The Summer I Died: A Thriller (10 page)

I was about to suggest driving a little ways down the road and trying the phone there when she screamed again and I nearly jumped out of my pants. Just three little words but they scared the living shit out of me:
“
Oh, God, no!
”

Then there was nothing.

“
She’s in trouble,
”
Tooth said, running back toward the tree line. I stood where I was, paralyzed, as if my body and brain were at odds. Tooth looked back at me and yelled,
“
Don’t wuss out on me. Move!
”

I sprinted forward and crashed through the trees with him, smashing my knee on a low limb and grabbing his shoulder for support. We dodged more limbs and stumbled over boulders as we pushed further into the woods. The sun began to fade away to shadow the further we went, and the moist underbelly of the forest gave rise to slithering insects and small rodents that dashed out of our way in a frenzy. In front
of me, Tooth used the gun to hack
through some thick foliage. I took a look around me and realized I wasn’t sure which way led back to the car anymore, since we’d been twisting and skirting
around so many obstacles. A
few minutes
later
, we emerged into a little clearing where a couple small trees had been knocked over, probably by a storm. Up to my left I could see the mountain clearing we’d been up on earlier when we’d shot the beer cans.

“
Why don’t we go back up there and look out and see if we see anything?
”
I said.

“
We already looked out all afternoon.
”

“
Not really, just shot the shit over the scenery.
”

“
We won’t be able to see through the tree canopy.
”

“
But we can’t see two feet in front of us now.
”

He seemed to consider this but I could tell he wanted to keep going the way we were headed. Reluctantly, he said,
“
Okay. Maybe I can get reception up there.
”

We trekked over to where the mountain began to slope upward and climbed up by grabbing tree limbs and hauling ourselves forward, almost like doing chin-ups. Probably it would have been easier to go around the base of the slope and find a path but I didn’t think of it until we were a ways up. The mosquitoes came back in full force, and since we couldn’t cover our faces they attacked like hungry vampires. They bit through my shirt and into my neck, my cheek, my elbows, all over. I made an attempt to swat at them at one point and nearly fell down the mountain.

T
ooth was first to reach the lip
and get on top. He covered his face with his shirt, put the gun in his waistband, and pulled me up. From there it was about twenty feet to the clearing. I stepped over one of the beer cans we’d murdered earlier and recognized my own work. Tooth started dialing but again got no service.
“
Motherfucker!
”
he yelled.
“
See, this is why we need to move. Nothing here works.
”

I walked back to the edge we’d just come up from and looked out over the valley. I couldn’t see anything but treetops
—
a vast sea of green. Tooth had been right and I felt like sitting down and giving up. The whole Mighty Mouse routine was a bad idea from the start. I don’t know what we thought we were going to accomplish tramping through a mountain stoned out of our gourd. Hell, Tooth looked high enough to see God. We were going about this all wrong. I started to say this to Tooth but when I turned around he was gone.

I found him on the other side of the clearing, looking toward the direction of Bobtail. He was squinting.
“
You see that?
”
he asked.

“
I’m not going to California,
”
I said.

“
No, dipshit, over there. You see that rock cliff?
”

In the distance,
across a small valley of pines, was
a sheer rock face.

“
Yeah.
”

“
Okay, now see that?
”
He pointed off to his left, toward Bobtail. I followed his finger and squinted, clueless as to what he wanted me to see. Then the trees swayed and I saw what he was looking at. I was stunned. It was sort of the way you feel when you find Waldo in one of those cartoons. Once you see him you can’t believe you didn’t notice him earlier. What I mean was, there was a house. I could see it through the treetops as they blew side to side, could make out its log cabin walls and a beat up blue pickup truck
parked on the side
. There was also something moving under the canopy near the house, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Shadowy
and large
, it swam beneath the trees. A bear, I wondered.

As if in answer, we heard a dog bark. Only it didn’t come from the house, it came from the rock wall.

“
It’s bouncing off the cliff,
”
Tooth said.
“That’s why we’re having a hard time pinpointing it. It’s echoing off everything.”

“
This is messed up
,
”
was all I could reply. Then,
“
What the hell is a house doing in the mountains? Aren’t there zoning laws and shit?
”

“
Probably it’s further toward the road than we think. Look, the road goes around the mountain toward the house. With a long enough driveway, that would put the house back toward the edge of the woods but not necessarily in them. We’re not really that far in ourselves.
”

“
Okay, so if that’s where the woman is she must have a phone.
”

“
Maybe you were right, maybe something fell on her. Maybe she was working on her truck and the jack broke.
”

“
She’d be nothing but mush by now.
”

“
Well, we can’t leave her if she’s still alive.
”

“
Yes, we can. Tooth, I don’t feel good about this. Nobody even knows we’re out here.
”

“
Chill out, Wolverine. When we get there the first thing we’ll do is call the cops from her phone.
”

“
But what if she’s dead by then?
”

“
Then call Japan
and a
sk for sucky fucky. They like that.
”

I looked at the house and listened to the barking coming at me from the other direction. There was a pang of shame in my gut because I knew I was being a wimp about the whole situation. I was like a squirrel who couldn’t decide whether or not to cross the road when traffic was coming, while Tooth was already on the other side safe and sound. I must have looked worried because he pulled up his shirt and showed me the gun.

