Hunters (38 page)

The two cliffward legs had been blown out,
and the wind was pushing it toward the edge. The other two supports
struggled to hold it, and Ned was struck with the incongruous image
of a giraffe with only two legs, an animal that the laws of physics
would forbid to stand for long.

The wind shifted, blowing obliquely across the
tower, and the metal twisted. Ned heard its cry, high and piercing,
like a woman shrieking. The wrenching metal continued to scream in
the wind, and Ned thought he heard the harsh, ripping sound of the
bolts of the surviving legs pulling out. And the tower began to
fall.

J
ust before the
charges went off, Jean Catlett had climbed into the cab, her pistol
and flashlight both held out in front of her like protective
totems. She swept the tiny room with her light, and its beam caught
Chuck Marriner struggling to his feet and rubbing the back of his
head. There was a cut over his right eye from which dark blood ran
down his nose and lip.

"Where
is
he?" Jean shrieked, shining
her light everywhere, floor and ceiling, as though Ned Craig might
be clinging to it bat-like.

"Dunno..." Chuck muttered, wiping away the
blood that had gotten in his eye. He looked around slowly. "The
rope..."

"There's a rope
here!
" she said,
kicking the small coil Chuck had carried up the tower.

"No, no, the long one, the one I was
gonna..."

Then Jean saw the two open windows, one on
the cliff side of the cab. "Shit! That
fucker!
"

The truth slowly came to Chuck. "You mean
he...oh Jesus." He headed around the alidade to the trap door,
tottering, still dizzy from the two blows to his head. Jean pushed
past him and started down first.

But going down was more hazardous than coming
up had been, and she slipped on the steps, righted herself, and
continued down more slowly. She heard Chuck coming behind her.

And then the dark night burned, and a fist of
air nearly knocked her off the steps. She dropped light and gun and
clung to a metal world that now swayed like a carnival ride. "Oh
fuck..." she heard Chuck say weakly. "Oh fuck..."

Something screamed like a huge, dying
monster, and she felt gravity slowly shift. In a breathless moment
that held both all time and no time, she knew the tower was
falling.

"
Jump!
" Chuck yelled, and when she turned her
head, slowly, as if it were sunk in the thickness of dreams, he was
no longer behind her, and the wind blew upward now, and she dove
over the rail, down into the dark.

A
nd as Jean fell,
free of the tower, Sam Rogers clung to the rail that had so far
saved her life, not knowing what was happening, feeling the blast
throw her upward, and thinking that she was falling
up
, and
then her body was over the rail, and the thin steel was across her
stomach, smashing the wind out of her. She swayed with something
more than her own vertigo, and clutched the rail with her elbows,
letting herself slide slowly backwards and extending her legs so
that they were on the landing again.

She sat, still holding the metal rod, not
understanding any of this, still crying, listening as the steel
screamed all around her, knowing only that she had to hang on, hang
on to live.

She hung on, as her world cried and twisted and
turned. She hung on all the way to the bottom of the cliff, until
the crushing metal and rock wrenched her dead hands away.

"M
egan!" Ned cried.
"
Megan!
"

He looked at the disturbed snow where he
thought they had been standing, but then remembered that they had
moved somewhere else. The trees came close to the tower on one
side, and he went there, thinking that maybe that was where he had
seen them, where they had gone to get a better view of his
hanging.

Tracks were impossible to follow, since the
wind covered them so quickly. The only way to find her was to
search the entire area, and he had to do it as quickly as possible.
Even now she might be lying half hidden in the snow, bleeding to
death.

He started to give a moan of despair, but
quickly choked it back. She was alive, she had to be. She could not
have died like this.

Sure. And neither could all those others, but
they did. Lunatics had the power to change reality, and remake it
into their own nightmare world.

He went to the cabin for a flashlight, then
went back outside to search. It did seem a nightmare world, he
thought as he hunted for Megan. Darkness, cold, the wind still
whipping the fabric of his clothes, icing his cheeks, turning his
hair crystalline. And somewhere out in the darkness, over the
cliff's edge, the bodies of those who had died with the tower. They
deserved nothing better.

And somewhere else, Megan.

He walked and called and listened, and heard
nothing.

