by Mark Tufo
She pressed against him and it wasn’t even a debate.
The plans had begun that night but the final piece hadn’t clicked in place until Sven had been sent to Meat Camp with his gang of tween followers and Jose had told him that he knew sort of where that place was and maybe he’d be able to hook him up with some weed while he was out here. Jose really had no intention of going up there, but then Amanda had looked at him and he knew she’d thought of something.
Turned out, she’d found a crevice in the rocks while hiking with a boyfriend. A crevice that was as deep as a tomb, untouched by everything but bears and raccoons and maybe moonshiners once upon a time. And it had been ridiculously easy to lure Kyle here. The promise of weed and sex had been more than enough.
“Feel better?” she said, drawing her tongue from his mouth.
He nodded and looked across the clearing. “You were supposed to wait until we were over there.” He pointed to the small pile of rocks he had left beside a tree on the opposite side of the clearing. Didn’t matter, anyway—rocks were everywhere.
“I didn’t want to wait any longer,” she said. “I was sick of him.”
Jose finally looked down at the corpse of his “friend.”
Sweet, sweet poison, all right.
“Now, come on, let’s get him over there before the buzzards start circling.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dr. Lewis Little and his wife, Dr. Samantha Little, stood over the German shepherd’s carcass laid out on the examination table. Their own dogs were outside, barking in spurts of rapid yawps with gaps of whining in between like they knew just what Mommy and Daddy were looking at indoors.
“Sounds like rabies from the description,” Lewis said. “But it’s not presenting with the usual symptoms.”
Samantha checked the dog’s collar even though she’d checked twice already. That was her style—don’t double check, triple check. It was part of what made her a good veterinarian and a sometimes-annoying wife.Did you turn off the stove? Are you sure? Did you really check it or are you just yessing me to death? Yes, I checked it. Yes. Yes. Yes.
“Meat Camp Road,” she said. Just like the other two.”
“Should we contact the owner first?”
“There’s no phone number,” she said. “Besides, it threatened a boy. And the dog’s dead anyway.”
“The boy was lucky.”
“We should send the head to the state lab.”
Lewis smiled, though tired. “Seems kind of extreme, considering he didn’t have a scratch.”
She gave him that look of hers. “The dog’s head, not the boy’s, Mr. Smarty Pants.”
They’d been married for five years and in that time, some looks had evolved, as in “became part of their shared language,” but not all of them. This one still recalled those early courting days when they were in their twenties. Back when she laughed a little out of proportion with his jokes.
“No wonder my pants are smart. I do all my thinking in there.” First year of marriage, they might have done something on one of the stainless steel surgical tables.
Now, they had a job to do.
“Dummy,” she said and pushed his hand away. “That’s why you married me, huh?”
He did his best suave expression and leaned in for a kiss. She slid on her surgical mask and picked up a scalpel. “Better watch it, Mr. Charming. Wouldn’t want something to get cut.”
“Into the rough stuff, are we?”
They both knew the wordplay was only delaying the unpleasant inevitable. No matter how clinical the procedure, they’d both gone into veterinarian medicine because they loved animals, and neither enjoyed digging into an animal cut down in its prime.
“Let’s have a look,” she said. “Prep her.”
“With pleasure.” He slid his hand along her waist and trailed down. She batted him away. “The dog. Prep the dog.”
She sighed.
Married life.
But play time was over. Now it was time for some wet work.
- - -
Benny was only twelve but he’d seen a guy stabbed and another one shot in the foot. He’d seen how the blood bubbled from the stab wound and how the tendons on the foot flexed the toeless stubs up and down, but that wasn’t anything compared to walking alone in these woods. At least when somebody had a knife or a gun against you, there were options. Out here, there was nothing but endless ways for things to trip you, sneak up on you, grab you and do whatever it wanted to you.
The sun was still out somewhere, not that he could see it. The camp was cloaked in dusk already, the shadows of the forest reaching across the buildings. The trees were thick and wild, topped with clusters of scarlet and gold leaves that looked mottled in the dying light.
Suppose a wolf appeared around one of the bunkhouses. Suppose it was hungry. He wouldn’t be able to outrun it. It would probably snag his leg, rip open his calf, and then bite into his stomach. He’d be able to watch it chew on his intestines. And would any of the kids laughing inside the bunkhouses come out to help him if he screamed his damn face off? No, they’d all be too freaking scared. He’d die with everyone hiding behind closed doors.
Jesus, he thought.I need to chill before—
Something ran across the path just beyond the reach of the flashlight beam. Leaves crunched beneath it and a single leaf swayed in the air before settling. Benny stopped, swung the flashlight around. In the city, there were street lamps and porch lights and headlights. The twilight was like some special thick kind of black that existed only in the woods. Something that could wrap around things. Conceal them even when they should be in plain sight.
“Hello?” His voice sounded so small and childish.
Near him came a snuffling sound, almost like a chuckle. The surge of adrenaline subsided some as he swung around and the light bobbed over branches. They were playing a trick on him, that’s all. Stupid idiots playing a trick.
