by sara12356
This was no cougar, no pack of coyotes on the prowl.
“Who’s there?” he shouted, his voice hoarse, somewhat shaking. At another quiet yet somehow ominous rustle, he pivoted and caught sight of something to his left, moving swiftly among the shadows and tree trunks—large and definitely upright, bipedal, it was little more than a fleeting glimpse, but still distinctive.
He thought of the thing he thought he’d seen on the night of his crash, the bipedal creature that had been scuttling across the road, that had screamed at him in furious challenge less than a second before the Jeep had slammed headlong into it. Not a bear, he thought. It wasn’t a bear and it wasn’t a cougar, and unless it was my imagination, I don’t think it was human, either.
“Shit.” Andrew heard more rustling and then turned, began to run. Based on what he’d heard, there were at least three of the things in the woods—one behind him, one on either side, all moving in on him quickly, deliberately. And he had no intention of sticking around to find out why.
His boot soles skittered for uncertain purchase in the slippery carpet of leaves and brambles. Twice, he lost his footing, falling onto his knees, his ass, and he scrambled upright as fast as he could. When at last, he came to a stop, he pressed himself against the broad trunk of a pine tree, winded. He wanted to gasp, to gulp greedily to reclaim his breath, but pressed his lips together instead, listening.
Did I lose them? he wondered. He’d cut a zig-zagging, erratic path through the woods on purpose in the hopes of shaking off anyone who’d tried to follow him.
He poked his head around the side of the tree, listened and waited.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi
He didn’t even make it to ten-Mississippi before he heard footsteps crashing through the brush, coming up fast.
“Shit!” Andrew ducked out from behind the tree and ran again, pumping his arms, his feet pounding against the muddy ground. He ran like he’d never in his entire life, until the frantic cadence of his heart left him feeling as if it would leap clear out of his chest, until his breath was so ragged, he was nearly gagging. He ran until he felt something catch against his ankle, something that drew abruptly snug as he bolted past, and in an instant, just as he realized what it was…
Snare line!
…he was jerked off his feet, whipping ass over elbows into the air, caught in a rope trap that left him swinging in a wild, swooping arc at least twenty feet in the air.
“Shit!” Andrew screamed, because everything in his line of sight was now topsy-turvy, looping and circling, and all of the blood was rushing into his face, his brain.
“Shit!” he screamed again, his rifle tumbling from his hands to the ground below. It hit the forest floor and bounced off the carpeting of leaves and pine needles. He’d chambered a round earlier, and now it discharged with a sudden cloud of smoke and a thunderous BOOM that seemed deafening in the otherwise quiet woods. In its aftermath, as it reverberated through the trees and against the low-lying clouds overhead, Andrew heard the rustle of footsteps again, this time running away. From his vantage, upside down and dangling, he caught sight of four figures, little more than shadows, darting away from the clearing below, fanning out into the woods in opposing directions.
“Shit!” he screamed a third time, as he careened face-first into something dangling upside from the tree next to him. He didn’t even realize what it was at first. All he knew was that he struck it headlong and it stunk like all hell, pungent like soured milk or some putrefied sort of cheese.
Andrew put his hands out to push it away from him, and as he swung back in a wide arc, he could see it now—the desiccated remains of a human being likewise strung up by the remains of its ankle. Its parchment-like flesh had peeled back and fallen away, exposing blackened tissue and underlying bone beneath. The head and torso had decomposed enough to leave the skull almost entirely exposed, open and empty eye sockets glaring, its toothy, skeletal mouth hanging wide. Scraps of hair, scraggly tufts poked out of what was left of its scalp, and as Andrew swung back toward it, helpless to stop himself, screaming the whole time, he could see the corpse wore the tattered remains of an Army uniform.
He yowled in disgusted horror as he plowed into it again, sending it twisting and turning by the short length of its tether. The recent heavy rains had left the corpse heavy and sodden and this time, when he pushed away from it, his hands punched through the husk of its chest cavity. His fingers splayed into damp, spongy flesh beneath and released a tumble of wayward beetles and maggots, the last stragglers of what had surely once been a ravenous infestation.
