Voracious (29 page)

Something had utterly demolished her fuel system, and fear seized Madeline like a plunge into an icy-cold lake. Snapping her head up, she gazed frantically in all directions.

Another car drove by, the passenger giving her an unfriendly look that said, “What are you doing parked in the middle of the road?” No offer of help. No “Are you okay?” Just “Get out of my way.”

She straightened up, heart threatening to beat right out of her chest. The thing must have done it while she was talking to Noah. It was possible Stefan had damaged her car earlier, but the stink of gasoline surely would have tipped her off when she climbed into her car back at the cabin.

No. This was fresh.

He’d done it while everyone was focused on Noah. Which meant Stefan had healed.

The damn creature had snuck up here while she was only yards away and tore up her precious VW. And with Noah hauled off by the rangers, it was her only means of escape.

Frantically she glanced around, feeling more vulnerable than she ever had before. Until now she’d had Noah, and Noah had the knife. Now she was alone, weaponless, with no idea how she’d get away from the creature if it decided to attack. She couldn’t outrun it, couldn’t defeat it in a fight. Safety now lay only in movement and escape.

But for several moments she stood rooted to the spot, listening for any sign of the creature lurking nearby.

Several more cars passed. Mountain chickadees fluttered and sang in the trees nearby.
Chee-dee-dee. Chee-dee-dee.
A chickaree warbled and darted quickly up a tree, chirping agitatedly as it went.

Forcing her racing mind to slow, she thought logically. Her car needed to be fixed. She would tow it to the repair garage in nearby West Glacier, just outside the west entrance of the park.

Luckily it was Wednesday. Hopefully someone would be at the garage.

A beat-up old Subaru station wagon approached, slowed, and to her amazement stopped. Two women rode in it, both with shoulder-length blonde dreadlocks, braided hemp necklaces, and worn and faded T-shirts. They looked like sisters, both with similar freckled faces and the same sloping, upturned noses.

“Hey,” the passenger said. “You need help?” She was young, somewhere under twenty-five, Madeline guessed.

Madeline nodded quickly, stooping over so she could look at the driver, as well. “Yes. My car sprang a fuel leak. Can you drive me to the garage in West Glacier? The one just up the road?”

“Sure,” said the driver. “Hop in!”

“Thank you!” Madeline said gratefully. “Just let me get my car off the road.”

“You need help?” asked the passenger.

Madeline looked at the level ground and shook her head. “No, thanks. It’ll just take me a sec.” She jogged back to the driver door, stooped in, and inserted the key. Then she put the car in neutral, disengaged the emergency brake, and started pushing the car off the road. The Rabbit was light and easy to push on such level terrain, and in less than a minute, it was safely parked in the short grass along the road.

She locked up her car and moved to the back door of the Subaru.

“Oh, shoot! Carly, can you move some of your stuff?” the driver asked hastily.

As Madeline opened the door, a heap of gear spilled out, including a tent, an unrolled sleeping bag, as well as a bunch of bananas, a well-worn boot, and two unwrapped toaster pastries that looked older than the boot.

“Sure thing,” Carly said, turning around in the passenger seat and helping Madeline pull in the unruly gear and place it back on the seat.

With a small space cleared, Madeline sat down and closed the door behind her. Her fingers touched the vinyl seat of the car.

The two sisters hiking in the high country, backs laden with heavy packs, stopping at a rock pile to watch for pikas …

Carly as a teenager, sitting in the backseat of the Subaru on the way to a piano recital, nervous as never before …

The other sister, crying, ankle broken after a fall on a skateboard, Carly driving her to the hospital …

Their mother, in mid-lecture, warning them of the dangers of not following a more traditional path, wanting them to be lawyers or bookkeepers …

She pushed the myriad images to the back of her mind. The driver took off, and Madeline gave a long, mournful look at her faithful VW.
I’ll be back,
she mouthed to it.
Don’t worry.

It was the only time she’d ever had to leave it somewhere like that. In all the time she’d had it, it had never broken down once. Now ragged holes gaped in its underside.

“I’m Meg,” said the driver.

“And I’m Carly,” added the passenger.

