Watchers in the Woods

by William W. Johnstone

  “It will mean taking some casualties.”

  “If it is a war to the finish, that is to be expected.”

  Cathy suddenly threw back her head and screamed like an angry panther, scaring the crap out of Monroe and everyone else. The Sataws jumped the men of the CWA, attacked them so quickly and so violently many of the men had no chance at all to defend themselves.

  Claude went down to the wet earth, his throat torn out, dying with his eyes wide open in shock and fear. Cathy knelt down and lapped at his blood while the carnage continued all around her.

  Roswald was ridden to the ground by several Sataws and screamed as clawed hands tore open his stomach and pulled out his intestines. Donny got off one shot, killing a young man standing close to Cathy before the man’s throat was torn from him and tossed in a bloody, quivering pile to one side.

  Yates turned to run toward his horse, was tripped by a completely normal-appearing woman, and fell heavily to the ground. She leaped on his back and began gnawing at his throat while he screamed and attempted to throw her off.

  Marcel yelled at his horse to move, but it was too late. A Sataw leaped flatfooted from the ground and knocked him out of the saddle. Marcel’s neck was broken before he hit the ground.

  Monroe, Luther, Carl, and Jim Bob made the timberline and were clear just seconds after the horrible scream sprang from Cathy’s throat.

  Alton was yanked screaming from his horse and his head beaten to unrecognizable pulp by a man using the butt of Alton’s AK-47. A few Sataws took the opportunity to dine on raw flesh from Alton’s body.

  Floyd, Judd, and Kane made the timber and cut west, heading back across the valley.

  Hardin, Sanders, and Duff were being bea to death with clubs and shovels left behind by the campers. The wet air began to stink with the odor of fresh blood and relaxed bowels and bladders.

  Nutley, wounded in an earlier battle, was thrown from his horse and tried to crawl away to the timber. A very pretty young woman, dressed in designer jeans and wearing expensive jewelry, beat him unconscious with a club, then dropped down on all fours and began drinking the blood gushing from his neck.

  “Oh my God up yonder in Heaven somewheres Jesus Your beloved son Mary whatever in the hell she was all the angels everywhere mama and daddy Brother Cecil of the Church I give money to all my good life somebody anybody everybody please come and save us from this fuckin’ awfulness!” a CWA man fell to his knees and prayed, running his words together while he pissed in his dirty underwear. His rifle lay in the churned-up mud and his pistol, belted around his waist, was forgotten in his wild fear.

  A Sataw jammed a clawed hand into his mouth and jerked out his tongue, then stuck his mouth to the man’s mouth and began sucking out the blood, holding the jerking, hunching victim by the ears while he noisily drank his fill.

  Dolan made the timberline and was running for his life when a creature reared up in front of him and roared, his stinking breath foul. Dolan cut to his right. He had lost his weapon back yonder in the mud and the blood. Dolan ran right into a tree, knocking him to the ground and addling him further. His last glimpse of life on earth was slightly marred by the face of a Sataw, grinning and drooling and smacking its thick lips at the prospect of an early dinner.

  Seymour, Marwood, and Ely were galloping full tilt across the valley, alternately cussing and praying as they tried to stay in the saddle.

  B.O. Shanty was just a tad too slow. He made it to the edge of the flat when his horse slipped in the mud and threw him to the ground. B.O. had always enjoyed pronging his daughters. He’d been brought up for incest a number of times but the frightened little girls had always refused to testify against their daddy. B.O. would never again molest anybody. A handsome young man, fashionably dressed and wearing expensive cowboy boots and a nice smile on his pleasant face, pinned B.O. to the ground by driving a stake through his stomach.

  “Oh, Lord, Lord Almighty!” B.O. squalled. “You ain’t a-gonna leave me like this here, is you?” He screamed in pain and tried to pull the stake from his stomach. But his fingers were bloody and muddy and the stake was driven deep into the ground. B.O. whimpered in fear on the ground, like many of the small animals he’d trapped during his lifetime must have done while waiting for death to relieve them of the pain they could not understand and did not deserve.

