Voracious (34 page)

To one side of the desk stood a massive false rock face with a taxidermied mountain goat on top. She ducked down a narrow passageway to her left, winding by displays on logging and early tourism industry in the Canadian Rockies.

Finally she found a quiet little corner by a luge display and sat down next to its red and white sled. What could she do? What were her options? She could rent a car, but she didn’t know of any nearby places, and it would take her a while to find them. She’d also have to scare up a ride to the rental location if it was too far away.

She could hitchhike. But at this point, paranoia was tightening its already considerable grip on her perceptions. The creature could be any person who picked her up along the road. Stefan would just have to steal a different car, assume a different form, and nonchalantly pick her up from the side of the road.

She put her head in her hands.

“You okay?” asked a young voice next to her. A little blonde-haired girl stood there, a rubber lizard in one hand.

Madeline smiled. “Yeah. Just got a headache.”

“You should take aspirin. My mom gives me this orange-flavored aspirin. It’s pretty good.”

Madeline guessed at the girl’s age. Five. Maybe six. Kate’s age. In all the panic of the last few days, she’d nearly forgotten about the little girl she’d pulled from the dam. She hoped Kate was okay.

“Cool lizard,” Madeline said, indicating the girl’s rubbery companion.

“It’s a gecko. His name’s Dexter.”

“Hiya, Dex,” Madeline said.

The girl laughed. A woman walked up behind the child and put her hands on the small shoulders. “Ready to go? We’ll go get ice cream.”

“Really? I’m ready!”

She turned without a word and grasped her mother’s hand. Together they walked away, rounding a corner beyond further displays.

Madeline returned her head to her hands. “What am I going to do?” she whispered.

Outside, the distinct shriek of a train whistle sounded. She lifted her head.

The train. Lots of people would be on it. And the station was just around the corner from the visitor center. The whistle pierced the air again.

She was out of the visitor center in a flash, pushing past a family that was dithering over a map of Banff National Park in the doorway.

Outside, she ran up a small rise and saw the silver of an Amtrak train sitting at the station.

Scanning the road, she saw no sign of George or the car.

She rushed toward the station, hoping the train would stay at the station for a few more minutes.

Madeline ran to the ticket window, trying to catch her breath to talk to the cashier there. An elderly man with a neatly trimmed white mustache, he waited patiently while she gasped and tried to swallow away the dryness in her throat. “Does this train go through Mothershead?” she asked.

The cashier shook his head. “Nope. This is the Empire Builder. It goes west from here but stops along the way in Whitefish, and you can take a bus from there.”

“Great,” she said between gasps. “Is it leaving soon?”

“At 5:46 p.m.” He looked at his watch, a gold-banded thing with a black face. “That’s in about twenty minutes.”

“Terrific.” She pulled her wallet from the roomy back pocket of Noah’s jeans. Fishing her credit card out, she passed it across the counter.

He totaled up her ticket and finished the sale, handing her a small folder with her ticket inside. Then he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “These are the bus times out of Whitefish,” he explained, “and directions to get to the bus station from the train.” He slid that paper across the counter, too.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the offered paper and envelope.

“You can go ahead and board, if you like. Might be a good idea. You can get a better seat.”

She nodded and turned away from the counter. Light from the setting sun streamed into the little train station, and she squinted against the golden brightness.

Outside the train waited, and uniformed Amtrak employees stood by the doors to assist passengers. She left the small station and crossed to the closest attendant, a young woman with cocoa-colored skin and long, braided hair swept up under her hat. “Go up to the second level and sit wherever you like,” she told Madeline. “The conductor will come by later and take your ticket once the train’s in motion.”

“Okay, thanks,” Madeline said, smiling at her. She scanned up and down the platform. She was alone except for the train workers.

She stepped up into the train and climbed the small staircase to the first level. Racks of baggage rose on either side of her, suitcases stacked neatly next to army duffels and backcountry packs. To her right stood another staircase, this one taller than the first. She climbed its carpeted steps and emerged on the second level in the heart of coach seating.

