Scavenger

by David Morrell

  “Hard to tell,” Derrick answered. “Maybe fifteen miles. Maybe more. When everything’s open like this, our eyes play tricks.”

  Ray pressed a button on his GPS receiver. “The altimeter says we’re at fifty-five hundred feet.” He looked at Bethany. “A mile above sea level. If you’re not used to it, the altitude would be another reason you’re thirsty.”

  “No, I’m thirsty because the son of a bitch didn’t give us water.”

  “Quiet,” Viv cautioned. “He hears everything we say.”

  Bethany adjusted the bill of her cap, shielding her eyes. “The sun’s so bright, my contact lenses feel like they’re cooking. Hey, you out there! Are you listening?”

  No response.

  “At least, you could have given us sunglasses!”

  Still no response.

  “Maybe the bastard isn’t listening.” Bethany looked around. “Do you suppose there are cameras out here?”

  Amanda took for granted there were. But before she could say it, Bethany asked, “Where? In those trees we’re heading toward? Or long lenses watching from the house? Or on posts somewhere, scanning the valley?”

  They slid down into the gully. Dust rose under their boots. The gully was about five feet wide, higher than their heads. The shadow at the bottom cooled them.

  “I used to love sailing, couldn’t wait to get on the water with nothing around me except the horizon.” Bethany shuddered. “It made me feel like something inside me was reaching out toward God or something. But after two weeks in that rubber boat, all that open space sucked the soul right out of me. I haven’t been near the water since. It’s hard to get people to buy sailboats when the thought of being on one terrifies me.”

  Amanda dug her boots into the slope ahead, raising dust as she climbed. The dust coated her lips and tasted bitter. Emerging into the heat of the sun, she looked back and saw Bethany peering up from the shadow of the gully.

  “It’s nice and cool down here,” Bethany said.

  “This isn’t the ocean,” Derrick emphasized. “At least, it’s steady under your feet. It doesn’t ripple.”

  “Maybe not to you, it doesn’t ripple. But my legs haven’t felt steady since I woke up. At least, in that building, I had walls around me.”

  “Think of the mountains as walls.”

  Bethany looked bleak. “Mouth’s drier.”

  “The voice said there was water at the coordinates we were given.”

  “No!” Bethany objected. “The voice said we’d find something we needed. Whatever that means. He didn’t say anything about water. We added what we wanted to hear.” She pulled her headset from beneath her cap.

  “Climb out of there,” Viv said.

  “We’re not going to be any stronger than we are now.” Bethany stared at the headset in her hand. With disgust, she dropped it.

  “No,” Derrick said.

  “What can the bastard do to me?” Bethany spread her arms, making herself a target. “Shoot me? How? He can’t see me down here!”

  Amanda looked around and felt a naked spot between her shoulders. Above the gully, everything was a potential sniper site: clumps of sagebrush, the row of trees they were headed toward, the rocks next to it. In the open, we’re all easy targets, she realized.

  “Take your chance now,” Bethany urged. “If we all run in a different direction, how’s he going to keep track of us all? How’s he going to be everywhere at once to stop us? He can’t.”

  The logic’s so tempting, Amanda thought. While we’re together, we don’t have a chance. She almost told Bethany she was right, almost slid down the dust to join her, but something made Amanda hesitate, a limbic suspicion that things weren’t as simple as Bethany believed, that escaping couldn’t be as easy as five people fleeing in five different directions.

  Then Amanda did slide into the gully, not to join Bethany but to try to stop her. She put a hand on Bethany’s shoulder. “I’ve got a bad feeling. Don’t do this.”

  “Hey, the voice said he wanted us to be self-reliant, didn’t he?” Bethany tugged Amanda’s fingers away, took a deep breath, and walked along the concealing gully. Her pace increased. If the gully maintained its direction, it would lead toward the exit from the valley, Amanda saw.

  Running now, raising dust, Bethany disappeared around a curve. Amanda heard the receding noise of her boot steps in the dust, then stared up at Ray, Derrick, and Viv, uncertain what to do.

