Monster Read online

Having completed her task, Beck quickly pocketed the roll, reassembled herself, and rose gingerly. She hobbled out of the enclosure, hand-over-handing along the logs, expecting the female would follow her.

  But the female didn’t follow her.

  Beck turned, curious, just as the bushes opposite the enclosure quaked, then parted, and the big gray female and her son burst headlong into the clearing like children after tossed candy.

  How? She’d had no idea they were there, no indication, and—

  And apparently Beck’s female had not been the only one watching! Beck was mortified, and even more so to see how fascinated these creatures were with her most recent accomplishment. They probed and sniffed. They were almost fighting over it.

  Since Beck was on their turf, and even the young ape outweighed her at least three to one, she backed off and gave them all the space they needed. Hopefully they would like whatever it was they were learning.

  Then the juvenile’s eyes darted elsewhere, his attention cut short by an eerie, faraway whistle. The two females became alert and silent, heads erect, eyes shifting. Beck was more than alert; so far, whistles had not brought good news.

  From somewhere in the dark, far beyond the enclosure, an animal was calling, first in a low whistle and then in a low, guttural rumble like boulders tumbling.

  The gray female answered in a whistle and then a low-pitched, subdued moan, chin jutting, lips pursed in a tight little O. When a rumbling reply came back, the three apes huddled, grudges apparently put on hold, eyes searching beyond the enclosure, anticipating something as they grunted and snuffed at each other.

  For Beck, dread had become normal, changing only in degree. She peered through the trees, side-glancing at the others for any clues about which way to look. Part of her, like a hopeful child, wondered if it might be a team of rescuers come to take her back, but the rest of her knew better.

  The forest on the mountainside was broken into smaller, struggling clumps of stunted firs and pines: black, saw-toothed cones against a moon-washed sky. A soft, distant rustling directed Beck’s attention to a black mass of trees that swelled sideways until one tree separated from the others, walking, spreading in size as it approached. Beck perceived the shape of this new shadow from the stars and sky vanishing behind it: broad, lumbering shoulders; thick neck; high, crested head; huge arms, with hair like Spanish moss.

  Like little kids caught in mischief, the females and the juvenile scurried out of Beck’s makeshift outhouse, looking over their shoulders and panting little exclamations to each other. Beck’s female, with typical surprising speed, swept Beck up in her arms, and Beck, in typical fashion, rode along, like it or not. They dove into the stand of young firs and sat on the female’s nest as if they’d all built it, the other female overtly fascinated with her own fingernails; the juvenile cuddling up against his mother; and Beck’s female doting on Beck, first dropping her onto the nest as if she could handle being dropped, then nudging her this way and that way as if to make Beck comfortable. Beck did not appreciate the poking and prodding. There was so much of it, it was sure to draw the big male’s attention.

  The big newcomer sensed—most likely smelled—something outside of normal before he even got there. He had been moving swiftly, silently, like a spirit through the broken forest and over the rocks, but now, just outside the grove of firs, he moved one careful, exploratory step at a time, sniffing and huffing suspiciously, looking about for whatever was wrong.

  This had to be the daddy, all eight feet of him. He was covered in coarse black hair; his face was one big scowl in a leathery mask, and Beck had never seen such piercing eyes, each cornea reflecting the moon in a diamond of light. He carried a slain deer in his left arm, its head dangling on a broken neck. Preoccupied, he dropped it.

  Beck knew what was wrong—she was wrong—but she hadn’t a clue what to do about it. All she could do was cower behind the red female’s big frame and—

  That option vanished. Abruptly, the other female dropped facedown to the ground, bowing on all fours with her head low, rumbling and clicking her tongue in homage. Beck’s female, as if reminded of her manners, dove to the ground and did the same. The young one, because he was a male, or because he was still a juvenile and not expected to know any better, did not participate in the ritual but sat where he was, glancing in Beck’s direction as if to guide the alpha male to the proper target.