“Madeline,” she answered, smiling at them.

Meg sized her up in the rearview mirror. “You been out here for long?”

“Standing on the side of the road or camping in the park?”

She laughed. “Camping.”

“Not long. Four days. But it’s been one hell of a four days. What about you guys?”

Carly scratched her head, the dreadlocks on that side moving up and down. “We’ve been out for what, three … three and a half years, I think.”

Madeline’s mouth gaped. “Three and a half years?”

Carly nodded, turning to the side in her seat so she could see Madeline. “Yeah … it’s been awesome. We just go from job to job, you know? Meg here’s a cook, and I mostly do housekeeping—you know, changing sheets and that kind of thing.”

Meg nodded. “We just go from park to park, depending on the season, finding odd jobs and room and board.”

The idea of such a carefree life appealed immensely to Madeline. She studied the two women with admiration. “That’s terrific!”

“Yeah, we sure think so. Mom doesn’t so much though.”

At the mention of their mother, Meg laughed. “Nope. Definitely not. She wants us to be stockbrokers.”

“Or work for a PR firm.”

“But not us.”

“Nope.” Carly pushed a handful of dreadlocks out of her eye and smiled. She was beautiful. A stunning, natural beauty. “We’re free spirits.”

“You two are sisters, then?” she asked.

“Yup,” Meg answered. “You got a sister?”

They were nearing the intense traffic of the trinket store and restaurant area of West Glacier, and they slowed to a crawl behind a line of cars waiting to get gas at the little service station.

“Only child,” Madeline answered. But she thought of Ellie and smiled sadly. She was the closest thing to a sister that Madeline could ever want.

She took in the pile of gear in the backseat next to her and in the trunk. “Looks like you two are heading on to new adventures,” she remarked.

Carly nodded. “Yep! Meg here scored a job as a cook in a backcountry chalet here in Glacier. I’m going with her to hopefully talk them into hiring me on in housekeeping.”

“Sounds like a great life,” Madeline said. She thought of her last few dark days and tried to envision a cheery future for herself full of travel. Failing that, she just tried to envision a future. But she couldn’t see past the horror and terror of the last few days, couldn’t imagine what lay in store for her in the next few hours, let alone the next few years.

“You okay?” Meg asked, watching her in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” she lied. “Just really tired.”

By now they’d made it to the far end of the gas station’s parking lot, moving steadily in the flow of cars. Meg pulled up at the garage. “Front door service,” she said, grinning.

“Thank you!” Madeline opened the door, careful to keep more gear from spilling out. “Take care,” she said, stooping to look through the window. “And good luck on your adventures!”

“Peace!” Carly said.

“Get some rest,” Meg added.

“Will do.” Madeline managed a smile, and the women pulled away, leaving her standing in front of the repair garage.

An hour later Madeline sat in an uncomfortable red vinyl seat in the repair garage waiting room, perusing a two-year-old issue of
National Geographic
. They’d towed her car back to the garage, and an elderly mechanic with a shock of white hair had been checking it over for the last ten minutes.

He entered through the employee door of the waiting room and walked up behind the counter, thumbing through pages on an ancient wooden clipboard. “Miss Keye?” he asked, looking questioningly around the waiting room, even though she was the only one there. She put down the magazine and walked to the counter. She fished around in the back pocket of Noah’s jeans for her wallet and realized she’d left it back at the cabin in her rush to leave.

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve looked over your Rabbit,” he said softly. The sympathetic look in his eye did not do much for her confidence. “I’m afraid it’s bad. Now, I can weld some of the damage and get new fuel lines and a tank and filter, but the problem is that it’s an import, and I don’t have many VW parts here. The ones I do have are for the buses. Darn popular with campers, those buses. They got the pop-up top and those sinks and stoves and whatnot. Darn handy. But I don’t have any Rabbit parts. I’ll have to order them.”

She raised her eyebrows. Somehow she knew ordering them was going to take a long time. She asked the question.

“Two weeks,” he said. “Maybe a week and a half. Depends on if they’re making another shipment up this way. Otherwise I just get parts every two weeks.”

“Darn,” she said, using the old man’s word of choice. “That long? Are you sure?”

