No problem.
She forced herself through a mental inventory to see if she had damaged anything.
Her first concern was her back. She recalled the long weeks in agony, the pain shooting up her spine, the nights when she had to sleep in a recliner because there was no comfortable position to be found anywhere in bed.
But there was no back pain.
Thank God.
What there was, was a snuffling sound behind her and a nasty rash of goose bumps creeping up where the pain should have been. She lifted her head ever so slowly and turned to the rear of the cabin, where she got a fleeting glimpse of another big black nose, poking around the logs.
She managed to catch her breath but let it out instantly as the sow's cub came sauntering around to see what all the excitement was about.
2:51
DAWN MADE CERTAIN THE volume on the radio was way down before depressing the talk button. She wasn't sure if Micky was hearing her anymore but she desperately needed to communicate with someone.
El was still in Clive's workshed. She could hear his voice but couldn't make out what he was saying.
She pressed the transmit button and whispered Micky's name.
Nothing.
She experimented by turning up the volume. Just a hair.
Nothing.
Outside the wind whistled under the eaves, and the day was gloomier than ever. Dawn thought of her mother, back in their cabin, surrounded by cold and darkness, and tears stung her eyes.
She was alone as she had never been in her life. Her mother was the only family Dawn had known for years and she felt deserted and betrayed even as she experienced a deeper guilt than she had ever known could exist.
I didn't do anything to help her.
When El was stabbing the knife into her back, I didn't even scream.
She had just stood there, motionless, sucking in her breath, terrified, useless. When he'd murdered Howard she had been equally worthless. She knew that Terry or Howard would have sacrificed their own lives to save her and she had done absolutely nothing for them.
A tiny voice argued that there was nothing that she could have done. That anything she'd tried to do would only have gotten her killed too. But it was a small voice and ineffective against the massive guilt welling up inside her.
El began to take on new dimensions.
Dawn began to wonder if El had some kind of magical powers.
Look how easily he'd killed her mother and Howard and Rita.
How he knew to wait for Clive.
And what was he doing to them now? Why was he cutting them up like that?
It seemed like some kind of sick ritual.
“Micky?” she whispered into the radio. “Are you still there?”
From the store below came the eerie sound of El, humming a tune.
2:55
THE CUB EYED MICKY curiously. He snuffled through the garbage on the ground around her while, behind her, Micky heard the alarming sound of the steps creaking beneath the massive weight of the sow. Dawn's voice screeched from the radio in her pocket.
Micky couldn't reach for it. She was afraid to move or breathe.
She couldn't believe the situation.
She pictured Aaron coming upon the scene and laughing.
A bear behind her. A bear in front of her. And she was lying in a pile of garbage.
Add to that the fact that Aaron was lying dead up the trail.
Terry and Howard lying dead down the trail.
And Dawn calling on the radio to announce that El was mutilating his victims.
Micky didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
She wanted to jump up and scream at the two bears to get the fuck out of her way because she really didn't have time for this shit. A part of her mind told her to go ahead. That it just might work. Bears were known to back down when faced with a noisy, aggressive opponent.
But not a sow with a cub.
Micky knew that if she stood up right now, if she made any move that the mother took to be in any way threatening to her offspring, she would die.
She turned her head to watch the cub but she sensed the sow right behind her. The big bear was close enough that Micky could hear its rumbling breath. Close enough that she got a good whiff of the rancid smell of the animal. She had heard that bears stunk but she never expected to get close enough to one to actually experience it. The odor was a mixture of rotten garbage and feces and wet soil.
Aaron said that some bears were like dogs. They liked to roll in anything that stank. Now she had direct proof. The cub dropped down on all fours right in front of her face and rolled over in the snow, dredging up half-empty food cans and plastic bread bags. He rolled back over onto his stomach, his nose inches from hers. At that range, with his canines exposed, he didn't look at all cute and cuddly.
Something sharp nudged the nape of Micky's neck.
2:56
MARTY LIFTED A PILLOWCASE from the ground and dusted off the snow. The rest of the laundry sculpted odd white patterns on the Glorianus front lawn. Stan reached down and retrieved a sheet. When he shook the clinging wet snow from it, Marty let out a low gasp.
“Shit,” said Stan.
They both stared at the bloody boot print that desecrated the perfect white of the cotton.
Both of them dropped the linens and lifted their rifles. They turned back to face the dark windows of the cabin, which suddenly seemed to have a much more foreboding stare. Marty lowered himself into a crouch and hurried closer to the wall, where he wouldn't be a good target. He waved impatiently at Stan, who was still looking left and right, peering inside. Stan nodded, then slipped over beside Marty.
“You want to get your ass shot off?” hissed Marty.
“I didn't see anything.”
“Neither did they,” said Marty, nodding back toward the laundry.
“Yeah,” muttered Stan.
They glared at each other for a minute, Marty knowing that he had to take charge and also knowing that Stan was going to argue with him.
