The figure lifted his head and inhaled, as if sniffing the air. He turned, directly facing the bushes where the pair was hiding. Zack couldn’t tell in the growing darkness, but the killer appeared to be looking right at them. Zack’s body screamed at him to run. It took all of his effort to remain still. The murderer took two steps forward. He was practically standing right on top of them. Zack froze. It was too late to move now. There was nowhere to go. His eyes moved down from the masked face to the gun, which hung loosely in the air.
Lily, he thought, bracing for the end. I’m sorry.
The thunder sounded again. The murderer looked at the sky and took a step back. His gaze moved to the ground, where he studied the last footprint for several minutes before marching east. He was headed toward Dire Lake. His footsteps eventually receded into the night.
Zack and Beth remained in place for what felt like hours until they were sure the killer wasn’t coming back. Beth slumped forward and pressed her face against his shoulders. Zack didn’t know how to react until she burst out crying. Tears poured down her face. He held her as she sobbed and made no move to get up.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, brushing her hair. “It’s going to be okay, Lily.” Either she didn’t notice that he called her by the wrong name, or she chose to ignore it. They sat there like that for several minutes, surrounded by the sounds of the storm.
***
Rodney Crowe tried not to be impatient. It wasn’t yet two in the morning. The night was still young. There was all the time in the world and plenty of potential victims scurrying about like rats. All the same, he was starting to feel uneasy. He had excelled in tracking his prey so far, but he couldn’t escape the feeling he’d just let some slip through his fingers. The device was never wrong.
The clouds had appeared from nowhere, and he was unsure how rainfall would change the game. Crowe chided himself. There was no need for worry. Everything was going smoothly. The chaos inspired by his minefield in the valley was playing out nicely. The campers were divided, injured, or dead. Even so, there was much work left to do.
He stepped deftly over a pile of dry leaves and found himself looking at the lake. It continued sparkling in the faint moonlight, oblivious to the gathering clouds.
“You’re exposed,” a voice whispered behind him.
Crowe swore and turned around slowly. A handgun was pointing directly at his head.
“You should know better,” the voice said.
As Crowe watched, the Hunter stepped into the light and lowered his weapon.
“I was wondering when I’d run into you,” Crowe said. He searched the other man’s black eyes for a hint of what was going on inside the man’s mind. Like always, the eyes conveyed nothing. “I saw the ATV near the creek.”
“Two of the campers were following the footprints, looking for Fields,” the Hunter said. He touched the chain around his neck. Crowe had noted the Hunter’s obsession with the necklace, though he chose not to mention it. “I’ve been tracking them.” He held up a blade covered in blood. “After I took care of one of their friends.”
“They’ll be reunited with him soon enough.”
Before Crowe could continue, the other man held up a hand to silence him. Both men were dressed identically.
“They’re mine,” the Hunter said, practically hissing. Crowe fell silent. “The man knows his way around the woods. He should prove interesting. Besides,” he said with a sneer, “you already passed them by.” The Hunter gestured to the goggles around his neck. “Have you forgotten how to use those?”
Crowe scowled. He knew he’d been close. He’d missed his chance. “There are plenty of them to go around. Let’s not fight.”
“No, that comes later.”
For now, they would go their separate ways. They wouldn’t pursue the same victims until later in the game. That was their custom. He held up two fingers.
“That makes two,” he said. “Counting the man in the tent.”
Crowe always felt the first kill shouldn’t count, but that was the way the game was played. Underneath the bandana mask, he smiled.
“I blew one of them to pieces earlier,” he said, “and shot another in the back. If he’s still alive, I’ll find him.”
There was a flash of lightning over the lake, and thunder echoed overhead. When Crowe looked back at the forest, the Hunter had vanished. Crowe licked his lips and returned to the forest. There were no strict rules to the game, not for them anyway. They were the ones in control. Rules were for those who were hunted. Together, they would kill them all.
Crowe’s hike turned upward. He had one little chore to complete before returning to Dire Lake. He knew what the campers were planning. They thought they could return to the lodge to their cars and escape. That would be the last mistake they would ever make.
Chapter Thirteen
2:13 am
It was going to rain. Will felt it in his bones. It was only a matter of when. If they didn’t reach the cliff before the storm hit, navigating through the forest would prove impossible. They would be exactly where the killer wanted them.
He turned to Cole. Though he put up a brave front, the wounded man was slowing down. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live.” Cole winced as he mouthed the words.
Will shrugged. If Cole wasn’t going to linger on his wounds, neither would he. Cole was keeping up with him for the moment, and that was enough. Will didn’t want to think about what might happen if that changed. He didn’t relish the idea of parting ways with his friend. It wasn’t merely out of concern for Cole. Will didn’t want to find himself alone in the forest.
The sky had grown even darker with the arrival of the storm front, if that was even possible. Will could barely see. “Check your cell phone again.”
