by Rick Hautala
“Take that!” Mark shouted, laughing hysterically as the creature, stunned, staggered backward, the side of its face seeping blood.
“Come on! Come and get it! I’ve got some more for you! You want it?”
Mark took a few steps forward, jiggling the rifle threateningly in his grip.
The creature, while hurt, was far from down and out. With a roar that completely masked the raging sound of the river, it lunged again at Mark, slashing at him with clawed hands.
Mark stepped back just in time, swung the rifle back behind him, and brought it up and over, like a frenzied woodsman trying to split a log. The butt of the rifle smashed down hard on the top of the beast’s skull, caving it in like an eggshell. Blood, brains, and chips of bone exploded in a red shower into the river. The intelligent glow in the creature’s eyes suddenly glazed over into a staring, vacant expression of dulled amazement. With a bubbling growl, it collapsed into the river and was swept away by the swift current.
“Fuckin’-A!” Mark wailed, waving his arms above his head.
Tears of relief poured from his eyes as he looked up at the sky and let the now heavy rainfall splatter his face and wash away the blood that had speckled him. Still jacked up on adrenalin, he cocked his shoulders back and looked around as though expecting to see a stadium full of cheering spectators. It took him a moment to realize where he was and what had happened.
“Phil!” he shouted, and then, with a long, trailing cry, he dove into the water and let the current carry him away.
Somewhere down the river, he hoped—he knew he had to find Phil. The only question was—would he be dead or alive?
Chapter Thirty-four
Lost and Found
The river swept Mark away, fast and far.
He rocketed between water-smoothed boulders, tossing and turning like a useless piece of driftwood in the raging foam. Sky, forest, and river all blended together into one gray-green smear. The roar of the water was the single dominant noise, sounding like a continuous explosion of rolling thunder. The water chilled Mark to the bone as it crashed over his head, filling his nose and mouth every time he gasped for breath. At some point he realized that he was no longer clutching his rifle, but it no longer mattered.
Nothing mattered.
All feeling in his body was lost, and all hope was gone. He couldn’t even begin to struggle against the irresistible pull of the current.
And his thoughts were as chaotic as the river.
The first clear thought he had was his conviction that the two creatures who had attacked him and Phil were dead.
They had to be!
So as long as there were no other survivors left to carry the bodies away, someone—sometime—was going to be in for one hell of a surprise when they found that dead beast on the riverbank or the other one, washed up somewhere downstream.
Downstream. That was where Mark also expected to find Phil, as long as he, himself, didn’t end up a rotting corpse somewhere between here and the ocean.
But almost certainly Phil was dead.
He must be!
With two broken legs and weakened by a week of torment in the creatures’ cave, there was no way he would be able to keep his head above water, much less swim to safety. Unable to struggle against the current, he would eventually be smashed against a rock and go under.
So the person he had gone through all this trouble for, had risked his life to save, was dead.
As was Sandy!
That was something else of which Mark was positive.
The gruesome memory of seeing his daughter torn apart in a feeding frenzy of those creatures still left him dazed, with a hollow pit in his stomach that was more numbing than the freezing river. It was impossible for him to believe that he had seen it happen and not done anything.
But she was dead—gone forever—and nothing was ever going to bring her back.
And Polly . . . Polly was as good as gone, too.
He had suspected she’d been sleeping around long before Sandy had told him about the affair she’d been having with Dennis. But he had already screwed up his first marriage, and he hadn’t been able to figure out how to handle this situation other than by avoiding any overt confrontation.
That was chickenshit, and he knew it, but he had to accept it.
He had failed in everything he had set out to do, so what was the use even of struggling against the river?
Why not just say fuck it! and let it whisk him away?
Just give up.
Stop flailing his arms and legs, and float out of control until he dashed his brains out on a rock or his lungs filled with water and he went down—down— down for the third time.
Lost in the chaos of his thoughts and the careening ride downstream, Mark was only distantly aware when something snagged his left leg, pulling his legs backward while the water continued to push the top half of his body forward. Before he realized that he had hit the shallow river bottom, the current propelled him out of the water and onto a sandbar at a bend in the river.
Air—real air, not water or spray—filled his lungs with a roaring intake. His arms and legs moved without conscious command from his brain as he scrambled away from the water’s edge and, shivering wildly, collapsed again, digging his fingers into wet sand as though he had to cling to it to avoid being swept away again.
I’m not dead! Jesus! I’m not dead!
He had no sense of how long he lay there, burrowing his face into the sand and making vague swimming motions that scooped deep furrows into the sand. Rain was falling heavily, hitting him like tiny pellets when he was finally aware enough to lurch to his feet and start walking. His sodden clothes dragged him back at every step, but he pushed himself forward, his only thought that he had to get into the woods—he had to hide deep in the forest before ...