“I’m afraid so.” His soft blue eyes gazed on her kindly. “What do you want to do?”

She thought a moment, fingers drumming on the black and greasy Formica counter. What could she do? Towing it even as far as Missoula would cost her a mint. Leaving it here until he could fix it was the best bet. But she couldn’t very well stay here, with no friends and no escape car. No. She would leave the Rabbit here, get home somehow, and come back for it. She hated the thought of leaving her beloved car, the sense of familiarity it brought her, but it was the best choice.

“Can I leave it here until you fix it?”

“Sure can,” he answered. “Got a lot out back.”

She nodded. “Then that’s what I’d like to do. I’ve got to get back home, though. I’ll leave you my information so you can contact me when you finish or call me if you have questions.”

“Good enough,” he said, and produced a tablet from under the counter. In block letters he painstakingly wrote down what was wrong with the Rabbit and then handed the pen over to her to fill in her information, the car’s year, make, and model and sign at the X to authorize repairs.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It’s what I do.” He grinned, his blue eyes sparkling beneath the crop of short, white hair. She smiled back and hoped desperately that she was leaving her Rabbit in good hands.

Now she just had to find a way home.

Her first thought was George. No one else would be willing to drive five hours to get her.

Exiting the relative peace of the repair garage waiting room, Madeline entered the chaos of the parking lot beyond. Cars still circled endlessly, waiting to fill up on gas; kids screamed; parents yelled.

Across the street, Madeline spotted two public telephones. At one a gaggle of redheaded children and their parents gathered, each taking turns talking into the mouthpiece. On the other phone talked a lone woman in her mid-forties, with graying hair in a loose ponytail and a point-and-shoot camera in one hand. Her T-shirt advertised, God, Guns and Guts Keep America Free.

Madeline approached the telephones. Reaching in her back pocket, she remembered again that she’d left her wallet at the cabin. Luckily, though, she had her calling card number memorized. And at least leaving her wallet at the cabin was better than if she’d been carrying it during the flash flood. If she hadn’t stashed it in her car, her calling card, along with her two credit cards, her driver’s license, hell, even her Mothershead Library card, would be somewhere in the river, swept far downstream by now or sunk to voluminous depths along with her expensive, well-loved pack that she’d never see again.

She waited patiently as God, Guns and Guts chatted quietly with someone, and the red-haired family yammered away loudly to the grandmother of the familial clan.

As she stood there, baking in the afternoon sun that beat down between pine needles, she fantasized that someone walking along a beach in the Pacific Ocean would one day stumble across her backpack in a tumble of sun-bleached driftwood. They’d find the name tag on her pack and give her a call. Or maybe the pack would wash up in Hawaii or Japan. Maybe she’d have to go to Oahu to claim it, and would end up scuba diving with dolphins.

After she waited for a few more minutes, God, Guns and Guts hung up. As the woman walked away, she threw Madeline a gruff look over one shoulder. The woman’s face was tough, tanned, and leathered, and the eyes spoke of a rough life that hadn’t had too many lucky breaks.

Madeline smiled at her, and the woman managed a smile back, then turned away.

She walked to the phone and picked up the handset, getting a wave of psychic white noise as she did so. It hit her powerfully, and she dropped the phone, letting it swing at the end of its cord. Shaking her head lightly, she picked up the handset again, trying to tune the visions out, but the buzzing in her head only allowed itself to be reduced to a low hum instead of disappearing entirely. Normally she’d be able to tune out such a thing. But she was exhausted, and probably a hundred people had used the phone already today, leaving a sea of fresh vibes behind.

She thought about visiting the park in the off-season sometime, but that thought was immediately followed by an image of the Sickle Moon Killer, pursuing her relentlessly through the abandoned campsites and parking lots in front of boarded-up restaurants and gift shops. Vividly she could see his dark, whiskered face, deep grooves carved into his aging face from years of frowning and brooding over the fourteen-year-old who’d put him away. In her mind’s eye, with his dark eyes glittering over a crooked nose broken in a prison fight, the Sickle Moon Killer caught up with her, a knife gleaming in one down-swinging hand.