The Frank Peretti Collection

by Frank E. Peretti

  Burkhardt’s old desk was bare. Cap set down the box of keys and pulled out the drawers; they were all empty. The bulletin board above the desk carried a calendar still flipped to January even though it was July, announcements of events that had long passed, and a few snapshots held in place with pushpins: a pretty grad student holding a lab rat as she injected it; rats with mottled colors in their fur; four male students grinning as they held a trophy they’d won at a regional collegiate science fair. Burkhardt’s PhD diploma had been removed from the wall, but the square of unfaded paint still marked where it once hung. A “Teacher of the Year” plaque remained, dusty and forgotten. Cap remembered Burkhardt losing interest in teaching over the years, and now it seemed Burkhardt didn’t care much for the memories either, nor for the young lives he’d influenced, considering he’d left their pictures behind.

  Cap went to the cardboard boxes and folded back the top flaps of the first. Ah, here was at least one vestige of Burkhardt’s presence. Inside, wrapped in several layers of newspaper to protect from breakage, were some of Burkhardt’s glass specimen jars. Burkhardt always prided himself on his vast collection of evolutionary icons in formaldehyde, a display that once took up several shelves along the front of the room and caught the eye of anyone who dropped in. He’d bought, borrowed, and swapped with other biologists around the world to collect Galapagos finches with different-sized beaks, peppered moths both white and gray, coelacanths that were regarded as living fossils, bats whose wing bones bore a homologous similarity to the human hand, lizards that had supposedly evolved from snakes, and a boa constrictor that had supposedly evolved from lizards, all part of Burkhardt’s sideshow of the dead. These remaining jars must have been the last ones packed, still waiting to make the move, wherever it was they were going.

  Cap pulled out one of the jars and carefully removed the newspaper wrapping. He’d no doubt seen this specimen before—

  No. He hadn’t. This one was new, and from its appearance, Cap decided, Burkhardt hadn’t bought or traded for it— Burkhardt had produced this one.

  It was a lab rat floating in amber preservative, a pitiful animal with a twisted spine and—Cap counted them twice to be sure— six legs.

  He pulled out and unwrapped the second jar. It was another lab rat, this one with mottled fur and no eyes.

  The third jar contained a rat with no legs at all.

  Cap felt his face flush and his stomach grow queasy. He rewrapped and placed the jars back in their box, not looking at the contents, trying to sell himself a foolish, vain hope that Burkhardt had gotten the message and stopped with rats—or at the very worst, chimpanzees. Burkhardt was a scientist, after all. Surely he knew how to read the indications of the data, especially at such a high level—

  At the far end of the room, a solitary animal cage caught Cap’s attention. He paused in wrapping the last jar and stared at the cage a moment, frozen in time, one hand on the jar and the other holding the box lid open.

  He couldn’t be seeing what he thought he was seeing. He wasn’t ready for things to get worse.

  He lowered the last jar into the box, then hurried down the aisle between the workbenches for a closer look.

  The cage was similar to a large pet carrier, a rectangular box of tough plastic with a swinging, barred gate at one end. It had come on tough times. The opening all around the gate had been chewed as if by an enormous rat trying to escape. The slot for the latch was nearly gouged out. The gate was tooth marked and bulged outward as if pushed with incredible strength from the inside.

  Whatever Burkhardt had kept in this cage, it was bigger than a rat; apparently—hopefully—Burkhardt had found a bigger, tougher cage.

  “Dr. Capella!”

  He’d stayed too long. Turning, he saw Merrill come into the room, flanked by two campus police in gray uniforms, the university’s best and biggest.

  Merrill was strong and confident between his two-man army. He extended his palm. “My keys?”

  Cap nodded toward Burkhardt’s empty desk. “They’re on the desk.”

  Merrill retrieved them. “Cap, you have a choice: leave this campus immediately and do not come back, ever, or be placed under arrest right here, right now.”

  Cap walked slowly forward, hands half-raised in surrender. “Hi, Tim.”

  The first cop, lanky and bespectacled, said, “Hi.”

  “Kenny, how’s it going?”

