunder was real. He wanted the hating one who had let loose the thunder. The hating one was special.

He let that one go for now but would return and find him. He knew the hating one lived with the old one in the big wood cave. He watched the red trickle from the raw rut. He would find that place again, because this small two-leg with the power voice, this one who had let go the thunder—this one would die. But first, the old one was below on the trail.

B
en covered a quarter mile at top speed before hearing the thundering report of the gun. He prayed Mac's aim had been true. He wanted to go back but had a feeling he should keep moving. He paced himself, and though his heart was chugging hard, he knew he was going to make it. He would get back to Mac's Malibu, break the window, and use the police radio inside to call for help. He wondered if the radio worked without the car key.

As he stopped to catch a breather, his old ticker was screaming, but Ben felt no signs of danger, from his body or from the thing somewhere out there. He was less afraid of its running him down than he was of his body's failing him. Instead of spitting into its face and dying like a warrior, he was afraid he might just pucker up like a seventy-nine-year-old rag doll. In his dream he was always running, a young, strong brave, the thing nearly upon him. But of course in the dream he always woke up right before it caught him. He didn't have the luxury of that particular escape now. He began moving again, wondering how his partners were. Part of him hoped they had slain the beast, but another part wished for his own resolution.

A moment later he knew he would complete his dream.

It was behind him, moving fast. He knew it, could feel it. Its mind found his and they locked. It was not going to let him go. Ben trotted, stifling his panic, knowing that's what it wanted—panic, fear. He didn't want to die.
Eighty's a good, long life. Yeah, tell that to the guy who's seventy-nine.
Then he saw Doris at home, worrying about him. She'd be okay, he'd seen to that…

Now he knew it was going to happen and that he was really just a frail old man with a crazy notion of facing a sixty-year-old ghost, and—

It was behind him, not far. Fifty yards, a hundred? Five hundred? Didn't know, it didn't matter. There were five or more miles between Ben and the car, and even then—

He heard it now, its locomotive breaths…Oh-Mah…

Ben tried to speed up, but his lungs were inadequate, not keeping up, not enough air, feeling dizzy, his arm, left arm, feeling numb, bad sign…know the signs…bad one. He ran harder, knowing it was all or nothing. It was right there, felt it, warmth on the back of his neck…

He kept moving, trying to quicken his pace, but his worst fear was being realized: his body was letting him down. He pushed the throttle but was out of gas,
no oil in the crankcase.
His chest heaved in consort with his open mouth to grab air, but it wasn't working anymore. His legs were getting rubbery but he kept forward progress, he could do it, he'd been to war, this was nothin'—

Suddenly pain radiated out from Ben's chest and in no time it became one of those huge fireworks displays, the biggest he'd ever seen…beautiful blooming, sparkling stars in his eyes, cascading rays of light, it was stunning, the best fireworks he'd ever seen…

And after what seemed to be the longest pause…

Almost like a lazy afternoon spent lying in the sun…

He was floating, drifting…

Or was it running? No, he was…flying. Now he could see everything, soft, glowing, dreamy. He saw himself, on the ground, on the trail, lying there, his eyes open, but he was here…How could he be there
and
here?

Drifting up, he felt no more pain, no more fear, no more bad things, just a warmth, a feeling of…love? He saw it, Oh-Mah. It was huge, running, and it was hurt…its shoulder…blood. He felt its pain and he felt…compassion. He didn't need to beat it anymore, to look into its eyes…

Then it was upon him, or rather that crumpled shell at the side of trail, the empty husk that looked like Ben, but couldn't be because he was here and then…

A hand, not on his shoulder exactly, but more on his soul, touched him, and he knew the hand.

“Granddad?” he asked, though he somehow knew.

It's okay, Benjamin. It's okay.

Ben knew the voice and now he understood. Of course it had been familiar, his inner voice, his inner Indian…

“I know,” said Ben, and they drifted higher, watching this Oh-Mah as he frolicked with the old carcass that had been Ben. After a moment, or an eternity, it all got very white…blinding but not hurting a bit…so beautiful…