You Only Die Twice (12 page)

“No, it
isn’t.
 
It’s a fact.
 
I’m the Chosen One.
 
He told me so Himself.
 
I’m also not the one who fucked up.
 
I’m not the one who lost her.
 
That would be you, Ted.
 
Because of some damned moose that turned
you into a pussy, that would be you.
 
It’s all on you.
 
You lost
her.
 
You.
 
Not me.
 
And He knows it should she somehow
escape.”

“She’s
not going to escape.”

“And you
know that how?”

“Because
she’s still in the woods.”

“And you
know that how?”

“Because
He told me so.”

“No, He
hasn’t.
 
Don’t lie, Teddy.
 
When you lie to me, you lie to Him.”

“I’m
telling you, she’s still in t
he woods.
 
Nobody has lost―”

The line
went dead.
 
Unbelieving, Ted
Carpenter stared blankly at the phone.
 
Kenneth Berkowitz had just severed their connection.
 
He actually dared to hang up on him.

Furious,
he put the phone back into his pocket and swung around to listen for his footfalls.
 
They should be coming at any moment,
shouldn’t they?
 
After all, if God
had Berkowitz’s back, he should be hearing them right now because the goal was
to kill Cheryl Dunning and time was of the essence.
 
God knew that.
 
If He was watching this―and of course, He
was―then Kenneth should be at his side now.

Only he
wasn’t.
 

There
was no sound of anyone rushing toward him.
 
No hero to save the day.
 
So,
Berkowitz was full of shit.
 
He hung
up on him out of arrogance, which Ted Carpenter considered a sin.
 
And what was this crap about him being
the Chosen One?

He
wondered if it was better to go forward alone.
 
He’d certainly done God’s work on his
own before.
 
But until this moment,
he’d always respected Kenneth.
 
They
shared the same ideals.
 
They got
each other and worked well together.
 
Without him, Ted knew that he never would have made the sort of progress
they were making now.
 

Still,
that conversation crossed a line.
 
He couldn’t tolerate being hung up on or treated as if he was second
rate.
 
Kenneth had taken things too
far.
 
He was trying to assume the
lead.
 
By hanging up on him, he
essentially said that he considered him incompetent, something Ted had heard
from his father since he was a boy and one of the main reasons he killed him
when he turned seventeen.
 

Certainly,
cutting his father’s throat while the man was shaving in front of his bathroom
mirror, where he could witness his own death unravelling before him in fans of
blood, proved that his son wasn’t completely incompetent.
 
He was, after all, capable of cutting a
man’s throat and taking his life.
 

Those
were the words he whispered in his father’s ear as the blood jetted onto the
mirror, shock registered in his eyes, his knees buckled and he dropped to the
tile floor, where Ted watched him bleed out while his father reached for his
throat to stop the torrent of blood spraying him, his son and the room, and
where he kicked and writhed until his sorry, miserable life left him and he was
dead.

He
thought of a quote from Deuteronomy 23:1:
 
“No man whose testicles have been crushed
or whose organ has been cut off may become a member of the Assembly of
God.”
 

If
Kenneth challenged him when he arrived, if he came to argue with him or to
belittle him, he at least knew one way to keep him out of God’s arms
forever.
 
He was the elder and the
elder was to be respected, not shut down or shit on, as Kenneth just tried to
do to him.
 
So, if he came with the
same attitude, Ted would knock Kenneth hard to the ground, repeat the scripture
before Kenneth could compose himself, and then he’d do as the scripture
advised.
 
Kenneth would die knowing
that he’d been cheated out of spending eternity with God.

As he
stood there, waiting for Kenneth to arrive, he thought of Cheryl Dunning and
wondered where she was and what she was doing.
 
Had she escaped.
 
Not a chance.
 
He believed that unconditionally.
 
God had plans for her and Ted was ready
to deliver those plans when He decided the time was right.
 

At that
moment, what he didn’t know is that a God he didn’t understand was working
other avenues.
 

Because
of efforts made by Patty Jennings and James Coleman, the Maine State Police now
was searching for a young male, approximately thirty, who was muscular, had
short dark hair, and who stood approximately six feet tall.
 
He was last seen wearing jeans, boots
and a flannel shirt around midnight the night before at a Bangor dance club
called The Grind.
 
From memory,
Patty Jennings gave information that resulted in a detailed composite of the
individual, who was wanted for rape and a host of other crimes.
 

The
media was on alert.
 

Stories
with the composite already had appeared on television news shows, news blogs,
social media sites and, tomorrow, they would appear in newspapers.
 

The
composite also was shared with police and other law enforcement agencies around
the state.
 

Now, all
were working in unison in an effort to find the man and bring him in for
questioning.

CHAPTE
R TWENTY

Cheryl
Dunning took to the ground and began her hunt.
 

It wasn’t
food she hunted―it was water.
 
