Monster (38 page)

“So where is it now?” Kane asked.

“Four miles southeast,” Sing replied. She zoomed in for a closer view of the terrain. “And it’s coming our way.”

The Sasquatch train was moving again, rushing through dense forest, brushing aside limbs, leaping over logs as they looked anxiously over their shoulders and gave off fear scent, pushing, pushing, pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion, an endless cycle. Only one thing had changed: Rachel and Beck were now second in line behind Jacob; Leah and Reuben brought up the rear.

The change was costly. Beck was sure she needed a doctor. The bleeding from her nose and mouth had gone from steady to sporadic, but it hadn’t stopped. Her face felt puffy and her whole body ached, not just her ankle. With barely enough strength to hold on, she feared she had none left to survive.

She’d found a way to bind the GPS in the roll of her sleeve, leaving its antenna exposed to the heavens. Beyond that, she was living by faith. The case was bitten and bent in the middle, and she couldn’t get the slightest hiss out of the radio. She could only hope the GPS part was actually working and that someone was watching.

Perhaps it was that person the Sasquatches were running from this very moment; hunters had encircled them before, and Reed was one of them. Beck cradled her head on Rachel’s soft, furry shoulder, so tired, dizzy, wishing whoever it was would catch up and put an end to this.

Rachel’s head turned, her leathery cheek bumping Beck’s bruised face. It hurt.

“What?”

Rachel huffed and kept running, a new wave of fear quickening her step.

Beck raised her head, and through the rush of the wind and the snapping of passing limbs, she recognized a familiar, chilling sound: the cry of the banshee. The woman from Lost Creek was wailing again, her voice carrying like a faraway siren, following them like a distant shadow.

Wait. Following them?

Beck fought off her stupor and forced herself to think. All the Sasquatches were
here
, running together. She could see all four of them. Jacob wasn’t making the noise; he was running from the noise.

She tightly clutched Rachel’s fur as a chill went through her.

It was no hunter either.

She looked over her shoulder. There were so many trees, limbs, thickets, dark spaces. Anything could hide in there.

Max and Reed came to a wide-eyed, open-eared halt.

“Yeah, you heard it, and so did I,” Reed said, answering the question in Max’s eyes.

Reed faced south while Max faced north, both on high alert, watching each other’s backs. They were working their way up the mountain slope above Abney, in a hurry and breathing hard, hoping they and the others could weave a net tight enough to catch a north-moving GPS and whatever or whoever might be carrying it.

Reed radioed, “Pete, we heard it to the south, down your way.”

There was a pause before Pete replied, “It’s north of me. It’s in the circle, gentlemen—as soon as we get one.”

Reed checked the screen on his GPS. He could see Blips 3 and 4, Pete and Sam, moving up the mountain to the south, but Thorne and Kane, sharing GPS unit 5, weren’t on the screen. “Sing, you there yet?”

“We’re at the drop-off point,” she answered, just pulling the motor home to a stop at the end of Service Road 221, a road so old and unused that nature was taking it back. According to her Forest Service map, this would place Steve Thorne and Wiley Kane far enough to the north to intercept the blip
if
it continued on its present course and
if
they could get up the mountain in time to close up the circle.

Thorne and Kane were geared up, armed and ready, in the back of the motor home. Thorne had GPS 5 on his sleeve.

Sing killed the engine and set the brake. “Good hunting.”

They jumped out the door like paratroopers and started up the hill.

Sing took her place at the computer station and scrolled the map to her present location. Zooming out, she found all the blips: Reed and Max, units 1 and 2, widening their position above Abney; Pete and Sam, units 3 and 4, farther up the mountainside a mile south, but swinging north to close in. And Thorne and Kane, unit 5, heading up the hill with a good climb ahead of them before they would cross the projected path of Blip Number 6. Because the radio on unit 6 wasn’t working, only Sing could see the blip, via satellite. It would be up to her to guide the hunters to its location.

“Target is still moving north,” she reported, “on a course roughly 355. Pete, bearing to target is 345, about half a mile; Reed, bearing to target is 110, three quarters of a mile. Steve, maintain your heading; at your present rate of climb you should intercept it.”

