Monster

by Frank Peretti

  “You better get out of here,” he said. “I got some crew comin’ in, and I don’t wanna be stuck explainin’ you.”

  Cap inched around the big man’s frame and made a beeline for the back door. “Louis, uh, thanks.”

  Louis followed him at a distance, watching him. “You get what you needed?”

  Cap paused at the door, considering the question and the data printout he’d stuffed in his pocket. “I’m afraid so.”

  He got out of there.

  Reed worked his way carefully up the incline, searching and selecting a firm, hopefully silent place to plant each step, weaving and dodging from tree to tree, his pulse pounding, his rifle slick in his sweating hands. The GPS receiver strapped to his left forearm showed him he’d come halfway up the slope; the four numbered blips on the moving map indicated he was maintaining formation with the others. They were moving up the hill in a semicircular arrangement, like the bottom half of a clock: Reed was at three o’clock; Pete was downhill and to Reed’s left at five o’clock; Max was coming up the middle to Pete’s left at seven o’clock; Sheriff Mills was directly opposite Reed at nine o’clock. The rock face was directly above them.

  The GPS doubled as a two-way radio, and now Pete’s voice whispered in Reed’s earpiece, “The tracks are veering south a little. Let’s add another ten degrees.”

  Reed spotted a big fir about fifty yards up the bank and ten degrees to his right. He headed for it. The blips on his map made the same correction. The half circle warped, lagged, caught up, overtightened, then loosened again as each man struggled with the terrain, but so far they were holding the dragnet together.

  Reed held his rifle in one hand while he dried the other on his pant leg, then switched hands and dried again. Part of him—the part with the weak knees, pounding pulse, and sweaty palms—couldn’t help dwelling on the flaws in the plan. There were only four hunters forming this semicircle, and they were spread out over half a mile. Any creature brave and wily enough could slip through the huge gaps between them and be long gone before they knew it. The success of Pete’s plan rested on these animals being either very shy or very deadly. If they were shy, they would back away until the hunters could tighten the circle and hem them in against the rocks; if they were deadly, then at least one of the hunters was bound to encounter them sooner or later. Pete didn’t mention how even shy animals could become deadly if cornered, but it did occur to Reed that, given what they were attempting, they were going to be dealing with a deadly wild animal either way. Pete’s only admonition for whenever that happened was “Don’t let them get past you.”

  Right. No problem. Those eighteen-inch footprints had given Reed a whole new way of looking at shadowy trees, obscured stumps, and breeze-rippled bushes. He’d already chambered a round. The safety was off. Thinking of Beck was the only thing that kept him pushing into this madness. Pete had said she was injured, limping most likely. Reed hoped it wasn’t more serious. How had she managed to survive this long when two strong men had died at the hands of these beasts? That was the question no one had asked, and yet it bothered Reed. Was she living in a terror that far outpaced the hell he’d been living in?

  There were only three blips on his GPS screen. “Sheriff Mills? I don’t have you on-screen.”

  “. . . I’m . . . on the . . . here,” Mills came back, his voice breaking up.

  Sing had returned to her mobile lab, parked next to a trailer-turned-tavern in the obscure, almost-town of Whitetail. She could see all four blips on her computer screen via the satellite dish on her roof. “The satellite’s picking up everybody,” she reported over her headset. “It’s the peer-to-peer radio signal between the units. Sometimes terrain and distance can block it.”

  “Yeah, I’m down in a hollow,” Mills reported.

  “It happens. Max? Better add another ten degrees; you’re drifting left.”

  “Ten more degrees,” Max replied.

  “Everybody, I copy you about a quarter mile below the rocks.”

  The blips kept moving, inch by inch.

  “Whoa!” Max whispered.

  Pete radioed, “Hold up!”

  The radios went silent. The blips on the screen stopped moving.

  Reed merged with an elderly hemlock, nothing moving but his eyes, and then, as slowly as the sweep hand on a clock, his head. The forest around him was thick enough to hide anything. Apart from the chirping of a bird somewhere, he heard nothing. No movement. No twigs snapping, no rustling. He waited.

