The Shadowkiller (37 page)

W
hen Kris felt her cell phone vibrating, it was two minutes before she was to go out live to all of Puget Sound. She glanced at the phone's display and recognized Mac's number. She figured he was probably calling to bitch at her for either stabbing him in the back or having his buddy thrown in jail or calling him an asshole on his voice mail.
Guilty as charged.
She shoved the vibrating device deep into her pants pocket and positioned it close to her crotch. She figured Mac was still good for a thrill.

With his eyes nervously on Channel 7's newscast, Mac took a break from phoning Kris and punched in the numbers for the television station. Twice he got a recording that routed him to a voice mail. He got an emergency number but that too went to voice mail. He wracked his brain, trying to decide how far he should go to warn her. Ben had certainly been right a few times, but this was quite a leap of faith.

Mac took a chance and called his own department. He got a rookie operator and told him to find a working emergency number so he could speak to an actual person at the television station, saying it was “pretty important.” Had Mac insisted it was a dire emergency, he might have had better luck. The rookie had heard all about Mac Schneider. He told Mac he'd check it out and promptly forgot after a lengthy domestic violence dispute call moments later.

As Mac waited for the callback, he saw Kris appear on camera, somewhere in the foothills, to report her story on the mountain biker. Ben's premonition had Mac on the edge of his seat, electrified with anxiety, his imagination inventing a giant hairy form crossing the scene from the shadows as she spoke. He didn't need that kind of proof. No, he really didn't want that at all.

Kris ended her poignant piece on the ace mountain biker with “Robbed of his dream, today could have been the highest point in his young life, but here I stand, in the lee of a dark peak somewhere above me, quite likely the last place Skip Caldwell ever saw.”

As soon as she finished—“Kris Walker, reporting live from the mountains in Snohomish County, back to you in the studio”—since there were no questions from the anchors, Gary cut his floodlight.

Elevated by the end of a long day and the atmosphere of this coal black nowhere, Jess quickly coiled his audio cables, unhooked Kris's microphone, and reached for the beers.

Gary held up a hand to stay the party. “Leave 'em till we've struck all the gear,” he advised. Then to bolster his argument, he added, “We don't need to forget a thousand-dollar lav or something.”

Jess abandoned the beer and pitched in stowing equipment. Kris, as usual, stepped aside and lit up. As her crew busied themselves in their pre-party prep, she walked a few steps from the zone of light radiating from the van. There was a cold, light breeze, and though she could hear leaves and needles rustling, she could see nothing but the van and the ground around them.

Kris took rapid, nervous puffs to come down from the high of being on the air, but soon there was something else, another anxiety crawling up her back. It wasn't waning postperformance stress, it was more like apprehension. It was odd, like the vaguest energy, so faint it was hard for her to define. She suddenly had the creeps and wanted to be somewhere else. She stubbed out her cigarette and walked over to the crew.

“Let's go,” she said, reaching for the passenger door.

Gary didn't understand her abrupt attitude shift. “Hey, we're done,” he encouraged. “Let's have a beer.” In the uneven light from the interior of the van, Gary thought Kris's face seemed oddly stricken, but he still pressed her,“C'mon. Let's have one.”

“I said let's go,” she said, irritated. “I don't want to be here anymore.”

Gwen looked at the Stygian curtain around their little cocoon of light and immediately felt what Kris had just felt. “She's right,” she said. “Let's hit the road. We can drink on the way.”

Jess already had a beer and was two big gulps into it. “Fine with me. Gary's driving.”

Gary didn't understand the mood crash. “Look, let's just—”

Gary's words were interrupted by a soft snapping sound close by. They all looked as Kris opened the van's passenger door.

“That's it,” she commanded,“let's get the fu—”

Suddenly the damp atmosphere shuddered as an impossibly low animal growl ushered forth from the blackness next to them, freezing them in their shoes. Then that deep bass, guttural sound rose to an impossible amplification, a shredding, metallic animal scream that sent adrenaline pumping into their systems like the spillways at Hoover Dam. They flew into accelerated motion. Gary ran around toward the driver's door and Kris leaped into the open passenger side, while Gwen and Jess swan dived through the portal of the sliding door.

