Black Mountain: An Alex Hunter Novel 4

by Greig Beck

  ‘What . . .’ Logan began, but stopped as Erskine held the back of one hand up in front of his face.

  ‘It’s just through them bushes,’ he whispered without turning, ‘moving in and out of the rocks. Must be a cave or shelter or sumthin’ there.’

  Logan followed Erskine’s gaze. After a second or two, he saw movement – something large, fur-covered, moving in and out of the shadows. The dog whined again and pulled on its lead.

  ‘What’s up?’ Markenson’s voice made Logan jump.

  He turned to scowl at the man, put his finger first to his lips, then pointed through the foliage. Markenson nodded slowly, mouthing, Got it.

  ‘Whatta we doin’?’ Parsons gasped as he reached them, his round face the colour of boiled beef.

  Logan stood, giving up trying to be quiet. ‘For fuck’s sake, Parsons. Why didn’t you bring your bugle? You coulda belted out the cavalry charge. Whatever it is, it’s through there. I’m going in, but I want you two ten feet further up near that big oak. Keep watching me, and whatever you do, don’t bunch up. And don’t fucking shoot each other . . . or me.’

  He paused and reconsidered that last statement. ‘Just stay focused, okay? Keep your barrels to the ground unless you sight something.’

  Both men nodded.

  Erskine spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s movin’ again.’ He reached down to pat the dog’s muzzle. ‘Shush up now, boy.’

  The dog tried to lick his hand even though its mouth was clamped. Its eyes were rolling in both excitement and fear.

  Logan pointed up the slope, then to his men. They hunched down and pushed through the branches of the dark fir trees, which were so tightly packed it was if their stems were woven together. Logan watched them go, then turned back to Erskine.

  ‘You and Buzz stay here. If anything goes wrong for me and the boys, God forbid, head straight back down to the truck and call Chief Winston in Charlotte.’ He paused, trying to think of something heroic to say, but all that came to mind were General Douglas MacArthur’s wartime quotes – none of which seemed appropriate.

  He crept forward, ducked below a branch and stepped out into a small clearing. Some ancient landslip had brought down a jumble of enormous boulders, and the shadowy spaces between them created a series of shelters.

  Logan paused to look up the slope. As instructed, Markenson and Parsons were standing in an opening between some trees. They waved, and as he lifted his chin in return he was pleased to see they both had their guns ready but pointed to the ground. Just as well. If he went back to the station full of double-aught he’d never hear the end of it.

  He breathed in slowly through his nose: the clearing smelled rank. Something large had been living here, and, by the look of the large bones strewn about, had been feeding up here as well. He took another few steps and motioned with one hand for his men to move forward.

  The forest was cemetery quiet, and he was sure he could hear breathing, a deep-chested panting, coming from just up ahead. He lifted his gun. He felt good, his hands were steady as a rock. He remembered two things from his training – don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to; and, more importantly, make the first one count.

  The panting was getting louder, coming from just behind a large kidney-shaped rock. He gritted his teeth. This is where training and guts meet reality, he thought solemnly; then, Damn, wish I’d thought of that in front of Erskine. He gripped his gun a little tighter.

  The panting stopped. There was silence. Logan held his breath. He waited a few seconds, then slowly brought his gun up, aiming the barrel at the tumble of boulders where he assumed the beast’s lair to be. He planted his legs wide apart – a hunter’s stance.

  The sudden roar was like a monstrous shockwave; he felt it from his scalp all the way down to his clenched sphincter. The creature appeared on the rocks, a colossus of teeth, claw and stinking fur, like something out of a bourbon-soaked nightmare. Its open jaws could have accommodated Logan’s entire head and shoulders.

  It roared again, but Logan swallowed a dry ball of fear and kept his gun up, level, unwavering. He could see the massive beast coiling its muscles, its face furious, or fear-maddened, or both.

  It leaped; he fired.

  Other explosive roars quickly followed, then a crushing hot weight landed on top of him.

  *

  Chief Logan took the canteen, sipped, then allowed Markenson to drag him to his feet. He held on to his deputy’s arm for a few seconds, waiting for the wooziness to leave his gut. He guessed he might be suffering delayed shock.