“Jesus Christ,” Andrew cried, flapping his hands wildly, trying to get the putrid flesh, the slimy remains off him. He felt his stomach wrench and he gulped, choking on bile, struggling not to vomit.
Calm down, he told himself. Get a grip or you’re going to die.
He forced himself to stop struggling, to hold still, and when he did, he slowly stopped swinging. The dead man beside him stopped eventually swinging, as well, and Andrew struggled not to look at it again. If he did, he knew it would only rekindle his panic.
Looking up—or in this case, down—Andrew saw the length of rope wrapped vice-like around his ankle, knotted expertly above him in the tree. From his limited vantage, it looked like a simple snare design.
Okay, he told himself. I can do this.
Jamming his hand into his right hip pocket, he fumbled for his folding knife. Curling his fingers around it, he slipped it loose, moving slowly, carefully. Because if I drop it, I’m seriously fucked, he thought, sparing a glance at the dead man to his left. Just like that poor son of a bitch.
The soldier had been wearing a set of camouflage fatigues. Clearly in a state of advanced decomposition, there was no way it was Thomas O’Malley.
Then who is it? Andrew wondered. Like the body itself, there wasn’t much left of the uniform. In fact, it looked to Andrew as if something had been feeding on both, ripping them apart with teeth and claws. Anything like a name or rank insignia patch had long since been torn away. Both of the skeleton’s arms were missing, along with most of its sleeves, and its abdomen—which Andrew had put his hands through—had been torn open at some earlier point in time, likely eviscerating the man.
He caught sight of something on what was left of the uniform shoulder, a silver pin, a single bar. An officer’s insignia, he realized. What does that stand for? A lieutenant? A captain?
Andrew unfolded his knife, then tucked the blade between his teeth. Furrowing his brows, mustering his strength, he uttered a grunt and tried to sit up in mid-air. Hands outstretched, he tried to reach his feet, his fingers splayed wide and groping madly for the rope around his ankle. The first three or four tries, all he succeeded in doing was sending himself in another set of concentric, swinging spirals above the ground and exhausting himself in the process.
Dangling limply, he struggled to reclaim his breath. Shit, he thought, both because the task was proving harder than he’d anticipated and because he knew if he dangled upside for too long, he’d risk blacking out or suffocating.
I can do this, he thought, brows knitting again. He forced himself to move, sitting up in the air, struggling against gravity’s relentless pull. He pawed at the rope, his fingertips flapping against his heel, and then with a hoarse, strangled cry, he made himself reach further, strain harder. This time, he caught hold of his boot laces, and from there, got a clumsy but firm grasp on the rope. Snatching the knife from his mouth with his free hand, he clenched his teeth and set about sawing frantically at the snare line. The muscles in his abdomen began to cramp, and the strain spread from there through his back and thighs. His palms had grown slick with sweat, the knife handle slippery as a result.
I can do this, he told himself, forcing the knife back and forth, driving the serrated edge through the rope. I can do this, goddamn it, I can do this.
When the rope snapped, he felt the tension abruptly slacken, then he plummeted to the g
round. He landed hard, luckily catching the brunt of the impact against his backpack. It was still enough force to knock the wind from himself, and his head snapped back, rapping soundly against the butt of his fallen rifle. His mind went murky, his vision fading to black. Just as his eyelids fluttered shut, he caught a momentary glimpse of the soldier above him, gaping at him, eyeless and slack-jawed.
A first lieutenant’s bar, he thought dimly before passing out. That’s what it is.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He wasn’t out long, to judge by the quality of sunlight seeping through both tree crowns and clouds when he opened his eyes again. Raindrops had made their way through orange and amber leaves, past pine needles and sap-sticky cones to spatter against his face in a slow, steadying progression that had eventually drawn him out of unconsciousness.
At least, his first dimly aware thought was that they were raindrops. When he blinked dazedly skyward, bleary and bewildered, he watched something small, white and pellet-like, plop down from above, falling straight at his head.