His friend squinted at the screen. “There’s still no service.” Cole returned the phone to his pocket.
Will sighed, frustrated. “Do you mind if I use it to shine some light down the trail?”
Cole shook his head. “I think we should try to conserve the battery.”
That irritated Will. He’d gone out of his way to take care of Cole. The least his friend could do was let him use the phone for a little light. Each time Will thought his eyes had adjusted to the dark, the night seemed to swell with a new influx of blackness.
That was the main reason he was reluctant to leave Cole behind. Will didn’t want to be on his own in the night. He clutched the shotgun tighter. The killer could be anywhere, hiding behind a tree or under the brush. The thought sent chills running down his spine.
When he was a young boy, Will was terrified by darkness. He slept with a nightlight until he was in middle school, a fact he kept quietly to himself. Each night after his mother tucked him in, the boy waited in silence for something horrifying to appear. The threat never materialized, which only served to heighten the boy’s fears for the next encounter with the night. Whether it was a creature under the bed or a figure concealed in the closet, he was sure the darkness was only biding its time.
As an adult, Will no longer required a nightlight to sleep. The fantastic imagination of his childhood was no more than a forgotten memory. Unfortunately, the killer stalking them through the woods wasn’t part of his imagination. The Hunter was a being of flesh and blood, one more terrifying than anything he could ever dream up. Will was once more afraid of finding himself alone in the dark.
The two men suddenly found themselves off the trail, having wandered off in the dark. Will swore out of frustration.
“What’s the matter?” Cole asked.
“Nothing that couldn’t be solved if you just gave me the cell phone,” Will said, snarling. A glimpse of moonlight showed a path beyond the trees, and he stalked off in its direction, leaving Cole to follow.
***
Cole could feel Will starting to become unhinged, but he was powerless to do anything about it. With his leg the way it was, he was just thankful he hadn’t been separated from his last remaining friend. By the time he caught up with Will, Cole was keeping his distance.
“I need time to think,” Will said. “I need to remember where we are. If the storm hits before we find our way back to the lake, we’ll never find our way out of here.”
Cole heard the edge in Will’s voice. His friend was used to being in control. Now that control had been taken from him, and they had all been rendered impotent.
I don’t blame him for being afraid, Cole thought. The prospect of being lost was terrifying. Who knew what other traps the Hunter had concealed?
“Let’s try raising Zack on the radio,” he suggested, anxious to find out what happened to his friend.
“Suit yourself,” Will said before thrusting the walkie-talkie into Cole’s hand. While Will paced nervously, Cole used the opportunity to rest against a tree. His foot throbbed in constant pain.
The first time he tried to elicit a response from his friend, Cole was greeted with nothing but silence. A few minutes later, however, a voice rang out above the static.
“Cole?” It was Zack.
“Thank God it’s you,” Cole said, relieved. “Are you okay?” Ahead on the trail, Will stopped pacing and listened with his back turned.
“For now,” Zack answered. His voice was hushed. “The killer showed up when we were talking before. He chased us through the woods. Beth and I are on our own now. Ron didn’t make it.”
Will returned to the spot where Cole was sitting and snatched the two-way radio out of his hands. “That’s impossible,” he said. “We were attacked at the same time. The valley was covered in landmines. Dave and Bart were practically blown apart.”
There was a prolonged silence on the other end as Zack digested the words. Then the two men heard a female voice on the other side.
“What if there’s more than one of them?”
The question hung in the air for a moment. It wasn’t something any of the campers wanted to think about, but Beth’s theory explained why the Hunter managed to cover so much ground effectively.
“We don’t have time to worry about that right now,” Will finally muttered. “It’s about to start pouring rain, and when it does, Cole and I will be lost. We need to get the keys and get back to the lodge.”
“I agree,” Zack said. “We’ve gone off trail. I can see Dire Lake through the trees. We should reach Deadman’s Drop in a few miles. If you come this way, be careful. When the killer passed us by, he was also headed in that direction. He might be waiting for us.”
Will swore loudly. “We’ll have to think about that when we get there. We were on Shatter Creek Trail headed toward the lake when we lost our way. I thought I heard an ATV and tried to find where the sound was coming from.”
“It’s Fields,” Zack replied. “At least, it was Fields. We found the ATV flipped over in the mud, but no sign of Fields other than some footprints. They turned out to be a dead end.”
A howl sounded in the forest behind them. Although Cole knew the animal wasn’t connected to the killer, the sound still caused the hair to stand up on the back of his neck.
“We have to go,” Will said, and Cole agreed. They couldn’t afford to risk continuing the conversation. “Listen, you need to give us time to catch up to you. Don’t leave us behind.”
“I wasn’t considering it,” Zack said. “We’ll try to get closer to the cliff, then find a place to hide and wait for you.”
With that, the conversation was over.
