Voracious (37 page)

“I don’t have a choice.” She grabbed him harshly around the wrist and dragged him out of the train, bounding over the tracks. Large pools of light illuminated the station on this side, and she quickly ran to the extent of the light and darted into the shadows. Dark shrubbery and trees swallowed them on that side of the station, and they ran on.

She listened carefully for signs of pursuit. She didn’t hear any police officers call out or hear anyone crashing through the bushes behind them. They reached a quiet, urban street, all the stores locked up for the night. She released her grip on George, who followed breathlessly, demanding to know where they were going. She shushed him rudely, not stopping to explain until they were several blocks from the station.

She turned down a shadowed, suburban street and stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

“I don’t think they followed us. It was pretty chaotic back there.”

“Okay,” he said panting, trying to catch his breath. “Now you explain?”

She nodded. “Okay. As best I can. And while I’m talking, we have to find a way back to your car.”

He brought his hand to his head. “I thought you’d decided on the bus?”

“No. The creature is headed back to his cabin. And my friend Noah is waiting for him there. I have to help him.” She gazed up and down the street, trying to spot the way to Highway 2, which led back into the park. “Let’s walk while we talk.” She picked up the pace to a jog, heading toward a gas station where she could get directions to the highway. “We’ll have to hitch,” she said.

They reached the gas station, and she went inside the snack store. A burly man sat behind the counter, eating a long piece of round jerky. “Can I help you, miss?” he asked, swallowing.

“Which way to Highway 2?”

He pointed out of the window. “It’s about seven blocks that way,” he said. “Just go straight. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” she said and quickly left the store, George still following in bewilderment.

She spotted a pay phone and stopped. “I have to make a phone call. Got to know my dad is okay. I’ll be right back.” She walked to the phone and dialed his house. Her father answered on the second ring. When she heard his voice she paused, not knowing what to say. They hadn’t talked in over a year, she realized. Tempted to hang up, she remained gripping the phone. “Dad?” she said finally.

“Maddy?” he answered. “What’s wrong?”

A painful lump in her throat swelled up, and she forced a swallow. For a second she was four years old again, still his little girl. She longed to tell him what had happened, ask for his advice, his help. But instead she remained quiet. She hadn’t been his little girl for years now, not since the divorce. “Nothing,” she said at last. “Just wanted to see how you were.”

“You have one of your visions or something?” The coldness in his voice cut her.

“No, Daddy. Just hadn’t talked to you in a long time.”

“Yeah,” he answered simply, sounding distracted. She heard the TV in the background: football.

“So you’re okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He cursed at the home team, then went quiet.

“Well, I’ll let you go, then,” she said, her heart heavy.

“Okay,” he said, and hung up the receiver.

Madeline replaced the handset, and still holding on to it, burst into tears.

“Mad,” George said gently, walking over to her. He turned her around to face him, then took her in his arms. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I, George.” She desperately missed the family she’d once belonged to. Sitting on the couch watching movies with her mom. Hiking with her dad. She’d become a pariah, even to them. Some nights, sitting alone in her tiny apartment, the grief was palpable. She had never felt so alone in her life than she did then, sitting on her worn couch, with only memories as companions.

She put her head on George’s chest, felt his hand stroking her hair. Her dad was fine. And she suspected Steve was okay, as well. “This must be pretty serious for you to call your dad. That can’t have been easy. You want to tell me what all has happened?”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and pulled away, embarrassed for breaking down. She started walking briskly in the direction the clerk had indicated, and he followed. “Okay,” she said, sniffing and taking several deep breaths. “Here’s the deal. That thing on the train? It eats people. And it wants to eat me, to get my psychometric talent. Only I’m not going to let it. And Noah is this guy who’s been hunting it for centuries. Only now he’s on some suicide mission, and I’ve got to stop him.” She paused for breath. “Make sense?”

George didn’t answer. He continued to walk quickly beside her. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Given what I’ve seen today, I’d definitely say yeah.”