What the…? he thought as it hit his mouth, bouncing off his lips into the leaves.
His head swam as he sat up and he closed his eyes against a momentary swell of vertigo. He felt something bounce of his head and frowned, glancing up again. What the hell is that?
Looking down at the ground beside him, he realized.
“Oh, Jesus,” he gulped, knocking the maggot that lay twitching in the leaves near his hip away. They were falling from the corpse that dangled almost directly above him, tumbling one by one like lemmings off a cliff through the hole he’d accidentally punched in the body’s midriff.
He felt another one hit him on the crown of his head, then slip down through his hair, sliding beneath the collar of his shirt. With a disgusted yowl, he scrambled to his feet, dancing in a clumsy circle while he yanked the hem loose from his pants and shook the grub out. Next, he swatted at his hair, his face, anyplace he’d felt the maggots landing as he’d roused from unconsciousness, then everyplace else just for good measure.
Jesus, they were falling on me. One of them almost landed in my mouth! And then, in his mind, he could picture what would have happened had his mouth been open—the maggot hitting not the closed seam of his lips, but his tongue instead, falling straight down the back of his throat. He felt his stomach heave at this and gulped, clapping his hand to his mouth. Turning in a stumbling pirouette, he grabbed hold of a nearby sapling for support and threw up into the weeds.
“That is fucking gross,” he wheezed, spitting violently once he’d spewed the contents of his gut. He wiped his lips on his sleeve, then wiped them again just to be sure.
Since finding himself dangling upside down in a tree next to a rotting corpse, he hadn’t given much thought to the people in the forest who had chased him. In fact, up to that moment, he’d pretty much reprioritized and forgotten them—that is, until he heard a rustling from the underbrush behind him. Startled, he whirled, eyes wide as he stared out into the ambiguously quiet, shadow-draped woods.
He heard another crunch, then a grey squirrel scampered between the trunks of two pines. With a shaky sigh and even less certain laugh, Andrew relaxed, shoving his hair back from his face.
“You little bastard,” he told the squirrel. For its part, it blinked at him for a moment, cheeks distended with an acorn, then it turned and hopped away.
Ducking to avoid any more kamikaze maggots, Andrew retrieved his fallen rifle. Opting to leave it in hand rather than sling it out of reach over his shoulder, he spared a last look at the sorry bastard still strung up in the tree. If his iPhone had still worked, with its built-in GPS and mapping applications, he could have marked the spot—literally—where he now stood so he could find it again. As it was, he squatted and shrugged his way out of his backpack, opening the front compartment and fishing out the maps Dani had given him. He didn’t have a pencil, but a quick glance around revealed a poke plant nearby, its thick stalks laden with ripened, purple berries. He picked one, crushed it between his index finger and thumb, then marked approximately on Dani’s map where he’d found the snare. Or, more accurately, it had found him.
Because I’ll have to bring her back here, he thought, stuffing the map back into the bag, then slipping his arms through the straps, shouldering it once more. And probably Prendick, too. They’ll know who this guy is. Maybe they can figure out what happened to him, how he wound up out here.
Another rustle drew his gaze again to the shadows. This time, he didn’t see any woodland creatures scurrying about to ease that sudden, anxious dread knotting in his stomach. Time to get the hell out of Dodge, he thought, stuffing the map back into the bag, then slipping his arms through the straps, shouldering it once more.
****
The hike back to the compound wasn’t the fastest he’d ever completed, but it came pretty damn close, especially considering he kept whipping around to look behind him, or to either side whenever he’d hear—or think he heard—a suspicious sound. Thankfully, however, whatever footsteps had pursued him off the trail and into the woods didn’t follow him out again, and with the help of his compass, he was able to retrace his path accurately enough to reach the facility’s perimeter yard once more.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Dani said when she caught sight of him at the garage door.
“They found O’Malley,” he tried.