J
esus, but he ached.
Every muscle in his body felt as though it had been stretched and
pulled by some sadistic trainer, and then whacked with a stick.

Chuck Marriner rolled over in the deep snow
into which he had fallen, and tried not to groan. As soon as he had
felt the tower start to sway uncontrollably, and known that it was
going over, he had jumped. The thought had come to him fast, and
he'd have been dead if it hadn't. Stay with the tower, end up at
the bottom of the cliff. Jump, and you had a gnat's whisker's
chance of surviving.

He didn't know how far he had dropped in free
fall. It felt like one hell of a long time. But then he had hit the
tops of the trees that hugged the west side of the tower, tall
evergreens whose snow-heavy boughs slowed his fall. He had smashed
into some hard limbs on the way down—Christ, his ribs ached like a
bitch
—but he had landed in a drift of snow right at the edge
of the cliff. If he had waited another second to jump, he would
have missed the trees entirely and gone over the side.

Just like Jean.

He wondered about Sam and Michael, and then
figured that since Jean had come tearing up the tower, the other
two wouldn't have been far behind. No, they were probably all dead
now, and he was the only one left, and the tower had gone over and
he hadn't even
seen
it, because his ass was falling through
the trees at the time.

That fucker Craig.

All that was left now was his hatred of Ned
Craig. He would kill the sonovabitch, that he would do. He had no
idea what he would do next, but he would kill Ned Craig.

He pushed himself to his feet, and started walking
though the snow.

N
ed had been looking
for Megan for fifteen minutes, calling her name all the while.
Pinchot accompanied him, seemingly puzzled by Ned's strange
behavior. He had run off into the woods behind the cabin when the
charges blew, but had come back when he heard Ned calling.

Ned was by the edge of the woods near the
base of the fallen tower when he thought he heard Megan answer his
call. He turned around toward the source of the sound, and
something exploded in the side of his head, knocking him to the
ground. When his head cleared enough to see, Chuck was standing
over him, his coat ripped in a dozen places, and caked blood
forming a brown crust under his nose. He was holding a piece of
dead wood four feet long.

"I dunno what happened," Chuck said, "but
it's your fault."

He picked up the flashlight Ned had dropped,
placed it in the snow so that it shone on Ned, and then raised the
piece of wood again and brought it down. Ned tried to hold up an
arm, but he moved far too slowly, and the branch caught him in the
neck. He coughed, and felt thick phlegm bubble into his mouth.

"Hadn't been for you," Chuck said, raising
the stick for another strike, "I wouldn't even
be
here." He
brought it down again, and Ned twisted so that the wood hit his
shoulder instead of his head. Still, he felt something break, and a
yelp of pain escaped him. He knew that he had to get to his feet,
but he was still dizzy from the blows.

Ned turned so that his back was to Chuck, and
started to push himself up, but the branch came down on the back of
his thighs, and he fell face first into the snow again. Then Chuck
went to work in earnest, like a man putting up firewood for the
winter, pummeling Ned on the back, buttocks, and legs, as though he
wanted to cripple him rather than kill him.

Ned was helpless. He could only lie there
taking the blows, thinking how everyone made him more exhausted,
more anxious to sleep, to have it over. In minutes his body was a
mass of pain. He could move, but he could not fight.

Then the beating stopped, and he heard
Chuck's voice through the rushing in his ears. "How you feelin',
Neddie? Pretty shitty? Ache a little? Your old hound dog sure isn't
comin' to the rescue—look!"

Chuck placed the branch under Ned's head and
levered it up out of the snow. Pinchot sat five yards away, his
head cocked, looking curiously at Ned as he looked at everything.
There would be no help from the dog.

"Say goodbye to the puppy dog, Neddie. It's
lights out time." Chuck held the branch like a baseball bat,
swinging it in short circles over his head. "Batter up!"

Ned kept watching him as he swung the bat,
wanting to move, but not able to, wanting just to sleep, to...

To die?

No!
The branch came down, straight at
his head, and he pulled himself from its path so that it struck him
only a glancing blow that tore open his scalp. Then he poured all
his will into lurching forward and grabbing Chuck by the legs,
pulling him down to the snow. The man fell heavily on Ned, driving
the air from his lungs, and Ned felt Chuck's bare hands around his
neck, squeezing like steel cables, or like the rope with which Ned
had nearly been hanged.