“This creature can look like anyone,” she said further. “I thought you were him.”

George touched the bandage on his head. “Oh.”

“Sorry about that.” Madeline started to jog again, feeling the strain in her exhausted body. But she had to keep going. The cut in her arm had finally stopped bleeding, and her blood-soaked shirt was positively stiff. Luckily, the shirt was dark green, and people wouldn’t notice the blood so easily now that it was night. “Let’s scare up a ride.” She marched toward the highway and the uncertain future that lay before her.

After ten minutes of standing on the side of Highway 2, Madeline and George were picked up by a young man driving a red Ford pickup truck. Squeezing onto the front bench, they drove the twenty-seven miles to West Glacier, she and the driver, Phil, talking animatedly. He was spending his summer helping with his family’s ranch. Despite her dire mood, Madeline found Phil quite funny and laughed at more than one of his jokes about his family and long, hot days spent mending fences.

George, on the other hand, remained completely quiet.

“I’ve never seen people hitch into Glacier without at least a backpack,” Phil commented as he dropped them off near George’s car.

“Our gear is stashed at our friend’s house here,” Madeline lied, feeling a little bad about it but knowing she couldn’t go into the actual story.

Phil nodded.

“Thanks!” she said, closing the door.

George waved, though he still didn’t say anything. Phil drove off, and George walked like a zombie toward his car.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He nodded.

She wondered if the insanity of the situation had finally caught up to him. “You don’t look okay.”

They walked in silence to his car, which was parked in one corner of the gas station’s parking lot, the same station that doubled as the repair garage. Her Rabbit stood at the other end of the lot, next to the large bay doors of the garage. She felt sad seeing it sit there forlornly.

When they reached his blue Toyota, he looked up, his eyes haunted. “I’m fine,” he said robotically, as if the question had just registered in his brain. He fished out his keys.

She stared at him for several long minutes. He looked out of place there, her friend appearing in the midst of a nightmare. He was part of the world back home, where, as lonely as things were, they still made sense.

“George,” she said finally. “I don’t want you to come with me.”

He furrowed his brow. “What? Are you crazy? You can’t go against that thing alone.”

She shook her head. “That thing is practically unstoppable. I don’t want to be mean here, but it just wouldn’t matter if you were with me.”

George threw up his hands in exasperation. “It took both of us to throw it off the train!”

“Yeah, but there isn’t going to be a train up there. Just miles of desolate backcountry and a remote cabin to get killed in.”

“I could help get your friend out of there.”

“If he’s even still alive when I get there.”

“Well, you must believe he is, if you’re going to go through with this.”

She hoped he was alive, though the creature could still beat her there, loping through the woods on all fours in a direct route while she had to stick to the roads.

She sighed and took a minute to collect her thoughts. George simply couldn’t come, as much as she wanted him there for sheer comfort’s sake. In reality, she was likely heading up there to her own death. She didn’t want him to get killed, too. “George, please listen to me. That thing has killed hundreds of people, maybe more. I don’t want you to go.”

He crossed his arms defiantly. “I’m not going to let you go alone.”

Since the creature had shown up, Madeline had enlisted the help of numerous people. Steve could have been killed. George, too. The ranger in the backcountry station didn’t even have a chance to meet her before the creature killed him. Now Noah had gone to face it. She had a stake in this and had to go up there to do something. But she couldn’t live with herself if her only friend got killed in the process. This thing wanted her, and she was going to face it alone.

George didn’t belong here. He could die here.

Suddenly Madeline knew what she had to do. Lunging forward, she pushed George to the ground. He cried out in surprise, landing on his shoulder. Wrenching the keys from his hand, she fumbled with them quickly, located the car key, and inserted it into the lock.

“What are you doing?” he asked, suddenly come to life. He started to get up. She aimed a well-placed boot at his chest and knocked him back down, robbing him of his breath. Twisting the key in the lock, she unlocked the door and wrested it open.