  “Oh, yes,” the young man said.

  “This ain’t no Christian thing to do,” B.O. gasped.

  “And I am my brother’s keeper, and I will fight his fight; and speak the word for beast and bird, till the world shall set things right.”

  “Huh?” B.O. said, looking up at the young man through pain-filled eyes.

  “Ella Wheeler Wilcox,” the young man said.

  “I ain’t never heard of her. Where’d she pick and sing?”

  The young man walked back to the bloody ground around the compound.

  “Help!” B.O. hollered.

  “Don’t harm the children,” Cathy said. “We can reeducate them. Kill all the others. Especially that damned CIA man. Find them. Find them!”

  “Help!” B.O. hollered. “Somebody come help me.”

  High above, the vultures began their slow and patient circling.

  6

  The rundown and ramshackle old mining complex had been shut down right after World War Two. The equipment that could have been rafted out had been, and all the rest was abandoned. The buildings were rotted and dangerous, and both state and federal governments had posted signs warning people not to enter the old buildings.

  Tom spoke for the first time since leaving the stockade on the flat. “Place looks dangerous.”

  “It is,” Nick said shortly. “But what’s under it ain’t.”

  “What’s under it, Mr. Nick?” Judy asked.

  “Tunnels. They run all the way over to that mountain.” He pointed. “The government built them back in the early thirties. I don’t know why they did, but they did. I completely forgot about this place. None of the tribe will enter it, includin’ Sataws.”

  “Why?” Sara asked.

  “The mountain is sacred to them. All life is supposed to have sprung from there.”

  “That doesn’t look much like the Garden of Eden to me,” young Walter said.

  Old Dan chuckled. “It ain’t. And it ain’t entirely safe for us either, ’cause the outsiders that’s comin’ in to help will enter it. Come on, people. Let’s get out of this rain and get dry.”

  * * *

  “Must have been a slaughter back there,” Jones said, after hearing the faint screaming and yelling and then witnessing the scared CWA men hightailing it off the flat and out into the valley. “I guessed that one right.”

  “And I only heard one shot,” Norm said.

  “They had help,” Matt said. The men were taking a one minute break to catch their breath.

  “Who?” Jones asked.

  “My guess would be the war is on and outsiders are in helping the breakaways. Jones, you have any juice left in your transceiver?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Plug in your earpiece and see if you can find out what happened back there. I’m saving my batteries for an emergency.”

  Norm grinned at him. “And this ain’t?”

  “It’ll get worse, ol’ buddy.”

  “You sure know how to make a man’s day, Matt.”

  Jones listened to the CWA frequency, the expression on his face growing grimmer and grimmer. He shook his head and clicked off the little transceiver.

  “They’re talking about all sorts of city folks joining up with the links. Real nice-talking, well-dressed folks, male and female. They said the new folks helped slaughter the CWA, then drank their blood like vampires.”

  “Good God!” Norm said. “But surely they must know that they can’t win?”

  “I don’t know whether they can or not,” Matt told him. “Remember, they’ve been coming out of this area for hundreds of years. Well, this is just confirming what I suspected.
The tribe has people in government, probably within the Bureau, the Agency, Treasury, Customs, House and Senate, and maybe on the President’s staff.”

  “How about the President himself?” Jones asked.

  “Doubtful. He’s too closely investigated. He’s been in the public eye for most of his life. His family has been checked out since before they left England. I think they came over on the Mayflower.”

  “Mine came over by ship too,” Norm said with a chuckle. “Chained in the hold!”

  The men enjoyed a quiet laugh. Matt said, “Well, with the group safe—let’s presume they are—there goes the need for any diversion, boys. Any suggestions as to what we do next?”

  “Getting our asses out of here would be nice,” Norm said.