  Parsons slapped his shoulder. ‘Right between the eyes, Chief.’

  Logan looked down at the massive lion. Its skin was torn by numerous bullet and buckshot holes. Someone had used a stick to prop open its jaws, displaying yellowed teeth as long as his fingers.

  Markenson kneeled beside the huge head to investigate the cavernous mouth. He turned slowly to look up at the chief. ‘You think the Wilson girl is in there?’

  Logan went to rub his brow, but noticed there was blood on his hands and wiped them on his pants. He pictured the tiny girl standing alone in front of the 500-pound monster and shuddered. ‘You know, Ollie, I sure hope she isn’t. But let’s call in the ME and find out.’

  *

  ‘C’mere.’ Charles Schroder waved Matt over to where he was crouched beside a tree.

  Matt could see his friend’s attention was riveted on an area where the dry grasses had been unable to take hold. All that was visible from a distance was bare dirt and a few struggling asters.

  Matt looked quickly over his shoulder before heading over. He knew they were probably trespassing. When he’d phoned Chief Logan earlier, he’d been told that he was out at the Wilson place looking for a missing girl. While he was still on the line, he’d heard the chief and some of his men rush in to get kitted out with weapons. Something was up and Matt’s radar had gone off the scale. They’d arrived at the Wilson place at dusk, and Charles had been straight on the scent like a bloodhound.

  Matt kneeled next to him, adding his own flashlight beam to Charles’s, and frowned at the ground. Up close, he still couldn’t see anything beyond a few bumps and waves in the dry soil. Charles looked at him, his face excited, eyes wide.

  ‘We got something,’ he said, clearing pine needles and twigs away from the soil.

  Matt moved his flashlight slowly over the area while Charles fumbled in his pockets. ‘I don’t see it. What’ve you got – a track or spoor?’

  Charles pulled a small tape measure from his pocket and sat back on his haunches. He lifted his flashlight to shoulder level and shone it at a spot in the dirt. ‘Okay, squint and make your eyes go a little out of focus. That’ll allow your central vision to include peripheral input.’ He raised his other arm, his hand extended flat to the ground. ‘Now look where I’m pointing.’

  Matt could just make out a rough shape in the dry soil. The small depressions resolved into a pattern, something more than an accident. ‘Holy shit, I see it – it’s fucking enormous. A footprint, or part of one.’

  ‘Keep your foghorn down,’ Charles said. ‘You’re damned right – we got a clear big toe, and part of the metatarsus pad.’

  He expertly extended the tape one way, then the other, then set it down carefully beside the print and pulled a small battered notebook from his pocket. He removed the rubber band binding it, and started to scribble with the pencil stub that rolled free of its pages. He chuckled softly as he looked again at the print. ‘Whoa, you’re a big ’un, aren’t you?’

  He held the notebook out so Matt could see his calculations. ‘I’ve used standard anthropoidal biometric ratios. As an example, an average human of about six feet in height has a foot length approximately fifteen per cent of its total height. The big toe is roughly eighteen per cent of that ratio.’ He looked at Matt, who nodded, so he went on. ‘The big toe we have here is around three and a half inches in length, giving us a total stature of . . .’ He circled a number
and tapped it. ‘One hundred and twenty-five inches . . . over ten fucking feet tall!’ He sat back in the dirt, almost panting with excitement.

  Matt laughed. ‘Hey, take it easy, buddy. Do you need a cigarette after that?’

  They both laughed.

  Charles shook his head. ‘I should have brought a camera. Sorry to doubt you, but I thought this was going to be hoax number one million, and so I didn’t bother. I’ll come back later and take some casts.’

  Matt gave his friend a half-smile. ‘I’m glad you came anyway. And hey, all I had to go on was a rock carving and a grainy photo – I kinda doubted it myself.’

  Charles’s face turned serious. ‘You do know, we’ve got to find this thing before anyone else does? This could make the coelacanth and the Wollemi pine look like sardines and dried flowers. We can’t let something this rare be filled with a lot of shotgun pellets.’

