Gillian heard herself shriek, “NO!”
The other woman spun around and ran up the trail. She flung off her pack. Holden leaped over it. He grabbed the knife out of his rear pocket as he chased her.
She was fast, but Holden gained on her. Reaching out, he grabbed the back of her gray T-shirt. The fabric stretched, tenting out behind her. Then she staggered and danced sideways as if being swung on the end of a rope. Her feet tangled. She went down, tumbling and rolling. Holden pounced on her.
Chapter Thirty
“We could stop anywhere along here,” Rick said.
“I’d rather find a place,” Bert said, “where the stream isn’t so close to the trail. We’d have people hiking right by our camp.”
Rick smiled. “Yeah, this trail is Grand Central Station around here.”
They hadn’t seen anyone except Angus the lunatic since leaving the girls. But Rick agreed with Bert. If they kept going, they might find a good secluded area.
“Why don’t we just give it another hour?” Bert suggested. “It’d be nice to get settled while we have some of the afternoon ahead of us.”
“How far’s Mulligan Lake?”
“More like two hours.”
“Andrea and Bonnie’ll probably be there,” Rick said.
“Well, we won’t go that far.” She looked at him, a corner of her mouth curling up. “Unless you want to.”
“I just want to get someplace where we’ll have plenty of privacy.”
“Me too.”
They walked side by side around a bend in the trail that took them past a stone comer. Rick reached below Bert’s pack and squeezed her rump. “What have you got in mind?” he asked.
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “A little of this, a little of that.” Her face turned forward again and she stopped abruptly.
Rick halted beside her.
On the trail at their feet lay a red backpack.
“What the hell?” Rick muttered. “Looks like one of ...”
She grabbed his arm so hard that pain streaked through it. She was gazing past him, to the right.
Rick turned his head.
He thought, It’s another hallucination, has to be, but how can Bert be seeing it?
He stared.
The trail where he stood with Bert was slightly higher than the clearing ahead, and gave him a perfect view.
Can’t be real. Impossible.
It was worse than his daydreams, his visions, worse than anything he had ever imagined. Julie’s death seemed pristine compared to this.
One of the bodies was a naked man. He lay on his back near the sprawled remains of a girl. Rick refused to look straight at the girl, to see what had been done to her. He gazed at the man. The man looked as if he were made of blood, as if his skin had been peeled off.
Rick let his eyes dart past the third body, a twisted, faceless thing.
Strewn about the bodies was clothing: a pair of cut-off jeans with one leg split open; a yellow blouse; a torn rag of panties; faded blue gym shorts; a gray T-shirt sliced down the front, rumpled in such a way that the letters UC showed. Some of the clothes were sprinkled red as if they had been sprayed from a distance, and Rick realized vaguely that the girls must’ve already been naked when the blood began to fly.
The girls.
Andrea and Bonnie.
He couldn’t look at their bodies, but the clothes were enough.
The other clothes belonged to the man: shoes placed neatly together with socks tucked inside, folded trousers, a knit shirt on the ground near the pants.
Who is he? Rick wondered.
Did he do this? Why’s he dead?
Bert, standing at Rick’s side, bent over and heaved. She had her knife clutched in her right hand. It was pressed to the side of her leg, and the blade jerked as spasms shook her body.
Already has her knife out, Rick thought. Got through the shock and saw the danger. Why didn’t I?
If I only had the gun!
Rick drew his own knife from the scabbard on his belt. Then he squirmed out of his shoulder straps. His pack dropped to the trail behind him. He scanned the clearing, the base of the slope a distance to the right, the trees beyond the clearing, the stream to the left and the wooded area on its other side. Saw no one. Imagined Jase and Luke and Wally charging at them from the rear. Whirled around. No one. He raised his eyes. No one scurrying down the rocks.
“RICK!”
He began to turn and everything seemed to be in slow motion. He saw Bert’s pack falling toward the trail behind her legs. Her arm began to move upward, pointing with the knife. He finished his turn. The man of blood was sitting up. His eyes were open. He had a red erection.
Rick grabbed Bert’s shirt and pulled. She twisted slowly toward him, her shirt coming off her shoulder, her right breast exposed, the knotted fabric across her chest slipping apart. “RUN!” he yelled in her face. His voice seemed far away and echoing. He saw her head shake slowly from side to side, her hair swaying out below the edges of her hat. “GO!” he yelled again, and then he released her shirt and started toward the man.
The man, somehow already up, wasn’t coming at them. Instead, he ran away. His back wasn’t red. It had a deep tan except for his white, flexing buttocks. He only ran a few steps. His arms reached out. He grabbed a long stick slanting up out of one of the bodies (a broad-boned body ... Bonnie?). He tugged it out with both hands. It made a sucking sound. He pivoted, swinging it like a baseball bat. Rick, almost upon him, flung up his arms to protect his head. His wrist exploded with pain. But the knife stayed in his numb hand. The man leaped out of his way. Rick couldn’t stop. His forward foot came down on a thigh of the corpse. The body turned under his weight. An outstretched arm flopped up as if reaching for him. He tried to miss it as he stumbled, but the toe of his boot smashed the forearm down and he thought, I’m sorry, as he staggered past the body, trying to stay up.
Something crashed against the back of his head. He slammed the ground and skidded.
He lifted his face out of the grass.
Was I out? What if it’s all over, and Bert ... ?
He looked over his shoulder.
Bert was on her feet, face to face with the man, trying to wrestle the shaft out of his hands. Her knife was clenched in her teeth. She was being twisted and shaken like a doll, no match for the killer.
Rick started to get up.
The pole was snatched from Bert’s grip. She reached for the knife between her teeth. Before she could grab it, the man drove an end of the pole into her belly. Her mouth made a wide O. She stumbled backward, folding, and her rump pounded the ground.
The man left Bert sitting there, turned away, and squatted by the head of the other corpse.
Andrea?
She’d been scalped.
She had a knife in her mouth. But not crossways, pirate fashion, like Bert. The broad handle stuck straight up from her lips. The man clutched it and pulled. Andrea’s raw head lifted as the blade slid out.
A huge blade.
The man’s eyes, bulging white in his red mask, fixed on Rick.
Rick was almost on him.
The man jerked the knife the rest of the way out, ripping through a cheek. The blade swept past Rick’s belly. He felt a hot sting as it nicked his side. As he lunged at the crouching man, he slashed downward. His knife skidded on the man’s forehead, sliced the left eyeball, cut through a nostril, tore a diagonal gash through his lips and chin, swept down and split the back of Rick’s own left hand.