Monster

by Frank Peretti

  She raised the lid and the screen came to life, the same old map of the surrounding forest with nothing showing but— Something new caught her eye as her finger poised above the keyboard.

  Was that . . . ?

  No. It had to be dust on the screen, a bad pixel, the mouse pointer . . .

  It was blinking.

  She leaned in to make sure.

  Yes, it was blinking.

  She rolled out the computer chair and sat in it, digging her glasses from her shirt pocket.

  The radio on the dash squawked, “Sing? Any problems?”

  She put on her glasses and leaned close.

  The blinking blip was labeled with a number 6.

  “Reed . . .”

  The radio squawked again. “Hello? Sing? You copy?”

  “Reed . . . !”

  Number 6. The GPS they’d left at the baiting site.

  The Last-Ditch Attempt.

  “Reed!” Sing bolted from her chair, ran to the dashboard, grabbed up the radio. “REEEEED!”

  fifteen

  Cap drove up the Skeel Gulch Road, past quaint homesteads and run-down barns, freshly mowed hay fields, and a huge pond where a moose grazed on water cabbage. He found the bridge just as Mr. Dinsley had described it, a squatty rectangle of logs and rough-hewn planks with red reflectors tacked to each end. After the road took a left turn, Dinsley’s directions ran out, and Cap was left to do the best he could with the man’s broad-sweeping description, “It’s up in there somewhere.”

  Cap drove two miles up the road, looking for anything that might be home to a scientist detached from reality. When he noticed recent tire tracks turning onto the road from a gravel driveway, he was desperate enough to check it out.

  The driveway wound back through the trees for several hundred feet, then ended abruptly at a small, metal-roofed cabin. The parking lot was empty, so Cap felt safe pulling to a stop and climbing out for a look-see.

  Just a few paces up from the parking lot, Cap could see past the cabin and into the trees beyond. The owner had added an outbuilding, a metal structure the size of an aircraft hangar.

  Dinsley said Burkhardt had built a shop a few years ago. Cap may have come to the right place.

  In an instant, Reed’s entire universe had compressed to the size of a tiny blip on a computer screen. The blip was moving north, pulling the moving map downward across the screen pixel by pixel, blinking as it went, a little number 6 at its side. Reed didn’t dare believe what it could mean; his nerves wouldn’t be able to take it. “You double-checked?”

  Sing, at the computer, was wiping tears from her eyes. “I cycled through all the GPS codes and every unit is accounted for, including this one: 1 through 5 are in their cases right here under the bench. Number 6 is out, and it’s broadcasting—” Her voice tightened into a weeping squeak. She took a deep breath to clear it. “I tested it before you guys left it at the baiting site. This is it; this is the one!”

  Pete, at Reed’s side, couldn’t have looked more intense if he’d been staring down a cougar. “You sure you wrapped those batteries?”

  Reed was trying not to hope too soon. The whiplike reversal would snap his mind for sure. “I made double sure. Only an intelligent human being would have pulled that paper out of there and reset the batteries. This isn’t an accident.”

  “What if it’s a hiker who found it?” Sing ventured.

  “The trails are closed,” said Reed.

  Pete pointed. “It’s not on a trail. And look how fast it’s moving. That’s no hiker.”

  “ATV?” Reed suggested.

  “Not in there. It’s nothing but steep slopes, heavy forest, and no roads.” He watched it a moment. “But something with eighteen-inch feet could move that fast.”

  Reed nodded, remembering that moment below the waterfall on the trail to Abney. “It’s still carrying her.”

  Pete cautioned, “We don’t know for sure.”

  “Right.” Reed reined himself in. “What about radio contact?”

  Sing replied, “I’ve tried to raise whoever it is, but the unit radio doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve got GPS locating, but that’s it.”

  There was a rap on the doorpost and Max Johnson stuck his head in. “Hey, we’re all here!”

  Reed went to the door. Max, Steve Thorne, Sam Marlowe, and Wiley Kane stood there, a firm set in their faces that almost overruled Reed’s doubt. He still needed to be sure. “I need to know you guys are with me.”

  “I’m in,” said Max. “Always have been. I want to finish this, Reed, and finish it right.”

  Reed wasn’t satisfied yet. “Steve?”

  “I don’t care what’s up there, and I’m not going to bicker about it,” Thorne replied. “Whatever it is, if it comes between us and your wife, I’m prepared to take it out.”

  “Sam?”

  Sam seemed so young, but the grim look in his eyes came from the heart of a man. “I know I’m the rookie here, but I’ll give you my best and that’s a promise.”

  Reed still couldn’t address Kane by his first name. “Kane? Do you think I killed my wife and made up a story to cover it up?”

  Kane sniffed a chuckle and wagged his head shamefully. “I’ll wash my mouth out if that’s what you want.”

  “I might.”

  “Fair enough.” Kane grinned. “I just got me a record-breaking bear. Getting a big old Sasquatch, now, wouldn’t that be something?”

  Reed asked Thorne, “Think you can keep him in line?”

  Thorne nodded.

  “All right, then.”

  “What about Jimmy and the others?” Kane asked.

  Max piped up, “We don’t need the others. We know where your wife is.”

  “There isn’t time,” said Reed. He stepped back from the door to make room. “Come on in. Let’s get organized.”

  The hunters climbed in and squeezed around the computer station, marveling at the sight of one little blip.

  “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 dartin
g 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.”