Slaughter gave up trying to convince him.
"They were all idealists," Dunlap said.
"Who? What are you talking about?"
"Quiller and the others up here," Dunlap said. 'They truly thought that, if they left the world and went up in here, they could live the kind of life they'd always wanted. They were fools."
"It's worked out fine for me."
"I wonder how it all worked out for them, however," Dun-lap said. "This Quiller. Do you know about him?"
"Just from talk I pick up now and then."
"Well, he was evidently something. Six foot eight. Thin beyond grotesqueness, and that maybe helped him. Newsmen who were near him said he wasn't real. You know, as if they couldn't quite believe that he was there. It's like he radiated something holy. Charismatic like the best of that type, and those newsmen saw the best, believe me. If this way of life had any chance, Quiller was the man to do it."
"He was rich, I hear."
"An understatement, and that money would have helped as well."
They squeezed up past a fallen pine tree. Its needles were dead, dried and scattered across the road, the branches skeletal, and Slaughter looked up past them toward a wall of vines and bushes, slats of brown that showed through, and he knew that they were almost there. He slowed around a curve and, before he even stopped the cruiser, said to Dunlap, "See if you can budge that gate."
But Dunlap only stared ahead. "I said-"
"I'm going." Dunlap stepped from the cruiser. First he viewed the wall of vines from several angles, took several photographs; then he left the camera in the cruiser, and he walked up to the weed-shrouded gate.
Slaughter watched him through the windshield. With the filtered sun, the frame around his windshield, Slaughter sensed that Dunlap was much farther than he really was. Sitting here, the motor idling, Slaughter was abruptly conscious that there weren't any other sounds around him in the forest. Sure, the noise we made has frightened everything away, he guessed.
He watched as Dunlap stopped and looked at all the vines and weeds that wound around the gate posts. Dunlap reached out. Then he brought his hand back.
"Poison ivy?" Dunlap called.
Slaughter laughed. "A city boy. No, I don't know exactly what they are, but they're not poison ivy."
Dunlap nodded. Then he turned back to the vines and almost touched them before looking at him again. "You're sure?"
"For Christ sake."
"Never mind. I'll do it."
Dunlap tugged some vines away. He did it cautiously at first, and then he used more strength against them. He was pushing at the gate.
"We'll maybe have to clear the whole bunch," Slaughter leaned out, saying.
"More than that. We'll have to break the lock here."
"What?"
"A rusted chain and lock."
"Tug at it. The chain might be so old you'll break it."
"That's what I've been doing."
"Hell, I thought that was more weeds."
"You'd better have a look."
Slaughter thought about all the time they were wasting, thought about the town, and shut the motor off. He stepped from the cruiser, walking toward the gate. "I should have known they'd have fixed the gate once Wheeler drove up through it," Dunlap said.
Slaughter didn't understand the reference.
"I'll tell you later. But they fixed it, all right. Christ, they really did. Just look at those thick timbers. They'd stop any pickup truck."
The two men stood in the shadowy, cool, yet humid forest that was close around them, grass and fallen pine tree needles underfoot, and they were silent for a moment.
"Here, let me try it," Slaughter said. He put his full weight against the gate and pushed, but nothing happened. Oh, a little creaking in the wood and some slight movement as the chain went taut, but nothing else, and Slaughter felt the awkward pressure in his shoulder, stepping back and rubbing at it. "What about the hinges?" he asked.
But although rusted, they were large and solid, and the screws were sturdy in the timber.
"Well, that does it," Slaughter said.
"You don't mean we're leaving."
"No. I came up this far, and I don't intend to waste time coming back. We're going to have to climb the fence and walk."
They looked at one another.
"Wait a second while I get my camera." Dunlap went down to the cruiser for it. When he came back, Slaughter waved for him to climb up first, and Dunlap put his shoe on one thick timber, grabbing at another timber, easing over. Slaughter climbed up just behind him, and they stepped down into the compound, on the edge of Quiller's fifty acres. "Something wrong?" Slaughter asked. "No, I'm just shaky," Dunlap answered. "You were right. I need a drink."
