The Mountain King (22 page)

Heated animal breath blew into his face as the creature leaned close to him and, snapping its jaws, exposed its large, flat teeth. Thick, yellowish foam flew from the creature’s lips and splattered Mark’s face. Mark nearly gagged at the stench of the creature’s breath. His awareness was spinning so far down into a cushiony, throbbing darkness that he was barely aware of the explosion of the gun. He never felt the splash of hot blood onto his face or the crazy twitching of the animal’s body as a bullet tore through the back of its head, killing it instantly. 

Mark continued to spiral downward, lost in a dizzying darkness thicker than any darkness he had ever experienced before. His whole existence seemed to be reduced to one tiny, flickering pulse of pain and despair. 

Time lost all meaning as the darkness sucked him down. ... 

And then, from far away, he heard a faint voice calling to him. 

He thought he recognized the voice, but it was so faint, so far away, he was positive he was already dead and drifting further and further away. 

“Hey! . . . You all right? . . . Are you all right, Mark?.. . Come on, man, talk to me!”
 

Mark tried to suck in a lungful of air, but the pressure on his crushed ribs made it impossible for him to take a deep breath. The small amount of air that did enter his lungs felt like hot, fetid water. The darkness surrounding him was complete, but then, only vaguely at first, he became aware that he was no longer being held by the arms that had pinned him. His body was free and floating, as if he were tumbling weightlessly down a long, dark river. A hot, sticky liquid was dripping from his face and running down his neck. 

My blood,
he thought. 

With the faint spark of hope that he wasn’t already dead, he struggled to open one eye. It took a great deal of effort, but he managed to look around. The first thing he saw was Phil, staring at him with the most idiotic grin he had ever seen. 

“You’re alive!” Phil shouted. “Jesus God! I can’t believe I got him! One shot!” 

You got him?
Mark wanted to say but couldn’t. 

“I crawled over and picked up the rifle, and I shot him!” 

He was leaning over Mark, looking at him like he wanted to give him a great big bear hug. “I can’t believe I didn’t hit you, too!” 

Mark sucked in a shallow breath that wheezed in his throat. 

“Yeah,” he finally managed to say. 

He was trembling violently as he pushed the carcass off him and stood up slowly. Every joint and muscle screamed with pain as he stared in utter disbelief at the two dead creatures lying on the ground. The top of one’s head, obviously a female, had been blown away by Phil’s lucky shot. The other one was face down on the ground with a wide, bloody hole in its back. 

Mark grimaced when he looked at his gore-streaked hands and then wiped his face. He rotated both of his shoulders and kicked both legs to make sure nothing was broken, then took a deep breath, wincing with the pain of his expanding ribs. He might have one or two cracked ribs, he thought, and absolutely every part of his body hurt; but nothing else seemed to be broken. 

He looked numbly over at Phil, who was sitting back on the ground, whooping with joy as he shook the rifle above his head. 

“All right!” he shouted. “We got two more of ‘em! We fucking-A got ‘em!” 

Phil cut himself short and looked at Mark when he grabbed the rifle, bolted it, and, crouching, cautiously glanced all around. 

“Hey, come on,” Phil said, his voice still trembling with excitement. “There aren’t any more around. Don’t you think, if there were any more, they’d have attacked by now?” 

“Maybe . . . maybe not,” Mark said as he rolled his head back and forth and massaged the back of his neck. It felt as though several vertebrae had been broken. 

“So that’s three down!” Phil shouted. “Three down and two to go!” 

“Yeah,” Mark said. He leaned over, panting for breath as he wiped the creature’s blood from his face with the flat of his hand. “Three down and two to go ... as far as we know.” 

Chapter Thirty-three
 

Down to the River 

The clouds turned to the color of soot, and rain was threatening by the time they reached what used to be Mark’s campsite. 

The place was a shambles. 

What was left of his tent was flattened and torn to shreds. The aluminum support bars had been ripped from the ground and bent into pretzel shapes. Tatters of brightly colored nylon along with the torn remnants of Mark’s extra clothing were strewn all around on the ground and hung from the branches overhead, flapping in the stiffening breeze like medieval war pennants. Every can and package of food had been squashed or ripped open and scattered about on the ground. 

“Who do you think did this?” Phil asked after Mark had lowered him to the ground. 

With his hands on his hips, Mark looked around dejectedly.  

“I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count,” he said as he kicked at the mess. He didn’t find anything useful, not even enough scraps of a heavy shirt he could put on to cut the chill. 