She needed to find a fresh, active source of water soon, or she might
become too dehydrated to protect herself when he came for her again.
 
Which he would.
 
It was only a matter of time before he
found her.
 
So
, she
walked softly and steadily and she listened, hoping that soon she would hear
the distinct sounds of a bubbling brook or a rushing stream.

She didn’t
know what time it was―he stole her watch―but given the angle of the
sun, she guessed it was close to two o’clock, which meant it would be dark in
four hours.
 
If she didn’t find
water soon, she’d need to give up the hunt, build herself some kind of obscure
shelter made of fallen branches and leaves, and slip into it for the night.
 
In the morning―if morning came for
her―she’d begin the search again.
 
She’d be weaker then, but she’d go on until she either no longer could,
or until her life was taken from her through other means.

The
phone in her pants pocket buzzed.
 
She pulled it out, turned it on and read his text:
 
“You think you won, but know that you
didn’t.
 
You will die.
 
I’m coming for you.”

“No
shit, Sherlock.”

She put
the phone back in her pocket and refused to let the message rattle her.
 
He would send others.
 
She prepared herself for them.
 
What she couldn’t do is to allow him to
sidetrack her.
 
If she was going to
survive, she needed to accept the fact that he was searching hard for her and
that he was going to continue to mess with her along the way, but know that if
she didn’t focus completely on the task at hand, he’d win.

So, she
focused.
 
In spite of the chill in
the air that long ago had ached into her bones, she focused.
 
In spite of the pain cutting through
different parts of her body, she focused.
 

She
thought of her father and her grandfather, who once taught her about the woods,
and then, remembering, she stopped and stood completely still.
 
She’d been walking for the better part
of thirty minutes, some of which probably were in a haze.
 

She
needed to be smarter.
 
She needed to
stop and listen.
 
She needed to look
around her for a convergence of animal tracks, which her grandfather once told
her that, if they were in close proximity to each other, she was near a primary
water source.

She
wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and closed her eyes and listened.
 
When she heard nothing after five
minutes, she turned ninety degrees and listened.
 
Nothing.
 

She
pressed on, checking for tracks while she walked.
 
Occasionally, she saw deer tracks, but
nothing substantial.
 
Nothing that
looked as if many animals had traveled a similar path.
 

Often,
she stopped and strained to hear something, but there was nothing.
 
She checked the slope of the land and
saw that she was going downhill.
 
Just slightly, but still, she was walking downhill, which is where a
water source naturally would flow.
 

There
has to be something
, she thought.
 

But in
the end, when the sun was getting too low along the horizon for comfort, Cheryl
Dunning knew she’d been beat.
 
She
wanted to cry when she came to the realization that she couldn’t have water,
something she’d always taken for granted.
 
She wanted to scream in outrage at what was happening to her, but she
couldn’t.
 
Her father would expect
her to remain strong.
 
Her
grandfather, a firmer man raised on a farm, would demand it of her.
 

One day
without water wouldn’t kill her, but it would undermine her strength.
 
Two days without water would challenge
her.
 
Three days without water would
leave her no choice but to drink her own urine.
 
There were ways to stay alive in the
woods, most of which were unpleasant.
 
But she’d do it if she had to.
 
Her life was worth that.

And she
was damned if she was going to let him win.

CHAPTER
TW
ENTY-ONE

When
another twenty minutes passed and Cheryl found no signs of water, she knew it
was time to stop the hunt and build a shelter.
 

The sun
was dipping behind the uneven line of trees.
 
Soon, darkness would descend, which
wouldn’t just bring colder temperatures, but nighttime creatures also on the
hunt.
 

Because
of her father and grandfather, she knew how to build something that would
protect her overnight, and she knew that she could do it reasonably fast.

What she
needed was a ditch of some sort.
 
A
hollow in the forest floor in which she could sink down a few feet without
having to build something that looked unnaturally high.
 
The hollow would allow her more living
space and it also would allow her to be as inconspicuous as possible when the
shelter was finished.
 

To
accomplish that, the shelter needed to look like a natural
part of the
landscape.
 
Just a mound of limbs,
branches and a covering leaves.
 
That way, if she was successful, it would look to someone like a small
rise on the forest floor―perhaps a hill―and maybe, hopefully,
they’d take no notice of it should they pa
ss by.

That was
the goal.
 

This
time, unlike finding water, finding a reasonably deep recess in the landscape
was easy.
 
Within minutes, she found
a choice spot that was partly concealed by fir trees.
 
She felt excited by it.
 
With the trees circling it, they
wouldn’t just serve to help conceal the shelter, but they also would work to
protect her from any breeze or wind.
 

She
started to construct it.
 
She
gathered dry wood, sticks and fallen limbs.
 
She maneuvered them, layered them and
constructed them in such a way that created a gently sloping hill, bearing in
mind that in the end, it had to look as natural as possible, and that, later,
she might need to use the shelter for something else should they come too close
to her.