“I won’t
let you down.”
“You
already have.
Don’t do it again.”
They
started to m
ove forward.
The earth
was soft and gave beneath their feet.
The air was crisp and smelled of summer’s death―earthy smells that
weren’t unpleasant in spite of their decomposing state.
The
orange blob ahead of them now was at a right angle.
She was sitti
ng
upright.
Was she listening to
them?
Could she hear them?
After that conversation, she probably
had.
She also knew she’d been
spotted―he told her so in the text.
So, what
was she thinking now?
Was she doing
what she should be doing?
Was she
repenting her sins?
Kenneth doubted
it.
After the way they watched her
behave at that bar, drinking and laughing and dancing like the whore she was,
and smoking outside when they left the bar, he doubted whether she even knew
what a sin was.
But she would
now.
The Lord would show her her
sins, and then cast her away to hell, where she’d roast along with all the others
who had failed Him.
The
breeze rose against his back and rustled the limbs surrounding him.
He looked above him and saw a canopy of
stars, the moon off to his right, but no clouds, no pending storm.
The breeze became a short gust of wind,
which he welcomed in spite of how cool it was.
The sound would help to muffle their
footsteps.
“She’s
doing something,” Ted said quietly.
“She’s
moving around.”
“It
looks like she made herself some kind of shelter.”
“How did
she do that?”
“She’s a
Maine girl,” Ted said.
“She learned
it along the way.
This isn’t her
first time in the woods.”
“Maybe
so.
But it’s her last time in
them,” Kenneth Berkowitz said.
“Let’s get her.
Pull her
out.
And let me have some fun, will
you?
I want to have my way with her
first.”
CHAPTER
TW
ENTY-NINE
The
forest floor in her shelter might be damp, but Cheryl Dunning knew better than
to build the shelter out of damp wood.
She
built it with dry branches, twigs that were close to the tree trunks and low to
the base.
Those always were the
driest.
The pine needles on which
she sat had sapwood and fatwood running through them.
They were filled with oils and they
would burn when lit, regardless of whether they were wet or dry, so she was
lucky that she was sitting on tens of thousands of them.
During
all those hunting trips she once took with her father and grandfather, she was
fastidious in learning the ways of the woods.
Even at that young age, she could feel her
father’s disappointment that his wife had given him three daughters and not one
son.
It was nothing he ever made
known to her―her father loved her deeply.
Instead, it was just something she
sensed.
It couldn’t
have
been easy for him to live in a house filled with women, including his own
mother, who moved in with them when her husband died of pancreatic cancer.
And so
she set out to become that son.
She
hunted.
She played sports in school
and she learned how to fish, a pastime she still loved, especially when the
family went to their camp on Moosehead Lake.
She sat and watched the Red Sox games
with her father during the season and the Pats games when their season
began.
Her mother wouldn’t allow
her to swear at the television set as he did, but when she wasn’t around, her
father almost encouraged it.
Sometimes, they’d holler at the screen in such frustration or joy, he once
said they’d make a fine couple of sailors.
When her
body began to change and her interest turned more and more to boys, the time
she spent with her father began its slow but inevitable decline as she began
the ascent into her teen years and finally into adulthood.
To this day, they still were close, but
she realized now, perhaps more than ever, just how instrumental those days had
been with him.
He taught her what
his father had taught him.
And that
just might save my life.
She
worked quickly.
If she was going to
torch this motherfucker, then she had to build a fire that would burn hot and
high,
hopefully setting fire to the woods around her so that people would take
note―if there were any people around here to do so―when the tall
pines caught and started to rage as they became engulfed in flames.
She didn’t know where he had taken her,
but if
she could set these woods on fire, there was a good chance that someone would
see it, fire departments would be called, and she just might get out of here
alive.
If he
doesn’t shoot me when I set the fire.
She
couldn’t think that way.
Instead,
she started to move about the shelter.
She gathered a handful of dry leaves and placed them in a mound.
Then, she plucked sticks from the
shelter itself and created a tight layer of insulation on top of the leaves,
thus separating the sticks from the damp forest floor.
She sprinkled the top of the sticks with
pine needles and more leaves, and then gathered from the shelter a host of
other branches, all the time worrying that with each one she pulled out, he
could hear her.
Would he know what
she was doing?
Probably not.
Did it matter?
Probably not.
His aim was to kill her.
Period.
And he was coming this way.
I can’t
let him win.
The fire
would take time to catch and grow and overwhelm the shelter, which would fuel
it and turn it into a kind of pyre, but the time it would take for that to
happen was another strike against her.