“He wasn’t even missing,” she said. “He’d been asleep in his room. Said he wasn’t feeling good. Oh, well.” She laughed. “At least you got some exercise out of the…” Her voice and smile withered when she drew close enough to get a good look at him. His clothes were dirty and mud-spattered, and a rather putrescent stink lingered around him thanks to his trussed up neighbor in the woods. Her nose wrinkled slightly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you smell.”
He told her what had happened, the foot pursuit through the forest, the snare trap he’d stumbled upon, the decaying soldier left hanging upside down in the tree.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped when he finished. “He was a soldier? You’re sure of that?”
Andrew nodded. “I couldn’t see a name patch, but he was definitely wearing a uniform. And he had an officer’s insignia on him, one of those little silver pins. A first lieutenant’s bar.”
At this, Dani frowned, puzzled. “That doesn’t make any sense. There aren’t any lieutenants here. Not anymore, not since they sent Carter home to Arkansas.” Heading for the door, she said, “Come on. We need to go find Major Prendick.” She cut him a glance and a wry smirk. “You keep downwind, okay?”
He frowned. “Ha, ha.”
****
“Well, now, that’s quite the story you’ve come up with, Mister Braddock.” Prendick seemed completely blithe, even dubious about Andrew’s account of what had happened.
Which, needless to say, pissed Andrew off. “It’s not a story and I didn’t come up with it. It happened. I told you. Someone or something chased me through the forest.”
“Or something,” Prendick repeated pointedly.
Andrew nodded. “At least four of them. I was following the footpath Dani told me you use for patrols, then they forced me off it, into the trees. They followed me for at least a quarter of a mile.”
Crossing his arms, but not losing his bemused, aloof expression, Prendick regarded him. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Because they knew where the snare trap was. They were herding me toward it.”
Prendick rolled his eyes.
“I saw them,” Andrew snapped. “Moving through the trees, just for a second, but they looked a lot like the thing I told you I saw the night I wrecked my Jeep.”
“Mister Braddock,” Prendick began.
“I’m telling the truth, goddamn it,” Andrew snapped, planting his foot on the edge of Prendick’s desk and yanking up his pant cuff. “Look at my leg. You think I did this to myself?” He wrenched down his sock, revealing an angry red welt line encircling his ankle, the painful im
print left by the snare line.
Prendick frowned. “What I think, Mister Braddock, is that you hit your head pretty hard when you fell. And what I know for a fact is that in this forest, it’s easy to get turned around, mixed up. If you wander off the path, don’t recognize your surroundings, it’s easy to jump at shadows, every unfamiliar sound.”
“I work in forests like this pretty much every day of my life,” Andrew argued. “I wasn’t lost or imagining things.”
“Well, I’m at a loss to explain it.” Prendick threw up his hands. “Because you’re saying you saw a dead soldier out there in the woods, and I’m telling you we’re not missing any. We’re all present or otherwise accounted for, and this is a brand new facility. We’re the only unit that’s ever been stationed here.”
Any pretense of good humor had drained from his face and voice, and he glared at Andrew now, as bristled and close to angry as Andrew had yet to see him.
“Major, if I may,” Dani ventured, her voice hesitant, her tone courteous and deferent. “Upon our arrival here, sir, we were briefed on the possibility of encountering narcotics dealers out in the woods. These mountains have a reputation for hiding marijuana crops and methamphetamine labs. We were warned about the risks of booby traps, sir, set to protect their boundaries—nail-pits, pipe bombs, that sort of thing.”
“I remember the briefing, Specialist Santoro,” Prendick told her dryly. “I was the one who delivered it.”
“Maybe that’s what Andrew ran into, sir,” Dani said. Cutting Andrew a wide-eyed, tentative glance, she added, “Maybe this body he said he saw wasn’t really one at all, but some kind of effigy, like a scarecrow, that’s meant to keep people away.”
“No.” Andrew shook his head. “It wasn’t anything like that. It was a body. I stuck my hands through it. It was half-rotted, full of maggots and it stunk like hell. You can still smell it on me.”