  “Are the rest of you going to join her?” the voice abruptly asked.

  The intimate sound in Amanda’s ears made her flinch.

  “There’s always a chance that she’ll succeed,” the voice said. “Do you want to take the same chance?”

  No one replied.

  “What about you, Amanda?”

  “How the hell does he know what Bethany’s doing?” Ray murmured.

  “In that case, keep moving,” the voice ordered. “Don’t waste the little time you have.”

  Amanda turned toward the curve beyond which Bethany had disappeared.

  “It’s unfortunate that she took off her headset,” the voice said. “That prevents me from trying to reason with her.”

  “How does he know she took off her headset?” Ray demanded.

  With a chill, Amanda picked up the headset and blew dust from it. She brought it close to her eyes, examining the headband, the ear buds, and the microphone stub. “The microphone.” Her words were filled with despair.

  “Brava,” the voice said.

  “The microphone?” Derrick asked from the top of the slope. “What about it?”

  Amanda could hardly speak. “It’s not just a…”

  Viv tore off her headset and stared at the microphone stub. “My God, it’s a camera.”

  She dropped the headset and stumbled back.

  “Derrick, tell your wife to pick it up,” the voice said.

  Derrick looked paralyzed.

  “Tell your wife to pick it up,” the voice emphasized.

  “Viv, he wants you to pick up your headset.”

  “No.”

  “Everyone step back from her,” the voice said.

  Derrick’s dark features tightened. “What are you going to do?”

  “Teach you not to make me repeat myself. Step back.”

  In a rush, Derrick grabbed the headset from the dirt and made Viv take it. “Put it on.”

  Seeing the fright in Derrick’s eyes, Viv trembled and did what he wanted.

  “Amanda, climb to the top of the gully,” the voice ordered. “Join the others. Look toward the east.”

  “East?”

  “The exit from the valley,” Ray said.

  Amanda felt something cold squeeze her heart. “That’s the direction Bethany went.” She scrambled up the side of the gully. Dust crumbled under her hiking boots, but she kneed and clawed and reached the top. She straightened, focusing her gaze toward the continuation of the gully. Amid grass and sagebrush, the gully meandered toward the distant pass. Amanda saw glimpses of Bethany’s gray cap and the gray shoulders of her jumpsuit as she hurried.

  The voice sounded too resigned, Amanda decided. “Wait! You said it’s unfortunate she took off her headset. You said you wanted to reason with her. If I can catch her…” A terrible premonition made Amanda breathe faster. “If I can stop her…”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you let me bring her back?”

  The voice didn’t answer.

  Before Amanda realized what she was doing, she ran. “Bethany!” she yelled. “Stop!” The vast openness swallowed her words.

  Amanda charged across the brittle grass. She passed sagebrush, a knee-high boulder, and a stunted pine tree.

  “Bethany!”

  But Bethany kept racing along the bottom of the gully. Her gray cap and the gray shoulders of her jumpsuit were more visible. She never looked back.

  “Stop!”

  Amanda increased the speed and length of her stride. “Listen to me!” she managed to shout between h
oarse deep breaths that burned her throat.

  Ahead, the gully became less deep. Bethany was visible to her waist now, rushing toward the far-away gap in the mountains.

  “Stop!” Amanda yelled. Sweat slicked her skin, making her jumpsuit cling to her. “He knows!”

  Now the gully was so shallow that Bethany’s hips showed. The lack of cover increased her frenzy. She charged toward a sandy depression, where water presumably gathered during rainy periods. On the opposite side, another gully began.

  “You’re not stopping her,” the voice said in Amanda’s ears.

  “Trying.” Amanda fought to muster strength, to run even faster. A rock dislodged under her, making her stumble. “Bethany! Stop! Please!”

  The urgency in Amanda’s words finally had an effect. Halfway across the depression, Bethany seemed to lose energy. She faltered and turned. Chest heaving, she peered back toward Amanda.