Behind the van, Gary was the first to meet their gigantic antagonist, a dark living tower blocking his path to safety. He screamed in horror and it struck him open-handed, bashing his head against the back end of the vehicle, ejecting a mass of gray matter and vital fluids through the side of his breached cranium.

From the passenger seat Kris reached across and twisted the ignition keys and the engine came to life. She scrambled over the console, not knowing who or what was attacking them but thinking of nothing but escape. A motion caught the corner of her eye and she saw Jess fly out of the middle of the van.

Gwen's continuous scream was so shrill and powerful she went hoarse before finishing. Just as she drew another breath to scream again, Gwen too was whisked from the van. Kris fumbled to get the vehicle in gear and then backed up. As she did, she heard both Jess and Gwen emit bloodcurdling wails of piercing agony. Then a squishing sound ended Jess's cries.

She floored the gas pedal. The van's wheels spun but Kris felt no sensation of movement. She whipsawed the steering wheel and realized the van wasn't moving because their assailants were
holding the van in place.
Gwen's screams quieted to bubbling whimpers, all in the space of a few seconds.

Kris wrenched the steering wheel back and forth with the throttle full out, and the engine strained toward blowing apart. The tires merely buzzed like dull saws cutting dirt and gravel. She still couldn't see the aggressors but suddenly realized it wasn't a group of people. That's when it occurred to her that the attacker might not be human. Mac's words reverberated in her head but she still rejected the idea as too fantastic, too absurd, despite the insane events occurring. Gwen's strained gurgles ended abruptly.

Kris smashed the gas pedal again, raging the engine. Then the van keeled over sideways, crashing onto the driver's side, shattering the side windows on impact. What looked to Kris like a surreal, animated black tree limb knifed down from above. On the end of the appendage was a black, humanlike hand big enough to palm a beach ball. It clutched her roughly and she was pulled out the passenger window, hitting her shoulder and legs as she passed through.

The dead van's lights still threw illumination as Kris now stared eye to eye with a real monster. Alone, her companions having been destroyed in mere seconds, her feet dangling five feet above the ground, she looked with uncontrollable horror into its subhuman, apish face framed by a huge spray of matted hair. Holding her by the back of the neck, it sniffed her, the nostrils on its flat nose flaring slightly, its stinking exhalations sounding like wind in a deep cavern.

As terrified as she was, Kris had a sudden ray of hope that it wasn't going to kill her. If it wanted to, it would have done so by now, she reasoned. Along with her transcendent fear, the scale of this creature and the easy power with which it held her one hundred twenty-two pounds overwhelmed her with a life-draining awe. It snorted and turned. Keeping its grip on her, it picked up something else. Kris saw Gary's lifeless body dangle from the creature's grasp. Then it carried them into the woods.

A
gain and again Mac punched redial and kept getting the recording that the subscriber was out of range. He figured she must be moving because the phone had rung through just two minutes before and now it defaulted to voice mail. He vowed to pester the hell out of her until she answered and confirmed she was safe. He hit redial and this time the phone rang. His heart racing, he closed his eyes and visualized her answering. It rang and rang and rang.

After an interminable fifteen minutes bouncing up over logs and through brush, the giant's hand encircling her slender waist, Kris felt her hopes fade with each mighty step. As the monster climbed farther into the mountains, her stark terror, combined with the bobbing motion, made her nauseous. But she resolved to live, somehow. She heard a sigh from Gary and realized it was just air escaping his lungs. She had caught a glimpse of him by the van and was positive he was dead. The beast had Gary slung under his other arm as if he were carrying a rolled magazine.

They traveled deeper and higher into the forest. Kris had felt the phone vibrating in her pocket since the abduction and tears stung her eyes. She made several tries to retrieve it from her pants but just couldn't get her hand inside the pocket. Then the creature shifted her slightly and she got her hand on the phone and felt it vibrating. She pulled it out and managed to open it just as it went to voice mail. Then she fumbled the phone and nearly dropped it. Terrified of losing it, she clutched the phone as if it were her last hope. And it probably was. Kris never cried, but this seemed like a good time to start. She had to escape. It would be the greatest story ever told—if she lived. That last thought caused her to hiccup and more tears rolled out. She tried to keep silent, but her chest shivered and she sniffed involuntarily, the pain of the beast's vise grip around her midsection almost too much to bear. The jostling up-and-down motion made using the phone impossible, especially in the dark, so she waited, squeezing it tightly, occasionally feeling it vibrate, but fearing she would lose it if she tried to open it.

