Scream Catcher (29 page)

Only seconds before, death seemed inevitable.

He found himself giving up.

But now he wants to live.

He’s battling for his life by clinging to a thick tree root that juts out of the Tongue Mountain rock-face.

* * *

The wide open valley and beyond it the blacked-out village of Lake George lays a thousand or more feet below, flash-lit by long spider-veined lightning strikes. To Jude’s left, the rushing stream water spews out of the culvert, shoots off into mid-air before arcing downward, falling through the black night to the invisible ground below.

To his right, maybe a half a mile of open cliff-face.

Carefully positioning the toes on his boots, he searches for a foothold against the loose shale until managing to locate solid footing. Grip tight, he pulls and chins himself up and over the tree root. When his head is above the cliff edge, he raises his right leg, locates a second secure toehold.

Pressing his full weight down on his right foot, he lets go of the tree root, thrusts his right hand over the cliff edge. He then pushes his palm down flat onto the wet, gravelly floor. With his left hand still secured to the root, all he needs to do is haul his body up and over the side.

It’s precisely what he starts on when his right hand explodes in pain.

* * *

Jerking up, he sees Lennox standing over him, lithium-powered night vision scope masking his dark face and blue eyes. The beast stands tall and powerful in a black tight-fitting bodysuit and thick-soled combat boots. Strapped to his narrow waist is a utility belt, various components and tools attached to it. If it isn’t for the lightning and the glow of the DNVD scope, Jude might not have seen the beast at all.

But he would feel his presence.

Lennox’s right foot has come down on Jude’s right hand, boot heel crushing flesh and bone. The pain shoots out through his arm, rides the nerve bundle like a high speed railway, past his elbow and up into his shoulder, then up into his head. His entire right side is on fire. Jude screams, voice howling into a night punctuated with rain, thunder and absolute darkness. He hears his own voice echoing off the cliffside, shooting out into the valley, out over the roofs of the village, out over the Lake. He can’t be sure if Lennox is capturing his screams with his iPhone, but he knows that precisely what the beast will inevitably want.

Screams and cold-blooded murder.

Jude holds to the edge, runs his free hand over the shale wall, searches for a chunk of loose rock. He locates a piece about the size of his own hand. The rock is smooth on one side, with a sharp jagged edge on the other. He fits the rock into the palm of his left hand, grips it with every ounce of his strength. Then, with one swift downwards swing of his arm, he thrusts the sharp edge into the foot of the beast.

* * *

Now it’s Lennox who screams.

The beast shrieks, his high-pitched voice crying out into the deep night. He’s the suddenly maimed wild animal. Lennox may have the power to see in the night, but he never anticipated the chunk of sharp shale coming for his foot. He yanks his right foot out from under the rock, yanks it loose from the tip of the sharpened edge, falls flat onto his back.

Something happens to Jude then: he feels no more pain.

There is only the bleeding and a rush of energy that shoots up from the tips of his toes, enters into his limbs. Jude does not pull himself over the cliff edge so much as he leaps over it, landing directly on top of his pursuer.

Pressing knees against Lennox’s arms, Jude pulls the Maglite from his pant waist, raises it high. Using it like a club, he swings. There’s the good feel of teeth breaking on contact. Lips popping, gums tearing. A single incandescent green tubular eye stares up at Jude while the beast once more screams a high-pitched yodel that cuts not only through the forest, but also into skull and brain.

Jude swings wildly, hitting the beast again and again.

“Scream!” he shouts. “You fucking motherfucker, scream for me!”

Lennox smiles.

He spits blood into Jude’s face. He beast smiles and works up a gurgled laugh while swinging his right arm around so quick, Jude never sees the rock that slams his skull.

In the end, all Jude knows is that suddenly the tables have reversed themselves. Now it’s he who is on his back, left side of his head pounding in rapid pulses of sting.

Jude gazes up at the little green eye and the muscle-bound animal it’s attached to.

“Kill me now fucker!” he cries. “Just kill us all now.”

That’s when the air goes abruptly still. The rain, the wind, even the lightning seem to halt their fury as if God himself has depressed a Pause button on the world.

Lennox wipes his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, does it without the least bit of effort as though impervious to the pain in his foot and mouth.

He spits another wad of blood and spittle.

Reaching into a pocket on his bodysuit, he pulls out his iPhone, depresses the app.

Coming from the speaker, a scream.

Jude’s scream.

“Gotcha,” Lennox laughs.

From down on his back, Jude stares into the green eye, at the rainwater that drips down off the bald head, down onto bloody lips. He tries to speak. But no words will come. Only the silent motion of a mouth opening and closing.

As if responding to the silence, Lennox rears back with his left leg, snap-kicks Jude in the rib cage.

“The Player’s got twelve minutes to secure its first objective,” adds the beast, before once more shooting off into the night.

Tongue Mountain

Friday, 2:05 A.M.

Down flat on his back, Jude sucks wet air through an open mouth, makes a survey of his body, tries to work up a damage assessment.

Opening his eyes, he digs into his shirt with a still good left hand, pulls out the topo map. It’s soaked through with rainwater, the thin plastic having torn down the center. Multi-colored ink mixed with blood and rain, running down off the paper.

In the deep night, the map proves impossible to read anyway.

He rips the compass off his neck, tosses it over the cliff edge. Does it out of frustration; out of anger and hate. Does it in defiance of the demon.

He pushes himself up off the ground, onto his feet, flips the useless map over the edge along with the compass. Stuffing a damaged right hand into his pant waist, he approaches the tree line.