  “I’ll second that,” Jones said. “I just wish we knew exactly where Nick was taking the group so we could throw up a buffer line between those things out there and them.”

  “No way of telling,” Matt said. “Nick was intentionally vague about that. Jones, where is the nearest ranger fire tower?”

  “About three days’ march from here, a hard march. Over that way. I’m sure there are more, but that’s the only one I’m familiar with. Monroe never really trusted me, so I didn’t get away from the base camp alone very often.”

  “Well,” Matt said, standing up and looking carefully around him. “We all know what search and destroy means. So let’s go search and destroy.”

  * * *

  “These are Secret Service people we can trust,” Manetti said, after working at a computer for hours. A computer had been set up in a room adjoining the Oval Office and with a central codebook, Manetti had been able to access nearly any government office he desired. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, I can just about say with certainty that the Secret Service has been compromised.”

  The President took the list and quickly scanned it. “You feel that all these names in the right-hand column are Secret Service agents somehow connected to this . . . misadventure now occurring in Idaho?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President called the chief of the White House detail into the office.

  “What’s up, Mr. President?” James Willis said. “Sir, I can’t protect you unless you level with me. If there is something . . .”

  The President waved him silent. “Relax, James. Sit down. You know Manetti from the Agency. Fine. Manetti, bring him up to date.”

  Manetti hit the salient points quickly. When he had finished, Willis sat with his mouth hanging open. He shook his head, blinked his eyes, and said, “This is not some inside joke, Mr. President?”

  “I assure you it is not, James.”

  Willis took the list Manetti handed him and studied it.

  “What color eyes does Barnett have, James?” the CIA man asked.

  “Blue.”

  “Hammel?”

  “Umm ... sort of a strange brown with a yellow tint. Odd eyes.”

  “Bell?”

  “Ahhh . . . brown with that yellow tint.”

  “Keller?”

  “Gray eyes.”

  “Cole?”

  “Yeah,” Willis said. “I see what you mean. Brown with that odd yellow tint. The same with Adams, Hancock, and Walker. I just never paid any attention to that before.” He reached for a cigarette then recalled that the President did not approve of smoking.

  Manetti said, “Simmons is on his way in from Denver. But we have a little problem there, too. I asked him about the Bureau’s backup team, which was supposed to go in with our backup team if Matt yelled for help. He pulled the files. It looks like agents Williams, Ford, Pointer, and Macky are all tribe members.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” the President said.

  “Simmons is putting together a team to keep an eye on the team in place.”

  “This is getting complicated,” Willis said. “But how about the Company’s team out there?”

  Manetti’s expression was strained. “They fit the same profile as the Bureau’s men.”

  “James, call in the White House physician and tell him I have ordered drug testing of all Secret Service agents, to begin immediately. Now that we know what to look for, he should be able to isolate those tribe traits quickly. Get on it.”

  The Secret Service man walked to a phone, gave the White House doctor his instructions, and then called some of his own people and began giving orders.

  “I’ll call my chief of staff in on this,” the President said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Manetti said softly.

  The President turned slowly to stare at the Company man. “Do you mean . . . ?”

  “Yes, sir. He fits the profile. Think about him and visualize his eyes.”

  The President nodded. “I can also think of three senators and a half a dozen representatives that fit it.”

  “That’s right, sir. And also General Dawson on the Joint Chiefs. We’re just touching the tip of the iceberg here. How many network news people and CEOs are a part of this? How many mayors and governors and judges are a part of it? How many lower-echelon people in the CIA, Treasury, Bureau, NSA and so forth, all of them able to alter or conceal records, are a part of it? How many police chiefs and sheriffs and highway patrolmen?”

  “Under no circumstances can we go public with this,” Willis said. “We’re going to have to go slow and easy, ferreting them out quietly.”

  “I agree,” Manetti said. “But how many are actually enemies and how many are just people trying to live a normal life? Blending in and working within the system, obeying the law and happy to do so? According to Simmons, Matt reported that the lodge owner and the guide are both tribe members but very decent people who agreed to work with him.”

