Voracious

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Gradually the train picked up speed as it chugged by the small, scenic towns of Hungry Horse and Columbia Falls on its way to Whitefish. When they’d been under way for ten minutes, Madeline stretched and got out of her seat. Her stomach rumbled, demanding a visit to the café car. She started for the rear of the train, bouncing around the center aisle as the train made its turbulent way down the tracks. On one lurch, she almost ended up in the lap of the woman reading Dorothy Gilman. The older woman smiled up at Madeline from beneath a flowered hat.

  Madeline reached the end of the car and pressed the large metal button on the car’s door. With a noisy whoosh, it slid open, admitting her to the loud area between her car and the one behind it.

  She pressed the square button on the next door, and with a whoosh was admitted to the next car. This one was even emptier, with only two people occupying it. One was a man in his fifties working on a laptop. He looked up as she entered, smiled faintly, and returned to his work.

  The other passenger was a haggard, furtive-looking woman who was crocheting what looked like Christmas stockings. She gave Madeline’s muddy shirt an unfriendly once-over and returned to her hook and yarn.

  Madeline walked to the end of the car, pushed the door button, and entered the confines of the place between the cars. When she pressed on the next button, the noisy door opened to admit her to the next car.

  The first thing she saw when the door opened fully was George, standing up in the aisle, facing her, with a wad of paper towels soaking up blood from the nasty gash she’d given him.

  He saw her. She backed up, the door sliding closed without her passing through it. He raced forward, pressing the button on the door just as she was pivoting to get back into the previous car. The door opened, painfully slowly, and Madeline was halfway through it when he caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded, shouting above the din of the train in the confined area. She flung his hand away. “You’re my friend, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’d sure like to know why you asked me to come all the way up here so you could smash my head open. And I’m still trying to figure out why I was crazy enough to follow you onto this train and abandon my car back in the park. I just saw you duck into the station, and my brain went out of the window. I wanted to help you.” He gingerly fingered the bandage on his head. “What was left of my brain, anyway.”

  She studied him intently, the face she’d come to know as her friend’s face, the eyes she’d once trusted.

  “I’ve read Noah’s diary,” she warned him. Behind her back she reached for the door button.

  George lifted his eyebrows. “What?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Who’s Noah?”

  She shook her head. “I know your MO. What you’ve done here is really clever, and I didn’t figure it out until it was almost too late. What did you plan to do? Drive me somewhere desolate where no one would interrupt you while you stole my life?”

  George looked thoroughly confused. He put one hand to his temple, the other still holding the wad of red-soaked paper towels. Blood dripped down into his eye. “Okay … hold on. Have you completely lost it? What in the world are you talking about?”

  Her searching hand found the door button, and the door slid open. She backed into the car, then turned and ran down the center aisle, the train lurching and throwing her off balance repeatedly as she went.

  She glanced over her shoulder. George hadn’t followed. She could still see him between the cars, staring at her through the door’s window.

  She passed through the doors into the next car, wanting to find a conductor or, even better, a large group of people. She thought of the observation lounge, the car on the train comprised almost completely of windows, including the ceiling. Usually they were packed. It would be near the rear of the train, back by the dining and café cars. And George blocked the way.

  She’d have to think of some way to get around him or barge by him. She ran through the car and entered her own. Her eyes fell on the stairs leading down to the baggage area, where she had first boarded the train.

  Quickly she bounded down them, finding the area much as she’d seen it before. No one was down there, just suitcases and duffel bags. A door lay to her right, and she pushed the button to open it. It didn’t budge. Beyond the door window it was completely dark. She guessed the sleeping cars were somewhere on the lower level. Perhaps this was one of them. Or some kind of off-limits train crew room.

  She was going to have to get past George. Briefly she entertained the notion of climbing outside the train and up onto the roof, then leaping along from car to car like in so many thrillers she’d seen. At first the thought seemed crazy, but it started to grow on her when she thought of coming face-to-face with the creature again.

  Tentatively she went to the door through which she had boarded the train. Feeling like she was shoplifting or hot-wiring a car, she reached out and pushed the door’s button. Nothing happened. She tried it again. The door didn’t budge.

  Part of her was relieved. Taking her chances inside the train with the creature seemed only slightly riskier than stumbling along the top of the lumbering locomotive. She pictured tunnels with low clearance and tremendously cold, mountain winds that could sweep her off the smooth steel roof.

  She turned away from the door and crept to the bottom of the stairs. Staring up the stairwell, she saw no sign of her pursuer, but she knew he was up there somewhere, choosing the best place to ambush her.

  If only she could hide somehow. But the hiding places on a train were greatly limited, especially if one didn’t have a sleeping car. No matter how easy old movies made it look to completely hide from someone on a train, riding coach on Amtrak was a completely different story. Her options were in plain sight in a large group, locked in a toilet stall in the woman’s bathroom, or lying down inside someone’s duffel bag after throwing all their stuff out.

  None of them seemed too hopeful.

  With growing dread, Madeline returned to the stairs and peered upward. She listened for anything unusual above the trains clackity clack on the tracks. She didn’t hear anything.