* * *

Bushwhacking through the thick greenbrier and second-growth saplings, the sound of rushing stream water grows louder with each step forward. Jude has no choice but to swallow the pain, focus instead on the anger, on the determination to reach his first objective in the time allotted. He knows that Lennox has the upper hand; knows the Black Dragon will kill Rosie if he doesn’t get to her inside twelve minutes. He knows that no time can be spared focusing on anything but saving the lives of his family.

Trekking blindly through the thick growth, he comes upon a small clearing. It’s then that the weather takes a turn for the better. The sky opens up not with another downpour but with moonlight. The yellow-white moon glow suddenly emerges from out of a split in the cloud cover. Just like that it’s as if Jude were standing on the bow of a ship as it entered into the calm eye of the storm.

For the moment he is amazed to find himself standing in the middle of the clearing, staring up at the waxing August moon. The moon is brightly lit and more inviting than the sturdiest of shelters. It’s the first natural light he’s been exposed to in hours.

Pulling eyes away, Jude gazes back down at the clearing before him.

That’s when he spots a yellow flag attached to metal pole that’s been shoved into the ground in the center of the treeless area. How insane is this? A pin marker from a putting green placed all the way up there in the middle of the mountain forest. One of the flags, no doubt, Lennox documented on the topo map.

Jude approaches the marker with a renewed sense of confidence brewing inside his bruised chest. At the base of the pin marker he discovers a shoebox wrapped in translucent plastic Saran Wrap. Taped to the box top beneath the Saran Wrap is a white four-by-five inch index card. Written on the white card in thick black Sharpie are the words, “Ten Life Points.”

Jude understands the significance of the card. His son is a video game fanatic, after all. Jude knows the meaning of Life Points. Life Points equal extra game minutes. Jack is always going on about racking them up, saving them, storing them on memory cards so that his video game characters do not die. So that they stay in
Play
!

What’s about to be
Game Over
is now
Pause
.

By discovering the flag, Lennox is affording Jude ten additional minutes with which to rescue Rosie.

The ex-cop bends down, picks up the box with his good hand. The wet plastic feels cool and soggy between his fingers. He pulls it off, tosses it to the ground. Yanking back the box lid, he peeks inside, finds himself knocked over by what he discovers: a tube of antibacterial cream, a bundle of white bandages, some pre-wrapped dressings, a small bottle of Bentadine antiseptic, alcohol pads, a pair of forceps and a roll of thick medical tape. There is also a bottle of spring water, three sticks of plastic-wrapped mozzarella cheese and a single foot long Slim Jim. Finally, located at the bottom of the box he finds a brand new four-pack of size D Alkaline Batteries.

Silver and black
Energizer
Batteries.

Jude rips open the package of batteries before clumsily reloading the Maglite.

Rigging the heavy black flashlight it gives off a powerful beam of white light.

Just in time.

Because Mother Nature is once more turning tail. The moon and its rays are again being consumed by the thick cloud cover.

Swallowing a mouthful of water, Jude quickly eats one of the cheese-strings and the Slim Jim. He does it not out of hunger, but out of a need for energy; for body heat. He shoves the food in, swallowing after barely chewing. Then without thinking about it, he cups the broken nose inside his two hands. Supporting the fleshy nostril portion between opposing thumbs, he sucks a deep breath, cracks the cartilage back in place.

He releases a strained shriek that shoots off into the valley.

But when the sting finally abates, he rubs some of the antibacterial ointment onto the nose ridge in the place where the skin split. He rubs a dab onto the lacerations that pockmark the top of his right hand, wraps the badly bruised hand with bandages and tape, drops everything back into the box, including the wrappers. Closing the lid, he sets it back down onto the soggy ground.

Making his way to the far tree line, Jude enters the thick woods towards the sound of rushing water.

Tongue Mountain

Friday, 2:15 A.M.

The rain pours down in sheets.

It comes down with such force, it penetrates the thick tree cover, raindrops shooting and scooting between the now illuminated leaves like tracer bullets. The rain smacks against Jude’s face, sinks into the antibacterial ointment he’s applied to his broken nose. The diluted ointment oozes down the center of his face like syrup, runs into his mouth. It tastes bitter on his tongue, on his lips. For the first time since having been dropped in the mountain woods, Jude must come to grips with his exhaustion.

He is dead tired.

Tired
and
wired.

He is living a very bad dream and all is as much surreal as it is the real deal.

Branches slap and jab at his face. It’s like the trees have eyes. The trees see him coming. They are his enemy because they hurt him. But Jude does not feel the pain and the sting anymore. He feels only the urgent need to get to Rosie before her time runs out. With that life or death mission accomplished, he will then be allowed to go after his son.

He will save the boy’s life according to the
rules
of the kill game.

* * *

Jude breaks through the tree-line, the trembling beam of Maglite shining ahead of him.

He spots the stream.

It runs downhill, fast and wide, on its way to the pool and beyond that the cliff face. He scans the beam of bright flashlight over the surface of the stream, searches for a way to get across without being consumed in the whitewater. He looks for a bridge of boulders, one rock succeeding the other. Or maybe a lightning-struck tree that’s fallen across the stream’s width. If he can’t locate anything, perhaps he can count on an area of streambed shallower than the rest; a place that will afford him the chance to wade across.

He moves his way upstream for maybe thirty yards, then downstream until he comes to the edge of the pool. Despite the search he comes up with nothing that would allow him an easy means of getting across the open water. No big rocks, no felled tree, no shallow land bridge.

He makes his way back to his original position.

In the back and front of his mind he feels the allotted time growing tighter with each passing second. Even with the additional ten Life Points he guesstimates that the remaining minutes have dwindled down to six or five. Maybe less.

The time for thinking has come to an end.

Jude knows there’s no alternative other than to go for it. Having made the decision, he stuffs the end of the Maglite into the waistband of his jeans. He approaches the edge of the whitewater, gulps down his dread like bad medicine, jumps.