The Becoming - a novella (11 page)

George didn’t own
a rocking chair, nor did he have a fireplace in the living room of his small
house in Teaneck, New Jersey, didn’t even like to read all that much. But he
figured,
what the hell, it’s my daydream, I might as well enjoy it.
He
knew he should not have come hunting alone in the dank, desolate woods of
Northern Maine in late November, but none of his buddies could make it this
weekend, and George was damned if he was going to let his five-day break from
the job at the paper mill pass by without getting out and enjoying some fresh
air and solitude.

Going off by
himself in the woods was a piss-poor idea, George knew that—common sense
dictated that you always take at least one person with you as well as let
someone else know exactly where you will be when you’re traveling into
thousands of square miles of mostly uninhabited forest—but he had hiked and
hunted his entire life in some of the most remote and rugged areas this country
had to offer, so it wasn’t like he had no outdoor experience. Besides, with his
trusty hand-held GPS, how bad could things get?

Pretty bad indeed,
George now decided. The goddamned GPS had crapped out on him two days ago for
no particular reason that George could determine. It simply made the decision,
somewhere inside its freakin’ soulless solid-state electronic guts, to take a
break from operating, maybe a permanent break; George didn’t know. What he did
know, though, was that without a working GPS and after his map book had been
washed away during a river crossing, he was more or less totally screwed.

George unzipped
the right front pocket of his insulated hunting jacket and pulled out his cell
phone for what he guessed might be about the two hundredth time in the last two
days, knowing what he would see when he powered it up but doing so anyway. The
device clicked and whirred, eventually awakening from its slumber and informing
George that, so sorry, there was still no cell coverage in this part of the
God-forsaken northern Maine woods, and furthermore, its battery was getting
dangerously low, so if he wished to make a call, this might be a good goddamned
time to do it. He cursed under his breath. The damn thing was about as useful
to him as the broken GPS. Two electronic paperweights.

His hands were
shaking as he shoved the cell phone back into his pocket and re-zipped it. He
had only removed his gloves for a couple of minutes, and his fingers were
already stiffening and losing feeling. Dammit, it was cold!

George stopped in
a small clearing and tried to get his bearings, knowing it was pointless but
not having the faintest clue what else to do. The lowering sky was a dark grey,
almost black; the sun a distant memory even though it was the middle of the
day. Orienting himself direction-wise was a no go. The drizzle which had fallen
pretty much constantly since, incredibly, just about the exact moment his GPS
had given up the ghost was now increasing in intensity from a soft mist to a
steady, slanting rain. The temperature was falling, too, and George knew he
needed to find shelter and hole up until the weather cleared.

He had been
walking nonstop for almost two days now and exhaustion hung on him like a
cloak. Conventional outdoor wisdom dictated that when someone got lost they
should stay in one place and wait for help, but George knew while that was good
advice for a twelve-year-old who had become disoriented during a Boy Scout
hike, it would do nothing to help him in his present situation. No one knew he
had even come here, and as far as George could remember from his map book
before it decided to go for a swim and never return, there was only one small
town within twenty miles in any direction, so the chances of some random hiker
or hunter stumbling upon him and helping him out of this mess were pretty slim.
Almost nonexistent, when it came right down to brass tacks.

That being the
case, George figured he might just as well keep moving. Maybe he would get
lucky and stumble upon the little hamlet, and if he didn’t, well, he would be
no worse off walking when the sun finally came out than he would have been had
he stayed in one place. Either way, if he didn’t find that town, he was going
to have some serious hiking to do once he was able to determine which way was
south.

But now, hungry,
tired, depressed and drenched, with a steadily lowering body temperature as an
added bonus, George Hooper decided the number one priority was to seek shelter
and wait out the rest of the storm, at least until he could get warm and dry.
But where? Most of the trees in this thickly forested area were towering pines,
their branches sagging from the weight of all the water collecting on their
needles the past two days. Perhaps he could burrow under the branches toward
the middle of one of the mammoth firs in the hopes of finding some dry ground.