  Beck, now on open display, had never felt so caught-and-in-trouble in her life. Her hand went unconsciously to her neck, as the images of both Randy Thompson and the dead deer flashed through her mind.

  And she was in trouble. The male leaped backward in shock, eyes wide, a raspy huff gushing from his throat and his hair bristling on end. With steamy breath rushing through his nostrils, he glared at Beck and then at the two females, muscles tense, teeth bared.

  He thinks I’m a threat!

  Learning—fast—from the other two females, Beck flopped to the ground and bowed.

  The thing didn’t move. After three or four seconds, Beck was still alive.

  The other female moved aside and enfolded her son, leaving the big red female to explain.

  Beck’s female rose to her knees and reached for Beck—

  The male shot forward, took the female by the scruff of the neck, and threw her into a row of young firs, bending them over like field grass. She screamed, arms covering her face, white teeth glinting in the moonlight, as she slid down the bent trunks—

  He grabbed her before she reached the ground and threw her again, this time into a larger tree that shuddered as she bounced off its furrowed trunk and thudded to the ground. She cried in pain.

  Beck didn’t have to think long or hard. There was absolutely no safety here, no hope of living. She pushed herself from the ground and hobbled and hopped out of the grove, dragging one foot while she jumped with the other, fleeing from one branch to another, stumbling from trunk to trunk, groping for anything that would bear her up and keep her moving. She could still hear the female screaming and the alpha male roaring; she heard the blows and felt the ground shake. It didn’t matter that she had no idea where she was; the only thing that mattered was being elsewhere, anywhere but here. She pulled herself, pushed herself, counting the inches, desperate for distance.

  The screaming stopped. Beck could easily imagine the big female’s head nearly twisted off, her tongue hanging, her eyes rolling. So much for Beck’s protector. Their strange, unnatural interlude was over, leaving Beck lost and unwelcome in a scratching, entangling, tripping darkness with nowhere to go that was anywhere.

  She fell against a tree—she didn’t find it; it found her, and it hurt. She remained still, just breathing, waiting for the pain in her ankle to subside enough for her to take one more step.

  Now that she was quiet, she realized that the woods were not. Somewhere behind her came a crashing, a crackling, and the thudding of heavy footfalls.

  “N-n-n-no . . . no . . .” She forced herself onward, tripped over a log, and rolled among fallen branches, clenching her teeth to stifle a scream. She reached, groped, tried to sit up and get her legs under her. Her good leg moved. The sprained one was stuck and punished her severely for pulling. She pulled anyway and couldn’t help a whimper of pain. She was free.

  The thing was coming closer, moving through the tangle with unbelievable speed.

  Randy Thompson. This was how it was for him!

  She tried to climb the tree but found no handholds. She lunged forward, leaping on her one good leg, groping for any branch, any tree trunk—

  Huge hairy arms grabbed her around her middle and jerked her backward, knocking the wind out of her. She screamed, she kicked, she tried to wriggle free.

  The arms were like iron.

  Willard, Idaho, was a loosely arranged, quiet little town of red brick storefronts, older farmhouses on hillsides, and scattered modular homes on weedy lots. It was like many in Idaho, built in a day when timber and mining were sure to make money and folks th
ought there would be some point in living there. Today it survived as the Whitcomb County seat with a proud, pillared courthouse. Down this old building’s tight corridors and behind its many doors with the frosted windows were all the entities that held the county together: the district court and judge, the prosecuting attorney, the county commissioners, Planning and Zoning, Disaster Services, County Assessor, Social Services, and on and on, enough to fill the building directory on the wall just inside the front door.

  If someone wished to find the county sheriff, the directory would send that person next door to the newer building meant to serve as an expansion of the old one. This building was white concrete block, one story, plain and practical, intended for a specific purpose, which was to house the county sheriff’s office and the county jail. Inside the front door was a reception counter; behind that were four desks, a fairly neat one for the secretary and three generally cluttered ones for the deputies; to the right was Sheriff Patrick Mills’s private office, a separate room with a door he usually kept open. To the left and through an archway was the examining station for driver’s licenses, complete with two testing booths, an eye chart, a camera, and two green footprints painted on the floor to show the applicant where to stand for his or her photo.

