Monster (36 page)

Yet all three had followed them here, more real and present than ever.

Less than a week ago, they thought they would learn to survive. They hoped they would hear from God.

She sighed. Maybe they had. It all seemed too much like life to be otherwise.

She shook off the sorrow and the weakness. As Cap said, it still wasn’t over—and that was like life too. She straightened her spine and took a deep breath.
Eyes forward,
she told herself. She would join up with Cap in Three Rivers. Maybe the answers were there.

She set the parking brake and got out of the driver’s seat, eager to empty their motel room, settle up with Arlen, and get rolling.

She noticed her computer was still on, listening for GPS signals that were no longer there. She’d forgotten to turn it off, maybe on purpose.

She left it on and went out the door.

“So you heading out?” came a voice from a few doors down the porch.

Thorne and Kane sat on a bench, kicked back and enjoying a beer.

Sing was surprised and knew it showed. “Aren’t you?”

Kane took a swig from his bottle and wagged his head. “Got my bear in Arlen’s cooler. It’ll keep.”

“Thought we’d stick around and do a little more hunting,” said Thorne.

Then Max stuck his head out the door behind them. “Oh, you going now?”

Sing studied the three men only a moment and then replied, “Can’t wait.”

They seemed satisfied with that.

Reed and Pete pulled up behind the motor home in Pete’s old truck. They had nothing new to say to each other and just a nod to give to the men on the porch. Someday they would talk about how badly things had gone, but they both needed time. With only a handshake, they parted company, Reed to his room to gather his things, Pete to the lobby to update Arlen and thank him for his help.

Room 105 was still in the pitiful, panicky mess Reed had left after Arlen got the call from Fleming Cryncovich. His uniform was draped over a chair where he’d left it. His computer printout regarding the logger’s death and the photos of the mysterious unknown footprints in the Lost Creek cabin lay scattered on the bed. Leaning in the corner, carefully reassembled by Cap and Sing, was Beck’s backpack. Looking at it, Reed remembered so clearly the moment she picked out the color. He remembered helping her get her arms through the straps as she wriggled into it at the bottom of the Cave Lake Trail.

He tossed his sheriff’s deputy shoes off a chair—and stared at his gun, his radio, his handcuffs lying on the bedside stand. He snapped open the black leather case that held the handcuffs and drew them out. They were small enough to fit in the pocket of his flannel shirt, so he put them there, if only as a reminder. For Beck’s sake, he would be strong and forever stand between innocent people and those who would take away their loved ones. He sat down, letting his eyes drift where they wanted, mostly toward the backpack, and letting his heart feel whatever it needed to feel. No words, no thoughts, no answers. Just feelings. Sing would be heading out to join up with Cap. Reed would catch up later, in uniform if the situation called for it. But this moment he wouldn’t rush. It had waited for him patiently—the grief. He would give it its due.

With Rachel’s indulgence, Beck stretched the limit of her invisible tether and reached a tiny crease in the terrain where a feeble stream trickled among rocks, aging logs, and moss-covered windfall. Crouching on all fours, one hand on a tuft of wild grass and the other on a stick that bridged the stream, Beck sipped with her lips just touching the surface so as not to stir up the black mud on the bottom.

Survive, survive, survive,
she thought.
Drink to live. Live to hope. Hope for a miracle.

The stick under her hand shifted, and she sat up before it gave way and she got a face full of mud.

It didn’t give way. It didn’t crack either. With nothing better to hold her attention, she closed her fist around it and lifted. It came off the ground in her hand, about the size and weight of a baseball bat. She wielded it just a moment, thinking of Reuben and imagining what a good club it would make, but of course, she was only venting her frustration.

She let the other end of the stick plop into the streambed but still held on to her end, just for the feel of it. Thinking she should return to the group before Rachel got nervous, she almost let it go but didn’t. Instead, she lifted it again, felt its weight, gave it a few small swings. She tapped it against a rock. The stick hadn’t rotted. Years of sun had turned it hard and gray.