. .. Before ...
... Before what?
He felt an overpowering sense of danger, of threat, but didn’t know—or recall—the source of that threat.
Then it hit him
Phil! . . . and Sandy . . . and those creatures!
Looking back toward the river, he noticed for the first time a crumpled form on the water’s edge, no more than twenty feet from where he had washed up. He instantly recognized who it was.
“Oh, shit! Phil!” he shouted, his voice booming like a single shot from a rifle.
His teeth were chattering from the cold, and his legs threatened to give out from underneath him as he ran over to his friend. Dull, aching sobs racked his chest when he reached the body and knelt down beside it.
“Oh, shit!—oh, Jesus!—oh, shit!” he sobbed as all of his pent-up emotions poured out of him.
He placed one hand lightly on Phil’s shoulder, stunned by the cold, lifeless feel of the body, and made a feeble attempt to lift him. He knew he didn’t have the strength to roll Phil over, much less pick him up, but it didn’t matter.
Phil was dead, just as he was going to be dead—if not soon, then certainly by the time darkness fell and the weather turned colder . . . too cold for him to stand without either a heavy jacket or a match to light a fire.
“I’m so sorry, Phil . . . Jesus, so sorry,” Mark whispered.
He clutched his friend’s shoulders with both hands and, leaning forward, pressed his face against Phil’s back. Agony like he had never known before, blacker and colder than the deepest river in hell, filled him as sobs ripped from his throat. His tears mingled with the rain that was streaming down his face. He was so lost in his misery that it took him several seconds to realize that he could feel Phil’s back moving.
Yes!
Ever so slightly, he could feel a slow, steady expansion and contraction.
“Oh, my God!” Mark whispered.
He turned his head to one side and, pressing his ear against Phil’s back, listened.
Yes!—beneath the steady hissing roar of the river, he could hear a faint, erratic thud-thud-thud.
Phil wasn’t dead.
Not yet!
Mark had no idea how he found the strength, but he rolled Phil onto his back, slid his arms underneath him, and picked him up. Carrying him like a baby, he walked across the jumble of rocks at the river’s edge toward the forest margin, intent only on making it to the woods. Beyond that, he had no clear idea what to do. Hopefully he could find enough dry wood to get a fire going, but without matches, he didn’t know how he was going to manage that.
Step after agonizing step seemed to bring him no closer to the woods. Phil’s unconscious body sagged in his arms like a useless feed sack. One of Phil’s hands hung down and kept knocking against Mark’s leg, threatening to trip him with every other step.
Exhaustion blazed in Mark’s muscles, but it gave his soaked and shivering body no warmth against the cold air. A small voice in the back of his mind was whispering to him, telling him that they still weren’t saved, that maybe he was insane with exhaustion and had imagined hearing Phil’s heart beating. Even without any more of the creatures to attack them, the forest could just as easily extinguish both of them once night fell, and the cold and dampness settled down on them.
But Mark wasn’t about to give up now.
He would fight defeat with whatever strength he had left, and he would not surrender until death pulled him down for that final time.
He made it to a small clearing under the trees. Rain still dripped from the branches overhead, but at least they were out of the steady, direct downpour. Mark cleared a small area with his foot and then gently lowered Phil to the ground.
“You know, maybe we’ll make it out of this yet, pal,” he said in a voice that sounded thick and strangely foreign to his own ears.
Mark looked around the thicket, wishing he had a blanket or tent drop cloth or something to cover his friend. He knew that the immediate danger—for both of them—was hypothermia. There was no other alternative but to dig into the ground and cover up his friend with whatever dead leaves and soil he could scrape over him.
He worked quickly, covering Phil right up to his neck in hopes that the mulch would provide enough insulation so his body heat would keep him alive. As he worked, though, Mark couldn’t resist the horrifying thought that Phil was already dead, and he was simply burying him.
“I’ve got to go for help alone,” he said, once the job was done. “I can’t carry you anymore, but hang in there just one more night, okay, buddy?”
There was no response from Phil. He lay there with his eyes closed, looking like a corpse.
“That’s all I’m gonna ask of you. You’ve got to do it for me. Just hang in there another couple of hours.”
Mark was sobbing quietly as he rested his hand on Phil’s unmoving face. The skin was waxy and white, cold and hard to the touch, like a cheap plaster mask, not at all like real flesh.
Mark stood up slowly, reluctant to leave his friend but positive that he had no other choice. Before leaving, he piled up some boulders at the edge of the woods in a rough arrow formation to mark the spot. Then, using his Swiss Army knife, he cut off a piece of his pant leg and hung a flag from a branch that would be easy to see, even from the riverbank. Night was only an hour away, so he turned and started walking.