It was like watching a fast-pitched baseball heading for home plate and hoping the catcher could put on his mitt in time to catch it blindfolded.

“I’ve found a sign,” Pete reported. “It’s more than one, maybe the whole family.”

“So maybe they’re going back home,” Reed offered. “Back where this whole thing started.”

Sing could see Lost Creek on the map just a few miles north. She wagged her head in absolute wonder and started trembling. She’d always believed the footprints at the first baiting station were real, and now being right terrified her. What had Beck gone through? If they found her, given she was still alive, would she even be the same person?

Cap had to know. Sing grabbed her cell phone.

Cap said good-bye and folded his cell phone, stunned, not knowing what to feel or think, except for one thing: he had to get inside this cabin.

He’d knocked on the cabin door several times and concluded there was no one at home. Now he looked up and down the porch. Did Burkhardt have a particular habit when it came to hiding keys? From his two years as the man’s unwilling protégé, Cap recalled Burkhardt liking overhead places: rafters, ledges, windowsills, light fixtures. He felt along the molding across the top of the door. Nothing. There was a hanging flowerpot next to the stairs. He reached and fumbled among the leaves.

A house key.

He stopped for one more cautious look around and then let himself in.

It was warm and homey inside, with pleasant, soft furniture, a bearskin rug, a stuffed deer head, a mounted trout with its weight and length proudly displayed on a brass placard beneath it. Fishing poles were mounted in a rack near the front door, and in a cabinet with glass doors next to the brick fireplace . . .

Rows and rows of glass jars containing Burkhardt’s icons of evolution: the Galapagos finches with different-sized beaks, the white and gray peppered moths, the coelacanths and bats, the lizards and snakes, and on the top row, in a place of honor, four new additions—unborn chimpanzees, floating in a fetal position in the amber liquid, eyes half open, toothless mouths in a half yawn.

Baumgartner had listed three possible results of tampering with a chimp’s DNA—a normal, unchanged chimp; a deformed, retarded chimp; or a dead chimp. Apparently, these were the dead ones.

Pete and Sam were moving north, following Sing’s vectors while Pete spotted snapped limbs, bruised leaves, and soil depressions to cross-check their progress. From the sign Pete found, the targets were not moving in any lazy, meandering pattern that would indicate foraging but were heading in a fairly straight line northward, definitely on the run.

“How close are we?” Pete whispered in his radio.

Sing came back, “Still half a mile. They’re moving just as fast as you are.”

Pete halted at the edge of some soft ground, scanned it for prints, but found none. “Mm. We’ve veered off the trail somehow.”

Sam stepped through and pushed ahead, peering intently in all directions. “Why don’t we bag this tracking stuff and just follow Sing’s vectors?”

“I want to know what those critters are doing,” Pete said, his eyes searching the ground.

“Pete, come on, that thing’s gonna pull farther away the longer we stand here!”

Then Pete found a footprint in a bare patch of soft earth.

Sam’s.

He dropped to one knee and produced a blue diagram card from his pocket, quickly comparing.

When he looked up, Sam was watching him.

Thorne and Kane were pushing uphill, groping and climbing as silently as possible through tightly spaced trees and limbs, following Sing’s vectors, primed for a deadly collision.

“Veer to the right,” came Sing’s voice through Thorne’s earpiece, “090.”

Thorne whispered to Kane, about thirty feet ahead of him, “Kane, move right. Kane!”

Suddenly Kane jerked to attention, whispered a curse, and aimed his rifle uphill.

Before Thorne could caution him, the rifle went off.

Beck knew that sound and understood when Jacob turned on his heels and ran past, leading the group the opposite direction. Hunters. It was all happening again.

Thorne hissed at Kane, “What are you doing?”

Kane was nearly beside himself and had a tough time keeping his voice down. “I saw it! It was a Sasquatch—I am not foolin’ you!”

Thorne caught up and put a hand on his shoulder to keep him calm—and corralled. “You weren’t even supposed to be ahead of me. We were tracking with the GPS, remember?”