  ‘I think Chief Logan took all that firepower after the escaped lion,’ Matt said. ‘It was probably here too. For all we know, it could have been tracking this creature as well.’

  Charles shook his head. ‘If this creature is what I think it is, the lion wasn’t tracking it. More like it was tracking the lion.’

  Matt looked up at the Black Mountain. It was night now, and a huge moon had lifted up behind the peak, making it look almost prehistoric. He shuddered and felt his fears reemerging. Being out in the dark with a giant creature on the loose brought back memories of another monster that had stalked him and others beneath miles of rock and ice. He took a deep breath. A lot of people had died that time. He hoped history wasn’t about to repeat itself.

  *

  The old man moved through the trees close to the house. He stood looking up at the mountain for several minutes, as still and quiet as the hushed night around him. He took a small leather pouch from his pocket, loosened the looped string around the top and pinched out something that he threw in the air towards the mountain. Some of the substance blew back in his face and he sneezed.

  He sliced the air with one arm, his fingers opening and closing, making symbols and shapes in the air. He spoke in a strong voice, a chant that lasted for several minutes. Then he stopped and stood staring once again at the mountain.

  As he turned to leave, he kicked dirt over the print that Matt and Charles had been investigating.

  TWELVE

  Kathleen Hunter shivered on the porch and blew a plume of misty breath from her lips. Going to be a cold winter this year, she thought, as she stepped down onto the frosty grass. As she walked around to the side of the house, she could see Jess at the window, up on her back legs, staring down at her. The dog’s big black nose was pressed to the glass, leaving a smear. Kathleen laughed softly; on her back legs and backlit like that, the enormous German shepherd looked like a werewolf.

  She shook her head as she approached the woodpile. ‘Been acting peculiar for days now,’ she muttered. ‘More like a mother hen.’ Could dogs get menopausal, she wondered. Might be time to take her to the vet for a check-up.

  Kathleen shivered again. She was always a bit spooked by the trees at night – the clouds crossing the moon made them seem to move and sway even without any wind. They alternated between seeming further away than they were, or closer, as they did tonight. Just a trick of the silvery light, but still a little unsettling.

  She reached the woodpile, and stopped to sniff and look around. Phew, what is that smell? Something must be dead. No wonder Jess was all stirred up.

  In that instant, a booming whoop smashed out of the trees beside her. She dropped the bucket and swung around to the noise – to see one of the largest tree trunks moving towards her. Except it wasn’t a tree, after all.

  Kathleen Hunter screamed.

  *

  Jess ran from the door to the window and back again. Her hackles were a line of spikes down her back, and flecks of saliva had appeared at the corners of her mouth. The sense of danger was overpowering. A stench leaked in under the door that made her flanks shiver and dredged up a frightful genetic memory from ancestors a million generations back.

  As she reached the front of the house again, a booming whooping sound made her freeze. She leaped at the door and grabbed the handle in her jaws and pulled. Nothing happened. She scratched at the doorframe with her claws, dragging long splinters from the heavy wood, then bounded back to the window. As she neared it, she heard a sound that made her heart erupt with fury – the scream of her master.

  Jess exploded through the glass without a second thought.

  *

  The creature loomed above Kathleen Hunter like a deformed giant, its long crested head blotting out the moon, its stink filling her nostrils. She scrabbled backwards along the dry ground and screamed again, the first name that came to mind: ‘Alex!’ The face of her lost son flashed into her mind and she could almost feel him close by.

  There was a sound of smashing glass and Jess came out of the darkness like a hundred-pound tan and gold missile. The dog leaped over Kathleen to strike the giant form. She hung on, sinking her teeth in deep and hard. The whooping changed to a roar that seemed to blast the leaves from the nearby tree branches.

  Kathleen knew Jess could never be a match for the massive brute. As she watched, the creature wrapped one hand around the dog’s neck, dragged her free of its putrid-smelling flesh and flung her at the nearest tree as if she weighed nothing. Jess hit hard, bones and cartilage exploding from the impact, before her body shuddered into a heap at its base. Kathleen could see Jess’s eyes were still open, staring at her, but probably sightless. She screamed out in agony – her last friend, gone.