Most of the seats were empty, and she was glad for it. She’d been hoping to have a couple seats to herself so she could stretch out. She chose a seat on the right side of the train so she could look out that way in the direction of George’s car and the park. Only five people occupied the car: a couple near the front sat sound asleep; a woman in her fifties read a Dorothy Gilman novel; a young guy in a cowboy hat sat listening to headphones with his eyes closed; and the last one, a Caucasian dreadlocked guy about her age wearing a batik shirt, sat staring out of the window and looking as if he’d just left the love of his life behind. She could feel sadness wafting off him.

She sat down, bombarded momentarily by the white-noise Bus Seat Effect, which she tuned out. Leaning forward in the seat, she waited impatiently for the train to depart, watching out of the window with unease.

Madeline started awake with a jerk. She hadn’t even realized she’d dozed off. Her exhausted body had made the choice for her.

The train lurched out of the station, and her drowsy head knocked against the seat’s headrest. Out of the window, Glacier National Park stretched into the distance. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and shadows filled the forest. They chugged away from the station, slowly passing through the tiny town of West Glacier. She watched the Glacier Highland Resort go by out of the opposite window.

Gradually the train picked up speed as it chugged by the small, scenic towns of Hungry Horse and Columbia Falls on its way to Whitefish. When they’d been under way for ten minutes, Madeline stretched and got out of her seat. Her stomach rumbled, demanding a visit to the café car. She started for the rear of the train, bouncing around the center aisle as the train made its turbulent way down the tracks. On one lurch, she almost ended up in the lap of the woman reading Dorothy Gilman. The older woman smiled up at Madeline from beneath a flowered hat.

Madeline reached the end of the car and pressed the large metal button on the car’s door. With a noisy whoosh, it slid open, admitting her to the loud area between her car and the one behind it.

She pressed the square button on the next door, and with a whoosh was admitted to the next car. This one was even emptier, with only two people occupying it. One was a man in his fifties working on a laptop. He looked up as she entered, smiled faintly, and returned to his work.

The other passenger was a haggard, furtive-looking woman who was crocheting what looked like Christmas stockings. She gave Madeline’s muddy shirt an unfriendly once-over and returned to her hook and yarn.

Madeline walked to the end of the car, pushed the door button, and entered the confines of the place between the cars. When she pressed on the next button, the noisy door opened to admit her to the next car.

The first thing she saw when the door opened fully was George, standing up in the aisle, facing her, with a wad of paper towels soaking up blood from the nasty gash she’d given him.

He saw her. She backed up, the door sliding closed without her passing through it. He raced forward, pressing the button on the door just as she was pivoting to get back into the previous car. The door opened, painfully slowly, and Madeline was halfway through it when he caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, shouting above the din of the train in the confined area. She flung his hand away. “You’re my friend, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’d sure like to know why you asked me to come all the way up here so you could smash my head open. And I’m still trying to figure out why I was crazy enough to follow you onto this train and abandon my car back in the park. I just saw you duck into the station, and my brain went out of the window. I wanted to help you.” He gingerly fingered the bandage on his head. “What was left of my brain, anyway.”

She studied him intently, the face she’d come to know as her friend’s face, the eyes she’d once trusted.

“I’ve read Noah’s diary,” she warned him. Behind her back she reached for the door button.

George lifted his eyebrows. “What?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Who’s Noah?”

She shook her head. “I know your MO. What you’ve done here is really clever, and I didn’t figure it out until it was almost too late. What did you plan to do? Drive me somewhere desolate where no one would interrupt you while you stole my life?”

George looked thoroughly confused. He put one hand to his temple, the other still holding the wad of red-soaked paper towels. Blood dripped down into his eye. “Okay … hold on. Have you completely lost it? What in the world are you talking about?”