Well, whatever. At least he had the balls to go get a lighter. “All right, Gregory. I know it’s you, smartass.”
Sounding more confident that time, Benny resumed his trek toward the counselor’s lodge, which should be right up ahead somewhere. Once he got there, everything would be cool. But he also couldn’t let the guys know he was scared, so he forced himself to take one step at a time, even throwing in a little swagger.
That weird snuffling sound came again, only from both his left and his right. Sort of like Pedro when his asthma was acting up, and the boy had to hit the inhaler so he could breath easier.
Benny stopped, swung the light and saw nothing. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “Okay, assholes, I’m going to smoke it all by myself.”
A little further on, he spotted the lodge. The wind picked up and rattled the branches. The sound reminded him of some stupid Halloween cartoon he’d seen of a goofy-looking skeleton whose bones shook together as it moved. The skeleton made the old “OhhhOOO,” sound ghosts made and he had laughed at how stupid the whole thing was, but he wasn’t laughing now. Out here, even in the early-evening sun, there could actually be ghosts.
Something moved near him, a determinedshush of underbrush.
He started running. He heard something to his right, a snapping branch perhaps, or maybe a cracking arm bone, and ran faster. The lodge bobbed side to side and the shaking flashlight blurred its edges. Somebody laughed in the woods, had to be a laugh, though it sounded more like someone choking on dirt.
Stupid Gregory. After Benny smoked the entire joint, he was going to set that guy’s blankets on fire.
When the lodge was within an easy twenty feet, Benny slowed. His heart calmed. No big deal. He was a street kid. He could handle this backwoods boogie. His walk morphed into that cool, cocky strut the Big Rollers always had when walking their turf. Closer now to the lodge, he walked even slower, like he’d been strolling the whole time.
That made him smile. What a stupid waste, getting scared like he’d been, running here. He was almost a man. And there wa
s dope to be smoked.
Something moved to his right.
He stopped, still grinning. The flashlight almost reached the lodge door. He was about to say that this was stupid, them still trying to scare him, and threatened to shout “Screw it, get your own damn matches,” when a frantic, scrabbling sound erupted behind him. Something charging right at him.
The wolf’s hungry.
Or maybe the ghost is.
He started to turn and a blur disoriented him. It grabbed him with a heavy thump. Dirty, bloody hands clawed at his face. The flashlight dropped to the ground and rolled a few feet away.
Benny screamed and the hands muffled him. Too strong to be Gregory. Sven maybe. But what was that smell? The person stank like the old wooden outhouses the campers had to use, but mixed with the acrid odor of blood and something even worse. Some kind of rot he knew but couldn’t place.
The attacker’s body trembled against Benny’s and began to drag him back into the woods. Benny tried to rip the hands from his face but the attacker’s fingers dug at the corners of his mouth and stabbed him in the eye. Pain watered his vision. He couldn’t cry. He had to fight.
He had to be strong. Man up.
Something pierced his side. The pain was quick and sharp, flushing through him. Like a knife wound would probably feel.
He was pulled back, his feet kicking at the dirt as if they were separate from him. Like his feet were desperate to run away to save themselves. The lodge door wavered in the flashlight’s glow and then tree branches obscured everything. His side ached something fierce and he couldn’t even draw enough breath to scream.
The branches rattled. They sounded just like shaking bones.
CHAPTER NINE
Halfway across the clearing—Jose dragging Kyle by his feet, blood staining the leaf-covered ground, Amanda walking several paces off to the side—Jose thought he heard something.
He stopped, still holding Kyle’s feet, and looked around. “You hear that?”
“Hear what?”
The woods were still, the mountain peaks empty, even the insects disturbed into silence by the assault. No witnesses. Certainly no black-cloaked worshippers with binoculars.
“Thought I heard something.”
“It’s the woods,” she said. “You’re bound to hear something. Now, let’s hurry up. You’ve got to get cleaned up, and we need to move fast.”
Jose looked around once more. He swore he had heard something moving, crushing leaves, panting. And maybe it was just paranoia and being out in the wild like this with a dead body in his hands, but he felt like something was watching him.
Probably a deer. Yeah.
“You brought clothes?”
“They’re in the trunk. Let’s move it.”
He dragged Kyle’s corpse across the clearing through the grass and dropped him near the pile of rocks.
“The hole is over there,” Amanda said.
“I’m resting.”
“If you actually want this to work, there’s no time for resting.”
“And what if it backfires?”
“We hit the road and that’s that. They’ll never find him out here. Kyle will be reported missing and nothing will ever come of it. Kyle’s got some cash stashed in the glove compartment.” She sauntered toward him, hips swaying, now in control. “But it is going to work. His father is going to give us a million in cash and then we hit the road and the first motel we come to, we’re dumping all the cash on the bed and rolling in it naked.”
He grew excited, despite the niggling anxiety that things weren’t likely to work out so simply. “He’s just going to hand over the cash? Just like that?”
“If he doesn’t, he’ll never see his golden boy again.”
“But he isn’t going to.”