  “He can get to you!” Amanda yelled. “I don’t know how, but he can!”

  Bethany’s features glistened with sweat. She looked ahead toward the opposite side of the depression and the continuation of the gully. Abruptly, she ran toward it.

  “Don’t!” Amanda’s plea was directed to the voice as much as to Bethany.

  “She hates open spaces,” the voice said. “It was only a matter of time.”

  Amanda strained to increase speed but found it impossible. Like the gap in the mountains beyond, Bethany seemed to recede.

  “Better that it happened soon,” the voice told Amanda. “This way, the rest of you will learn not to waste time and strength on futile efforts.”

  “No!”

  “But I’m disappointed that she didn’t surprise me.”

  The moment Bethany reached the continuation of the gully, Amanda felt a shock wave. Amid a roar, Bethany’s gray-covered torso erupted in a spray of red. A hand flew one way while her skull flew another. The vapor of her blood misted the air as parts of her body pelted the ground.

  Amanda staggered to a halt, her ears in pain from the explosion. She wavered in shock at the sight of the blood vapor spreading in a sudden breeze. Then the vapor drifted down, speckling the sand.

  Amanda felt as if someone kicked the back of her legs from under her. She dropped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face, burning her cheeks.

  3

  It is a wonderful place, the moor.

  Hunched in the back seat of a taxi, Balenger studied the photocopy in his hand, wondering what the hell the paragraph on it meant. A faded copy of a stamp read NYPL HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY. Given the context, he decided that NYPL stood for New York Public Library. He used his cell phone to call information and learned that the Humanities & Social Sciences Library was at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

  The Avenue of the Americas was the nearest uptown route from Greenwich Village. Stop-and-go midday traffic slowed the taxi. Frustrated by blaring horns and the lurch of the vehicle, Balenger told the driver to let him out at 40th Street. He paid and ran, relieved to be moving, to find an outlet for his tension.

  But impatience wasn’t his only reason for leaving the taxi. He continued to feel shocked by the fire. Someone wanted to stop him from finding Amanda, and that person would almost certainly keep trying.

  He ran faster. Feeling exposed on the crowded sidewalk, he glanced behind him, wanting to know if anyone got out of another taxi and hurried in his direction. No one did. He looked ahead just in time to avoid crashing into a man with a briefcase. Veering, he charged through the intersection of 41st Street. A truck beeped and passed close enough for Balenger to feel a rush of air.

  Ahead, he saw a crowd on benches amid the trees of Bryant Park. He glanced over his shoulder again and still didn’t see anyone coming after him. Traffic remained motionless.

  Turning right, he sprinted to Fifth Avenue and reached the library, a massive stone building, whose wide steps and pillared entrance were guarded by two marble lions.

  He hurried through a revolving door and entered a massive hall, where people waited for a guard to examine their purses, knapsacks, and briefcases. As he wiped sweat from his forehead, he got curious looks from some of the people in line. He moved forward, glancing over his shoulder. Feeling seconds tick away, he worked to catch his breath. The high ceiling and stone floor had the echo of a church, but he paid little attention. His sole focus was on people coming through the entrance.

  The guard waved him through. After asking directions, Balenger climbed two flights of wide stairs. Off another huge hallway, he reached an information desk.

  “May I help?” a spectacled woman asked.

  “I hope so.” Balenger gave her the photocopy. “Do you have any idea where this comes from?”

  The librarian peered over her glasses, studying the passage.

  “It is a wonderful place, the moor,” said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. “You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.”

  She sounded puzzled. “Everything else has been blanked out.”

  Trying for a simple explanation, Balenger said, “It’s kind of a game.”

  The librarian nodded. “Yes, we get that on occasion. Last week, somebody came here with a list for a scavenger hunt. She needed to find a particular novel, but the only clue she’d been given was, ‘The sun goes down.’ We finally decided it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.”

