The Shadowkiller (5 page)

Jack Remsbecker's mouth fell open and his perception became dreamlike, as if what was happening was not actually happening. It was the body's extraordinary defense mechanism, preventing the mind from sending such shocking distress signals to the organs so as to actually induce heart failure or blackout from shock. Keeping going, despite all hope's seeming gone, was part of a last-ditch effort by the body to save itself. The failure of that safety mechanism, when confronted by a certain, terrible death, can cause some to literally die of fright.

Jack was not so lucky.

He saw it all coming through eyes filtered by absolute, paralyzing fear. As this towering engine of destruction quickly advanced on him, he stood stock-still, his Timberlands glued to the muddy trail. Somewhere, some cognizant brain function ruled flight impossible. The figure moved so fast, too fast for something that big. And he saw the certainty of his death in its eyes.

As it reached him, his muscles crumbled and he fell backward. But it caught him by the face before he went all the way over and held him, the pressure just enough to keep him up. Then it lifted him off the ground. Its massive palm covering his entire face, Jack saw his peripheral vision flash with red flecks as his blood pressure maxed out.

He felt it bounding up the hill, off the trail. It carried him easily and, after a moment, stopped and shifted its grip to the back of his neck. It raised him, and their faces came within a foot of each other. As muscled fingers closed Jack's voice box off, he smelled the awful stench of this thing and stared into its terrible orbs, yellow centers glistening with white rage.

Then he heard—and felt—a popping sound like microwave popcorn. It was his spine.

Jack wanted to cry like a baby but couldn't get his lungs to respond because his neck had just suffered the catastrophic C2-C3 break, rendering his body from his shoulders to his toes into just so much flaccid meat. Then he felt hot breath as this unspeakable demon opened its vast mouth and bit into most of his face like an apple, from his chin to the bridge of his nose. With his vision still momentarily functioning, his severed spine didn't ameliorate the unbearable pain from his neck up or the stark terror of man's worst primal fear—that of being consumed alive by another creature. Jack's last chaotic sensations were unimaginable agony layered upon exquisite horror.

N
ot long after the recently demised Jack Remsbecker had been spirited deep into the woods, then cleaned and consumed like a slaughterhouse chicken, Ty was easing the Mercedes back into its tiled slot. By the clock over the work bench it was 6:52. He knew Ronnie would be up and there would be tension until he explained himself.

He crossed the plaza into the house, hung his James Dean death jacket in the closet, and staggered toward Ronnie's office, hoping to expunge his cryptic good-bye message from her computer. In the kitchen sat his six-year-old daughter, Meredith, in her pajamas, spooning corn-flakes as if comatose. Ty knew that she would someday describe herself as “not a morning person.”

“Hi, sweetie. Mommy up?”

“Yeah,” she managed in a whisper.

“She been in her office yet?”

“Dunno.”

In Ronnie's office the screen saver streaked Escherlike images of ducks and reversed ducks, the same image that had played earlier. Ty tapped a key and the message he had typed was gone.

“Shit…”

“Hi.”

Ty spun to find his wife standing in the doorway, wearing a white terry cloth robe, wet hair wrapped in a towel, her arms crossed.

Ty looked surprised. “Hi.”

Ty read her face, and despite her outward calm he saw the slightest bit of concern. As Ronnie undid the towel and tousled short auburn locks, her sloe eyes were cautious, inquisitive. She looked more like twenty-eight than thirty-eight. Her tossed gamine crop and pale, almost pixieish beauty gave the first impression that Veronica Greenwood was soft, even girl-like. Yet Ty told anyone who would listen that Ronnie had the balls of the family.

At that moment Ty desperately wanted her, physically and emotionally, but knew he didn't deserve to even come near her. She just wanted her husband to snap out of his malaise and come back to her. They both feared they would never be able to talk things out because the problem had become too complex. Yet they also acknowledged that very smart people sometimes overcomplicated the potentially simple.

“I love you too. We all do,” she said, answering his earlier message. She lowered the towel and squinted. “You look terrible. What's going on?”

As Ty and Ronnie's eyes met, he suddenly felt deep shame over what he had almost done a few hours before. The betrayal and abandonment of his woman and children would have been enough to cast him into eternal damnation, if he really believed in that, which he sort of did. Ty chose to walk out, kissing her cheek as he passed. “I'm okay,” he said.