  Pete came on the radio, his whisper barely audible. “Max, I heard some movement your direction.”

  Max reported in a tense, hushed voice, “Yeah. There’s something up there, my eleven o’clock.”

  Pete replied, “Any visual?”

  “No.”

  Sing leaned toward her computer monitor, her hand pressing her earpiece against her ear, her mind leaping into the map she saw on the screen. The blips were motionless, still in a rough semicircle on steep terrain.

  “Sheriff?” came Pete’s voice.

  “I heard it. My two o’clock.”

  Reed scanned the forest to his left, inside the semicircle. His gaze locked onto a brown mass behind some elderberry. It didn’t move. After a blink, a look away, and a return, he saw that it was a stump.

  He carefully stole a step, then another, then four up the hill where he merged with another hemlock.

  “Yeah,” came the sheriff’s muffled voice. “There it was again, two o’clock.”

  Pete replied, “Sheriff, move up toward the rocks. Max, fill in. I’m up the middle. Reed, move left, close in, quick and quiet.”

  Reed separated from the hemlock and moved left, his eyes on the trees, the tangled brush, the ferns, the obscuring broad leaves. He stopped short at the sight of a shadow behind some devil’s club. When he was sure it was an upturned root ball, he stepped again, carefully placing his foot on soft earth or solid log, anything silent.

  “I’m getting closer,” said Mills. “I can hear it moving, still to my right.”

  “Move in, everybody,” said Pete. “Move in. Tighten the circle.”

  Reed checked the screen on his GPS. All four numbered blips were visible now, but the semicircle didn’t look much tighter than before. He tried to move faster.

  He froze. His finger wrapped around the trigger.

  Something uphill, to his right, caught his eye. Something white, flickering, waving. A whitetail deer? No. It wasn’t moving from that spot.

  “Did you hear that?” Mills asked.

  “Yeah,” Max replied.

  Reed checked his GPS. Mills was moving in, tightening the top of the semicircle. Max and Pete moved up the hill, flattening the pattern. He could see his blip still lingering out on the right flank.

  The strange white thing was there, moving in the slight breeze. Reed quickened his pace, eyes alert, as he closed the distance. It appeared to be a ribbon of some kind, but what surveyor would have been clear up here?

  “Heads up, heads up,” Mills whispered. “It’s coming down the hill.”

  “Max, eyes open!” said Pete.

  A quick run across the open grass, and Reed came to an elderberry bush sporting the white ornament. It looked like— He reached it, even touched it.

  A string of toilet paper.

  “I think I saw it!” said Mills. “Huh. I think it’s a bear. It’s black.”

  Reed did not remove the toilet paper from the bush but stood by it, surveying in all directions for any other sign. There! Only fifteen feet away, a small scrap of white lay like a fallen leaf on a patch of brown pine needles. Nervously, quickly, keeping an eye open for anything approaching, he entered his present location as a waypoint on the GPS. He was about to report when— “I don’t have it,” said Max.

  “I don’t either,” said Mills. “It’s quit moving.”

  “Pete, Reed, where are you?”

  Sing responded, “Pete’s on his way, about a thousand feet at your five o’clock. Reed, how’re
you doing?”

  “I’ve found something,” he said. For some silly reason he didn’t want to say he’d found toilet paper. “I’m going to—”

  He heard it, and time stopped. His thoughts, his breath, maybe even his heart, stopped. That ghostlike cry of anguish, though echoing and distant, chilled his blood even more than when he’d first heard it in the dark near the cabin on Lost Creek.

  Beck barely had time to flinch before Rachel grabbed her up and dove into a sheltering clump of elderberry and maple, huffing in alarm. Clamped against Rachel’s chest, Beck looked backward over Rachel’s shoulder and saw Leah crouching in the open, calling for Reuben with faint, high-pitched yelps, until the leaves closed in and she saw nothing.

  She didn’t have to. With the jolting surprise over and the brush settling back to stillness, she heard the distant sound that so alarmed her captors. Her hands became trembling fists as she clamped onto Rachel’s fur.

  Reed was about to call, but Mills spoke first.

  “It’s her!” said Mills. “Reed, I can hear Beck!”

