Monster (45 page)

Rachel eyed Reed for a long, careful moment, as if she was finally sorting out where she’d seen that strange creature before.

“See?” said Beck, patting Rachel’s arm. “You know him. You’ve seen him before.”

Rachel quit huffing and just stared.

Reed stayed on the ground but was poised to grab his rifle if anything went wrong.

Rachel drew a deep breath, sighed it out, and slowly relaxed her arms. Beck stepped down, limping slightly, one hand holding Rachel’s, one hand toward Reed. “Look at me, Reed.” He lifted his face to hers, and she could see hope flooding his eyes. “Don’t get up. Let me come to you. I have to come to you.”

She gazed back at Rachel one last time. Rachel seemed perplexed and troubled, but when Beck let go of her hand, she withdrew it, letting it fall to her side.

Beck turned toward Reed and limped across the clearing, passing by the fallen monster. She could muster only a quick, fearful glance in its direction.

It was the longest wait of Reed’s life, but he kept to the rules, watching Beck come closer, stepping and limping over rocks, easing through grass and low brush. When she was only ten feet away, she said quietly, “I think you can get up now.”

He rose slowly, meeting her eyes, careful not to look at the—

She fell into his arms.

He embraced her as she held him, kissed him, clung to him, stinking like a sewer but totally, wonderfully Beck. He was still cautious, checking the area over her shoulder, almost dancing with her as he scanned a full circle, wondering what became of Max Johnson, checking the location of his rifle, wondering what the Bigfoot might do—

The Bigfoot. He stopped and stared.

Beck turned. “See, Rachel? He’s—”

It was as if a dream had ended. The creature was gone. The brush and trees were motionless as if they’d never been disturbed.

Cap pressed his fingers against Sing’s carotid artery. The pulse was weak but steady. “Sing!
Sing!
”

She opened her eyes. It took her a moment before recognition settled, but finally she smiled. “Cap, you’re all right.”

“So are you,” he lied. He kissed her gently, almost imperceptibly on the cheek, afraid he might snuff out whatever spark of life remained.

“Hello,” Sing said to all the wonderful people in uniform who were stepping around Steve Thorne’s dead body to get to her.

The medics went right to work, assessing her vitals. One shined a light in her eyes. The pupils responded.

She pointed to the wall beside the computer station.

The medics were too busy saving her life to look. Cap and Dave followed her direction and found a thin spattering of her blood and some of her hairs on the wall. In the center of the pattern was a bullet hole.

Dave took a penlight from his pocket and shined it into the hole. He smiled. “The slug’s in there.”

The medic tending her wound smiled. “Pretty good scalp wound, but no penetration of the skull. She’ll make it.”

“Sing,” Dave asked, “what about Reed and Pete?”

“Reed’s looking for Beck.” She gasped. “And Max is still up there!”

Cap told Dave, “Adam Burkhardt.”

Dave eyed the computer. “Can you show us where?”

“Lost Creek.” Sing tried to rise but couldn’t. She gestured toward her computer. “Help me up there.”

Reed gave Beck a kiss, giving no thought to the mud, blood, and filth, then immediately turned his attention to her battered face and bloodstained shirt. Her nose and mouth had been bleeding, then apparently wiped and smeared with a dirty rag. “Are you . . . what happened?”

“I got in a fight.”

“Somebody
hit
you?”

“My snotty little cousin.”

“But you’re, you’re all right? Nothing broken, nothing . . .”

“I’ve been worse. But I’m with you now, and—”

She gasped, her eyes looking in horror over his shoulder.

Reed spun, then froze.

Max Johnson emerged from the brush, limping, in pain, his shaved head scratched by branches and bleeding. He sighted down his rifle at them.

Reed spoke quietly, without moving a muscle. “Max, it’s over.”

He wagged his head, his eyes burning. “I’m sorry, Reed. I have to survive.”

Beck whispered, hiding behind Reed. “He made the monster.”

The pieces flew together in Reed’s mind. “Survive as what? You want to end up like your creation? A killer?”