George looked
around for the most likely tree to begin burrowing into, and as he did, he
again glanced up at the dark sky, at the clouds roiling high above the
treetops. His breath caught in his throat as his brain at first refused to
believe what his eyes were telling him. He stared without moving for a good
sixty seconds at a thin column of smoke rising above the forest and
disappearing into the rain and mist. A fire!

Whether the smoke
was coming from a fireplace or a campfire or a cook stove, George had no way of
knowing, but one thing he
did
know was that someone was near, and if
someone was near then that meant food and warmth and directions out of here and
maybe even a ride back to civilization if he got really lucky.

He couldn’t
believe his incredible good fortune. He almost laughed out loud at the thought
that he had been seconds away from crawling on his belly through the mud under
a tree where he would have spent the next twenty-four hours or more cold and
miserable, and now, because he just happened to look skyward at the right time,
he might just be on his way home with a full belly and warm, dry clothes within
hours.

Hefting his pack,
which had started out heavy but was now even more so thanks to the water
soaking the canvas, George angled in the general direction of the smoke,
zigzagging through the trees, ducking under branches and putting up with ice-cold
water dripping down his neck. He kept his eyes on the prize: that thin column
of nearly-invisible wispy smoke, fearing that if he lost sight of it he might
never relocate it.

After roughly
twenty minutes of struggling, he trudged through a particularly thick line of
trees into a large clearing and stopped dead in his tracks. Spread out before
him was what had once been a tiny village, clearly abandoned years ago,
probably decades ago. Hell, maybe even centuries ago. The remnants of about a
half-dozen small granite foundations lined each side of a narrow, rutted dirt
trail, which was barely wide enough to accommodate a car, not that any car
would be able to navigate this rough terrain; even a four-wheel drive vehicle
would get stuck trying to make it out here.

In addition to the
ancient stone foundations, which George assumed had at one time held houses, a
couple of similar but larger foundations—perhaps supporting a general store and
maybe a police station or jail—sat in disrepair at the far end of the clearing.
Weeds and scrub grass and even some fairly large trees sprouted out, around and
through the foundations, giving the area a look of utter abandonment. The
forest had nearly completed its reclamation of the lonely and isolated village
which had been hacked out of it at some point in the distant past.

In his shock at
stumbling upon this tiny deserted village, George had almost forgotten the
trail of smoke he had been tracking and now looked around to see if he could
find the person or persons responsible for the fire. At first he could see no
sign of the smoke—he thought for a moment he had lost it completely and almost
panicked—but after a few seconds caught sight of a wisp drifting lazily up and
out of a red-brick chimney sprouting from the roof of a small log cabin off to
George’s right.

The home was
tucked into the very edge of the abandoned village and was clearly not part of
the original town; it looked almost brand new. The construction looked square
and shipshape, with windows and a door and a farmer’s porch running the length
of the house.

George’s heart
leaped with the thought that he was about to get out of this mess, then he was
struck like a hammer by the obvious question—
who in the hell builds a home
way out here in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of an old housing graveyard?
Even Ted Kaszinski, the old Unabomber himself, the guy with the grudge against
modern technology who had terrorized the country for a time in the 1990’s with
bombs delivered through the United States Postal Service, had lived in an area
that was at least accessible to some conveniences. What had George stumbled
upon? Some antisocial lunatic who might chop him up into little pieces and then
feed them to his equally antisocial dog?

George laughed
uneasily to himself at such a ridiculous notion. He just needed a little help,
that was all, and undoubtedly whoever lived here would be happy to provide it.

Of course they
would.

Jeez, get a grip.

But his nervous
body refused to cooperate with his calm, rational brain. His breath came rapid
and shallow and sweat dripped down his back as he stared at the strange village
laid out in front of him, not a pleasant sensation considering he had been wet
and freezing cold to begin with. George couldn’t imagine why he was so nervous
and jumpy. He wasn’t a guy who spooked easily, and he should be jumping up and
down screaming his damn fool head off in delight at the prospect of getting out
of this mess, not standing motionless in the rain like some four-year-old kid
afraid of his own shadow.