  No. No!

  “Sounds like she’s hurting,” said Max.

  Reed tried to control his voice as he radioed, “It’s not Beck! Repeat, it is not Beck. Do you copy?”

  “Reed, you’re breaking up,” said Pete.

  Faint in the distance, Sheriff Mills was shouting, “Beck! Beck Shelton!”

  Reed broke into a run, ducking and veering around trees, thrashing through thick brush. He radioed as he ran, “Mills, get out of there!”

  “Max, let’s move!” Pete ordered.

  The blips on Reed’s GPS crawled steadily toward each other, tightening the pattern.

  “I’ve got it,” said Mills. “It’s a—” A drawn breath. The squeak of leather, the rattle of metal. The sheriff was fumbling with his rifle. “Man, oh man, I don’t believe it!” His signal cut out.

  A rifle shot!

  “Mills! Mills!” Reed cried.

  Mills came back on the air, breathing heavily as if running. “Get up here; you hear me? Get up here!”

  Another rifle shot.

  Pete demanded, “Sheriff, are you all right?”

  “God help me, that thing’s walking!”

  eleven

  For a microsecond, Reed forced himself to stop against every raging need to plunge forward. He gripped his rifle high, ready to sight down the barrel at so much as a squirrel if it dared to move. Between gasps for air, he listened for any sound, no matter how insignificant. Whatever Mills had encountered, it wasn’t the only one.

  Pete was yelling, his voice distorted in the earpiece, “Mills! Just shoot. Draw a bead and shoot.”

  “I can’t see him!” Then came a scream of alarm. Another shot.

  Reed was moving again, eyes wide open, rifle ready. He came to a clearing, swept it visually, and dashed across.

  “Mills?” Pete called. “Mills! Max, do you see him?”

  Max didn’t answer. Reed checked his GPS as he plunged into the trees again. Mills was moving north, obviously running. Max’s blip had stalled. “Max, Sheriff Mills is northeast of you. Move northeast.”

  Max finally answered, “I can’t get there from here. I’ve got to go around—”

  They heard a scream, first piercing, then garbled, then muffled—

  Then cut short. Silent.

  A second scream followed: the woman—that same invisible banshee of Lost Creek—screamed as if she’d been cut open, the echoes of her voice layering one upon the other as the barren rocks sent the sound back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the valley. Reed froze in terror, his back against a tree, his eyes darting, his hands nearly dropping the rifle.

  The nightmare had returned in daylight. From out there, a legion of demons answered the woman from their haunts and hiding places, their guttural howls long and mournful like ghostly sirens following one upon the other, rising, fading, notes clashing, echoing, echoing, echoing.

  The radios were silent as every man went speechless. Reed was petrified, wishing he could meld into the tree at his back. These were no strangers; he’d heard this eerie dirge before, and it was no less terrifying now.

  Beck clamped her hands over her ears and cowered, unable to squirm out of Rachel’s iron grasp as the Sasquatch, head raised and jaws agape, howled with the power of a ship’s horn. Rachel was trembling, stinking. Her eyes swept about the brush canopy as if death hovered over their heads.

  I heard shots, Beck thought. But still the woman screamed. What’s happening?

  Just outside their hiding place in the brush, Leah crouched in the undergrowth and howled just as loudly, still anxiously looking for her son.

  Reuben came bounding out of the trees, tattered shreds of toilet paper streaming behind him. Leah scooped him up; he clung to her, a frightened child, and Leah immediately plunged into the elderberry thicket, nearly trampling Rachel and Beck in her haste.

  Pete called, “Mills? Sheriff Mills, can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  Reed checked his GPS. Max and Pete were moving again. Max would reach Mills first.

  But Mills’s blip wasn’t moving.

  Reed called, “Sing, are you getting anything from Sheriff Mills?”

  Sing’s voice was tight with emotion. “His GPS is still working and I’m getting his radio signal, but he isn’t moving. He isn’t responding.”

  Reed checked his bearings, dried his hands on his jacket, and plunged ahead, knees weak. “Hello, this is Reed. Somebody out there talk to me.”