“Do you really think he’ll wait for us?” Will asked Cole.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Will stared at the ground. “I wouldn’t, if we were in their shoes.” His expression darkened. “It’s not fair. I’ve always been there for Zack, haven’t I? I planned this entire trip for him. It’s his fault we’re in this mess.”
“Relax,” Cole said, and Will stopped rambling. “You know Zack. He would never leave us behind.”
Will didn’t reply. He extended a hand and helped Cole to his feet. Cole winced as the familiar pain in his mangled limb intensified when he stood.
“We need to hurry,” Will said. He shifted the shotgun to his other arm. Cole could tell the heavy gun was becoming uncomfortable to haul around.
“Do you need me to carry that for a while?”
“It’s mine,” Will snapped. He sighed. “I mean, with your leg the way it is, I don’t think you need the extra weight on it.” He handed Cole the radio instead. “Here, you can hold onto this.”
It was then that Cole heard a familiar sound not far away.
“I think I hear running water,” he said, hobbling through the brush.
The ground was covered in tall grasses, and their new path took them closer to the mountains. It wasn’t long before they came to a creek.
“I remember this creek,” Will mumbled. “It leads down from the mountains. Snowfall Creek.”
“If we follow it, the creek should lead us back to the lake.”
Will nodded, impressed. “Let’s go,” he said, and the two plotted a new course.
There was a new urgency in Will’s pace Cole hadn’t noticed before. As they continued, he found himself struggling more and more to keep up. His leg was bleeding worse than ever. He tried humming silently to block out the pain. The random choice of music surprised him—it was an old hymn he remembered learning in church.
Following his father’s death, Cole spent several months in a fog of anger and resentment. It was one of the reasons he understood what Zack was going through. Cole eventually found solace in church. The pastor’s sermons seemed to speak exactly to what troubled him, and the further involved he got in the church’s youth group, the easier he found it to express the pain he was dealing with. Faith grounded him and helped shape him into the adult he would become.
Having watched friends and strangers alike die over the last few hours, Cole’s faith was all that was keeping him from despair. Even so, he was starting to have doubts about his odds of survival. For not the first time that night, Cole wondered if he was going to die. He tried telling himself that if the worst happened, at least he would be reunited with his father. The thought provided little comfort.
It was cold, but not unbearably so. The landscape shifted again. Tall grasses faded away until they were on dry, patchy earth surrounded by endless rows of towering pines. The pines kept the pair largely insulated from the searing wind, though thunder continued crackling loudly above. The storm had yet to break, but Cole knew that when it did, it would be massive, untamed fury.
“This place is called the Red Pine Forest,” Will said softly, as if recalling it suddenly from his memory of the map. Or perhaps it wasn’t soft at all, and Will simply getting too far ahead. Without his glasses, Cole could hardly see him in the darkness.
“Will?” he called out, finally unable to distinguish between the black spot where Will had been with the other dark shapes of the forest. “Can you slow down a bit? I can’t see you.”
Will continued as if he hadn’t heard him. When he spoke, Cole squinted and managed to discern his friend’s outline moving under the trees.
“We’re getting closer to the lake,” Will said, almost to himself. “If we go through the forest instead of moving along the creek, we can cut the distance in half.”
Cole followed silently, not that he had much of a choice. He felt a chill run down his spine when they left the creek behind. Compounded by his distorted vision, the expansive forest, twisted in the darkness and moonlight, looked monstrous in its own right. The tall and narrow trees looked down at them, adorned in thorn-like leafy projections. Cole felt like the trees, or perhaps something else, was watching him.
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He was so busy looking at the trees, he didn’t see the pinecone resting deceptively on the barren soil. Cole stepped on it with his wounded foot. This time, he cried out in pain. Cole sank to the ground.
Will turned around, his face etched in anger. “Are you crazy? Zack just said the killer was headed in the direction of the lake. Do you want him to hear us?”
Cole mumbled an apology through gritted teeth. There were tears in his eyes from the pain.
“We don’t have time for this,” Will said. “Pick yourself up and come on.”
As Cole started to rise, he could swear he saw a shape move in the darkness not too far away. Without his glasses, he had no way to be sure. The terrain turned downward, and he followed Will down a slope. This time, he heard the footsteps behind them.
Cole quickened his pace until he caught up with Will. He quietly tugged on his friend’s shirt.
“Someone is following us,” he whispered. He felt Will’s body tense.
***
Will cast a glance over his shoulder at the hill from which they had just descended. Standing under the full light of the moon, the killer stared down at them.
Snarling, Will brought the shotgun up and pulled the trigger without bothering to aim the weapon. The murderer simply stood in place, watching as the bullet cleared the trees nowhere near him. In response, the killer withdrew a handgun and fired at him. The bullet tore through the tree next to Will. Panicking, Will turned and ran. He was exposed in the moonlight, and the Hunter was a much better shot than he was.
I have to find a place to hide, Will thought desperately.
A Sound In The Dark Page 13