  The creature shuffled towards her again, its teeth bared, each one longer than her fingers. Its giant hands flexed as if in anticipation of tearing her small frail body apart.

  Kathleen fell silent, her mind turning inwards. Nothing mattered any more.

  *

  Alex’s horse thundered along the green tunnel of branches that arched over the narrow track. They burst into a broad clearing and he pulled back on the reins. The powerful animal immediately slowed to a trot and he felt it breathing heavily underneath him. He looked back to see Adira emerge from the tunnel, smiling broadly, obviously enjoying the competition. He grinned back, his mouth forming a quip about her riding prowess, but the breath froze in his chest. A thunderbolt of pain, colour and light crashed down on him, like a physical blow, and he fell backwards from his horse. A face swirled into perspective . . . the old woman again, the one he’d seen in his dream. Then she’d been on a sunny porch, but now she was wrapped in darkness. She was screaming . . . he could feel her terror . . . feel it so strongly it was as though he was right there with her. There was something else there too, a huge presence hiding in the darkness. A large dog flew through the air, and a terrifying booming roar sounded all around them. There was blood and pain and fear.

  The woman screamed again, and this time it was a name . . . Alex. She knew him . . . and he knew her. His mother. He remembered her now. He remembered lying on a hillside, looking down at her . . . it was her farm, she lived there with the dog, Jess. Then he saw her as a younger woman, smiling at him, combing his hair . . . he was a boy . . . and she was his mother . . . Kathleen Hunter. And it was his name she was calling now . . . Alex. He was Alex Hunter.

  He tried to reach out to her, but was condemned to be a powerless observer. The huge presence loomed over her. He felt a surge of frustration and anger. He knew he could save her if he could just reach her. He struck out, thumping the ground, mentally trying to break through the glass. The pain intensified. Blood surged from his nose.

  *

  Adira leaped from her horse before it had halted and was beside Alex in an instant. His face was contorted in torment and he was holding out an arm, trying to grasp at something only he could see. Adira called his name, softly at first and then more loudly, but he didn’t respond.

  Alex raised himself to his hands and knees, head down, and pounded his fist hard into the dirt,
again and again. Adira could feel the blows through the soles of her feet. He raked up dirt and small rocks in each hand, then crushed his fists hard into the ground, reducing the stones to dust. He rose to his knees and roared in agony. Adira had only heard that sound in battle, from humans suffering mortal wounds.

  She realised he was shouting a woman’s name . . . Kathleen.

  His mother! she thought in horror. What is he remembering?

  Alex struck the ground again, as though trying to break through to somewhere below its surface. Blood ran from his nose and she saw that his teeth were gritted. His eyes were open but unfocused. He fell forward onto his hands and shook his head as if to clear it. He was breathing hard.

  When he spoke, the words were so soft she couldn’t make them out.

  ‘What, Alex? What is it?’

  His hand shot out and grabbed the front of her shirt, pulling her to face him. His eyes were focused now, and volcanic with fury. He roared in her face and shook her. ‘Why did you lie to me?’

  It was the moment she had been dreading: the return of his memories before she was ready – before either of them was ready – to deal with them.

  She grabbed his wrist. ‘I never lied.’

  Alex’s other hand came up towards her. She doubted he was going to hit her, but her training took over. Almost automatically she brought her free hand around flat to strike him under his chin with enough force to jam his face upwards. He released her shirt and took a step back, but didn’t fall. Instead he came back at her, fast. She needed to slow him down so she could talk to him. She was aware of what he could do if his rage overtook his logic.

  She braced herself and struck out twice. The closed fist strikes were part of a Krav Maga combination designed as a fast take-down against the most formidable opponents. Alex took both blows, then swung an arm down to block her next kick. He moved fluidly and Special-Forces-fast.

  His mother’s name isn’t the only memory coming back to him, Adira thought with growing trepidation. For the first time in her life, she realised she couldn’t win.