The stick had stirred up the bottom of the stream. She reached in with just one finger and spooned up a sample of the mud. It was fine and greasy between her fingers, like black paint. She smeared it along the top of one finger. It coated the skin evenly, turning it an impressive, smudgy black.

An outlandish thought crossed her mind: Displaying carried a lot of weight in Sasquatch circles, didn’t it? Stomping, hollering, threatening, throwing things, banging on things . . .

She studied the grass under her other hand, closed her fist around it, and yanked it up. There was plenty of it. As a matter of fact, there was plenty of other loose material around here, like leaves, twigs, and moss. Her shirt was loose fitting. It could hold a lot of this stuff.

No! She shook her head at herself, at God.
No! I’m not the one to do this!

As if God Himself were saying it, the thought came to her,
Of course you are. Who else is there?

She caught her reflection in the shallow water. There was only one face, one person looking back at her.

She smeared the black mud over another finger. Now two fingers were blackened—she
hated
getting dirty!

But it wouldn’t be enough. If she was going to put on a show, it had to be a big one, something no Sasquatch—especially Reuben—had ever seen before or even knew to expect.

She dug for more mud and blackened her whole hand, grimacing with disgust. It felt awful. But it looked awful too, and awful was good. Awful might work.

She probed around the immediate area, looking for more ideas—and stalling a bit. That was when she found a real prize: a fresh pile of Sasquatch droppings, most likely Jacob’s. The scent of that stuff would be quite alarming. If it was Jacob’s, it might even be confusing. Confusion was good. The more the better.

She scrambled around the area on hands and knees, then on two hands and one and a half feet, gathering leaves, twigs, moss, and grass. The process gave her momentum, enough to forsake her hygienic world and move to the brink of the stream once again.

A thin barrier of disgust held her back for only a moment, and then she made a choice. With a dangerous, reckless resolve, she dug into the mud, brought up a sizable blob, and smeared her face.

Sing made her last trip from Room 104, carrying her backpack and a toiletry bag out to the motor home. She piled them into the rear bedroom along with the other camping gear and a well-read copy of Randy Thompson’s book, the last vestiges of the vacation that never was. Arlen Peak had been a neighborly sort: he only charged for the first night, not the several days of searching.

She stepped into the motor home’s overcrowded midsection where the bulk of her lab and crime scene reconstruction gear was stowed, hung, stuffed, and folded. The last thing to fold up and put away was the computer, still running.

She pressed the
Menu
key, arrowed down to the
Shut Down
option, clicked on it, and got a box with the final question,
What do you want your computer to do? Shut Down
was the highlighted option.

She hesitated, the little arrow poised over the
OK
button. With a sigh, and feeling just a little foolish, she closed that window and left the computer running.

The computer map of the mountains came on-screen again, with no activity indicated.

She would be having a last, parting consultation with Reed as soon as he was ready. Perhaps she would shut down the computer then.

Jacob was probing the old stump for grubs, breaking off chunks of red, rotten wood with his fingernails and removing the white larvae with flicks of his tongue.

Leah sat next to an elderberry bush, indulging in the leaves from a branch she’d pulled down.

Rachel was picking through the hair on any part of her body she could reach, removing seeds, twigs, and small leaves, sampling each find for flavor and edibility.

Reuben was discovering how to regurgitate into his hand, but he still wasn’t sure what to do with the dripping contents. The intriguing yellow object was beside him on the ground, no longer an object of keen interest but a matter of territory nonetheless.

All four were aware of the female human’s presence on the other side of a thicket, near the tiny stream. None could see her, but they could hear her rustling about, raking the ground, often splashing in the little bit of water there was. She’d puttered about before, feeding, drinking, grooming herself. They’d grown used to her ways.

But then came a strange silence that bothered them. She’d never behaved in quite this way before, standing still as if hiding, lurking like a predator, even stalking in the bushes.

Jacob flicked a grub into his mouth and watched the thicket, curious but not alarmed.

Rachel looked over her shoulder, mildly curious what her “child” was up to, and puzzled to see Jacob still eating grubs from the stump when she could detect his scent from her “child’s” direction.

Leah shot a protective glance at Reuben, wary of danger.