  The thought occurred to Balenger that the paragraph might indeed be part of a game, one of the crudest anyone ever imagined.

  “The problem was, even though people often call us the main branch of the New York City library system, actually we’re a research facility,” the woman said. “We don’t lend books. Patrons can study them only on the premises. I needed to send the game player over to the branch on Fortieth Street.” The librarian continued to study the paragraph. “‘It is a wonderful place, the moor.’ Interesting.” She debated for a moment, then motioned to a man at a computer next to her.

  He approached.

  “Brontë or Conan Doyle?” the woman asked.

  After reading the passage, the man nodded. “Those are the two that come to mind.”

  “I don’t think it’s Brontë,” the woman said.

  “Exactly. Her style is more emotional.”

  Balenger gave the woman a quizzical look.

  “Mention a moor as a setting, and two novels stand out. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights takes place on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. It’s very atmospheric, Heathcliff talking to Cathy’s ghost as he wanders the moors, that sort of thing. In contrast, the description here is compressed into one sentence: ‘…undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite’…It gets the job done, but what the author seems really to care about are ‘the wonderful secrets’ the moor contains: ‘…so mysterious.’ That’s the author’s focus. I’d be very surprised if this person didn’t write mysteries. I think this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  “The Hound of the Baskervilles?”

  “Dartmoor in Devon, England. That’s where most of the novel takes place. In fact, it’s one of the most famous settings in any novel. As I mentioned, we don’t allow books to leave the building, but if you go to the reading room—” She pointed behind her. “—someone will bring you a copy.”

  Time, Balenger kept thinking. He made himself appear calm when he thanked her. His experience with Conan Doyle’s detective story was only through an old black-and-white film starring Basil Rathbone. He remembered it as dark and moody with plenty of fog over rugged, sometimes swampy terrain.

  The spacious reading room had the rich, warm tones of wood that had been polished for many decades. A guard stood at the entrance. Next to him, a sign warned Balenger to turn off his cell phone.

  Balenger complied and went to a counter, where he requested
a copy of the novel. His nerves calmed only a little when he noticed the reading room’s computer area. After receiving an access card, he found an empty computer station. He concentrated to keep his breathing under control and felt a persistent urge to massage the nagging ache in his left forearm. When he pushed up his jacket and shirt sleeves, he saw that the punctured area was more red and swollen. It looked infected.

  But that was the least of his troubles. As he stared at the computer keyboard, his fingers trembled. Amanda, he thought. Where did they take you?

  He didn’t know why Karen Bailey left the quotation for him or how reading the novel it came from (if it indeed came from The Hound of the Baskervilles) would help him find Amanda. He fought to think, to focus on what the quotation was supposed to tell him.

  Maybe it’s about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he thought desperately.

  Then why was everything else on the page, including the author’s name and the title of the book, removed? Why single out the quotation? What was special about it?

  The moor.

  Balenger reached for the computer keyboard. With shaking hands, he accessed Google and typed DARTMOOR. Several items appeared.

  DARTMOOR NATIONAL PARK

  DISCOVERING DARTMOOR

  WALKING DARTMOOR

  DARTMOOR RESCUE GROUP

  Balenger learned that Dartmoor National Park covered 250 square miles of low rocky hills that were described variously as bleak, forbidding, and primeval. Mist frequently covered the mostly uninhabited area. The frequent moisture collected in boggy mires, which explained the need for a Dartmoor rescue group.

  Am I supposed to conclude that somebody took Amanda to Dartmoor, England? he thought. Why? What would be the point? This isn’t getting me anywhere.

  Why did Karen Bailey arrange for me to receive the piece of paper?

  A thought made Balenger straighten. She could have mailed it to me, but she added a complication. I wouldn’t have known about the passage if I hadn’t gone to the theater. She told the man who pretended to be the professor to give me the paper only if I showed up.

  His temples throbbing, Balenger stared at the other Google references to Dartmoor. He now realized that he needed to look harder. He couldn’t assume anything was irrelevant.