"Well, you'll be done with this before you know it." They walked along the next part of the loggers' road, which was as overgrown as the first part. Slaughter heard a noise in the bushes and turned, but there was nothing he could see. He kept walking.
"Are there any people up here yet?" Slaughter wondered.
"I meant to ask you that myself. Parsons says there might be two or three."
"Oh, swell. Some commune."
"In its day, it was," Dunlap said. "I read that Quiller started with a couple thousand. Then he cut them down to just five hundred."
"Even so. If only two or three are up here."
"Yes, it isn't hard to measure Quiller's failure."
"What's the point then? I don't see your story?"
"That's the story. How it failed, and more important, why."
"Well, you must know your business."
They kept walking. Once again, Slaughter heard a noise behind them. He turned, but there was nothing. "Now who's jumpy?" Dunlap asked him. Slaughter had to laugh then. But the laughter echoed through the forest, and he quickly stopped.
The loggers' road disappeared a hundred feet ahead of them.
"Or could be that the forest just reclaimed it," Slaughter said.
They reached the dead end of the lane and glanced at the maze of trees around them.
"What now?" Slaughter asked.
"Well, the road was going straight up, and the clearing I suppose was somewhere near it. Let's just keep on through these trees."
"We could end up walking in a circle. We'll have to pay attention to our landmarks." That big boulder up ahead, Slaughter thought. And then that line of cliffs below the ridge. They veered through the pine trees, the needles lancing at them. Dunlap stumbled, falling on his camera, and he groped up, clutching at his chest, staring at the camera that was dangling from his shoulder.
"Is it broken?" Slaughter asked.
Dunlap didn't know. He hurriedly checked the camera, but it seemed intact, and he'd made certain that he kept the lens cap on. "I don't see any damage." "What about yourself?" "Oh, just the wind knocked out of me." "It could be worse. You want to try to walk?" Dunlap nodded. Bent a little forward, limping slightly, he pushed farther through the trees. The forest now was thicker, darker, dead trees fallen among the live ones, intersecting, thick vines growing up around them. Dunlap stopped and took deep breaths. "There has to be a better way. They brought their cars and vans up here. But it's sure as hell they didn't bring them this way."
"Maybe we should go back to the loggers' road and angle right or left," Slaughter suggested.
"And maybe lose our way as you just said? I wish I knew." "Well, let's keep going then. If this gets much worse, we'll have to change direction."
So they pushed up through the pine trees, and the clearing wasn't fifteen steps away, the trees so dense they didn't see it until they stepped free from the forest.
There were stumps that stretched off through young forest, all the growth here up to Slaughter's chest so that he looked out past the new tips of the pine trees toward the compound over there. Slaughter was reminded of a camping trip years ago. He'd gone with his father to a small lake in northern Michigan. They'd pitched their tent and eaten, so exhausted that they s
oon had gone to sleep. Rain pelting onto the canvas had wakened them, and they had talked and dozed and wakened again as the storm got worse, and in the morning when the storm was finished, they had crawled out from the tent to stare across the lake. A billowing mist hung over it, but they were camped up high enough that they were just above the mist, the pine trees visible along the other bank, and Slaughter now remembered how he'd thought about what he couldn't see below the mist-the fish that would be rising, and the ducks and frogs and other things. It wasn't real. That thought again. Like now. That sense of life around him but unseen. Except the compound was deserted.
They started through the new growth toward the compound. Dunlap took a photograph. "Hope the camera works." They continued walking.
"Sure," Dunlap said. "They used the timber here to build the barracks." He thought that Rettig had been accurate. With the difference that the walls were like log cabins, Dunlap was reminded of a deserted Army camp. Lanes and squares, a parade ground, everything was here. No, not exactly everything. He didn't see a flagpole. Hell, this kind of culture, they'd have called it a Maypole.
The compound loomed as they approached it, wide, the buildings all one story and with slanted roofs. At least the hippies knew enough to compensate for deep snow on the roofs in winter, Slaughter thought. And then he paused as Dunlap took another picture.
"Watch these branches on the ground here," Slaughter told him. "We don't want another accident."