  In a corner behind the counter and past the four desks was the computer station. There were other computers in the building, but this was the “department” computer, the one strictly devoted to law enforcement, available to any member of the staff for the performance of his or her duty. Some months ago, a flight simulator and a commando game had cropped up in a coded folder on the computer’s desktop, but these were not openly discussed and only discreetly used.

  Right now, with everyone gone but the night jailer and all calls forwarded to the central dispatcher, Reed sat at the computer in the light of a single desk lamp, the blue glow from the monitor on his face, an overlapped clutter of windows and boxes on the screen. He was tapping and clicking his way through the multiple levels and links of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, a networking tool used by law-enforcement agencies all around the country in tracking criminals and sharing investigative information. The program had subgroups for different categories of crime, regions of the country, and types of criminals, with subgroups under those, and side links from those. Sifting downward through all the levels could have been tough for someone who hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours, but Reed knew what he was after and pushed away sleep as he pushed through the program.

  Maybe Jimmy and the others—including bigmouth Kane from Missoula—did know the woods and had good reason for their opinions. They were outdoorsmen and Reed was a cop; so maybe Reed was a little out of his realm of competence.

  He tapped the keys, hammered the backspace and tried again, clicking the mouse.

  But then again, maybe they didn’t know everything, and maybe he did know something. Just standing around and letting them tell him what to think wasn’t going to resolve the question, nor was it going to expedite the process. Enough of that. Reed had a brain and skills of his own. He was going to do cop stuff, whatever it took to find Beck.

  Was there a pattern? Whatever this beast was, had it attacked anyone else, anywhere else? If so, when? Where had it come from, and which way was it going? Was there anything more they could find out about it?

  Reed finally clicked his way into a subgroup that linked and compared known homicides with unexplained deaths, a program intended to help law enforcement detect homicides that may not have been recognized as such. In a few more mouse clicks, he narrowed the time frame down to the last two weeks, and the region to his own and the three neighboring counties. The pickings were slim: a hit-and-run outside a tavern, and a logging accident. The tavern was far to the west, in another county, and took place a week ago.

  The logging accident . . .

  Reed read the entry again, carefully noted the location, and then checked a map.

  Ooookayyy. He clicked, nearly banged, the “print” command and then fidgeted while the paper slowly rolled out of the printer. By the time it had finished, he had his coat on. With the printout in his hand, he turned off the lamp and got out of there.

  With a slightly gentler drop than the last time, Beck landed back on the nest in the grove, limp and despondent. She’d given up trying to understand. The big red female, moving stiffly from her own bruises, had brought her back and now hunched over her, nudging, stroking, fussing.

  Beck grunted and pushed her hand away. I’m going to die anyway, thanks to you. What’s left to fuss about?

  Her eye was on the alpha male as he shared the dead deer with the other two just outside the grove. He slurped blood, ripped flesh from hide, tore the meat with his teeth and hands, and chewed, his mouth and chin bloodied. He looked her way only once as he chewed, just long and intensely enough to send a message of loathing, making sure she knew she didn’t belong. After that, for as long as Beck watched him, he paid her no mind; he just kept eating.

  Beck looked away. Maybe that was the end of it. Maybe for now, her captor “mother” had gotten her way and the male had relented—grudgingly, of course. But he’d sent his message loud and clear.

  All things considered, this should be bearable. It beat being thrown against a tree or having her head ripped off. Beck glanced at her aching feet and the recent scratches on her hands from all those dry, prickly branches in the dark. This was the worst that had happened to her. She was alive for one more moment, maybe one more night. She should be glad.

  She broke down and cried.

  The big female sank onto the nest beside her with a quiet groan and pulled her in close, an act of affection that only worsened Beck’s despair. Beck was too upset to say it; she could only think it: Why can’t you just let me go?