Her searching hand found the door button, and the door slid open. She backed into the car, then turned and ran down the center aisle, the train lurching and throwing her off balance repeatedly as she went.

She glanced over her shoulder. George hadn’t followed. She could still see him between the cars, staring at her through the door’s window.

She passed through the doors into the next car, wanting to find a conductor or, even better, a large group of people. She thought of the observation lounge, the car on the train comprised almost completely of windows, including the ceiling. Usually they were packed. It would be near the rear of the train, back by the dining and café cars. And George blocked the way.

She’d have to think of some way to get around him or barge by him. She ran through the car and entered her own. Her eyes fell on the stairs leading down to the baggage area, where she had first boarded the train.

Quickly she bounded down them, finding the area much as she’d seen it before. No one was down there, just suitcases and duffel bags. A door lay to her right, and she pushed the button to open it. It didn’t budge. Beyond the door window it was completely dark. She guessed the sleeping cars were somewhere on the lower level. Perhaps this was one of them. Or some kind of off-limits train crew room.

She was going to have to get past George. Briefly she entertained the notion of climbing outside the train and up onto the roof, then leaping along from car to car like in so many thrillers she’d seen. At first the thought seemed crazy, but it started to grow on her when she thought of coming face-to-face with the creature again.

Tentatively she went to the door through which she had boarded the train. Feeling like she was shoplifting or hot-wiring a car, she reached out and pushed the door’s button. Nothing happened. She tried it again. The door didn’t budge.

Part of her was relieved. Taking her chances inside the train with the creature seemed only slightly riskier than stumbling along the top of the lumbering locomotive. She pictured tunnels with low clearance and tremendously cold, mountain winds that could sweep her off the smooth steel roof.

She turned away from the door and crept to the bottom of the stairs. Staring up the stairwell, she saw no sign of her pursuer, but she knew he was up there somewhere, choosing the best place to ambush her.

If only she could hide somehow. But the hiding places on a train were greatly limited, especially if one didn’t have a sleeping car. No matter how easy old movies made it look to completely hide from someone on a train, riding coach on Amtrak was a completely different story. Her options were in plain sight in a large group, locked in a toilet stall in the woman’s bathroom, or lying down inside someone’s duffel bag after throwing all their stuff out.

None of them seemed too hopeful.

With growing dread, Madeline returned to the stairs and peered upward. She listened for anything unusual above the trains clackity clack on the tracks. She didn’t hear anything.

Slowly she climbed the stairs and looked over the car. The same people still sat there. No one new. No one looked alarmed, all just reading or staring out of the window as scenic Montana faded into night.

She crept through her car, then passed into the next. Still, the two passengers sat there, not even looking up this time. Stefan could be one of them. She could file by them, and he could reach out and grab her, sinking teeth into her neck.

She rushed down the corridor and entered the next car, the one where she’d originally seen George. He still stood there, still clutched the paper towels to his head. He saw her enter the car, and she stopped.

“Madeline,” he demanded, “what the hell is going on?”

She wanted to know for certain if he was the creature. A desperate part of her wanted her friend George to be real. “What were you doing before you came to Mothershead?”

“I lived somewhere else.”

“Yeah, I know that part. But where?”

He wrinkled his brow. “Does it matter?”

“You know damn well that it matters. Answer the question!”

He visibly fumbled for an answer. “I was living in Billings.”

“Doing what?”

Again, he hesitated, caught off guard. “I worked as a bookkeeper. For a law firm.”

“Why were you so evasive when I asked you about your past before?”

He winced, pressing the paper towels closer to the wound. “I was embarrassed, okay? Bookkeeper. Law firm. Not exactly exciting.”

It was a lame excuse, but the creature was obviously not willing to give up his deepest cover with her. “What does exciting matter?” she asked.

He paused. “It’s just that … when I met you, you were always hiking or rock climbing, all this exciting stuff. I was so boring. I just didn’t want you to know how boring.”