Ronnie watched her husband disappear down the hallway. She had feared for her marriage but now she feared for his life.

Ty entered his office and thought of his Scotch-blurred promise to never return. He sat at his desk, unrolled the small newspaper clenched in his hand, and found those two words,
broken trees,
and reread them again and again, as if someone, an editor at this two-bit local rag had somehow stumbled onto the Truth. This just might be the Rosetta Stone Ty Greenwood had searched for to restore his name and his life.

Unlike anything else he'd seen in three years, this piece of news was alive and right in the neighborhood, and no one but Ty knew what it might mean. He picked up the phone and started to dial the newspaper, then realized they wouldn't be answering at seven ten on a Saturday morning. He hung up and stared at the headline.

Tears came to his eyes as a wave of emotion washed over him.
Please God, don't let this be a false lead.
Ty rarely prayed for anything, but this moment seemed appropriate.
Why did I see this? Tell me this isn't a joke to prolong my agony. Is this my answer?
Ty could wait to make that call. For if this wasn't what he had been seeking, then he would soon be back on that black road to oblivion, and this time he'd get it right.

As a light rain began, Mitch looked at his watch. He'd been waiting at the trail's Y for twenty minutes. After giving Jack ten minutes leeway, he allowed himself to steam over it. Why should he pay the price for this guy's excesses? Mitch didn't go out and get smashed and whore around till all hours in search of some cheap thrills.

My God, can't he move a little faster?
That's why he, Mitch, was making partner and Jack was lucky to get his leftovers. Mitch's brain angrily searched for analogies and metaphors for Jack's failed existence and his own growing success and it all came down to who would be first to the top of that hill ahead. That reasoned out—and after waiting precisely twenty-four minutes—Mitch continued up the trail, his staccato pace matching his irritation.

John Baxter heard the phone ringing as he slipped the key into the lock of the glass door. He scurried, as quickly as he could at seventy-four, to the reception desk. It wasn't even seven thirty and someone was calling, probably to place an ad for their missing dog in the classifieds.

As publisher of the
Snohomish Daily News,
Baxter's pragmatic hope was that a big shot from some outfit like Burger King or Albert-sons had finally seen the error of their ways and was caving in and buying a double-truck ad in his humble paper. But he quickly dismissed that fantasy as he picked up the receiver. Too early and it was Saturday. His bet: missing dog.

“News.”

“May I have your editorial department?”

Baxter detected a faint Southern drawl. “You got it,” he answered.

“There was an article about a missing Weyerhaeuser guy. You know it?”

“Yup.”

“You write it?”

“Nope,” said Baxter. “A kid who works for me wrote it. A Wazzu intern.”

Wazzu was the local diminutive for Washington State University, the state's farm club for journalists.

“Her name's Verna McKay,” continued Baxter. “What can we do for you?”

“I'd like to talk to her about the information in the…Is she around?”

“No. Won't be in today. Maybe I can help.”

“I'm just curious as to what you have on file. I assume you have a file?”

“Yeah, but it's confidential. Why do you need it?”

“I'm sorry, you are?” Ty asked.

“John Baxter, editor and publisher. And you?”

“Ty Greenwood,” Ty blurted, immediately realizing he shouldn't be too aggressive. “If you could let me look at the file, I would really appreciate it. I'm with the…Forest Service…and we're concerned about the disappearances lately.”

“There've been others?” Baxter asked, ever the newsman.

“Yeah, a few,” Ty lied. This was the first such occurrence he knew of.

“Forest Service, huh?” Baxter figured nobody would make this up. “Yeah, okay, you can come down, but the file stays here.”

“Thanks. I'll be down later this morning.”

John Baxter hung up wondering why the guy had seemed so excited just to see a file about a logger who'd gone missing. People disappear in the woods all the time.

Mitch got to the top of the mountain, brushed the snow off a rock, sat down, and fished a sandwich out of his pack. He took a bite and thought of that sorry sonofabee Remsbecker. He glanced at his watch and shook his head. Though he hadn't seen Jack for over two hours, he calculated his hiking partner was a little less than thirty minutes behind him.

He finished off the first sandwich and gazed at the holy panorama. There were two nearby peaks taller than his, and the rest of the view was of smaller knobs and valleys of dark green stretching below. He was a few ridges away from the highway and had lost sight of the depression it tracked through. He liked being unable to see the road or any evidence of man.

