“Forgive my rudeness. Meat is best when it’s still warm,” it said in a low voice, a piece of ragged flesh hanging from its mouth.
Madeline’s jaw fell open. She had never talked to a ranger at all. This… thing had killed the ranger and taken its place, shape-shifting from hideous creature to human with so much ease, and now it paused from its meal, looking down on her with hunger, readying to tear into her, just as it had probably torn into Noah up on the mountain.
Wiping its dripping mouth, it leapt down from the rafters, landing solidly in a crouch before her.
Madeline screamed.
6
SHE spun toward the door, the creature leaping up, claws jerking her backpack roughly and raking through the fleece jacket.
Her hiking boots, wet with blood, slid noisily on the smooth floor. In the confines of the vaulted toilet, the thing was close behind her, lunging at her back, trying to drag her down by her pack. She felt claws dig into the jacket again, holding her back momentarily before the material tore free. Quickly she wrenched open the door and ran out into the open, not daring to look back. Her eyes scanned the area for a weapon, but she saw none, just the ground sloping away into the forest. She stopped at the back entrance of the ranger station and ripped the door open. Dashing down a narrow hallway, she burst through to the main room, knocking over a display on wildflowers as she passed it, hoping to impede the thing.
She knew she couldn’t outrun it, heard the door slam shut behind her as the thing entered the station.
Then she spied a fire ax propped up by the main door. Lunging at it, she grabbed the handle and whirled around at full tilt. The creature was too far away, and she spun frantically in almost a complete circle, falling off balance and stumbling. The ax connected violently with the wooden door frame and stuck fast.
Panicked, she tried to wrench it free, her hands burning with friction on the handle. The thing sped forward, a fanged black figure in a blood-soaked ranger’s uniform, now mere feet away. She gripped the ax tightly, working it quickly back and forth. Five feet. It began to give way. Four feet. She wrenched the ax head free. Three feet. Swinging the weapon with everything in her, she connected with the creature’s chest. Bones snapped audibly. Howling, it spun away, gripping its dark flesh as blood sprayed the room. The handle wrenched out of her fingers, and she backed away. Screaming, the creature loped madly away from her, retreating down the corridor, where it banged against one of the walls. At the end of the hall, near the generator room it had entered before, it stumbled, fell, and sprawled across the floor, gasping for breath.
She could hear the bubbling of blood as the thing attempted to breathe, a direct hit to the lung. It struggled to prop up on one hand, rose a couple feet, but its clawed, black hand slipped in blood, slamming its torso back to the floor.
Its body contracted violently, folding in on itself, rolling into a ball. It twitched, its arms and legs alive with a hundred spasms. Then it fell still, struggling to breathe in long, ragged gasps. After several final labored breaths, it stopped breathing and lay immobile.
Madeline turned and tore open the front door, flinging it back on its hinges and banging it against the wall. Then she was outside again, scanning the area for a safe place. Only trails met her sight, snaking off in three directions.
Not wasting another second, she took off toward a kiosk that housed several maps and trail descriptions, hoping she could hide behind it for a few minutes in order to catch her breath and think. Sliding in the dirt near the wooden display, she flung herself down behind it. She panted, her throat dry. Peering up, she studied the map. At a glance, she noted that one trail led straight into Many Glacier, one of the biggest campgrounds in the park. There would be people there. Phones. Rangers who were alive.
Instantly she rose and began running down the path, glancing behind her. She had probably killed the thing, but terror had seized her. Madeline ran until she simply couldn’t anymore. The ranger’s station was no longer in sight, and she had entered a steep, forested section. Gasping, she slowed to a walk, still looking nervously behind her.
She wondered how far behind her the thing was-if it still lay in a pool of its own blood, dead, or if it was up somehow, resurrected, following her scent. How had it found her? Beaten her to her next stop? Had it anticipated her next move? Loped down the mountain in the silver of moonlight and found the backcountry ranger station, the lone ranger up there-and eaten him?
None of it made sense.
Madeline shuddered. She could feel the terror the ranger must have felt when he saw the thing slink in through the front door of the station. And then when it came at him, claws and fangs tearing him apart…
She wondered if the ranger, not quite dead, had heard her come in. If he had been desperately trying to get her attention by banging on the wall of the station. “The generator’s been acting up.” The creature had stridden back there and savagely finished him off while she waited in the other room.
It was incredibly intelligent. It had infiltrated the ranger’s station-it spoke. The fact that it could anticipate her moves, her thoughts, was terrifying. Even now it might know exactly where she was. If it was somehow still alive.
If only she could somehow touch it, or touch something it had touched, she might know what it was and what it wanted. It hadn’t had contact with the backcountry book long enough for her to get any detail other than the blood.
She needed to touch something it had been exposed to for a longer period of time.
Or, she needed to touch the creature directly.
She continued down the trail, pondering, gasping for breath with her mouth open, a stitch forming in her side. Already the temperature was climbing. She’d never known it to be this hot in the Rockies, and she needed water badly. She had to stop and drink. Up ahead she saw a cluster of rocks. Maybe she could hide in there and drink from Noah’s water bottle. She hoped he was still alive, but his screams played intensely and repeatedly in her head, like some gruesome song she couldn’t get rid of.
When she reached the huge, granite boulders, she glanced back again. The trail was still empty. Quickly she darted off the path and ran around the side of one of the boulders. There she squatted on a bed of pine needles and flung the pack off her back. Inside she found another change of clothes, including some polypropylene long underwear and a pair of woolen socks. Next to that lay the water bottle. Grateful, she took a long drink, quenching her thirst.
Replacing the bottle, her hands found something smooth and solid. A great sadness suddenly swept over her. Curious, she pulled out the object, a very old hardback book. The spine was well worn and the paper old and spotted with age. She opened it carefully and found graceful handwriting and some field sketches: a flower, a mountain peak. It was someone’s old journal, she realized. She read the date on the page she was currently turned to: February 20, 1859. The book had a terribly sad energy to it.
Carefully she closed it, replacing it deep in the bag. Her fingers searched for sun protection, but met something cold and metal instead. Instantly images and emotions leapt into her mind.
Running down an alley in pursuit of a dark figure.
Fear. Desperation.
Throwing open a door to a train compartment and lunging inside, heart hammering.
She withdrew the object, holding it carefully. She knew backpackers carried knives, but those were usually folding blades or pocket knives.
The knife she now held in her hand was a foot-long dagger, encased in a round, ornamentally engraved silver sheath. The handle was completely metal, and when she drew it out, she saw that the blade was very strange. It had no edges but was round with a pointed end, like a sharpened spike. She touched the point and felt it snag on her flesh. Very sharp. She’d never seen a knife like it.