“You think it was—” Phil hitched his thumb in the direction of the mountaintop “—them?” 

Mark considered a moment, then nodded. 

“Who else? We know from what we saw last night that—” 

His throat closed off, and he had to blink his eyes rapidly to stop the tears from forming before he could continue. 

“—they can be damned calculating in their viciousness. It must have been them ... or else one of the search parties found it and didn’t like the idea that I was so well stocked. But I doubt that.” 

He shook his head and gritted his teeth with anger. He spent several minutes probing the rubble with the muzzle of his rifle, hoping to find some ammunition, but he didn’t even find a crushed and empty box. Whoever had done this had certainly wanted to make damned sure he couldn’t resupply himself. 

“It’s going to be dark soon,” Phil said. “Think we ought to camp here for the night, or try to make it all the way down?” 

“If I could find just—All right! Bingo!” Mark bent down and picked up a single bullet, which had been pressed point-first into the soft ground. He cleaned it off and slipped it into the rifle. “Now, if I could find just a couple more bullets so I have a full load, I’d say we should chance sleeping here, taking turns keeping watch, of course.” 

“Of course,” Phil echoed. 

Mark frowned as he looked up at the lowering gray sky. 

“I don’t know, though. Something tells me if we don’t get down from here tonight—” 

“Hmm . . . yeah,” Phil said. 

Once Mark was satisfied there was nothing else of use to find, and feeling as rested as he was going to feel, Mark heaved a heavy sigh and scooched down so Phil could climb up onto his back. After making sure Phil was comfortable, he handed him the rifle and started down the trail that would take them to the west branch of the Sawyer River and—eventually— home. 

The trail was less steep, and in spite of the stitching pain in Mark’s chest, the going was a little bit easier the closer they got to the river. Long before they saw it, they heard the distant rushing sound of the water. 

Overhead, the sky had turned deep gray. The wind was picking up. Rain had begun to fall in plump, heavy drops by the time they broke out of the woods onto the boulder-strewn shore of the west branch. 

Mark couldn’t believe the relief he felt as he gently lowered Phil to the ground. Every inch of his body felt like it was on fire with exhaustion. His lungs ached as he took a deep breath and held it before staggering like a shipwreck victim down to the water’s edge and bending down to fill his cupped hands with water and raise them to his mouth. 

The water was numbingly cold, so he cautioned himself not to drink too much at first, but he couldn’t stop himself from greedily gulping it down, letting the coolness flood down his throat and numb his belly. For the first time all day, he began to think that they might actually have a chance of making it out of the woods alive. 

“Hey, save a little for me, will you?” Phil called out, laughing as he watched Mark slurping the water. Once his thirst was satiated, Mark filled his hands and started back to where Phil was resting on the shore. Phil drank the small swallow of water that was left, smacked his lips, and sighed. 

“How far do we have to go?” he asked. 

He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the river as he looked at the opposite shore, where the lessening light cast the forest with an eerie, deep green gloom. 

For the first time, Mark glanced upriver, in the direction of the rope bridge which had been placed and maintained by the A.M.C. for crossing the river. His heart thumped hard in his chest when he saw the shredded rope strands on both sides hanging down from their support stanchions into the raging river. The wooden slats had long since floated away in the surge of water. 

“Shit, they got us here, too,” Mark whispered. He turned to Phil and pointed. “The fucking bridge is gone.” 

Gripping his rifle tightly, he squinted as he scanned the forest behind them. Suddenly every shadow was alive with menace. He imagined dozens of pairs of hate-filled eyes staring back at him, hungry for revenge. At first, he thought the flicker of motion he detected was just his imagination, but after a moment, he made out first one, then two dark silhouettes moving stealthily toward them through the dense brush. 

“Shit! Let’s get moving!” 

“Where to?” Phil asked as he climbed onto Mark’s back and clung tightly to his neck. 

“We’re gonna have to get a little wet,” Mark shouted. 

He went straight toward the river and, without hesitation, plunged into the icy water. The first blast of the river’s power almost knocked him off balance, but he struggled to regain his footing and then started moving forward. Progress was slow against the powerful current. 

“There they are!” Phil shouted, his mouth close enough to Mark’s ear to hurt. 

Mark resisted the urge to look back, concentrating instead on not losing his footing on the submerged rocks as he went deeper. The freezing water rose past his waist, up to his armpits. 

“Keep the rifle dry!” he shouted. 