  The beast got a message—the wrong message. She immediately extended her hand toward the others and pig grunted.

  They ignored her, so she grunted more insistently, rocking back and forth.

  The male finally looked her way as if doing her one more additional, very troublesome favor, then regarded what was left of the deer. With indifference, he took hold of the head in one hand and the shoulder in the other, and wrenched the head and neck from the body. When the female grunted imploringly one more time, he tossed it to her.

  It flopped at her feet, throwing blood. She picked it up, obviously glad to get it. With slow, lazy-fingered deliberation, she turned it over and over, sniffing and studying as if she’d never seen one before, and then, breaking the jaw open, she yanked out the tongue and bit the end off.

  Beck looked the other way, feeling sick. How could God create such creatures? And even worse, how could He throw her in with them? She never asked for this. She wouldn’t have been able to conceive such a horror to ask for.

  The female grunted and nudged her. She winced and would not turn her head. The female nudged her again, grunting, and Beck ventured a timid look with one eye.

  The ape was offering her a string of meat. Beck couldn’t recognize where it had come from, which was a good thing. She shook her head, her mouth clamped shut.

  The lady dangled the meat in front of her face and wiggled it so it thumped against her lips. It reminded Beck of when she tried to feed worms to a baby robin. The robin wouldn’t eat and soon died.

  Thump! The meat hit her face again. Beck reached up and took it as the female intensely, relentlessly watched.

  It’s a strip of bacon, Beck told herself. It’s like sushi. It’s rack of lamb without the rack, really rare. It’s steak on the platter right before the barbecue.

  Building up to the moment, Beck put the slightest tip of the meat between her teeth and nipped it off. As she pressed it against her tongue, the flavor came through, and really, it wasn’t half bad. It was raw and tasted a little “wild,” but it was meat. A little salt would have helped, she supposed, but . . .

  She bit off another piece and chewed it slowly on one side of her mouth and then the other.
She swallowed it, and then, of all things, she wondered if there might be more. She was hungry.

  Her female captor was still working on the tongue but found a nice strip from the back of the neck and bit it off to give to her.

  I’m eating, Beck thought. That was nothing unusual in itself, but it taxed her sanity to think she was taking part in this meal, in this setting, with these creatures. They were bloody, fearsome carnivores who were sharing a deer’s head with her, but she was eating it. They had blood and grease on their fingers, but so did she. They were disgusting to watch, but she was gaining an appreciation for how hunger could supplant politeness; she could relate—sort of.

  The female handed her another strip of flesh, and Beck received it gladly, chewing it down. That seemed to please the beast. She reached down and fingered the fringes on Beck’s brown buckskin coat. Then with her index finger, she hooked and twirled a strand of Beck’s reddish-brown hair.

  Beck dared to take hold of the hand and give it a furtive stroke, an action she knew worked on dogs, cats, and horses.

  It communicated. The lady gave a grunt, then another. The tone wasn’t angry, but seemed comforting.

  Beck couldn’t speak it, but the big red lady—and her hot-tempered gray rival—reminded Beck of Rachel and Leah, Jacob’s two wives in the Bible. Leah could bear children, but Rachel could not. Beck didn’t know if that was the case here, but she felt sorry for the red lady anyway. She gave the hand a little pat and looked up into that quizzical, leathery face. “R-roo-Rachel. ”

  “Hmmph,” Rachel replied, rotating the deer’s head in search of another bite.

  Beck watched the others who were still eating, wolfing down the heart and liver and gnawing on the ribs. She’d made their acquaintance, she realized—they’d sniffed and studied her excreta and she’d eaten from their deer’s head. Naming them would be appropriate. The other female’s name would have to be Leah, the biblical Rachel’s rival for the favor and attention of . . . Jacob. And the brat? Well, the biblical Jacob’s firstborn son was named Reuben. It was difficult to give a name she liked to a creature she didn’t like, but it would have to do.