  The second cop, arms crossed over his barrel chest, nodded and replied, “It’s going all right.”

  Cap addressed Merrill. “Looks like more than a sabbatical. Looks like Burkhardt’s pulled up and moved altogether.”

  “Which is no concern of yours.”

  Cap nodded at the damaged cage. “What happened? Did things get a little tough to contain?”

  Merrill smirked. “A word to the wise, Dr. Capella—if that term means anything to you: we are all scientists here, and that means we deal in facts. You are a creationist, and now have the added liability of being a trespasser and a burglar. Before you say anything to anyone, please give careful regard to which of us has the credibility—and the power to destroy the other.”

  Creationist. Merrill used that word as an insult. Cap had seen this power trip before, and he was fed up with it. “Is this a scientist I hear talking?”

  Merrill smiled. “In every way, Dr. Capella; in the eyes of my peers and, most of all, in the eyes of the public. I have my responsibilities, foremost among them, not allowing science to be undermined by detractors like you.”

  “Science? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it ‘the only game in town’?”

  Merrill turned to his cops. “Get him out of here.”

  Rachel was in a full run, her legs blurring in a shock-free, fluid stride, her weight forward, her arms swinging in wide arcs. Beck hung on, head down, cringing close to Rachel’s body and wincing as tree trunks and branches missed them by inches. She looked over her shoulder but saw no hunters, no friends, only rapidly retreating forest and distance building by powerful leaps. No hunter on foot could hope to catch them.

  Though it terrified her, she looked down at Rachel’s blurred feet, then the huge tree trunks that raced by, and tried to envision herself letting go, leaping into space, landing and rolling safely enough to live and limp away. What if she could drop into that clump of young firs? Would they soften her fall? Would Rachel realize she was gone? What if—

  Suddenly, shockingly, Rachel dug in and lurched to a stop, nearly throwing Beck off.

  Jacob burst out of the brush, stinking and huffing, so close he and Rachel almost collided. Leah followed, more frightened than Beck had ever seen her, carrying a whimpering Reuben on her back. The train was turning around. Rachel spun and moved into a run again, last in line. They were heading north, the way they’d come.

  Beck looked behind and saw nothing but forest, but she’d read Jacob’s face; something was back there—or someone.

  Jacob turned down the slope, Leah and Rachel followed, and Rachel’s fluid stride became a rocking, heaving lope as she leaped and landed, leaped and landed her way down the mountain. Beck’s stomach reacted immediately, and her grip began to weaken. She started sizing up landing spots again.

  Rachel stumbled! Landing after a leap, she was trying to stop, heeling in, staggering, grabbing and snapping off branches. She danced several yards farther down the slope, finally gripped a tree trunk with one hand, and whipped around to a quick halt.

  Beck couldn’t have held on if she wanted to. She sailed backward, floating as the ground dropped away, then landing cleanly, tumbling through a struggling patch of Oregon grape until she found a stump to grab. It occurred to her not to stop, to keep going downhill. She let go of the stump and let herself roll until her feet came under her and she stood, bracing herself against a small pine.

  Downhill and to her right, Leah clambered back up the hill with Reuben on the ground beside her, four-wheeling up the rocks. Beck veered left and half-limped down to the next tree
, buying just a little time, a little more distance from Rachel.

  Now she saw Jacob groping his way up the hill; he looked panicked, drooling and slow with exhaustion. Something had turned him back again.

  A shock went through Beck like electricity. She caught only a glimpse, only a fleeting image through a gap in the trees far below, but she knew what it was.

  A man’s camouflage cap. Had it not been moving, and had she not seen one before, she would have missed it, but there was no mistaking it.

  “Ohhh!” escaped her, a cry of hope and disbelief.

  Rachel pounded down the hill toward her, snapping off branches and upsetting loose rock.

  Beck hobbled downhill to the next tree and cried out again, not bothering with consonants or pronunciation but just making a noise, any noise she could.

  A man’s voice answered from far below, “Hello? Somebody up there?”