But not
if the breeze remains steady.
The
breeze, which was increasingly becoming sharp gusts of cold wind, was the best
friend she had right now.
That and
her Bic lighter.
Oxygen is what she
needed to make this shelter ignite quickly and right now, the universe was
cooperating with her in ways that it hadn’t since she was left alone at The
Grind the night before.
“You go
through stretches of misery and stretches of fortune,”
her
grandmother used to say.
Living on
the farm, her grandmother never had an easy life, but like her grandfather, she
knew it could have been worse.
Back
then, living on the land is what they had and while the land often gave its
fruits easily because the land was fertile, sometimes it didn’t because either
the weather was off or blight ruined the crop.
“You go
through stretches of misery and stretches of fortune.”
She was
fairly sure that she was on the side of misery right now, but at least she had
a plan, and that was better than being without one.
When she
was finished, she stopped and listened, expecting the worst and finding
it.
A rustling of leaves.
The sound of footsteps.
He wasn’t alone.
She was sure of it now.
He had someone with him.
Another
psycho.
She
wanted to cry at that moment because she knew that with them so close to her,
she didn’t stand a chance.
Before
the moose attacked, she saw him.
She
also saw his gun.
Naturally, his
partner would also have a gun.
I’m
going to die.
No, I’m
not.
You’re
in a stretch of misery.
I’m
not.
I still have a chance.
But her
thoughts held no conviction, only a whiff of desperation.
She lit
the base of the leaves and blew on them as a breeze sucked air into the
shelter.
She stood back, surprised,
as a fire, bright and sturdy, bloomed.
And then it quickly grew.
And then it sparked toward the shelter’s shallow ceiling, where it
tasted the branches and twigs.
When
it decided it rather liked them, it devoured them with a fervor that stunned
her.
CHAPTE
R THIRTY
She had
to get out.
The fire was unfolding
faster than she thought it would, but then it had the wind whipping through the
gaps in the shelter, didn’t it?
It
was being fed by it, wasn’t it?
She needed to leave―quickly―before she succumbed to the
smoke and then to the flames themselves.
He’s
right outside.
He’s seen the
fire.
He’s going to shoot me.
She had
no choice but to leave.
Bracing
herself, her heart striking against her chest so hard, it seemed as if it was
trying to break out and leave faster than she was, she bolted from the shelter,
shot low across the woods with the fire at her back and waited for the hail of
bullets that she was sure would bring her down.
They
didn’t come.
In the
fire’s wavering maelstrom of light, which cast a wild hive of shadows that
thrashed against the walls of trees surrounding her, she saw a tall, wide pine
just to her right and ran for it.
She
pressed her back against it.
She
watched the shelter smoke and burn, watched the trees that surrounded it catch
fire and, thanks to the wind, she watched other trees ignite, especially the
dead ones, which caught quickly.
The
forest was going up.
She
could feel the fire’s heat and fleetingly, in spite of the danger she was in,
she thought how good that heat felt.
She felt it sink into her body and warm her bones.
She was in desperate need of water, but
right now, after being so cold for so long, she welcomed the fire and its
heat.
She peered around the pine
and searched for any signs of him.
That’s
when she heard the growl off to her right.
Then the
snort.
She
turned slightly and her eyes connected with the eyes of a black bear, no more
than thirty feet from her.
She remained
completely still and then lowered her eyes so as not to challenge the animal.
But she
was too late.
It snapped its jaws
at her and slapped the ground with one of its paws, two sure signs that it felt
threatened, not only because of the fire, but also because of her.
Slowly,
she slipped around the tree so she was out of its sight.
She’d mistaken the bear for the madman
and what she assumed was someone else.
Four
paws sound like two footsteps.
And now,
somehow, she had to get away from it while the forest, being destroyed by the
wind-fueled flames tearing into the sky, was actively letting him know where
she was.
What
have I done?
she thought.
Which
direction do I take?
Before
she could decide, she heard the unmistakable sound of the bear lunging in her
direction.
CHA
PTER THIRTY-ONE
The
closer Kenneth Berkowitz got to Cheryl Dunning’s shelter, the easier he could
see it and the more he wondered how she’d found time to build it.
The
shelter was at least five-feet tall, constructed mostly of heavy logs and thick
limbs, and looked sturdy enough to withstand the elements for at least a few
years, if not several more.
He
decided that there was no way she could have made it herself.
Instead, he felt that she got lucky,
found an abandoned hunting shelter and made it her own for the night, hoping
they wouldn’t find her.