Reuben was paying attention to nothing other than the green goo in his hand and wasn’t expecting—
“Aaaaaaiiiiiii!!!”

They all jumped, even Jacob, as if a cannon had gone off in the midst of them, and then they stared, mouths gaping, as Beck exploded from the thicket, running lopsidedly on a weak ankle, shrieking like a cougar, brandishing a club, face, arms, and torso blackened with mud except for wide white areas around her eyes. She’d stuffed her shirt, sleeves and all, to the bursting point with leaves, twigs, and moss, expanding her outline. Grass shot out like bristling hair from her waist, her collar, her shirt cuffs, her pant legs. She’d even fashioned a headdress from her handkerchief and long spears of grass, creating a sunburst of grass and blowing reddish hair around her face.

Startling to hear, shocking to behold, she even smelled frightening, smeared with a liberal coat of dung that made her reek as if ejected from the bowels of the alpha male himself.

It was all or nothing. No turning back. No fear. No gentle, timid world. No mercy, no compassion, no propriety, no fairness. If this was how matters were settled out here, then this was how she would settle them. She ran headlong, her club raised, her eyes crazed, her mouth wide open in a permanent scream.

She closed in on Reuben, so focused and intense that he seemed to react in eerie slow motion—shyly jumping to his feet, gasping, and raising his arms in a singular moment that went on and on.

She would never get a second chance for that first blow, that first desperate grab for advantage. As she passed on his uphill side, she swung the club in a wide batter’s arc and broke it in half against the back of his skull. He reeled, stumbled forward. Beck dug in, reversed direction, lunged at him, swatted him again on his head and shoulders with the half club still in her hand.

He ran for his mother, who was on her feet, screaming with shock and indignity.

The GPS, that precious GPS, lay on the ground, ripe for the picking. She pounced on it, got her hands around it. Precious yellow plastic, hope from home—

Reuben pounced on her and, with one powerful heave of his arms, threw her, head over heels, into the bushes. She floated, mashed the branches, tumbled into the tangle until the thick stalks near the ground bore her up. Her head was swimming, her world spinning, but she kicked, struggled, stayed alive. Still entangled and suspended, not knowing which way was up or whether her body was intact or what she could do next, she screamed, yelled, thrashed, and displayed, doing anything her body could do to show anger, defiance, and strength.

Rachel was coming her way, trying to save her. No. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to stay in trouble. With a violent kick, a twist, and several strong yanks, she got out of the bushes and onto the clear ground.

Reuben was hunting for the GPS. She saw it the same time he did, in the grass, still intact.

She crawled, then got to her feet.
No fear. Show him who’s boss. Bluff if you have to!

She leaped, screamed, beat on her bulky, grass-and-moss-stuffed chest, waved her arms, slapped the ground. Her hand found a rock and she threw it, hitting him in the hip. He roared in pain.

Her entire field of vision suddenly filled with gray.

Leah.

“Tell you what,” said Arlen, his voice gentle, like that of a friend. “Those trophies are probably the last I’ll ever see. I would say you’ve paid enough. The room’s on me.”

Reed smiled, admiring the four new plaster casts in Arlen’s Bigfoot display case. He could understand what a treasure they must be to a man with Arlen’s perspective. “I do appreciate it,” Reed said. He examined the grainy photo of the big female striding along a sandbar. “Think they’ll stick around after all this?”

Arlen’s smile slipped. “Maybe not. They’ve never been hunted before. If I were them, I’d probably move on.”

“I hope you’re right. I might be the interim sheriff, but I can’t keep the trails closed forever, especially for a reason nobody’s going to believe.” Reed turned to go.

“Reed?”

“Yeah?”

“If I may speak on their behalf?” Arlen looked down at the casts for a moment, drumming the countertop with his fingers. “I can’t explain what we found up there, other than that your wife was with them and she was alive. I’d like to think it was the bear that killed her.”

Reed would never believe that, but there would be no point in bickering. “See you later, Arlen.”

He quietly closed the front door behind him, leaving a sad old man at the counter.

Leah snarled, displaying, baring her teeth, arms upraised as if to strike—and then she looked up.