The man was trembling. The barrel of the rifle oscillated in erratic circles. “It’s a natural process. It’s been going on for billions of years.”

“Max—”

“Burkhardt!” he spat. “Professor Adam Burkhardt!”

“Okay,” Reed lowered his voice. “Professor Burkhardt. You see? You have a name. You’re a person, a
man
; you’re more than that thing you made.”

The faint sound of a helicopter grew louder, coming closer.

Reed never broke eye contact. “And now, just look at yourself. Is this Professor Adam Burkhardt standing here? Is this something he would do?”

Burkhardt was shaking. “I don’t
want
to do this! But I have to survive!”

Reed insisted, “As what?”

Burkhardt glanced at his creation.

The sound of the helicopter grew louder and then appeared from the southwest, heading directly toward them.

“Professor. When that chopper lands, what are they going to find standing here? A man, or a monster?”

Burkhardt could no longer sight down the rifle. His eyes strayed, looking far away, filling with tears. The rifle drifted to one side and then sank as his resolve melted.

At last, his gaze fell and he began to quake, weeping.

The chopper rose overhead, circled, and began to settle toward a landing site beyond the trees.

“Professor. It’s over.”

Burkhardt sank to his knees, sobbing in shame and remorse.

Reed reached into his shirt pocket. The handcuffs were there, for this moment. He pulled them out. “Professor Burkhardt, you’re under arrest.” He took the rifle from Burkhardt’s weak and trembling hands and handed it to Beck. “It’s my duty to advise you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

He cuffed Burkhardt’s hands behind his back.

Jimmy Clark and the two sheriff’s officers were aghast when they first arrived, and Jimmy had not yet recovered even as he snapped photos of the scene and of Adam Burkhardt’s monster.

Click! Click! Click!
The clearing from several compass directions.

Click!
The location of the monster in the clearing.

Click!
The monster, wide shot.

Click!
The apelike feet, missing the opposing toes.

Click!
A close-up of the burn injury on the side of the head, compliments of Melanie Brooks and her pan of hot hamburger grease.

Click!
A close-up of the bullet wound in the leg, compliments of Sheriff Mills.

Click, click, click!
Jimmy lowered the camera and shook his head—something he’d been doing incessantly since he and the officers arrived.

Reed had just finished using the chopper’s first aid kit to clean Beck’s wounds and prepare a cold compress for her face. Now he came over to take one last look before they left for the chopper.

Jimmy gazed at him, struggled for words, and finally came up with, “I guess you’ve made your point.”

“Well, next time—” Reed smiled and waved that one off. “No, we don’t want a next time.”

“No, we sure don’t.”

They shared a laugh and then a handshake.

The two officers had Burkhardt between them. Burkhardt wouldn’t look at his monster; he wouldn’t look up at all.

Jimmy hollered, “Okay, let’s get these people out of here.”

Beck sat in the coarse grass, holding the cold compress against her face with one hand while pulling itchy, prickly grass, twigs, and moss from inside her shirt with the other.

When Reed and Jimmy came over to help her up, Jimmy shied back from the filth. “
Eeesh!
What did you do to yourself?”

“Hey!” She got to her feet without any help and looked him squarely in the eye. “Just for your information, this is my family scent. It tells everybody who I am and what I’ve been eating and how I’m feeling about things.”

Reed and Jimmy stared at her.

“It even tells you whether I like you or not, so read it and weep—”

“Beck,” Reed began.

“—unless you can’t read plain Sasquatch!”

“Beck?”

She turned toward him, her dignity reclaimed. “What?”

“What happened to your stutter?”

The question stopped her cold. Plainly, she hadn’t noticed until this moment. “Uh . . .” She glanced toward the woods. “Maybe God took it.”

He gave her a special smile and then pulled her in close. She clung to him unabashedly. “Ready to come home?” he asked.

“Anywhere with you.”

He gave her his arm to lean on. “Come on. Let’s get you to a hospital.”