She was an inch from his face. She smelled a little of sweat and semen, but he kind of liked that. Made her seem as wild as the forest, natural and primitive. “No shit, Einstein,” she said. “But he doesn’t know that.”
She was going to say that if the money wasn’t handed over in one hour, her partner was going to kill his precious son. The father would bitch and rail against her, threaten to call the cops, but Kyle had told Amanda that Daddy was worth a few billion, so, really, what was a million? Besides, Kyle assured her that his father stashed at least a million cash in various safes in the house.
Mad money, and this was as mad as it got.
“You really think we can get away with this?”
She waved him forward. “We will get away with this, and we’ll be able to play around all you want, but not until we’re done here.”
The granite shelf protruded among the trees like some kind of ancient temple. The opening to the crevice oozed cool air, fetid with mud and hidden things. Jose fought back a crazy vision of black-robed figures rising from its depths.
We saved you the trouble of a human sacrifice.
He dumped Kyle into the hole.
The rock had so mangled Kyle’s head that Jose couldn’t tell if the corpse was face up or face down. He shoved some loose rocks into the hole to make the mess go away.
“Give me one of the shovels.”
Amanda said nothing and didn’t help.
Halfway done, Jose heard something in the woods again. It was definitely the sound of movement among the trees, that distinct rustle of feet on the ground. And there was something else, too, something like breathing, only different. Congested, maybe.
A bear?
He stopped piling on the rocks and looked around.
Not congested, but something close to it. The sound was a strange, gulping, snuffling noise. Maybe whatever animal it was had some kind of sickness. Jose had never really thought about wild animals getting sick before, like catching the flu, but he supposed it could happen.
Or maybe the animal was snorting in anger. On Discovery Channel, animals threw a bitch fit if you got near their lair when they had pups or cubs or babies.
Whatever it was, it sounded close.
“What are you doing?” Amanda asked. She sat on a rock, picking dirt from her fingernails, already bored.
“I know I heard something this time. A sick animal or something.”
“Who cares?” she asked. “Probably a stupid squirrel.”
“Maybe it’s dangerous,” he said. “Maybe it smelled blood.”
“You’re almost done, let’s go. It’ll be dark soon.”
He turned back to the opening, relieved that the corpse was nearly hidden now. He was already getting blisters from the shovel. They’d carried two shovels out here on their first scouting mission, planning everything, even making out right near the spot because they’d gotten so excited. But Jose hadn’t realized the ground was so rocky, so he was doing more piling than digging.
He lifted a flat, moss-covered rock and paused with it hovering over the hole. He heard the sound again. Some sick or injured thing slumping its way toward them on heavy feet. Or maybe just a hungry thing. God only knew what it might do if they let it get close.
“Amanda, I really think we—”
He felt the push of air gusting toward him like a warning cry and ducked out of instinct. Something hard caught the top of his head just the same and vibrated with a dull metallicPLONG!
He fell to his knees, head not yet hurting but the pain was gathering like red waters behind a hellish dam.
“Fuck,” Amanda said as casually as if she’d broken a drinking glass.
He tried to get to his feet at the edge of the half-filled hole, wobbled, and fell back to his knees. Over his shoulder, he glared up at Amanda.
She held the shovel back behind her head like an absurdly long baseball bat.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Just stay still,” she said. “Hole’s big enough for two.”
She swung.
If she had wanted greater accuracy, she should have choked up on the shovel.
Bitch doesn’t know shit about murder.
Jose d
ucked again but he hadn’t really needed to because the force of her swing carried the shovel blade well over his head and flung her off her feet. The shovel thwacked the ground and she toppled sideways.
He stared at her, not believing. He loved her, for God’s sake. “Why?”
Her blonde hair hung over her face in sweaty patches. “I play for keeps,” she said with a snarl.
He started to say he didn’t understand what her damned problem was, but she lunged at him, pounced actually, like a rabid cat, even screeching like one too, and he grabbed his shovel and swung it quickly around.
The bottom of the blade thunked flush against the side of her head. The force of the smack vibrated into his hands.
She froze, eyes clouding, and fell over like a sack of wet sand. It was almost funny.
For a moment, she didn’t move and he thought he’d killed her, but then she gasped and coughed herself back to consciousness. She sat up, making these awful straining sounds. She sounded like some injured wild beast, something that should be put down.
She crawled on all fours toward him. That terrible, gasping, straining sound squeaking out of her. Blood rolled down the side of her head and her brown eyes were crooked, the one closest to the injury gazing off toward the sky.
“You messed up the plan,” he said and readied the shovel again.
She stopped a few feet away and squawked at him, uncomprehending.
“Now, no one’s getting any money.”
That odd snuffling sound came again from the woods, only much closer this time.
Jose looked past Amanda and there was something behind her, lurking beyond a few of the trees. Not something—someone.
“Hello?”
Amanda made her horrendous quaking noise, pushing her head forward, veins bulging blue along her throat, and the sound might have been a pig being butchered alive.
The person stepped out from behind the tree. It looked like a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen. He wore shorts and a baggy shirt stained with something. He walked closer, shuffling on uneven steps.