  Slowly she climbed the stairs and looked over the car. The same people still sat there. No one new. No one looked alarmed, all just reading or staring out of the window as scenic Montana faded into night.

  She crept through her car, then passed into the next. Still, the two passengers sat there, not even looking up this time. Stefan could be one of them. She could file by them, and he could reach out and grab her, sinking teeth into her neck.

  She rushed down the corridor and entered the next car, the one where she’d originally seen George. He still stood there, still clutched the paper towels to his head. He saw her enter the car, and she stopped.

  “Madeline,” he demanded, “what the hell is going on?”

  She wanted to know for certain if he was the creature. A desperate part of her wanted her friend George to be real. “What were you doing before you came to Mothershead?”

  “I lived somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, I know that part. But where?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Does it matter?”

  “You know damn well that it matters. Answer the question!”

  He visibly fumbled for an answer. “I was living in Billings.”

  “Doing what?”

  Again, he hesitated, caught off guard. “I worked as a bookkeeper. For a law firm.”

  “Why were you so evasive when I asked you about your past before?”

  He winced, pressing the paper towels closer to the wound. “I was embarrassed, okay? Bookkeeper. Law firm. Not exactly exciting.”

  It was a lame excuse, but the creature was obviously not willing to give up his deepest cover with her. “What does exciting matter?” she asked.

  He paused. “It’s just that … when I met you, you were always hiking or rock climbing, all this exciting stuff. I was so boring. I just didn’t want y
ou to know how boring.”

  She shook her head. This was going nowhere. She wanted to see his wound. By now it should be nearly healed. If it was, or if he refused to show it to her, she would know. “Let me see your head.”

  “What?” he asked exasperated, still covering it with the towels.

  “Let me see it!” she yelled, suddenly aware of the other passengers in the car, who stared at her and then looked away quickly when she met their eyes.

  George backed up. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He paused warily. “I don’t trust you,” he said finally.

  She didn’t know how she was going to get past him. He completely blocked the aisle.

  The other passengers stared. A couple in their thirties entered the car ahead of them.

  “George,” she suddenly gushed. “Oh gosh, you don’t look so good. You look like you’re going to pass out!”

  He wrinkled his brow in confusion. “No, I’m not. I—”

  “Oh, yeah,” she went on. “Your pupils are completely dilated. You need immediate medical attention!” She turned to the couple as they approached. “Excuse me,” she said. “Can you help me take my friend to the train’s clinic? He’s really in a bad way.”

  “Sure,” the woman said quickly. Her husband gave her a withering look. “We’d be glad to help.”

  George shook his head. “Really—I don’t need—”

  “Nonsense,” Madeline said quickly. Then to the couple: “I really appreciate it. He’s so stubborn. And I don’t think his balance is too great with that bump on his head.”

  “No problem,” the husband grumbled, giving in to his wife’s good nature.

  Madeline slid her arm around George’s waist, and the husband did the same on the other side. They began slowly walking him toward the rear of the train, where the medical attendant’s area lay. The wife walked ahead of them. “Are you okay?” she asked George.

  He exhaled in exasperation. “This is totally unnecessary!”

  “See how stubborn he is?” Madeline said to the wife. Inside, though, she knew it wasn’t stubbornness but calculated strategy. If he showed her the wound now, she’d know he was the creature. His refusal convinced her he was in fact her hunter. She had to get away while he was distracted.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. My Reginald is the same way.”

  When they pressed the door button and entered the space between the cars, Madeline suddenly cried out in alarm, “Oh, no! George, I left your wallet with all our money sitting on the seat! I have to go get it!” She turned to the kind woman. “Will you see that he gets to the clinic?”

  The woman nodded. “Of course.”

  “Thanks!” Madeline let go of George’s waist and returned to the previous car. She’d wait there for a few minutes, long enough for the couple to escort him down to the clinic, and then she’d move forward to the observation car.

  When she’d waited another five minutes, she passed between the cars and entered the observation lounge. About ten people sat around in the molded plastic white seats, most staring out at the sunset beyond. A businessman read a newspaper, a teenage boy relaxed with an MP3 player. Two kids about five years old pounded each other with their fists while their dad told them in an annoyed voice to cut it out. No sign of “George.” He’d have to play along with the couple till he got rid of them. He wouldn’t risk killing them out of annoyance in such a public place.

  Madeline slumped down next to an older man in hunting coveralls reading a newspaper in the bright overhead fluorescent lights. She exhaled. Tried to work out some tension in her shoulders with her fingers. She shut her eyes briefly, then opened them, taking in the tremendous black peaks silhouetted against the golden sky.

  The older man next to her lowered his newspaper and turned his head to stare at her. Unsettled, she tried to ignore him, but he watched her so pointedly that at last she turned and met his gaze. Terror swept over her. The sad eyes. The kind, fatherly face that had deceived so many. The wicked mouth turned up in a grin, revealing crooked, chipped teeth.

  Sam MacCready, the Sickle Moon Killer.

