He was in the back yard, on the far side of the garage.
Mom couldn’t see him here, couldn’t see the supersophisticated rocket launcher he’d assembled with a board, nails, and an unusually enterprising imagination. She couldn’t see the submachine gun, either, or the ammo, or the grenades, or the minitransmitter, or the bow and arrow that had gotten him through a week in the jungle. She couldn’t see how cleverly he’d camouflaged himself (although she would when it was time to wash up for lunch). She couldn’t see the bullets being laid down by the enemy copters that filled the sky, couldn’t hear the sharp whiz-thwack of lead all around him, the bam-boom-bam of explosives as they tore up the earth.
And there was absolutely no question she couldn’t see the piles of enemy soldiers he’d ass-sass-inated. But there they were, in twisted piles, littering the battlefield.
The ground assault was coming from the woods. Until now he’d had no trouble holding it off. He was good, Rambo was. A machine-gun burst here, a grenade there, not a wasted slug or rocket anywhere. How else could you survive alone against such odds?
But in the last ten minutes things had deteriorated. They were crazy, these enemy soldiers, and now they were pouring across open territory in one fearless human wave. On and on and on, with no end in sight. It was as if they had a factory for them back there in the woods, and they’d cranked the assembly line up to full.
He dodged behind a rock, then sat, trying to catch his breath. The blood was heavy in his head, and he felt it pounding behind his temples; when he closed his eyes, he could see stars. In a boyhood filled with hard playing, he couldn’t recall ever being so energized. He was afraid he might explode if he wasn’t careful.
He looked up.
As bad as it was on the ground, the aerial developments were much worse. In the last half hour they’d brought in those deadly helicopter gunships. Using infrared technology and some pretty advanced electronic snoopers, they’d found him with no problem.
Of course, this target was no wimp. This was Rambo, and until now Rambo had managed to keep the copters at a distance—long past the time a lesser soldier would have bitten the dust. But not even Rambo could hold out forever. His ammo was low, and he was going to have to find new cover until reinforcements arrived. He’d radioed for support but been unable to get through. His best bet would be to get to higher ground, where the reception was better.
Things were desperate.
He looked back toward the house, where his mother probably was still washing dishes or talking on the phone. He looked around the house, at the woods abutting the yard. A whisper of breeze laid its fingers upon his face. The weather had finally cleared after drizzle and fog that had seemed to last forever, and the morning was warm but not humid. Sunny, with birds chirping, the forest enticing—the kind of morning you wish they all could be.
For a moment the attack receded, and he ruminated, almost angrily: Bet they don’t let you play like this in kindergarten. Bet the smelly old teacher is just like Mommy, thinks guns are bad. Probably do nothing but coloring, sissy stuff like that.
A bullet zinging by his ear, so close he could feel the heat as it parted the air, jolted him back.
They were closing in. It was now or never.
Taking a huge breath, he struck out from the safety of the rock. Through the gate, into the field, hitting the deck when they started in with the shoulder-launched rockets. He slithered on his belly, to make himself as inconspicuous a target as possible.
He plunged through the briar into the woods and ran madly, his breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. Prickers grabbed at his clothing, branches snapped at his face, the undergrowth tried to get a hold on his feet, but he was too determined to let that slow him any. Deeper and deeper he went, the canopy of leaves blocking out the last glimpse of his house, sealing out the goodness of that incredible summer day. This new world was not only dim but cool and damp from the rain earlier in the week, and the earth had a distinctive rich smell, the smell of freshly sprouted mushrooms and crawly creatures under rotted logs.
He wasn’t supposed to come in this far.
How many zillion times had his mother told him that? How many lectures had she laid down about the dangers of Thunder Rise? As long as he could remember, she’d been lecturing him about the place. The woods were fifteen miles thick if you went straight up and over the rise, she’d warned—fifteen miles of uncharted deadfalls, bears and snakes and who-knows-what-else. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not only could you get lost up there, maybe lost overnight, but you could stumble into one of those caves that honeycombed Thunder Rise. Caves and crumbling mine shafts and water-filled quarries, the legacy of fools a hundred years ago who’d thought they could strike it rich. Only two years ago little Bobby Fulton had wandered up here. A week later they’d found him floating facedown in one of those deep, dark quarries.