  Beck had just opened her mouth to answer when Rachel caught her in midair, jarring her, stealing her breath, muffling her cry. Beck wriggled, squirmed, tried to get free. She screamed—

  She saw nothing but fiery eyes, bristling black hair, flaring nostrils, and glistening teeth. Jacob never came this close to anything except to kill it. His throaty roar erased her brain; his foul breath paralyzed her will.

  “Hello!” the man called.

  Beck didn’t answer.

  Reed was closing in on his waypoint well ahead of Jimmy’s team, when Steve Thorne’s voice crackled in his earpiece, “I’ve got something above me! It’s heading back up the hill!”

  “Any visual?” he heard Jimmy ask.

  “No, but I heard a woman scream.”

  “Max’s team, tighten up!” Pete ordered. “Give us a wall down there!”

  Reed looked at his GPS. He could see Max and Thorne tightening formation and inching uphill. Pete was moving south along the stone face, with Sam about five hundred feet below him. The other two guys were filling in between.

  Reed got on the radio. “Heads up, everybody! Don’t let the screaming fool you. That’s not a woman! That’s the target!” He didn’t like the silence he got in response. “Jimmy, I’ve got you and Sam behind and below.”

  “Yeah, that’s us,” Jimmy replied.

  “Can you get a man above me, between me and the rocks?”

  “Give him a few minutes.”

  “Did everybody hear my heads-up about the screaming sound?”

  Several answered that they had. Steve Thorne radioed, “You’re sure that’s not your wife?”

  No, he wasn’t sure and it was killing him. “Did she say anything?”

  “No, she just screamed.”

  A hunt, and not a search. Reed fought down his fear. “Don’t let that thing sucker you in. That’s what happened to Mills.”

  “What the heck are we hunting, anyway?” Thorne asked.

  Jimmy cut in, “I told you not to ask.”

  Reed paused to breathe deeply and gather himself. He glanced at his GPS. He was close now, only forty yards or so. The circle of hunters was closing in. Something inside that circle was going to be really ticked off.

  Beck’s world was a cruel kaleidoscope of blurred images—powerful, grappling arms, brush and tree limbs whipping past, her own arms and legs kicking and flailing, the total, choking darkness of Rachel’s bosom. In quick, intermittent flashes between grabs, holds, slaps, and kicks, she saw Jacob leading, ascending the slope, his flexible feet grabbing the ground and his legs pushing relentlessly upward.

  Rachel was just too strong, and Beck’s ribs, arms, legs, and sprained ankle were sending her warnings: Much more of this, and you’re going to break something. With a whimper muffled in Rachel’s hairy body, Beck gave up the struggle, if only to live one moment longer.

  The climb continued. Beck pushed herself up just far enough to look backward over Rachel’s shoulder. More forest, thicket, and impenetrable tangle. How these beasts could pass so easily through that stuff, she couldn’t fathom. No hunter could ever get through there.

  Ahead, she caught a glimpse of Jacob as he plunged into a tangle of honeysuckle and elderberry that had formed a living dome over a fallen aspen. Leah and Reuben followed, dropping through the tangled web of leaves and into a hollow beneath. Without slowing, Rachel lowered her head and shoulders and stormed through.

  It was like falling through a roof into a dark cellar, but the landing was soft—there were three hot, hairy bodies to cushion their fall. One of them, possibly Leah, gave a painful grunt on impact.

  The hollow was tight and confining, stabbed through with limbs from the fallen aspen, obscured on all sides by vines and brush, packed solid with steaming apes. It got hot right away. Jacob’s scent glands were working overtime.

  They were hiding again, motionless, eyes intense, breathing in quiet puffs. Listening. Peering through the myriad tiny gaps in the leaves, vines, and branches.

  It made Beck afraid, as if the monster were lurking outside and not on both sides of her.

  She could see through the curtain, a slot here, a chink there, tiny windows blurrily framing puzzle pieces of the forest outside. Other than the troubled forest chatter, she heard nothing. Something moved, and she gasped before she could catch herself. She leaned closer to the tangle, peering through a vertical hole between twisting vines. Something white dangled from a nearby elderberry bush, moving lazily in the breeze.

  They had come full circle. Obnoxious, raiding Reuben had already been here.