He sucked in the chill air, which expanded in his lungs like bottled oxygen. Mitch decided to finish his lunch—it was nine thirty already—and head back. He smiled as he pictured Jack at the office Monday, struggling to counter Mitch's version of the hike.

Forty minutes later, Mitch's emotions had run the gamut from irritated to disgusted to worried. He briefly considered that Jack might have gone back to the Cherokee to nap off his hangover but then rejected that because Jack had no way to get inside. Having been out of touch with each other now more than three hours, Mitch began glancing off trail in particularly dicey spots for signs of misadventure. He knew his friend was not as trail savvy as he was; Jack really only went on the hikes to humor him. Mitch felt guilty over his lack of patience and his competitive drive since Jack was only along for the fellowship.

After quickly descending several miles, all the while scanning the nearby slopes and ravines, Mitch seized on a patch of color twenty-five yards ahead. He trotted to it, the small white and gold pack of Marlboro Lights standing out against the drab moist dirt and rocks. Mitch put the pack in his pocket, then looked around, knowing Jack would not have parted with them unless something was very wrong.

“Jack?” He called out, “Jack!”

His voice echoed away and he waited for a response, even a moan.

“Jack! Hey, Jack!”

More nothing, except the white noise of soft rain and occasional rustling of birds and small ground dwellers.

“Jack!” Mitch gazed around. Not prone to cursing, he categorized this situation as appropriate for an expletive. “Shit,” he whispered.

Regretting his no-phone rule, he decided to jog to the car and call for help. He'd have either the King or Snohomish County Search and Rescue here in no time and they'd have Jack back safely before dinner.

Now this will be a story for the office on Monday.

It was easy to jog using the trail's steep downward slope. About five minutes into his trek, he slowed and looked around, feeling that the sun had just peeked through the rain clouds. A few yards later, after searching the sky, he realized he was actually having a gut instinct that something was wrong. He increased his jog to a run, his feet now sailing over the ruts and dips and switchbacks in his path. Racing down the trail, he suddenly had the perception he was being
pursued.
He acknowledged it was totally irrational, but there really seemed to be someone following him.

Even though he knew it wasn't Jack—everything told him it wasn't—he stopped to look, to listen. Though the soft whisper of rain had let up for a moment, he was woodsman enough to be aware that what he heard was
nothing.
Not a sound other than air molecules rubbing together. Not a bird, squirrel, cricket, or fly. Nothing. On any other day he might not have even noticed, but there was something ominous about the silence and a slow wave of panic swept over him.

Mitch began to run as fast as he could.

Running at full clip for ten minutes, he saw landmarks that told him he was less than half a mile from the Cherokee. The syncopation of his footsteps on the hard-worn trail beat a steady rhythm, and as he poured on the coal, the snapping of twigs and thudding on hardpan under his feet no longer sounded synchronized with his footfalls. Even in the split second of ground contact he was making, he could feel other, faster, bigger steps. Much bigger steps. It wasn't Jack and it sure wasn't anything he wanted to see. He concentrated on getting to the car and getting the hell out of there.

He was sprinting now, flying. The rain returned, harder than before.

Throwing his stride off slightly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys and the Cherokee's remote transmitter. That little black piece of plastic was a welcome feeling in his hand and gave Mitch the illusion he was safe already. But that warm shell shattered when Mitch heard
the breathing
—metered, regular breaths, but at a volume and resonance that were unreal, like a horrifyingly deep, basso profundo recording someone had concocted in a sound studio and was now playing behind him to frighten his wits from him. And it was working.

And the giant footfalls of the other were overpowering his too. Now there was no doubt something was right behind him, something really big, something…

Through the misty rain he saw the Cherokee and readied the door clicker, his thumb on the button—the one-touch, driver-side-only door opener. Closing on the truck, only thirty seconds more and…

He was going to make it…

He knew it…

He was so close. He visualized jumping into the front seat and…

It grabbed him.

There were no doubts in his mind as he was stopped short and lifted two, three, four feet off the ground, the transmitter falling out of his hand. A throaty, tearing snort from a maw like Cerberus's told him he was not in the grasp of anything human, and when he was whipped around, his mind froze as he realized he was merely a smaller animal in the clutches of a vastly superior animal.

He was held by the waist and neck, as the process of ending Mitch Roberts began. His body was bent backward like a fragile bundle of sticks into an impossible position, resulting in his nervous system's failing and his lungs collapsing from the pressure.