“
Besides, we’ve got a little backup of our own,
”
he said. As I spun around to go back down the mountain
trail, he grabbed my shirt and added,
“
Let’s go down over here. It’ll be faster than having to walk back around.
”

“
We should get the car.
”

“
It’ll be there when we get back.
”

“
But what if we need it to get help, to rush her to the hospital or something.
”

“
We’ll take her truck. C’mon.
”

“
But what if it broke when the jack broke?
”

“
What if I punch you in the boys for being a pussy? Look, it’s gonna take us twice as long to go down and get the car and then drive around than if we just run down right here.
”

Shit. He was right.

We started climbing down the mountain again, breaking limbs and sending rocks rolling down the slope. Going down a mountain is always harder than going up because your body naturally leans forward. That coupled with gravity makes downhill hiking a bitch. The damn dog wasn’t helping my nerves either, and when a moment later I heard the first rumble of thunder in the distance, I knew this was going to be a stressful night.

If I’d only known what was going to happen next I would have taken the gun from Tooth and
put bullets in both our brains.

CHAPTER 10

Pushing through the woods was harder than I’d expected. The branches interwove like latticework and we couldn’t break them all with our hands, so we circled wide and came back around. As we neared the house, the overgrowth gave way to rotting logs stacked here and there. Some of them were split into cubes and small triangles, possibly leftover firewood. Then again, maybe not, because after the logs we had to scale a makeshift fence created from old tree limbs. Log cabin, split rail
fence—maybe she was a lumberjack? I’d seen female lumberjacks before; they gave logging demonstrations at summer camps. They also scared the
shit out of your average womanizer.

The damn dog was still barking and I started to think we’d get bit before we could even find our damsel in distress.

On the other side of the fence, we could see the back of the house clearly through the remaining trees. It was a small two-story deal, with cream curtains in the windows, and dead flowers in the window boxes. Between us and the house was a small back yard with a broken swing set, some car parts, and a big gas tank of some sort. The ground was all dug up like some big dog had been burying things, which reminded
me
.
.
.

I grabbed Tooth before he left the cover of the trees.
“
Watch out for Cujo.
”

He put a finger to his lips to shush me and followed the woods around to the left, where the driveway came up beside the house. We were keeping just within the tree line.

Treading softly, I followed under the noise of the barking dogs, which were still out of sight. Seconds later, the barking stopped and I heard panting heading our way. I froze, praying Tooth had heard it as well. He did. We both stood like statues as two big rottweilers the size of bulls came trotting around from the front yard. They stopped next to a door set in a little windowless alcove that jutted out from the side of the house. From the look of it, it probably went down to a storage cellar under
ground
.

Man, those two dogs were beasts; they wouldn’t break a sweat taking down a wolf. Together they could probably make a rug out of a bear. They pawed at the door, whimpering, while we maintained our best tree impersonations.

“
Ten bucks says those are cellar stairs and she fell down them,
”
Tooth whispered.

“
How the fuck do we get past those dogs? If we move at all now, we’re dead.
”

“
I don’t know. They look pretty concerned. Maybe they’re nice.
Rottweilers are pretty nice animals, you know.
”

“
We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. They’re not nice. They’re protection.
”

Slowly, he began to slide the gun out of his waistband. Was he going to sho
ot them? I may not have been a member of PETA
but I didn’t see the sense in killing animals that were only doing their job. He said,
“
Just in case,
”
and moved toward the yard.

As we tiptoed through the trees, we heard a voice coming from behind the door. It was muffled but it was
still as hysterical as when we’d first heard it. Sure enough, it was our woman and she was still alive. I was studying the dogs, trying to figure a way to distract them, when I got this sudden rush that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t place it at first; it just made me nervous, like my spider sense was tingling. Then it hit me: the paw prints. The dogs had left bright red paw prints all over the door. Was
it
.
.
.
was it blood? Tooth had seen it, too, and glanced back at me over his shoulder like he was going to say something, but before he could utter a word, everything went to hell.

Two bodies exploded out of the door, running full speed directly toward us.

One was a woman, bound, gagged, covered in blood. The other was a thin shirtless man waving a hand ax in one fist and a saw in the other. My stomach lurched and I went rigid. I couldn’t move. My brain sort of refuse
d to accept what it was seeing.
Up was down, black was white.

Instantly, both the woman and the man saw Tooth and me, and both went wide-eyed. The woman kept screaming, kept racing our way. The man went ape shit, his face twisting into furious determination.