The chopper was parked on a rocky knoll a short hike up the hill. As it rose above the trees, Beck watched out the window and marveled: the mountains really were as vast and mysterious as they seemed.

Almost immediately, Jimmy started circling as Reed tapped her shoulder and pointed.

They passed over a deep, meandering ravine with a creek running down its center. Because of the thick forest, Beck could only catch a few quick glimpses, but it was enough for her to recognize a natural log bridge across the creek and the square, split-shake roof of a forlorn little cabin.

epilogue

“What in the world were they thinking?” A week later, Reed still couldn’t get over it. “I mean, how were they going to explain all the dead people lying around? Didn’t they think somebody would start to wonder?”

He sat at one of Arlen Peak’s best tables at the Tall Pine Resort, debriefing and remembering with Cap, Sing, Dave, and Jimmy while they waited for the best barbecued steak dinner Arlen could whip up.

“The problem got away from them, literally,” said Cap. “Even if Burkhardt and his crew had a containment plan, it had to be trashed the moment Beck got grabbed. These guys were desperate.”

“Nice pictures, Jimmy.” Sing, wearing a head bandage and a modified hair arrangement, was once again glued to her computer. “But Thorne cut us a nice break, right, Reed?” She was hinting. She still hadn’t heard the full explanation.

None of them had. Reed had a rapt audience. “I figured Thorne had to leave Kane’s gun with him so people would think Kane died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I had a waypoint in my GPS marking where Kane and Thorne left off, so I used that to find Kane’s body—that and some lucky guessing.”

“A mighty long shot, Reed,” said Jimmy.

Reed shrugged. “That’s all I had left.”

Jimmy patted his shoulder. “It was brilliant. Pete would’ve liked it.”

Reed, along with the others, fell into a somber moment at the mention of their old friend. “It does sound like something he’d do, doesn’t it?”

Dave had plucked a cracker from the basket in the middle of the table and said with his mouth full, “So what were they going to do with that monster’s carcass, let the birds eat it?”

“Bury it, I suppose,” said Sing.

“Well, it’s in a cooler now,” said Jimmy.

“Just like Burkhardt,” Reed quipped, and got a laugh.

“He and Merrill could end up being bunkmates,” Cap ventured.

“Tell them about your job,” Sing prompted her husband.

Now Cap had their undivided attention. “Well, it looks favorable. I don’t know whether the university’s had a change of heart or whether they’re just trying to save face, but . . .”

“But you can’t argue with Right,” said Sing with an overacted pat on his hand, “and that’s what you are!”

Arlen swept through to take drink orders. “And by the way, it’s not such a bad idea to let the birds and the bears and the coyotes eradicate a carcass. They can make quick work of it, let me tell you.” He directed his next sentence at Jimmy. “Which is why nobody’s ever found a Sasquatch skeleton. Nature has a way of erasing things.”

Jimmy smirked good-naturedly, hands lifted in surrender. “Whatever you say, Arlen.”

“Didn’t Beck find a skeleton up there?” Dave asked.

Reed put up a hand of caution. “That’s a sensitive area.”

Cap interjected, “But remember, Jimmy: Those hairs from Beck’s backpack turned out to have clean DNA from a creature not yet catalogued. Nobody mutated that animal; it was the real thing.

Sing peered closely at her computer screen. “And you might take a look at this, Jimmy, especially since you took these pictures.”

They all rose and gathered around Sing’s computer. She scrolled through the photos as they murmured, reacted, and pointed. They’d seen these before but were more than eager to see them again. Sing clicked and enlarged one of Jimmy’s wide shots of the clearing. “See those two fir trees and that bush between them?”

They did.

She scrolled to a medium shot of the monster’s corpse on the ground. The two fir trees were visible in the background. She clicked and dragged over the fir trees and zoomed in on that area.

“Take a look, gentlemen. Take your time.”

At first there was silence as they studied the blown-up image of two fir trunks with a splashing of green, yellow, and red leaves between them.