Dunlap nodded, staring toward the compound as they walked around the branches, coming toward the nearest buildings. There were weeds and bushes, young trees growing in the lanes, and vines enmeshed around the shutters. There were broken windows, doors half off their hinges. And the slogans on the walls, the symbols, Day-Gloed green and red and blue, now faded, flowers, flags with rifles for the stripes and bullets for the stars, a skull and crossbones and a down with nixon, the down with slashed out, then to hell with scrawled above it, that too slashed, a simple fuck above it. vietnam will claim our children. Skeletons across a pentagon.
"Sure. They took the time to do all that, but they didn't even think to treat the logs for insects," Slaughter said and pointed. There were tiny holes in all the logs, and down below the holes, thick piles of what seemed sawdust, dirty, flecked with dead leaves from the vines.
Dunlap took more photographs. As they reached the buildings, Slaughter had the odd sensation that he'd been here before. "Is anybody around?" And then he knew what he was thinking of. Sure. Bodine's ranch when yesterday he'd gone there and he'd heard the kettle.
"You look in this building. I'll check the others," Dunlap said, and Slaughter stopped him.
"No, we'd better stay together."
"What's the matter?" Dunlap asked.
"Let's just say I've got a bad feeling. Anybody here?" he called again.
He waited, but no answer.
"No one's been here for quite a while," Dunlap said.
They stepped inside one building. There were bunk beds, wooden slats instead of springs, no mattresses, but many spiders, cobwebs, leaves piled in one corner as a nest for something. The floor-decaying planks-looked unsafe.
"Let's try a little farther on," Slaughter said.
But almost every building was the same. Slaughter glanced around to notice how the compound had been situated in a canyon, cliffs beyond the trees on three sides, and the slope behind them descending toward the loggers' road. A wind came from below there, rustling trees and cooling him. He took his hat off. Then his back felt unprotected, and he looked behind him. "Well, they picked a good spot anyhow. Except they would have needed water, and I don't know where they got it."
"Higher up. Those cliffs might have some streams."
"Could be. But I don't have time to look."
That made his point, Slaughter hoped. He didn't have time. He hadn't thought it would take this long getting up here. While he felt more sympathetic toward Dunlap, all the same he had his job to do, and he was anxious to get out of here.
Because you're thinking of Bodine? he asked himself. That feeling you had yesterday? You're scared. You might as well admit it.
No. Because I have to get back if there's trouble. Sure. And now he followed Dunlap past some bushes toward a larger building. Its door had toppled. The steps were rotted. They looked past the spider webs at what must once have been the dining room. Rettig had been accurate again. Logs made into trestles, tables that went down the whole length of the room. A bird sat in a glassless window, staring at them. Slaughter blinked, the bird flew away, and Slaughter felt that spot between his shoulder blades again. He turned, but there was no one out there.
"Are they hiding?"
"Little children laughing?" Dunlap asked. "What the hell is that?" "It's from a poem. T.S. Eliot."
"I know who he is. That's not what I meant." And Slaughter started running toward the small low building in front of the parade ground. "I saw something moving."
He ran harder, glancing at the buildings on each side, staring toward the trees beyond them, and he had his gun out, lunging past the listing door, finding just a table, spider webs and dirt, more pine needles.
But there wasn't any back door, and he didn't understand what he'd seen moving. Then he did. The wind blew toward him, and he saw the thick, rotted curtain moving. A blanket really. Torn in half and hung up on a branch before a broken window. He was nauseated by the smell that he'd been registering all along: must and crumbling wood, the fetid, sick-sweet smell of buildings left to ruin. Then he saw the hornet's nest in the far right corner. Something moved inside its portal, and he stepped out into the open.
Dunlap. Where was Dunlap? "Over here!"
Now he reads my mind, Slaughter thought as he ran toward the muffled voice inside another building. The emotion in Dunlap's voice worried him.
This building didn't have planks for a floor. Only dirt. There weren't any windows. Two big doors hung open. Dunlap stood in a shadowy corner, staring at dark stains on the ground.
"That's blood?" Slaughter asked.
Dunlap only shook his head.
"Well, what then? Christ, you scared me."
"Did I? Well, I didn't mean to. No." Dunlap picked up the dirt and sniffed it.
Slaughter suddenly was angry. "Tell me what that stuff is."
