“Coulda been worse.” Amy kicked her shoes off and propped her bare feet up onto the dashboard. Something she had done since she was twelve. “Do you wanna take turns driving?”
“I’m fine. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when we hit the border.”
Amy protested that she was fine but Lara watched the girl slouch further down the faded leather seat. Glancing up into the rearview, she watched the city of roses grow smaller and smaller in the distance behind them.
15
THE PINE TREES FLANKING the road grew taller as they wound their way up the spine of the cordillera. The mountains in the distance loomed higher and the skies darkened, threatening rain. The fierceness of the terrain transfixed the eyes of driver and passenger alike, dampening conversation to nods and one word remarks. It was beautiful and humbling to behold and Amy had to tear her gaze from it to focus on the map spread over her knees. “Did we miss the sign?”
“We haven’t passed one in a while.”
“Well there’s nothing else here,” Amy said, consulting the map again. After crossing the border near Grand Forks, they stopped at a tourist booth to find a more detailed map of the area. Triangulating between the two reported deaths and the ghost town, Lara asked the bored-looking teenager in the information booth about the small town of Newcastle. It was a fishing destination, ample camping spots and cabin rentals. They climbed back into the truck and followed the map into the mountains. The houses thinned out and other vehicles became scarce. Rounding a bend in the road, a sign rose up from the weeds of the gravel shoulder, welcoming them to the town of Newcastle.
Quaint houses popped up along both sides of the road as the highway delivered them into the center of a small town. A grocery store and post office stood kitty-corner to the fire hall and two taverns. A sign in the window of the sporting goods store read: cabins for rent. Lara pulled into the parking lot next to it.
The man behind the counter was polite but wary, instantly tagging the pair as outsiders. He seemed almost reluctant to give them any information about accommodations in the area. Amy thought it odd for someone whose business catered to tourists but she smiled warmly and let Lara do the talking. The summer tourist season had yet to begin so the options for renting a cabin were limited to two different locations in the area. He showed them a map and Lara chose the one further from town, a campsite on a small body of water called Sauble Lake.
Amy thanked the man and then asked about the recent tragedy that had occurred in the area, the death of a hiker not far from here. The store owner replied that she must have her information wrong, stating that he had no knowledge of any such misfortune.
“That was weird,” Amy said as they walked back to the truck. “How could he not know about that?”
“Maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it. Bad for business.”
“Bizarre.” Amy reached for the driver’s side door. “Can I drive?”
The cabin was a rustic shambles overlooking a small lake. The summer season had yet to start so the owner drove out with them to turn on the water and the power. He offered to sweep out the cobwebs that had grown over winter but Lara said they would manage and thanked him for accommodating them. The cabin was remote, perched at the end of a long winding logging road and would serve as a base to operate from. It was also cheap. If they had come during the busy summer months, the costs would have forced them to pitch a tent somewhere.
“It’s cute.” Amy looked over the mismatched furniture and linoleum floor. The smell of old cedar seeped into everything. A mounted stag’s head hung over a cobblestone fireplace and cobwebs stretched over every right angle. “In a creepy cabin-in-the-woods kinda way.”
“It’s perfect.” Lara dropped the duffel bag onto the lumpy sofa and watched the dust roil up in the sunlight. “Let’s sweep it out before we unpack.”
They swept out the cobwebs and ran the faucets to flush the pipes. Amy opened the windows to air out the musty winter smell. Housekeeping done, they unloaded their gear and went over the weapons. Lara still had the shotgun, a former Marine Mossberg. She laid it across the table and piled two bricks of shells next to it. Amy looked over the Sig Sauer from Lara’s emergency cache. Along with it was a spare magazine and a box of rounds. The massive Desert Eagle clunked down beside it. Amy unpacked a box of cartridges and one extra magazine.
“Is this enough?” Amy looked over the weapons before them. Considering what they were hunting, it didn’t look like it was enough. A bazooka wouldn’t seem adequate.