  He looked at her with interest, then pivoted to fully face her. “You look surprised,” he said, his voice trembling with anger. “You didn’t buy that killed-in-a-prison-fight story, did you?”

  “How did you … ?” she said, her mouth gone dry.

  “Find you? With the right … persuasion … men can give away even their deepest secrets. It cost your dad a lot of skin, but eventually he caved.”

  Madeline stared. The terror she’d known since losing Ellie gripped her, freezing her to the spot. It was him. The Sickle Moon Killer. Same worry-creased brow, but the hair gray now, the physique muscular from years of prison weightlifting. From his hairy arms to his glowering expression, he was exactly as she’d seen him in nightmares haunting her since that day by the river.

  She stood up silently and backed away, her movement in slow motion as in a dream. But this was no dream. Everything was too harsh. The reek of cigarette smoke, the vibration of the train, the echoing voices of chattering train passengers.

  She backed up to the car’s door, mind numb. She should stay where she was, she thought. By all these people. He wouldn’t try to kill her by all these witnesses. And he was human. She could hurt him. She could kill him, if necessary, to save her own life.

  He stood up, walked over to where she stood by the door. She moved off to the side, keeping an escape route open. Several people climbed up the stairs from the small snack bar below, talking animatedly and pointing out the mountains to each other while crunching on nachos. They sat down where she and the Sickle Moon Killer had rested moments before. She didn’t take her eyes off MacCready, making note of the other passengers in her peripheral vision. Even still, the flash of the knife darted out so quickly she barely had time to leap away. The blade tore through her sleeve, nicking her.

  “What the hell?” cried a familiar voice. George’s head appeared in the stairwell from the snack bar, and he bounded up the remaining stairs. She’d almost convinced herself it couldn’t really be MacCready but must be the creature. But seeing George—that meant one of them was the creature. Didn’t it? She furrowed her brow.

  Throwing himself at the Sickle Moon Killer, George knocked the old man sprawling, both of them landing violently amid the seats.

  “Someone call train security!” George yelled out.

  Madeline gripped her arm where she had been cut. Blood seeped through the material, soaking her hand.

  The observation car exploded with activity, people crying out in surprise and yelling for security.

  George struggled with MacCready on the seats, restraining the hand with the flaying knife. Madeline darted forward, twisted the hand painfully, and wrenched the knife from the man’s grip. His face contorted in fury when he saw her. Old, powerful rage and fear welled up within her, hatred filling her mind. Creature or not, she hated this man for what he had done, for haunting her all these years and killing the only person who had ever really loved her.

  Her hand balled into a fist, and before she’d made the conscious decision, she pounded him in the face, his nose exploding with an audible pop. Blood sprayed out, flecking George’s face as he struggled to keep the man down.

  “I fucking hate you!” she yelled, pounding him again, this time connecting with an eye. Her left hand joined the rain of violence, and she landed blow after furious blow, including one to the throat that left him choking and gagging.

  And then uniformed officers grabbed her and pulled her off MacCready. One restrained her while the other pulled George away.

  “Are you okay, sir?” the portly, younger officer said to MacCready, obviously seeing him as some sort of elderly, innocent victim of a violent attack.

  “He’s the killer!” Madeline yelled. She thrashed in the restraining grip of the officer behind her, so angry she just wanted to pound the old man and the cop into obliv
ion.

  By now all the passengers in the observation car and the snack bar below had gathered around the fight. “She’s right!” a man said. “The guy had a knife!”

  “He cut her!” another added.

  “Is this true?” asked the officer who held her, a lean older man with wispy white hair.

  “Yes, damn it!”

  The cop released her, and she grabbed her arm again, the sleeve completely soaked now in her blood.

  “Madeline,” George said to her, pushing past the portly train cop to come to her. “Are you all right?”

  She saw that his head had been neatly bandaged where she’d injured him.

  She backed away, not sure what to make of him. “Stay back,” she warned, fists still balled at her sides.

  Behind him, the older cop approached, pulled out his handcuffs, and stood the Sickle Moon Killer up on his feet while his hefty partner looked on.

  George frowned. “I don’t understand. You leave without even saying good-bye. Then you ask me to come up here to get you and practically bash my brains in!”

  Madeline stared at the Sickle Moon Killer, feeling half in a nightmare. It didn’t mesh in the real world. She looked back at George then, puzzled. “What do you mean, I left without saying good-bye?”

  Before he could answer, the Sickle Moon Killer suddenly threw his arms up, throwing off the older train cop before he had a chance to snap cuffs on the powerful hands. “You’re dead!” he screamed at Madeline, spittle raining from his mouth.

  He kicked the train cop in the gut just as the officer scrambled to get a hold on his prisoner. The flaying knife lay nearby on the floor, and he dived for it. Wiry fingers closed around the handle, and MacCready brought the knife up, connecting with the officer’s stomach. A long, red line appeared as blood seeped through the man’s torn button-down shirt. He staggered back, clutching his stomach. His young partner rushed to him as he fell, screaming for someone to get a doctor.