“I’ll be back,” he shouted as soon as the grove was out of sight. “I found you once, buddy, and I’ll find you again. I promise I’ll get you out of here! You hear me, Phil? I promise you!”
Rain was falling steadily as Mark resumed his hike. The sky gradually darkened, or else his vision was fading; he couldn’t tell the difference and didn’t care. He staggered through the forest like an enraged drunk, careening off trees, walking around in circles, for all he knew.
Without a compass or trail map, he was unsure of which direction to head in. There certainly were no clearly marked trails within sight, and in the gathering darkness, he no doubt would have lost the trail had there been one.
But he kept hacking at tree trunks with his knife, marking his path, however meandering it might be, telling himself that someone had to find their way back to Phil in the morning.
As night descended, Mark sometimes imagined that he was still floating down the raging river, his body slamming against rocks as he struggled to keep his head above water. At other times, he was so distanced from his own physical pain that he could easily imagine he was flying high above the clouds, getting buffeted back and forth by angry blasts of wintry wind.
Time meant nothing to him.
He knew only cold and darkness as he fought through the night-stained underbrush, hoping to strike onto something familiar. He almost didn’t realize where he was when he tripped on something and fell forward, skinning his hands and knees on something smooth and flat.
Asphalt!
Jesus! A road! I made it!
He stood up stiffly and staggered into the middle of the road, looking up at the sky as he spun around in a wide circle, his arms extended wide open as if to embrace the night. He couldn’t expect to recognize where he was. All he cared about was knowing that this was a country road—a paved country road somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Eventually, someone was going to have to drive by. Rather than start walking, with a fifty-fifty chance of heading in the wrong direction, Mark decided that he needed rest. He saw nothing wrong with lying down on the roadside and closing his eyes as he waited.
He had no idea if he was dreaming, hallucinating, or if it was real when, some time later—minutes or hours, who could tell?—he awoke to see twin circles of bright yellow light bearing down on him like an angry demon’s eyes. He tried to rouse himself but couldn’t as he listened to a car or truck door open and slam shut.
Then footsteps slowly approached.
A voice, sounding amazingly like Police Chief LaBrea’s, spoke from the stinging glare of light.
“Jesus Christ, Mark! I almost hit you! What the hell are you doing, sleeping in the middle of the goddamned road? Trying to get yourself killed?”
Mark looked up but was unable to say a word.
“Come on,” LaBrea said, bending down and extending his hands to him. “Let me help you up. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Recovering
“Well, you’re looking a damn sight better,” Guy said as he shouldered open the hospital room door and walked over to the bed where Mark lay.
“Compared to what?” Mark said, smiling weakly as he raised his head slightly from the pillow and squinted up at his visitor. His lips were cracked and dry, and his throat felt like chopped meat, but—fortunately—the medication the doctors were giving him blunted most of the pain.
“Well,” LaBrea said, smiling tightly, “compared to what you looked like last night, ‘round about ten o’clock, when I found you face-down in the middle of the road, looking half dead.”
“I like to think of it as half alive,” Mark said.
Even with the curtains drawn and the lights turned down low, it hurt too much to keep his eyes open for long, so he shut them and eased his head back down. The loud crinkling of the pillow sounded like a string of firecrackers going off inside his head.
“What time is it, anyway?” he asked, smacking his lips.
Guy glanced at his wristwatch.
“Little before ten o’clock . .. Saturday morning, in case you’re wondering.”
Mark tried to focus on what he was saying, but Guy’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. He slid his eyelids open just enough to see the watery blur of the hospital room so he’d know that he was safe, not back on the mountain and imagining all of this.
“Did you guys—have you found Phil yet?” he asked, trying his best to release the winding tension in his body.
“Oh yeah. We found him all right. No problem there,” Guy said. “You left a pretty clear trail.” He chuckled softly. “Although it did weave around a bit. But you can relax now. He’s safe and sound—”
“How’s he doing?”
Guy paused a moment before he spoke. To Mark, it seemed as tho
ugh he took far too long to answer. It made him wonder if the policeman was trying to keep something from him.
“Well, the doctors say he’s in pretty rough shape. Not as bad as that other fella, though.”
“You mean Jack? You found him, too?”
“Uh-huh. His broken legs have healed all wrong, and he’s smashed up pretty bad. It’s going to be a while before either one of them’s up and about. They’ve been through a hell of a lot, physically and mentally. Frankly, I think it’s a goddamned miracle either one of them made it out of there alive. You ought to be damned proud that you—”
“I couldn’t save Sandy, though,” Mark said.
His voice broke, rasping like metal scraping against stone, and his eyes were burning with tears.