Lara picked up the .50 caliber handgun and slid the magazine out. “It’s enough. Your dad had silver tipped rounds for this. Are there any left?”
Amy took the spare magazine and thumbed the cartridges out one by one. The heavy rounds clattered to the table. “Three.”
The fifty caliber rounds in question had been specially made by Amy’s father, capped with solid silver. Hollow points, meant to fragment on impact for maximum destruction. No room for error with only three rounds, not for what they were gunning for. If, Amy reminded herself, there was only one of the monsters out there. She didn’t want to think about the alternative. “We’ll have to be careful with these. Can’t afford any wasted shots.”
“Then you better carry it.” Amy nodded at the open bag. “Do we have anything else?”
“A flashbang. Two knives.”
The flashbang was a small grenade meant to stun someone with a blinding flash and an ear-splitting wail. One of the knives was a lethal looking Kabar, a matched set with the shotgun. The other knife had a long blade of pewter, the slim handle reinforced with hockey tape to form a solid grip. Amy picked up the second blade. The tip of the blade had been snapped off at some interval and then filed down to form a nasty point but she still recognized the piece. She held the knife aloft. “Did Dad give you this?”
Lara nodded. “It’s silver.”
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
Lara knew that. She considered adding that the blade had been used to gut the first werewolf she had encountered, the psychotic Ivan Prall. And how it had also cleaved the throats of two other lobos the last time they were in these woods. “I know.”
Amy stretched her neck and stifled a yawn. “Okay. So, next steps?”
“Tomorrow we go back to the ghost town.”
“Let’s go now.” Amy cocked her chin towards the sunlight streaming in through the dusty panes of the west-facing window. “While we still got daylight.”
“No. We’re both tired from the drive. We get some sleep, start fresh tomorrow. Early.”
As small as the cabin was, it held two bedrooms, each one cramped with twin bunks. With sundown, the true darkness of the deep woods unnerved Amy. When she suggested they sleep in the same room, she was relieved when Lara agreed without comment. Whether the older woman also felt the unease of isolation or she was simply accommodating her fears, Amy didn’t know. She didn’t care either, once the lights were out and the darkness outside the cabin walls flooded inside.
The overcast sky must have cleared at some point because when Amy jerked awake from another nightmare, she opened her eyes to moonlight coming in through the window. It cast a ghostly blue haze over the room. And the other bed looked empty.
Amy reached over and pushed through the tangle of blankets on the other bunk, as if Lara was hiding within them. The sheets were cool to the touch, meaning it had been empty for a while.
Stumbling out of the bedroom, Amy found the kitchen empty, ditto the bathroom and sofa. The front door stood open, letting the bugs in.
Traipsing out of the cabin with the flashlight, her spine iced up as she stepped into that greater void of darkness. She regretted not flipping on the lights within the cabin because when she looked back, it had been swallowed by the night. She called out Lara’s name but nothing sounded back. A loon sounded far off on the lake with its eerie call. Frozen to the spot, she ran back inside for a moment and reemerged with the Sig Sauer in her free hand, thumb on the safety.
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Ten minutes of stumbling before the shaky beam of the Maglite picked out Lara among the darkened tree trunks. Lara sat on the flat stump of a lumbered tree but didn’t respond or even stir when her name rang out through the trees. Amy ran up, splashing the flashlight full into the woman’s face. “Lara? Are you all right?”
The woman didn’t respond at all. Her pupils didn’t even shrink under the full bore of the light in her face. Her lips were moving but no sound spilled out, the way the devout will silently mouth the words to a prayer.
Amy touched her shoulder. “Lara, snap out of it.”
Lara blinked, confusion flooding over her face as she cast her eyes at the trees around them. She folded her arms and started to shiver. “Amy?”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
Lara looked down at her feet, as if she’d done something wrong.
“You must have been sleepwalking.” Amy took her arm and eased Lara back to the cabin. “Come on, before you catch a cold out here.”