“Jesus! They’re coming in after us!” Phil yelled, his voice raw with fear. 

They were a little less than halfway across the river. If those creatures could swim, Mark knew they’d never reach the opposite shore before they were caught. 

He had to act—fast. 

“Give me the rifle,” he said. 

Once the rifle was in hand, he turned around carefully and braced his legs wide. The water tugged at him like hundreds of hands, pushing and pulling, trying to knock him over. 

Two bullets . . . and two targets!
 

The creatures had entered the water and were wading toward him, keeping at least twenty feet away from each other. Mark raised the rifle to his shoulder and sighted on one of them, but the surge of the river and Phil’s shifting weight kept knocking his aim off. He had to concentrate hard to bring the creature into his sights, but when it was about fifty feet away, he sucked in and held his breath, steadied his aim, and squeezed the trigger. 

Several things happened the instant the rifle went off. 

The creature in his gun sights roared with pain and doubled over, clutching both hands to its stomach. Bright red blood squirted from between its fingers. Phil involuntarily jerked back at the sound of the shot, moving just enough to knock Mark off balance. When Mark shifted for better footing, he stumbled on a rounded stone underwater and, with a helpless shout, fell backward, pitching Phil into the water. For a few frantic seconds he floundered underwater, then broke the surface just in time to see Phil being swept away by the swift current. 

The wounded creature wasn’t dead, though; Mark could see that. It had turned back and was crawling up onto the shore, leaving behind a wide, dark track of water and blood on the rocks. Halfway to the forest edge, it stopped, slumped over, and lay still. 

Undeterred by the sudden blast from the rifle, the other creature kept coming toward him, steadily closing the gap. 

Mark bolted the rifle, took careful aim at its face, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a useless click onto the bullet casing. He bolted the rifle and tried again, but got the same result. Mark’s teeth were chattering wildly as he glanced over his shoulder for Phil but didn’t see him. He was lost in the raging white foam of the rapids. When Mark turned back to face the approaching creature, it was less than ten feet away and closing fast, snarling viciously as it glared at him. With a snorting roar, it raised its arms over its head and lunged forward. 

“Come on! Come and get it, you son-of-a-bitch!” Mark wailed. 

The creature, apparently sensing that the rifle was now useless, bellowed and snorted, but it was the creature’s eyes that held Mark transfixed. He could see in those eyes a glimmer of intelligence and satisfaction that events had played out this way. It wanted nothing but cold, animal revenge. 

But that was what Mark wanted too, for Sandy’s brutal death. Shivering wildly from the cold, he flexed his knees and gripped the muzzle of the rifle, preparing to swing. The river’s current was pushing him back and forth in tugging surges, but he was counting on it to keep the creature off balance as well. 

The creature towered above Mark, and then, grunting loudly, it started to drop on him like an avalanche. Mark gritted his teeth and grunted as he swung the rifle around viciously to meet the attack. The rifle butt connected solidly with the side of the creature’s face. The impact sent a jolt of pain shooting up Mark’s arms to his shoulders. 

“Take that!” Mark shouted, laughing hysterically as the creature, stunned, staggered backward, the side of its face seeping blood. 

“Come on! Come and get it! I’ve got some more for you! You want it?” 

Mark took a few steps forward, jiggling the rifle threateningly in his grip. 

The creature, while hurt, was far from down and out. With a roar that completely masked the raging sound of the river, it lunged again at Mark, slashing at him with clawed hands. 

Mark stepped back just in time, swung the rifle back behind him, and brought it up and over, like a frenzied woodsman trying to split a log. The butt of the rifle smashed down hard on the top of the beast’s skull, caving it in like an eggshell. Blood, brains, and chips of bone exploded in a red shower into the river. The intelligent glow in the creature’s eyes suddenly glazed over into a staring, vacant expression of dulled amazement. With a bubbling growl, it collapsed into the river and was swept away by the swift current. 

“Fuckin’-A!” Mark wailed, waving his arms above his head. 

Tears of relief poured from his eyes as he looked up at the sky and let the now heavy rainfall splatter his face and wash away the blood that had speckled him. Still jacked up on adrenalin, he cocked his shoulders back and looked around as though expecting to see a stadium full of cheering spectators. It took him a moment to realize where he was and what had happened. 

“Phil!” he shouted, and then, with a long, trailing cry, he dove into the water and let the current carry him away. 

Somewhere down the river, he hoped—he knew he had to find Phil. The only question was—would he be dead or alive?