George coughed, bringing his hands to his chest as she jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind herself. Her hand quickly snapped down the lock, sealing her within.

Staggering, George got to his feet and grabbed at the handle. His fists landed on the glass of the driver’s window. “Madeline! Don’t do this!”

She started the car up and pulled away slowly, being sure not to run over George or his feet. She gave him a sad look through the window. “I can’t be responsible for your death, George,” she yelled through the glass.

“And I don’t want to read about yours!” he shouted back as she drove away.

She placed her hand flat on the window, silently said good-bye to her friend, and roared out of the parking lot, heading toward the cabin.

Madeline didn’t know what she’d find as she closed the final mile to the cabin. Maybe the creature would already be there, gleaming spike driven deeply into Noah’s bubbling flesh. Maybe she’d beat the creature there and could talk Noah into leaving with her. Her hands felt slick on the wheel of George’s car, and she worried for her friend she’d left in the parking lot.

Ahead, lights came into view.

Madeline slowed the bouncing Toyota on the pitted, dirt road and came to a halt, switching the headlights off.

The lights ahead, perfectly square, gleamed from the cabin only three hundred feet away. She studied the windows for any hint of movement, but it was simply too far away to see.

Not switching the headlights back on, she pulled the car off the road and parked it beneath a large hemlock. She switched the motor off. As quietly as possible, she opened the car door and climbed out. Locking it, she pressed it closed with her hip and pocketed the keys with nervous, trembling hands.

Ahead lay darkened clusters of pine trees and the glowing windows of the cabin beyond. She crept around the car and moved forward, the pine needles muffling her approach.

Two hundred feet.

One hundred feet.

As she drew closer, a large, hulking shape came into view, obstructing the light from one of the windows. Madeline’s heart jumped until she realized it was just the bulky, dark dimensions of Noah’s Jeep. He had parked right in front.

Bold.

Or stupid.

If Noah was alone in there, he was going about his assassination attempt in a dangerous way, parking his Jeep in full view and turning on all the lights. It wasn’t something she thought he’d do. He was either desperate and not thinking clearly, or something had gone wrong.

Ducking down low to stay out of the cabin’s light, she crept to the front door. Squatting next to it, she reached one shaking hand up to the handle.

Noah arriving at the cabin, full of despair, sobbing …

Leaving the safety of the Jeep, tentatively approaching the front door, determined and full of terror …

Reaching in through the broken pane of glass in the door, letting himself in. Planning to lie in wait behind the bedroom door, intentionally leaving his car in plain sight so the creature would know he was there and be braced for a confrontation, perhaps get his heart pumping so that when Noah cut him, the blood would flow that much more freely into Noah’s waiting mouth …

Noah imagining himself manifesting the gleaming spikes from each arm, impaling the screaming creature against one wall of the cabin, then detaching the spike so the creature could never rise again …

Madeline released her grip on the handle and exhaled, clearing her mind. Bracing her back against the cool wood of the cabin’s wall, she remained in shadow. She studied the front door of the cabin. She saw the broken pane but didn’t know if Noah had entered already, as he’d intended to do in the vision. She would have to touch the inside doorknob to know that.

Silently, heart threatening to beat right out of her chest, mouth gone dry, knees trembling, Madeline approached one of the front windows at an angle. Trying to remain out of sight, she stared in from one far corner, keeping her distance from the pane.

She didn’t see anyone, just the empty front room and the kitchen beyond.

She strained her ears.

The wind in the boughs.

A bat emitting a high-pitched squeak as it hunted moths in the tree canopy above.

Crickets singing.

The roar of a distant waterfall.

Stepping forward, she pressed one ear against the wooden wall of the cabin. For several long moments she remained there, straining to hear anything within.

She heard nothing.

Ducking beneath the window, she crept toward the front door again, her feet shuffling in the soft bed of pine needles. She waited a moment, wide eyes searching the darkness around the cabin to be sure she was alone.