"Toppa everything else..." Chuck panted, "You
went and stole...my damn
gloves
..."

Ned clawed at the man's face, but Chuck's
gloves that he wore made the attack ineffectual. Then he hammered
at him with his fists, but Chuck only continued to squeeze,
ignoring the snap of cartilage as Ned broke his nose, and the gush
of blood that followed. Ned's vision began to dim, and he felt a
terrible pounding in his ears, then his whole head, and everything
was becoming dark and hot and falling.

And then he heard the shot.

The pressure on his neck suddenly stopped, a
warm wetness bathed his face, and as his vision returned he saw
Chuck's face above him, lit by the oblique beam of the flashlight.
One eye glared at him balefully, but the other was gone, along with
most of the nose and nearly the entire forehead. Then the dead face
fell down against his own.

Ned turned his head away, trying not to gasp,
nor even to breathe. He pushed with all the strength he had left,
but succeeded only in raising the limp corpse a few inches.

Then, as if by magic, the heavy bulk detached
itself from him, and flopped into the snow next to Ned. Blood
pooled in the hollow of its face.

Ned looked up and saw who had shot Chuck and
kicked his body off of Ned's. He was a man Ned didn't think he had
ever seen before. He was dressed warmly, and was cradling a deer
rifle in his hand. His face looked grim.

"I think he was gonna kill you," the man
said. "Couldn't let him do that."

"Thank you..." Ned said feebly, unable to
move. Maybe this man would help him. Help him get up, search, find
Megan. "Can you help me...please..."

"Why sure, Officer...Craig, ain't it?"

How did this man know him? My God, Ned
thought, was he one of them? But then why would he have shot Chuck?
"You know me?....who are you?"

"Oh, we met a long time ago, Officer. You probably
don't even remember me. My name's Sheldon Lake."

S
heldon dug into his
coat pocket, took out a flare, stuck it in the snow, and lit it.
They both winced at the sudden burst of red-white fire. It would
burn for fifteen minutes, more than enough time.

He straightened up and looked down at Ned
Craig. "Ring a bell? Almost seven years ago. You arrested me for
shooting a doe in buck season, and I didn't like that...oh yeah,
you remember, don't you? You got in a real lucky punch and I went
to jail, remember? And you know what I got? Not there, not in jail,
but when I got out? From beatin' on a faggot? I got AIDS, Officer.
That's right. AIDS. And it was all because of you. So see, I
couldn't let this asshole finish you." He pointed to Chuck's body.
"That'd be too easy. No, you gotta go the rough way."

"What...how'd you..."

This was beautiful, Sheldon thought. This was
just priceless. "How'd I find you? Man, I was on your ass every
step of the way, from the time you left St. Mary's. You got to the
road to the tower, I split, came back today, parked at the road and
walked in. You never saw my truck following you?" Craig shook his
head. "Nah, you were too busy watching for these assholes' jeep,
weren't you? I was lucky—day later, and I woulda missed you. I went
to Pittsburgh, see? One last fling. Hell of a night."

It had been. Dope, booze, pussy, you name it,
Sheldon had done it. A wide open town, you knew where to look. The
next day, after he got done throwing up and his hangover had gone
away, he had gone to see his grandmother in the nursing home, but
it wasn't very good. She didn't know him. He didn't tell Ned Craig
about that.

"Then when I got back to St. Mary's, I
visited your lady. Sorry about her, by the way."

"She's...dead?"

"Deader'n shit. They shot her. I was
watchin'. They had some real firepower, so I couldn't do much till
you blew up the tower. Whoo-
ee
, that was a sight. Almost
made their comin' along worth it. See, I wanted to play a little
with you first—the phone line, the blood, the dead deer, the
fiddle? That was me." He tried to grin to show how proud he felt,
but he found he couldn't smile. "Freaked you out, huh? I had more
fun in mind. Hell, I was gonna knock you out, tie you both up, and
go to work on both of you. Not kill you or nothin'. But you'd die
all right. You still will. But not for a while."