  Of course, Reuben’s escapade with her toilet paper was not going to help the Sasquatches’ cause. A streamer of white toilet paper would stand out like a surveyor’s ribbon. One of the hunters was sure to spot it.

  Reed took a moment to listen and watch before taking another step toward the white ribbon. He had his bearings now. He recognized everything. He whispered via his earpiece, “Pete, I see the toilet paper.”

  “We’re closing on you,” Pete replied.

  “Still moving uphill,” said Max.

  “I’ve got a man above you,” Jimmy said.

  Reed didn’t move. Maybe Pete Henderson was rubbing off on him, or maybe he’d been in these woods so long he was growing a whole new set of senses, but he felt something.

  Steadying his rifle with his right hand, he flexed and stretched his left, then reversed the procedure, flexing his right. A search or a hunt? He checked the progress of the other hunters on his GPS. It was a search right now but would definitely be a hunt in a matter of minutes.

  As one, Beck and her captors alerted, their muscles tensing, their eyes shifting about. When they heard a second step, their heads turned the same direction, toward the south, the broken bits of light painting speckles on their faces, glimmers on their eyes. Beck peered through an opening, saw nothing but leaves, peered through another, saw only forest, peered through a third—

  At the sight of her husband, her diaphragm involuntarily leaped and a squeal escaped her throat. Rachel’s arm nearly collapsed her rib cage; Jacob shot her a glance and a warning hiss; Leah’s glaring eyes cut through the dark. Beck clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Reed took another step toward them. Beck craned her neck to steal a tiny, partial view of him through a gap in the leaves, her hand squeezing over her mouth ever more tightly as her emotions defied restraint.

  Reed stole forward, one step at a time, ducking branches, stepping over twigs, hands welded to his rifle. He removed the earpiece from his ear, putting aside the other voices. He only wanted to hear what was around him, right here, right now. Two more steps, and he reached his waypoint. He was standing by the white toilet paper streamer.

  He was so close that Beck could see only his legs.

  Rachel’s body had turned to iron. Her hair was bristling, stabbing Beck in the face and arms. Jacob breathed slowly but deeply, building strength in silence, his hair on end, ruthless murder in his eyes.

  Beck put her other hand over her mouth but could not steady the quaking breath rushing in and out of her nostrils.<
br />
  They’re cornered. They have young: Reuben—and me. If I make a sound . . . If Reed comes any closer . . .

  Reed stood still again and scanned around him, occupied first and foremost with staying alive, but driven by one irrepressible longing: to see Beck, to hear her voice, to know, at long last, that she was alive. Maybe it was the longing that gave him the feeling; somehow—maybe it was that stupid toilet paper—but he felt she was close.

  He remembered seeing another scrap of toilet paper the last time he was here, within sight of—

  There! Fifteen feet away, the scrap of white lay on a patch of brown pine needles, right below a huge honeysuckle that grew over a fallen aspen. He took two small, careful steps. A leaf crackled under his boot and he froze.

  Steady now.

  One more step. Freeze. Listen. One more step.

  A scent from an old nightmare reached his nostrils and his blood ran cold. Suddenly he wasn’t just remembering that first horrible night; he felt he was there, hearing Beck scream and feeling helpless, so helpless. The thing was there too. Though he couldn’t see it, he could feel it hiding, watching him.

  Beck. He could think only of her and took one more step toward the terror.

  It was one step farther than he’d ever gone before. One step ago, he was terrified. Now he was as good as dead, but he didn’t care. His hands became steady. He had no urge to step back. This was his destination, exactly where he wanted to be, not just close, but there.

  “Beck,” he whispered. “I’m here, babe. I’m right here.”

  He could smell the thing. If he wasn’t imagining that slow, steady, hissing sound, he could hear it too.

  A search or a hunt? He’d come to do both. He swung his rifle about, daring that thing to move.

  Reed stood just above the hollow. Beck heard a hiss crackling through saliva and teeth. Jacob’s teeth were bared, his canines gleaming. He was crouching, poised, planning.

  Reed, get out of here!

  He didn’t leave. He took another step toward them.