"Even after all these years, you can still smell the oil. This is where the Corvette would have been."
"Except it isn't."
"Where then?" Dunlap wondered.
"Look, there's no one up here. Quiller drove out years ago. He maybe let the others walk, but he kept the car in case he needed it to leave."
"I hate to say it, but I think you're right. And now my goddamned job is almost over."
"You can still track Quiller."
"No, it's finished. I'll be out of here by Monday. After I talk to Wheeler and see your records."
"And visit Parsons," Slaughter told him.
"Right. I haven't let that slip my mind."
"Twenty-three years? You really thought that they'd still be here?"
"Well, I had my hopes. I needed some big story to impress them."
"In New York?"
Dunlap's face was blank. "You're luckier than you imagine."
"Well, I made my own luck."
Dunlap took a breath and nodded. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe after this I'll have to spread out my own map." He looked all around. "The new republic." He snorted. "It's not all that failed." He started past the sagging doors, and Slaughter thought about the town as he went after him. The sun was descending. The wind had died. The compound felt lonelier than ever. Well, we'd better reach the car before the woods get too dark to see landmarks, Slaughter thought. "Let's get a drink," Dunlap said, and they walked along the lane between the ruined barracks.
PART THREE. The Mansion
ONE
It sniffed at the shoe. Mud and dampness. And it choked. It scurried back and settled on its haunches, puzzled by the odd sensation in its throat. Then the choking
spasm passed, and it was staring at the shoe. It waited, almost sniffed the shoe again, then made its choice, and scuttled toward the pile of clothing in one corner. Blue and stiff, yet muddy, damp just like the shoe. And once again it felt that sharp constriction in its throat-which made it angry- and it cuffed at the clothing. Then it snarled.
Over to one side, another kind of shoe, this one dark and scuffed, light spots showing through the surface, a faint odor, partly sweat, and partly from the animal the hide had once belonged to. It was sniffing closer. Then it bit the leather, and it shook its head, the shoe flopping one way, then another. But the clothes that hung down brushed against its head, and that annoyed it, so it pawed up at the clothing, snagged a pocket, pulling, and some clothes dropped down upon it. Smothered, frightened, it fumbled to get out from under, snarling, pawing, and the clothes dropped free. Then it smelled soap and chemicals, and it was growling. As it bit hard into the cloth and held the garment, tearing, it heard noises coming down the hallway out there. It turned, staring, But the door was closed. The noises stopped. It went back to the garment, snarling, tearing.
Something raided. It swung toward the door. The handle moved. It stiffened, garment hanging from its teeth. The handle kept moving. Then the door came open, and she stepped in. Dropping the garment from its mouth, it bared its teeth and snarled at her.
She breathed in sharply. "Warren?"
And it sprang at her. She stumbled back. Her elbow hit the door. The door swung shut behind her, and she fell against the doorjamb, fumbling with the handle, as it sprang at her again. She scrambled toward the dresser to avoid it.
"Warren!"
But it only snarled and kept coming.
"Warren!"
She kicked at it, throwing pictures off the dresser, dodging toward the bed, climbing, screaming. When it leaped the final time, it caught her not quite balanced on the bed so that they both went crashing off the other side, her back slamming hard on the floor as it came clawing at her throat. She screamed and hit at it. She struck it on the nose, the throat. It felt the blood pour over its lips, a salt taste in its mouth, and gagged. It pawed to clear the salt taste, angered by the gagging, slashed its teeth down toward her face, but in that moment's hesitation, she had gripped the table near the bed and scrambled from the floor to kick at it. The shoe came toward its face, but there was time to dodge, and now it sank its teeth hard into her leg. She wailed and kicked to free the leg, but it was growling, biting, and it felt the blood spurt into its mouth, that same salt taste. It gagged again as, shouting, she twisted her leg and jerked free. Something hard smashed against its shoulder, glass and a lampshade falling past. The pain surged through its shoulder. Whining, it was stunned. Then she wasn't before it any longer. She was stumbling past it toward the door, and it was turning, snarling, leaping as she reached the door and grabbed the handle, pulling, squeezing out to reach the hallway, slamming the door.
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