Back in bed, Amy pulled the blanket up to her chin to dispel the dewy chill. Lara crawled back into bed and turned her face to the wall without another word. Amy stared at her in the darkened bedroom. What had come over Lara? Had it been an innocent bout of sleepwalking or something more? The vacant stare in the woman’s eyes was unsettling to see. As if something else had taken over.
Maybe traveling out to the deep dark woods wasn’t such a good idea after all. Sometimes Amy forgot what Lara suffered, about the secret she kept. She hadn’t foreseen the notion that maybe all this black primal forest could awaken that awful thing inside Lara Mendes.
~
They left at sunup, following the map up another desolate road with the green of the jackpines closing in on all sides. Finding the cut-off to the old logging trail that lead to the ghost town was difficult as the vegetation had crept back up to conceal it. They had been forced to pull over and tread the shoulder on foot before locating it.
The trail was little more than two rutted tracks in the weeds and the old Jeep dipped and thudded over the potholes. They didn’t get far before the way was blocked by a felled tree, a giant hemlock bisecting the road with its roots torn up and exposed. Unloading the gear, they continued on foot. The branches of the trees stretched across the road, as if wanting to keep them out and they marched uphill in silence. Cresting the rise of the hill, they came down the other side to the sight of the old ghost town.
There was little left to mark the existence of the abandoned mining town. The fire had razed all but a few of the buildings and these last few ramshackle houses looked as if they would collapse against a soft breeze. The surrounding forest had burned down, leaving only blackened tree stumps and sloughs of mud, giving the terrain the scarred look of a forgotten battlefield.
Marching past charred stumps and sooty stone foundations, Amy felt the flesh on her arms goose. Her hand slipped around the grip of the handgun in her pocket. They were exposed and vulnerable in this wide open wasteland and she glanced back over her shoulder again and again. “Do you feel that?”
Lara kicked through a tangle of carbonized wood at her feet, the shotgun tight in her hand. “Feel what?”
“Like we’re being watched.”
At that, Lara looked up and surveyed the area around them, as if expecting someone to pop out of the brush. She clocked the fear in Amy’s eyes but pressed on. “Let’s keep moving.”
The ground was puddled and muddy and they picked their way along trying to keep their boots dry. A little further on, Lara stopped and Amy followed her gaze downhill to where something dark loomed up out of the weeds. The wreckage of a vehicle, twisted up and peeled back like some grotesque fruit. The source of the explosion that had started the fire and had taken Gallagher’s life. Amy moved forward but felt Lara snatch her arm.
“Don’t.”
Amy looked at her. “Why not? I want to see it.”
“It’s just metal. There’s nothing to see.”
Amy regarded the wreckage from where they stood and then looked back up the way they came. “Is there anything here? Any trace of it?”
Lara scowled as she turned her nose upwind. “I can’t tell. Everything smells like ash.”
“Let’s keep looking,” Amy said but she didn’t want to continue on. The unsettling sensation of being watched hadn’t let up and all she really wanted to do was march back to the truck and get the hell out of here. Back in the safety of Portland, she had wanted to do this, to hunt down this last beast but being out here now, Amy’s resolve withered quickly.
They continued on as silent as pilgrims until the road before them winnowed to almost nothing, as if the forest itself had swallowed it up. Lara led the way, treading through the ferns, when she stopped and squatted down on her knees.
Amy followed suit. “What is it?”
Lara didn’t respond, her head bowed as if in prayer. “It was here.”
The gun came out of Amy’s pocket and she gripped it in both hands. “Where?”
“Here,” Lara nodded to the wall of pine trees before them. “It skirted around the town. But it wouldn’t come any closer.”
“Are you sure it’s one of them?” Amy held out half a hope that her friend had picked up on the scent of a bear or a coyote. “How long ago?”
“A day or two.” Lara marched for the treeline. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m just going to look around a bit. Stay here in the open.”