Of course, Dad was the real reason she was so paranoid.
Dad had died on Thunder Rise. He’d been hunting that sparkling fall day, and he’d bagged his limit of grouse, had them in a feathery heap in the back of his Jeep, in fact, when it flipped—throwing him, then following behind a microsecond later in a perfectly matched trajectory. He’d bled to death, trapped there underneath his machine. Bled from a crushed skull, his blood matting the leaves in an ugly crimson splotch that had dried to a flaky crust by the time rescue workers pried his body free. Jimmy had just turned one, too young to know that Dad, seatbeltless and full of Jack Daniel’s, had been gunning that vehicle past fifty on a trail where ten would have been reckless.
Jimmy didn’t remember his father, didn’t remember ever remembering him, as far as he could tell. Dad was only half a plastic-framed wedding picture Mommy kept in a drawer.
Jimmy took cover behind a tree. The enemy was everywhere.
He could hear them crashing through the underbrush, breaking branches . . . only a few yards behind him . . . got to radio for reinforcements now, Rambo, or you’re gonna get yourself capchured . . . and you know what horrible things they do to you when you’re cap-chured . . . things with bamboo shoots and razors. . . .
He ran, squeezing off rounds of his submachine gun.
A half mile into the woods.
He could hear them, louder.
Without warning, he was into the clear. It was a road, a logging and mining road from another century. To Jimmy, it was a supply route for the enemy. And while there was a certain risk in traveling it, he could make better time.
He started up the road. Faster he pushed on, fancy-stepping to avoid rocks, deadfalls, twisting gullies left by the rain.
Suddenly another sound.
A roaring kind of sound.
At first he didn’t differentiate it from his game. Didn’t realize that he was hearing, not imagining, it.
A roaring.
From over there. Over there, by that ledge.
He stopped, frozen. The game was suddenly over, the helicopters and shoulder-launched rockets and enemy soldiers disappearing in an instant, chased away by a new feeling of fright.
That noise. Not exactly a roaring. More a growling.
Just the wind.
Or a black bear.
Rambo had flown the coop, leaving behind a little boy who right now was probably the biggest scaredy-cat in Berkshire County.
Jimmy felt something in his gut tighten. Felt a tingling in his nuts, as the big boys called what was between his legs.
For the first time he realized he was lost.
Don’t ever go up there. You do, and you’ll get the licking of your life. He could hear her words now, as clearly and loudly as if she were standing next to him.
Lost.
That terrifying word, “lost.”
Lost, the way Bobby Fulton got lost before they pulled his body out of the quarry. They said it had gotten dark on him all of a sudden. They said he’d wandered directionlessly then, crying the whole time, sobbing for his mommy and daddy, getting colder by the minute, not seei
ng the quarry (how could he, in the moonless night?), not knowing he was approaching the edge of it, not knowing he was about to drown when he stepped off into space. . . .
The growling brought him back. It was louder now, more vivid, closer, probably just around the side of that ledge. It was definitely not his imagination. It was definitely not part of the game. It was real, as real as his fright.
What is it?
It came to him in a flash.
Old Man Whipple and his dog.
Old Man Whipple, who eats little boys for breakfast.
Whipple was the only person who lived higher on Thunder Rise than the Ellises. No one knew what he did anymore; since his sister’s death in May, the only time he was seen was driving her beat-up Jeep on weekly shopping trips. But there were all sorts of rumors. According to one, he’d taken up devil worship. Another, started by the McDonalds—who claimed to have heard it from the horse’s mouth—had him digging in one of those mines, drawn by the old Indian legend about buried gold.