Grunting in
disgust at himself but still unable to shake the feeling that something was
terribly wrong, George forced himself to slow his breathing and made a
concerted effort to calm his frayed nerves. “Get ahold of yourself, dumbass,”
he muttered and began slowly walking toward the only recent construction, the
log cabin. The smoke from the chimney had now almost completely disappeared,
and George hoped the person or people who had been burning the fire inside the
house wouldn’t mind lighting it up again for him.

2

“That is totally disgusting.”
Sharon Dupont shook her head, her pretty mouth drawing down into a frown as new
Paskagankee Police Chief Mike McMahon attempted to navigate a large steak bomb
in the passenger seat of their parked cruiser. He grinned at the petite
officer’s horrified expression as he chomped away, bread and cheese and bits of
steak, onions and peppers littering the cruiser’s cloth bench seat, forming an
ever-growing circle around him.

He swallowed and
licked his lips. “You’re just jealous. You decided to pass up this traditional
American feast and now you’re sorry you didn’t get something too, so you could
join in the fun.”

“Are you kidding
me?” she countered. “After being subjected to this display, I might not ever
eat
anything
again, never mind dead animal flesh.”

McMahon reached
across the seat and waved the partially eaten sandwich in front of her, drawing
another frown. He nodded knowingly. “Jealousy. It’s very unbecoming.”

Mike McMahon had
been in town for just over a week. He had edged out a total of zero other
applicants for the chief of police job in the isolated northern Maine town of
Paskagankee—population four thousand, give or take. Outgoing Chief Wally
Court—a fitting name for a law enforcement officer, McMahon thought—had
reviewed Mike’s application and conducted a thirty-minute telephone interview
followed by a two-hour personal meeting before hiring him within a matter of
days.

In neither of the
interviews had Court asked Mike the obvious question of why he wanted to move
from Revere, Massachusetts—a hardscrabble community just north of Boston—to a
sleepy hamlet like Paskagankee while still in the prime of his career, and for
that Mike was grateful. Maybe the chief had heard about the shooting last year
and understood Mike’s need to get away from Revere, or maybe he just didn’t
give a damn why anyone would want the job and was just thankful someone did.
Either way, though, Mike had escaped his old life, which was exactly what he
needed.

Mike had been
surprised by the apparent contradiction that was Chief Wally Court. His office,
where the in-person job interview had taken place, had been neat to the point
of obsession, with the obligatory citations and photos of the chief
glad-handing dignitaries adorning his walls and with a shipshape desk devoid of
any hint of clutter.

The outgoing
chief’s personal appearance, however, had been a different story. His graying
hair badly needed a trim, as did his beard. He sported at least a three-day
growth of salt and pepper on a face clearly unused to the intrusion. His
uniform was heavily wrinkled and appeared slept-in, and Court sweated profusely
throughout the interview, looking extremely uncomfortable, as if he had
somewhere else he needed to be.

Mike thought it
all added up to something strange; there was clearly more to the story of
retiring Paskagankee Police Chief Wally Court than met the eye. Perhaps the man
was ill. Whatever his situation, it didn’t really matter. Mike had been
notified three days after the unusual interview that the job was his if he
wanted it. Furthermore, the town needed him to start as soon as possible due to
the imminent retirement of Chief Court, a circumstance that fit Mike’s desires
perfectly.

The first thing
McMahon had done upon his arrival in town was to introduce himself to his small
force of officers and announce he would not be changing any procedures or
assignments right away, but rather that he would take the next month or two and
accompany an officer on routine patrols in order to familiarize himself with
the town and its people. He had chosen rookie Sharon Dupont to train with for
no particular reason other than she was relatively new to the force, so he
assumed she would be less likely to kick and scream and raise a fuss about
having to babysit the new boss than a more established veteran would be.