  The President sat down behind his desk. “We don’t know if Matt Jordan is still alive. He hasn’t reported in—or if he has, the Company team out there isn’t passing it along. We don’t know if those campers and their kids are alive or dead. We’re working in the dark. What side is Atkins on?”

  “I think he’s probably the one giving orders in your name, sir. That means he’s probably trying to save the tribe by relocation. But some things puzzle me. Why all the hurry-up on his part? He knew the plan would be exposed sooner or later, so why didn’t he come to you with it?”

  “Maybe he isn’t trying to save the tribe,” Willis said. “Maybe that isn’t his plan at all. Maybe he wants to get them all together at that old NG base and then destroy them. ”

  “That’s monstrous!” the President said.

  “It would be a way out for those who have crossed over,” Manetti said. “But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. Maybe Atkins isn’t the bad guy. Maybe he’s seen a breakdown within the tribe—some disorder of the blood or the mind that is causing those on the outside to go . . . crazy and do what was done to Mrs. Gaston. Everything we have is so sketchy. We really don’t have anything solid to work with.”

  “Are there good guys and bad guys in this thing?” Willis asked, more to himself than to the others. “Do we have a clear-cut enemy? Is national security at risk? Is the President in danger?” He looked at the President. “Let’s get Atkins in here and ask him. Let’s lay our cards on the table and tell him it’s time for the truth.”

  The President looked at Manetti. “I agree.”

  “Do it,” the President ordered.

  * * *

  The younger children were sleeping on pallets in a warm and dry tunnel just beneath the old mining complex. The horses had been stabled in another tunnel nearby. The adults were gathered around a small fire, waiting for the coffee to make.

  “How come the smoke doesn’t choke us all?” Traci Dalton asked.

  “It’s bein’ pulled out by the breezes,” Nick told her. “These tunnels are well ventilated. I think the government was goin’ to use these for some sort of storage. I don’t know what. Maybe it was just a make-work project during the Depression. A lot of that went on, I’m told.”

  “For the first time in
several days I’m beginning to think we might actually get out of this alive,” Frank said.

  “There’s a chance of that,” Dan said. “But I got to say this to you, Mrs. Hunt: Your husband’s chances aren’t very good.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “He explained that to me just before we left. Matt tried to get him to go with us, but Norm refused.”

  “I hope the government has a lot of money,” Tom said. “Because they are going to see a lawsuit over this that will make the national debt look like petty cash.” He looked around the dimness of the tunnel. “Miserable goddamned place!”

  The others ignored him.

  “I wish that Jones was a little younger,” Traci said. “I think he’s cute.”

  “He’s a little old for you, dear,” Susan said. “Besides, I thought you were taken with that Nash boy.”

  “Ancient history, mother,” the daughter replied. “Phased out to the max.”

  Walter took off his earphones and laid them aside. “You can forget about listening to the radio down here. All I’m getting is static.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” Milli said.

  “I wish I knew what was happening with Matt and the others,” Susan said.

  * * *

  “Damn!” Matt whispered, looking at the scene below them through binoculars. “Those people look like they just stepped out of a fashion magazine.”

  “Until you look at the blood all over the front of their jackets,” Jones added, looking at Norm, peering through his own field glasses.

  “It does take away from the in look, doesn’t it?” Norm said. “Look at that pretty lady in the designer jeans, sniffing the ground like a dog.”

  “She’ll have our scent in a few seconds,” Matt said. “She’s working this direction.”

  “What’s the game plan?” Jones asked.

  “I’m hoping they won’t think we’re right at the edge of the timberline. They don’t appear to be too cautious in stalking us, so they probably think we’re hiding out in deep timber. If they get our scent and advance this way, let them get close and then open fire.”

  The woman suddenly straightened up and warbled like a bird, pointing toward the timber on the ridge above the little valley about two miles from where the vultures were now feeding on the remains of the CWA men.