Marty tried to think where the voice had come from. It sounded like a woman and it had barely carried through the gathering storm.
“You think he's inside?” said Stan. Both of them knew who he was. That wasn't a bear track on the sheet. And Terry would never have left her linens out in the snow.
This had to be El's doing.
He was Dawn and Terry's closest neighbor.
The shots had come from this area.
And nobody else in the whole world was as fucking nuts as El.
Maybe Dawn or Terry had gotten away and El was after them or maybe he had taken one or both of them back to his cabin. But then whose blood was on the sheet?
Or maybe he was inside.
Maybe he was wounded.
Maybe it was El's blood.
Maybe a lot of things. He and Stan couldn't leave the cabin without finding out first if El was in there or if Terry or Dawn were in there and needed their help. But Marty didn't want to shout to find out. What if El wasn't inside but close by? They'd just be alerting him to their presence.
“We need to find out if anyone's inside,” said Stan, loudly.
Marty cuffed him on the mouth.
“Hey!” Stan reared back, his face reddening.
“Shut up!” rasped Marty. “Do you want to let him know where we are?”
“You shouldn't have done that.”
Marty skittered along the cabin to the door. He reached out and pushed it in. Stan hurried past the opening to the other side of the jamb.
At least he was smart enough not to deliberately make a target of himself.
The door creaked slowly open.
Marty listened.
The wind camouflaged any noises from the cabin's interior. But a wide smear of blood started at the threshold.
Stan's jaw dropped.
The shit had definitely hit the fan in McRay.
2:57
MICKY STRAINED TO HEAR.
But
the snuffling of both bears, the pounding of her heart, and the crying of the wind was closer and more immediate than the voice that she thought she'd heard back down the trail.
It sounded like a man's voice.
Had El slipped out of the store when Dawn wasn't looking? Was he coming back to the cabin? She pictured herself caught between two grizzly bears and a serial killer.
But surely he hadn't had time.
She closed her eyes and started to count seconds between breaths, forcing her lungs to take in only enough oxygen to keep her body running, and willing her heart to slow. She relaxed her hands and wriggled her toes in her boots.
The snow chilled her left cheek and she focused on that rather than the stink of the two bears’ breath, steaming in her nostrils.
Then she felt the sow licking the back of her neck.
She opened her eyes in time to see the cub's long black tongue slap her cheek.
It tickled.
She fought down laughter, feeling her tortured diaphragm wanting to howl.
Salt.
They liked her sweat. Like two giant puppies licking their master's face. The tickling sensation and the absurdity of her situation were almost more than she could stand.
2:58
WELL SOMEBODY MUST HAVE gone batshit crazy.” Stan's face was white as a sheet but he had come back inside and at least Marty wasn't having to listen to him heaving into the snow anymore.
Marty knelt beside Terry's body. He had lit one of the mantel lamps and placed it on the counter but from that position it threw jagged black shadows that made the ugly scene even more macabre. Terry's torso looked as though someone had decided to make sushi out of it and the floor was thick with sticky blood. Marty turned up his nose at the smell of urine and feces that he knew was the inevitable result of violent death. He had never been this close to a human victim, though.
Howard lay crumpled beside the woodstove like a wet towel. There wasn't nearly so much blood around him as there was around Terry. But the wide swath that led back to the door showed just how much blood the old man had lost. Marty stood up and tried to stop himself from shaking.
“El did this,” said Stan, swallowing the huge lump in his throat. “Man. He's fucking crazy.”
“Yeah.” Marty couldn't quite get his voice to work.
“He cut their goddamned eyes out!” Stan's own eyes were wide as saucers.
“We're going to have to kill the son of a bitch,” said Marty. He noticed that Stan's knuckles were white on the grip of his rifle.
“Oh, yeah,” said Stan.
“Calm down, Stan,” said Marty.
“Yeah,” said Stan. “I'm calming down, now. Getting calm.”
“Breathe.” Marty took a deep breath and let it out loud enough for Stan to hear.
Stan took one deep breath. Then another. A little color seeped back into his cheeks.
“We ought to cover them up,” said Marty.
“Yeah,” said Stan. “Right.”
But there was nothing inside the cabin to cover the bodies with. They went outside and shuffled around, finding first a sheet that wasn't bloodied and then a blanket. They placed the blanket over Terry, gently draping it from her feet to her head, then put the sheet down over Howard.
Stan was clearly in a hurry to get back outside. But when Marty moved over beside him, Stan didn't budge.
“What?” said Marty, waiting patiently.
“I don't know. I just feel like we shouldn't leave them in the cold like this.”
Marty knew what he meant. He and Stan were both in shock. Their minds weren't working right. Actually, the best thing to do would probably be to let the bodies get cold.
“We should build a better fire before we leave,” said Stan.
“No,” said Marty. “We don't have time. We don't know where El is or who else is alive. And, besides, they can't feel anything.”
But Marty could tell by Stan's body language that this was going to be another sticking point.