The most frightening of all was the one the big boys told. Like all the other rumors, that one had Whipple crazy as a loon—but this loon carried a shotgun loaded with rock salt, which he was only too willing to discharge at anyone foolish enough to venture within range. At the Y, Jimmy knew a kid who swore he’d been fired at when he was riding his dirt bike on an old logging road.
This logging road, Jimmy thought with dread.
“M-M-Mr. Whipple?”
Nothing. Only a sound like panting.
“M-M-Mr. Whipple?”
He tried to remember the dog’s name. It wouldn’t come. “Here, doggy, doggy, doggy . . .”
Panting.
“Mr. Whipple, I was only”—his mind was racing fast now for an excuse—”I was only looking for my dog!” It was a lie, but he hoped Mr. Whipple didn’t know he didn’t have a dog.
“He ran off and—”
The sound again, closer.
Jimmy tried to finish his sentence. “M-m-m-m . . .”
And then it was there, staring him in the face, its moist nose twitching as it savored his little boy’s scent.
A wolf.
It stood there, eyeing him, nostrils twitching excitedly at the fresh smell of fear. Almost casually the wolf opened its mouth. Two rows of perfect white teeth, each as sharp as Rambo’s knife. Two gums, black as the nights on Thunder Rise, a driplet of saliva from one corner, the leftover of its last meal . . .
Jimmy didn’t remember running.
He didn’t remember the paralysis that had frozen his legs thawing, and then his stumbling, falling, getting up, continuing on, cutting his face, scraping his elbow, his only navigation luck and the fact that it was easier to run downhill than up.
He only remembered his mother bending over him, looking into his face with eyes that finally could register relief.
He was on the living room couch, where Ginny had carried him after he’d come screaming into the yard, then collapsed near the garage. For an endless terrifying moment, the period of his hyperventilation and eyelid-fluttering, she was sure he was dying. They had gone through her mother’s mind with frightening speed, the entire catalog of possible afflictions: seizure; rattlesnake bite; allergic reaction to bee sting; heart attack. Heart attack. She’d read in Good Housekeeping once about a boy her son’s age who’d died from one. Extremely rare, but it happened.
Please God, she’d prayed. Not him. He all I have left. Jimmy tried to raise his head.
“It’s OK,” she said, gently forcing his head back to the pillow. She smoothed his brow again with a towel, moist and still cool from the ice cubes.
Jimmy looked at her, his eyes glassy.
“It’s OK, sweetheart.”
He struggled to speak. She put her finger to her lips, then his. “Shhhh,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything.”
But he had to.
It was coming back now, coming back in all its 3-D, full-color horror. It—it . . . He had to warn her. It was still out there. For all he knew, it had followed him and was outside the house this very instant, watching, waiting. Stalking.
“W—”
“Shhh.”
“It was a wolf.”
“Shhh,” she repeated. “There are no wolves in Morgantown.”
“But I saw it. Big . . . teeth . . .” His eyes filled with tears.
“Jimmy, it must have been your imagination.”
“It wasn’t my ‘magination,” he said.
“There haven’t been wolves in Berkshire County since the Pilgrims,” Ginny said patiently.
“But I saw it, Mommy,” Jimmy insisted. “I—I know I wasn’t supposed to be up there, but I was. I’m sorry, Mommy, but I got lost, and—and I saw it. I saw it.”
“OK, sweetheart,” she said. “OK.”
“It was a wolf.”
It had to have been a dog, Ginny decided, its size and ferocity magnified by Jimmy’s imagination. Probably Whipple’s dog, the old fool. Last she knew, he had some kind of mutt . . . a mangy cross between a German Shepherd and a Collie, wasn’t it? Jimmy was lucky he hadn’t been bitten.
“You probably saw a dog, sweetheart,” she said gently.
Jimmy did not answer. A tremor, barely discernible, was passing through the house, and he could feel the couch rattle, ever so slightly. Ginny did not notice, or if she did, she thought it was only her son, his body momentarily reliving a nightmare.
In three seconds the tremor had passed.
Wolf, Jimmy thought, his fear catching in his throat.