After a very long while they ascended a mount and the ground leveled. Somewhere off in the impossible distance Kris saw a pinpoint light. She knew it was miles and a valley or two away, but she made up her mind to run for it if she got the chance. Nearly blind in the intense darkness, she heard Gary thud and then the thing lifted her again. She felt it grab her jacket and pull, tearing the fabric. Then her blouse and pants were ripped off. After sniffing her all over, it tore off her panties and tossed her to the ground.

She heard it mangling Gary's body and noticed that the beast's stench had dissipated slightly. It had moved away from her. That's when she took her cue. Phone still in hand, she jumped up and ran, back from where she sensed they had come, to that light so far away. She knew that by catching it off guard, she could lose it in the dark. Naked except for her bra, kneesocks, and shoes, Kris sprinted down the cold mountain. She couldn't see a damn thing, but she convinced herself she would escape. With tears streaking her face, she resolved she would tell her story.

As the small two-leg female fled, he began to eat the dead male. Tearing off the soft, tasteless outer skin, he bit into the still warm flesh, its blood providing a lubricant to wash the meat down his throat. He ripped an arm from the male and gnawed, its tiny bones cracking like twigs under colossal molars.

Crouching, he filled his gut. The female could not go far. She was ready to mate. He could smell her.

Kris raced into the abyss, stumbling over rocks, brush stinging her flesh, but the scratches and nicks were nothing compared to the alternative. In less than ten minutes she reached open ground. Ahead lay a rocky escarpment, its outline barely visible in the dim illumination from the spotty cloud cover. She flipped open her phone and the lighted pad beckoned. Despite her hands shaking terribly, she managed to retrieve the number that had last called her. She punched the button and heard the phone ringing. She looked above her, hoping the beast had abandoned interest in her but still fearful it might be coming for her.

“Hello” came the most welcome voice she had ever heard, Mac's.

“Help! This thing is—”

That's all Mac heard as her cell cut out. “Hello? Hello?” he screamed into the phone.

“—after me! Help me, Mac!” Then she realized she had lost the signal. Two sobs burst forth before she got her emotions in control. She looked around and tried to find a way down the steep mountain in near total darkness. She picked the best line and continued but didn't get far before stumbling, rock knives savaging bare knees.

Picking herself up, she moved on. She managed to get to a run again and tried phoning Mac but tripped on a root or rock and pitched headlong into a boulder, viciously shattering her jaw and reducing most of her front teeth to a mouthful of hard chips floating in saliva and blood.

Taking a moment to regain her bearings, she spat out her wrecked teeth and staggered to her feet. Miraculously she had not let go of the phone. Then it buzzed. Disoriented by the fall and her injury, she fumbled and dropped it, knocking off the battery.

“No! No!” she slurred through her broken jaw and ruined dentition.

She picked up the phone and tried to find the battery. After a long moment she grabbed it and floundered to reinstall it. She pressed redial and prayed for a ring tone. She heard it.

“Kris!” came Mac's voice. “Where are you?”

“I'm in the mountains, I'm…I'm…”

Her speech was heavy, as if she were speaking with a mouth full of molasses. She sounded drunk. Or hurt.

“It's coming! Your monster! You should have told me!”

“Told you what?”

“That it was real!” she cried and broke down.

Mac's blood ran cold. “Kris, where are you?” he screamed.

Then her voice really frightened him because she sounded so much like a wounded little girl. “Mac, I'm scared! I'm scared!” she whimpered thickly.

Kris looked off into the impossible distance where safety lay and saw that lonely little light, her homing beacon. In that one instant it was so sadly clear to her that Mac couldn't help her. She was also sad because she knew she would never get to that light. But she had to try. For the briefest moment she felt very, very sorry about many things. Sorry because this fleeting phone call was her last chance to touch a fellow human being before whatever fate awaited her. And she was so terribly sorry for not being a better person. She knew she was cruel and had drifted to the side people jokingly called “dark.” Like Darth Vader. For the first time in her life she didn't resist the feelings of guilt, didn't try to desperately crush them down before they made her soft. She had crossed the Rubicon a long time ago and once again, in a different way, not too many minutes ago. But if she had any chance at all, her life would hinge on what she, and only she, would do in the next few moments.