“It isn't right we leave them here like this,” insisted Stan.
Marty considered shoving Stan out of the way and just leaving. He knew that Stan wouldn't stay long in the cabin by himself. The trouble was he agreed with Stan. It didn't feel right to just leave them like this. He knew that it was insane, stoking a fire in the stove for dead people, but reason didn't have anything to do with it. Dead people didn't appreciate the flowers at their funerals either. But you still put them on the casket.
“All right,” said Marty, leaning his rifle beside the door. “Let's get some wood.”
3:00
DAWN HEARD THE FRONT door open and close and felt a draft slip beneath the bed. El had gone outside.
She knew that he wasn't tricking her. For one thing, she was reasonably sure that he didn't know she was inside the store and, for another, she'd heard him still mumbling to himself when he shut the door behind him. She clasped the radio tight against her cheek and whispered into it.
“Micky, are you there?” She had the volume turned up just high enough that a mouse wouldn't have been able to hear it five feet away.
But there was no reply.
She wondered if the other radio had gone dead. Hers hadn't been on very long, but she had no idea how long the batteries were good for. Or perhaps Micky had moved somewhere out of range. Or she'd set the radio down and gone off to do something and now she couldn't hear it. Whatever the reason, Dawn had now lost contact with the only other human being in the village she'd been certain was alive—other than El.
The gray light of afternoon was barely able to cut through the thickening snow and filter down to the floorboards. Her entire world was gray. She stared at the coiled springs in front of her face, smelling the age-old dust that felt so much cleaner in her lungs than the things she had been smelling all day.
What if something had happened to Micky?
I need to know what El's doing now.
If he's leaving, maybe I can get away.
But wasn't she better off just staying where she was?
After all, El hadn't found her and it seemed as though he wasn't going to. He probably still believed that he had wounded her and she was out in the woods somewhere, hurt or dead. Better to stay where she was and wait for help to arrive.
But when would that be?
And who?
Marty or Stan?
She didn't know the pair that well but what she did know of them didn't fill her with hope. They were like an old married couple, always bickering. They acted more like comedians than heroes. And they were probably all tucked away in their cabins, waiting out the storm beside their woodstoves, happily ignorant of what was going on.
Who then?
Micky?
She'd put all her faith in Micky and now Micky wasn't answering.
Damon?
Damon hated guns and, besides, she hadn't seen him in days.
Aaron?
The old man was more enigma than person, and he, too, lived far up the valley and didn't show himself much. And he was old. Real old.
Rich, the mail pilot?
He wouldn't be arriving for hours and El might murder him too.
She thought that she could probably make it through the night under the bed.
But what if El decided to spend the night in the store?
What if he slept in Clive and Rita's bed?
What if she lay awake all night, listening to El breathing, terrified to let herself drift off, lest she make some small noise and awaken to see him leaning under the bed, staring at her with those cold eyes? She wondered if he slept in his sunglasses.
She pictured him like that, lying back, sound asleep, no way to tell if his eyes were open or shut. That had to be why he wore them. Not to protect himself from the sun or the glare of the snow. Not to pretend to be anyone that he wasn't.
He wore the glasses like a mask.
So that he'd always look like he was awake.
Like he was always watching you.
El was outside somewhere and she had to find out what he was doing. If he left the store, she was going to look for some other place to hide. Better to bundle up and stay in the woods than here. She didn't want to think about hiding in one of the cabins, never knowing if El was going to show up and beat the door in.
With the day growing darker by the minute, Dawn once again forced herself out of her hiding place.
3:05
MICKY CLOSED HER EYES and prayed that Dawn was okay.
The cub's saliva had chilled enough that a paper-thin layer of white was stinging her skin. The layer underneath melted slowly from body heat, and trickled infuriatingly in an icy stream down her cheek. The sow had stopped licking the back of her neck and had begun snuffling at her, shoving her muzzle into Micky's ribs. Several times Micky felt the sharp pressure of a claw point through her clothes.
But there was no tearing sound, no agonizing ripping through her flesh. The sow was just testing.
Micky opened her eyes again, just a slit, and saw that the cub was sitting on his haunches, regarding her and his mother curiously. He saw Micky's eye open and for just an instant Micky feared that he was going to tell his mother. She managed to squelch a chuckle—any movement or noise on her part might be all it took to turn a funny moment into a tragedy.
The radio had been silent ever since Dawn's last harrowing message. Micky hoped that the girl was well hidden and had the sense to remain where she was and stay off the radio. But she knew what it must be costing Dawn that no one had responded. She remembered her own helplessness at Dawn's age. Wondering if anyone would ever come.
Feeling betrayed.
And alone.
Feeling hunted.
Micky remembered staring out through louvered closet doors in her parents’ store, as the man in the ski mask stalked her. The minutes like hours. Sweat dripping into her eyes. Breathing through tight lips. Everything seemed out of focus that day except his mirror glasses.
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