Amy said that she didn’t like that idea but Lara kept moving until she disappeared into the dark rainforest. Minutes ticked by and the cold sensation creeping up Amy’s spine worsened. Then a snap, sharp and loud from the trees, but not in the direction that Lara had gone.
The sound came from behind her. And there it was again. Something big, trampling through the underbrush.
16
THE URGE TO RUN was primal and immediate and Amy felt her limbs freeze up as fast as her heart rate spiked. The thing from her nightmares, the monster that had ripped her life apart was here and so too her chance to kill it. To blast its head open and spray its brains against the trees. That cathartic moment she’d secretly dreamed of every night after the night terror jerked her awake.
And all she wanted to do was run.
Gone was the roaring desire for revenge, the galling need for retribution. The hunger to utterly erase the monster from existence dissipated faster than smoke in a breeze. Did she really think she could do this? Face down this abomination and kill it? And now she couldn’t even run, her joints locked tight in paralysis. She had come all this way just to die on the first pass.
Where the hell was Lara?
It sounded again, the heavy rustling in the trees. Something clicked insider her and she bolted for the treeline, hunkering down behind the trunk of a cedar. She cocked an ear to listen but couldn’t hear anything beyond the clanging in her chest. When she caught it again, the sound was further off, as if the thing was moving away.
She’d be damned if she was going to let the thing get away now. She scurried from the tree, loping towards the direction of the noise. The crunch of twigs and needles under her heel was impossibly loud and the scraping brambles tore at her clothes. It was as if the forest itself was trying to give her away. She ran on in short bursts from tree to tree, stopping to listen between sprints.
The noise grew louder. A clumsy sound, no attempt to hide its movements. And it was moving towards her. There was still no sign of Lara. Shouldn’t she have picked up on this already? If Amy could hear this with her plain old normal ears, surely Lara heard it with her supernatural hearing.
She raised the barrel straight in her hands and curled her finger over the trigger piece. Sweep away the panic in your belly, she thought. When it shows, take time to aim and then blow it away.
The brush rustled. Three figures emerged from the dipping branches and stopped cold at seeing the gun aimed at them. Two men and a woman, Amy gauging their ages to be in
the twenties. The man carrying a videocamera sported a beard and a beer gut. The other man held up a hand as if pleading Amy to slow down. The woman was clad in black, tilting a boom microphone off one shoulder.
“Whoa,” said the leaner man, raising both palms to show that he was unarmed. Something about his sandy hair and fierce eyes tugged at Amy’s memory. “Put down the gun. We’re not armed or anything.”
Amy lowered the barrel but her heart kept pounding. “What are you doing out here?”
The trio exchanged uneasy glances, wary of this young woman with a gun in her hand. “Just doing some research,” the familiar-looking man said. He nodded at the weapon. “Please, could you put that thing away?”
Amy thumbed the safety on and slid the gun back into her pocket. An awkward sense of embarrassment washed over her for almost gunning down three strangers in the woods.
The woman took a step forward now that the weapon was tucked away. Her clotted mascara was the same shade of black as her clothes. “Why are you running around with a gun?”
This time Amy was taken aback, having no ready answer for why she was out here with a loaded gun. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Hunting.”
“Hunting what?” asked the one with the videocamera.
“Assholes with a lot of questions.”
“Easy,” said the lean man. He took a step forward, his hand extended to shake. “I’m Griffin. That’s Jay and this is Tasha.”
Amy hesitated then shook his hand quickly before stepping back. Scrutinizing the trio, she remembered how deceptive appearances could be. She’d met Edgar Grissom once, the deranged lycanthrope who had lured them here last winter. He was easy on the eyes and had charm in spades. And of course there was Lara. Was it possible these three were wolves in lamb’s clothing? She zeroed back to the one named Griffin and repeated her question. “What are you doing out here?”
“Tracking Bigfoot,” said the man named Jay, patting the heavy gauge videocamera on his shoulder. “You seen any big hairy monsters around here?”
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 64