Mac yelled into the phone again,“Kris, you've got to tell me where you are!”

He waited for her response and could hear her crying softly. After a long moment he heard her sigh and say,“I'm so—”

“—sorry.” Mac didn't hear that last word as her cell cut out.

Kris's phone beeped to indicate a lost signal.

And then she heard it. Coming down the hill, its breath a chuffing steam train somewhere above her, zeroing in as if she were wearing a flashing sign. Her legs went wobbly as dizziness nearly sent her tumbling headfirst onto the rocks. She regained her legs but was instantly disoriented, suddenly unsure whether she should go uphill or down. She turned and ran downhill but immediately fell again, this time backward, tearing a large patch of skin from her bare buttocks. In the fall, her forearm hit something, sending her phone clattering away. Stunned and weathering searing waves of pain, she slid more than ran, her exposed legs and ass bouncing off the rocks as one of her shoes fell off.

Despite her battered state, she gamely continued onward, spurred by the sickening knowledge that her inhuman kidnapper was still after her. She ran two or three steps, then slammed into some razor-edged stone, flaying her calf. Her resolve was almost gone, her reserve of hope nearly empty. The clatter of rocks above her told her the monster was close, but she reasoned that if she couldn't see it, it couldn't see her. She decided to gamble and stopped running, opting to roll into a fetal position and hope it passed her by. She did her best to stifle her rushing breath, her mind flashing on stories of Holocaust victims hiding in attics from the Gestapo, smothering their crying babies to death to keep from being discovered. She felt a stab of remorse that she'd never had much sympathy for them until now.

It was close. A rock rolled nearby and she heard its deep, powerful respiration, then whiffed its sour primate smell. If she could hold out and it gave up, she would walk out of here alive. She was absolutely rigid, moving not an eyelash, despite the shield of blackness. She allowed her eyes to tilt upward, and rimmed by the faint light of the overcast was the treelike beast, standing over her. Suppressing a scream with her remaining life force, she closed her eyes and prayed it would not find her.

It started to step past and for a moment she felt she was home free…then came the softest sensation, a bit of hair brushing her shin…

And it had found her. Kris screamed as one huge hand thrust down and pinned her. It leaned close, its hot, rancid suspirations assaulting her nose. Then its hands moved down her bare body. That's when she realized it was not going to kill her, just yet, for it had something else in mind.

Kris's terrible suspicion was confirmed seconds later as it spread her legs and its huge, stubby, engorged member jammed into the delicate flesh of her inner thigh, trying to find its mark. Kris suddenly understood, as Russ Tardif had, that there really were things worse than death. It tried again to enter her, and though Kris Walker had never been a screamer, she summoned a wail that challenged the top of her lungs, giving voice to her most profound final wish to provoke a quick end. But it was not to be.

The beast tried to enter her for an exquisitely agonizing few moments. She could feel its rigid animal-thing probing her, but her all-consuming terror had dried up any possible lubrication to help it. Then she felt its hand down there and its giant fingers probing pitilessly to enlarge the opening. She squirmed as best she could, but the beast's other hand held her as if a car rested on her chest. Then the pain shot through her like a white hot blade as it tore at her intimate parts. The blood flow provided enough viscosity to allow it to gain entrance and her eyes snapped wide when it slid its hideous organ home. Kris let fly with another scream that seemed to go out to the cosmos. She screamed and hit at its arms and body. It allowed the feeble onslaught for a few moments, then it put its hand to her throat.

Kris had begged for death to be swift, but now that it was here, the fear of what was next enveloped her. Its hand pressed hard, then the fingertips touched the palm as it encircled her neck. She thought she would black out quickly but it was not quick enough. As her air was cut off, her body began to spasm. She felt her vision going as her tongue lolled out involuntarily. Then, with the crushing pressure on her brain-case increasing, she saw streaks of colored lightning as her eyeballs squirted from their sockets and her optic nerves essentially shorted out. She was aware of her bladder letting go, and her last sensation was of being first in a beautiful green field with blue skies and cotton-ball clouds, and then, as if by a cut in a horror movie, in a hellish wasteland of fire and black skies populated by faceless dark beings.