“I saw it! It was walking, standing upright. Man, it was huge!”

Thorne stared at him. “You’re sure?”

Reed pressed his talk button and only half whispered, “Who fired a shot? What’s going on?”

Blip Number 6 was heading south again, with Thorne’s blip less than 500 yards northwest. “Heads up, everybody!” Sing said. “Target is moving south. Pete, Sam, it’ll be coming your way!”

Pete answered, “Okay, moving north to meet and greet.”

Sam reported, “I’ll move uphill, spread out a bit.”

Sing’s eyes were glued on every player. “Reed and Max, it’s going to pass you on the uphill side.”

Reed answered, “We’re heading that way.”

Jacob lumbered to a halt, then barely stood, stooped and swaying, his breathing labored, his eyes darting about, his nostrils sampling the air. Rachel came up behind him, every breath a painful wheeze. Beck slid to the ground, barely able to move her arms. Leah trudged from behind, legs like lead, and plopped to the ground with Reuben still on her back. The forest floor became a hairy heap, huffing and steaming.

Jacob’s gaze darted to the south, then to the north, then down the hill. He moaned, a mournful sound Beck had never heard before.

From somewhere up the slope, invisible in the forest, the woman whimpered, then snickered. She was closer, watching, waiting.

They were hemmed in.

Rachel lay on her belly, her body heaving with every breath, the wind from her nostrils wiggling the undergrowth in front of her face. Beck crawled to her and touched her shoulder. Rachel looked up at her through watery eyes, and Beck saw more than fear; she saw defeat.

“No. Rachel, come on, don’t . . .”

Jacob sank to his haunches, still sniffing, still looking, his hair bristling. Reuben cowered behind his mother’s prone body, and his expression was much like Jacob’s. He was afraid, listening, sniffing, sensing the surrounding danger.

And then a searing awareness worked its way through Beck’s pain and stupor:
It’s me. I’m the cause of this.

She struggled with her shirtsleeve and got the GPS loose. It appeared to be working. The map on the screen was now indicating a steep mountainside, and that’s where she was. This thing was locating her accurately, and somehow those hunters out there were getting the signal.

Which meant . . .

She didn’t understand what she did. It was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, but at the same time, it was the only thing.

She turned the GPS off.

The blip was gone.

Sing lurched forward. “No, no, don’t do that!”

She radioed, “I’ve lost contact with the target. It just winked out. Does anybody see anything?”

Reed and Max had split up and spread out. Reed was alone now in timber so thick he couldn’t see more than ten yards in any direction. “This is Reed. Negative contact.”

“This is Max. Negative contact.”

“Sam here. Still moving, still looking.”

“Pete here. Sam, I’ll wait for you to come up even with me.”

“This is Steve. Sorry for the misfire. There’s something wrong with Kane’s rifle. We’re checking it out.”

Beck, what are you doing?
Reed had heard of lost people getting so nutty in the woods that they actually hid from their rescuers. Was she afraid of being found? Either that, or . . .

Had she made friends with these creatures? Was she protecting them?

He radioed, “Everybody, keep closing on the last known position, steady and quiet, and be sure of your target before you shoot. Sing, let us know when you get the target again.”

“Will do.”

Reed wiped sweat from his hands and a drop of sweat from above his eye. He mentally reviewed the sight of the dead logger and the mangled body of Sheriff Mills. No more of that. Whatever Beck’s mental state, the hunt would end differently this time.

Cap wasn’t finding out much in the little cabin, other than Burkhardt was a fastidious person who always made his bed and put away his dishes. He searched and inspected his way to the back door and then gazed cautiously across the graveled alleyway to his next frontier: that huge metal outbuilding. It was time to get out there and take a look. He was pushing his luck beyond acceptable risk to take any longer in the—

The sound immobilized him. He was stunned, a statue in the small enclosed rear porch of the cabin. Yes, he’d heard Reed describe it, and Reed sounded like a nut case when he did. But Reed was right on the money!

From the big metal building, clear as day, Cap heard it for himself: the eerie wail of a woman in pain and despair, the cry of the banshee.