Wolf and he’s gonna get me. Mommy, too.
As his mother painted his elbows with Mercurochrome, he started to cry all over again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Monday, August 25
“Dad?” the little girl in the Mustang said to the driver. She was a five-and-a-half-year-old, large for her age, with curly brown hair she kept tamed (temporarily, at least) with matched barrettes.
“Yes, hon?” Brad answered as he shifted into fourth. He checked his watch. Ten-thirty A.M. Right on schedule. He’d chosen this time in hopes of avoiding the worst of Manhattan’s rush hour. Judging by the traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway’s northbound lane—steady, belligerent as always, but moderately light—he’d been successful. Throw in an hour for lunch and gas, and they’d be in Morgantown by four, no sweat.
“Can I have a pet?” The childless yuppie who owned their apartment building hadn’t allowed them.
“You sure can, honey,” Brad said. “Any kind of pet you want.”
“How about a . . . camel?” Abbie laughed. For some reason, she thought camels were the funniest-looking animals.
“One hump or two?”
“Two!”
“You’ve got it,” Brad said. “We’ll keep it in the living room, how’s that?”
“But how would we get him in the front door? Camels are very big. They’re the most hugest animals you ever saw.” She knew, having made three trips to the Bronx Zoo in the last year, once with her nursery school, the other two times with Brad.
“You’re right,” he said, pretending to sigh. “We’d have to keep him on the front lawn, I guess. Or on the roof.”
“That’s silly, Dad. Maybe we could get a barn.”
“Maybe.”
“Then I could feed him and ride him to school.”
“I doubt seriously they’d let you have a camel in kindergarten.”
“Yeah, I guess not. What I’d really like is a dog,” Abbie said enthusiastically. “I was only kidding about the camel. Can I have a dog, Dad?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, teasing her. The truth was, Brad was New York’s biggest sucker when it came to his daughter. And Abbie knew it.
“Please?”
“Well . . .”
“Please-oh-please-oh-please?” If she hadn’t been buckled into her seat, this was when she would have thrown her arms around him, successfully concluding the pre-acquisition ritual.
“Well . . . I think
a dog can be arranged,” he finally said. It was already near the top of the agenda, right after shelter and school.
“Thanks, Dad! Thanks millions!”
“You’re welcome, hon.”
“You know why I want a doggy?”
“Why?”
“Because dogs are smarter than cats. I think it’s because they have bigger brains, don’t you?”
“Could be. Dogs are more loyal, too.”
“What does ‘loyal’ mean?” she asked thoughtfully.
What your mother wasn’t, he thought with sudden, surprising bitterness. So she wasn’t so very far from his thoughts after all. “It means they’re your best friend,” he said. What your mother isn’t.
“Oh. Well, I think I’d like a Collie. I saw one on Mister Rogers. Are Collies loyal?”
“Very. You’ve seen Lassie, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t like it. It’s in black-and-white.”
“That used to be one of my favorite shows when I was your age. All the shows were black-and-white then.”
“Collies are awful big.” Abbie cut him off.
“Bigger than you, Apple Guy,” Brad said, calling her by nickname, which had evolved from her eighteen-month-old attempt to pronounce her full name, Abigail. No one else, not even her mother, ever used it. Hearing him say it almost always made her feel special inside.
“Probably eat as much as a camel.”
“Almost.” He smiled.
They were quiet for a while after that. The Mustang was packed to the dome light with stuff you’d be crazy to trust to the movers—his word processor and printer, the TV, the VCR, bank documents, his leather flight jacket, the best china, a milk crate of Abbie’s most treasured books and dolls. Tucking a Popple under one arm, she busied herself with her favorite volume, a Little Golden Book about dinosaurs. Abbie traveled well, had since she was an infant. If she got tired, she wouldn’t complain. She’d put her head back and snooze. Despite what she’d been through . . . what they’d been through . . . she was an easy kid. A great kid. Brad loved her with an intensity that sometimes frightened him.
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