  Pete came back, “We’re closing on Mills. Watch yourself. That critter’s still out here.”

  Reed was watching, all right. These woods were full of shadows and dark places to hide. His rifle barrel went anywhere his eyes went. A raven flew from a dead branch above him and he almost shot it.

  Sing came on the radio. “Max? Are you all right? Can you talk to me?”

  Max didn’t answer. Reed checked his screen. Max was moving, so he was alive. He was getting close to Mills’s location.

  Sing asked again, “Max?”

  Reed kept moving, pushing through the brush, clambering over rocks and logs, eyes darting, dread closing over him like a cloud.

  Pete radioed, “I have Max. He’s okay.” Movement. Branches snapping. Pete’s laboring breath and footsteps came over the radio. “Max? I’m coming up behind you.” Pete’s voice became strangely quiet, cautious. “Max, I don’t see your rifle. Point it in the air for me, will you, bud? Okay. Good. Now just keep it there, okay? I’m coming up behind you. You see me? Max? Just look over your right shoulder. It’s okay; it’s me.”

  Now Reed heard movement ahead of him. “Pete? I’m coming your way from slightly uphill.”

  “I hear you, Reed.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “Stand by. I’m gonna check on Max. He’s—”

  Silence.

  Reed didn’t like silence, not now. “Pete?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Reed could see a small break in the forest canopy ahead of him. Light was penetrating to the forest floor. A few more steps through the undergrowth and he saw Pete, looking his way.

  Pete waved at him, weakly at first, but then urgently. “Get out of those trees, Reed. We’ve got a casualty.”

  Those were the words none of them wanted to hear. Reed carefully chose some short leaps down the grade and broke into the clearing.

  Max was sitting awkwardly on the ground, teetering as if he’d collapsed there, his face pale, his body quivering and palsied with shock, his eyes staring, then averting, then staring again. Reed thought he was injured, even shot.

  Pete stood by Max, alert, rifle following his eyes as he continuously scanned the forest on all sides. He gestured for Reed to close in. Reed crossed quickly and stood by him, guarding Pete’s back as Pete guarded his.

  The question had only formed in Reed’s mind when the answer assaulted him from across the clearing. He lurched, looking away, flooded with sh
ock and revulsion.

  “Sorry,” said Pete in a hoarse whisper. “Should’ve warned you.”

  Reed forced himself to look again.

  Sheriff Mills’s body had been hurled against a tree and now lay wrapped around the trunk, crumpled and contorted like a broken doll. The earpiece lay in the grass, still connected by wire to the GPS on his left arm. Mills’s rifle lay in the grass, the stock broken off. Except for a few remaining sinews and dripping arteries, the head was all but separated from the body.

  Reed’s mind was paralyzed, but only for a moment. Without a conscious thought, he positioned his rifle and turned his full attention to the surrounding forest.

  For several seconds, with tendons tightened to their limit, sweat dripping down their faces, and every breath controlled, Reed and Pete rotated slowly about a common center, back to back, eyes, ears, and rifles on the dark, concealing forest that encircled them.

  At their feet, Max slumped to the ground, vomiting and moaning.

  “Max, shh,” Pete whispered.

  Max tried to finish as silently as he could.

  Sing came over the radio. Her voice was frantic. “Pete? Reed? Please report.”

  Without taking his eyes off the forest or his hand away from the trigger, Reed spoke quietly, slowly, and deliberately, the way Sheriff Mills would have. “Sing, get hold of yourself. Sheriff Mills is dead, same as Allen Arnold and Randy Thompson.” He thought he heard a faint “Oh no,” but after that, nothing. “Sing? Acknowledge.”

  Her voice was controlled. “I’m here. Sheriff Mills is dead.”

  “Call Deputy Saunders. Tell him to evacuate all the search teams, every last one of them. And have him contact the Forest Service. No civilians go into the woods, not campers, hikers, anybody— and that’s by order of . . . well, me. Guess I’m the county sheriff for now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Reed kept his voice steady. “I want you to get hold of Jimmy. Tell him we need him and all of his hunters up here, and if he can scare up any more from the Forest Service, we can use them too.”