Another bass rumble. More distinct this time. Closer. It echoed from the opposite mountainside, making its origin impossible to divine.
They were coming.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
A guttural roar. Closer still.
He fished the snow out of his barrel with his index finger and directed his rifle toward the forest uphill from him.
Crashing sounds.
The treetops shook and snow fell from the branches at the crest of the second rise.
It was too soon. They couldn’t have seen through his ruse yet. It was too soon!
“Umph. Umph. Umph.”
Grunting sounds from the woods.
Closing in.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
A roar grumbled through the valley behind him, from one side to the other, like a semi speeding past on a highway.
He glanced left. His tracks vanished into the trees, beyond which the only path led back across the treacherous scree-lined escarpment and ultimately to the house itself.
He glanced right. The trail narrowed to such a degree that he would have sought an alternate route even under ideal weather conditions.
Behind him was another sheer granite formation. The upper canopy of the massive pines far below was barely visible.
And his hunters were streaking straight down the hillside through the forest.
Directly at him.
“Umph. Umph.”
More grunting.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
He retreated a step and tried to locate movement between the tree trunks.
A glance back over his shoulder.
He was on a stone point with no escape and nothing but open air behind and beneath him.
“Umph. Umph.”
Another step backward.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
The ground trembled underfoot.
Dear God, how many of them were there?
More crashing. Branches snapped. Clumps of snow fell.
Closer.
Closer.
Another step back-
He bumped into something and nearly crawled right out of his skin. He whirled in time to see the pike topple over. Baumann’s lifeless face stared up at him from the snow, his nose pointing off to the side. The tattered skin on his neck was ridged with teeth marks. The impressions on the bottom of C-4 where the marrow had been gnawed out were so perfect they could have been used to cast a mold of the front six teeth on both the upper and lower rows.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
“Umph, umph,” from just ahead and to the left.
More grunts from the thicket off to his right.
The ground positively bucked beneath him.
He turned to his left. No way he’d ever reach the path.
To his right. Not a chance.
Behind him. A pitfall into the forest below.
Baumann’s face. Blindly looking straight through him. Four bloodless lacerations through his eyebrows and up his forehead past his hairline. One on his left temple. Whatever staked his head to the post had palmed it like a basketball. The hand itself had to be a good sixteen inches from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. Maybe more. Mother of God…
“Umph, umph. Umph, umph. Umph, umph.”
Crashing. Pounding.
Thundering footsteps, beating a drumroll on the frozen earth.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
Left? No.
Right? No, damn it.
Bushes shivering in front of him. Tree branches breaking.
“Umph-umph. Umph-umph.”
Coburn fired into the brush. Snow and wood splinters flew. The stock kicked. The report crashed.
Pull-jack-chamber-slam.
“Umph-umph-umph-umph.”
The wind shrieked through the canyon, buffeting him to the side.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
He shot at the sound, the shaking branches. The rifle bucked. The bullet sailed wide through the thicket.
“Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph.”
Pull-jack-chamber-slam.
Twenty feet to the border of the forest. A quarter of a second to reach him from the moment they broke cover.
One shot.
No chance to reload.
If he missed, he was dead.
Even if he hit, there was no chance of survival.
Baumann’s horrible screams in his head.
Shore’s warm blood spattering his face.
Vigil’s head screwed into his savaged pelvis.
“Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph.”
The trees shivered a mere twenty feet away.
Dark shapes through the blowing flakes.
The thunder of footsteps.
“rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”
Coburn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. He readjusted his grip on the Remington. Tried to hold the barrel steady.
Sudden and abrupt silence.
The movement in the shadows ceased. The trees slowly resumed a natural swaying motion in time with the wind, which carried that vile musky stench to him. Snowflakes swirled around him as if uncertain which way to go before being swept away from right to left.
In his ears: Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
There was no motion from behind the tree line. No sound.
He retreated another step.
What were they waiting for?
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
Left and right. No movement in either direction.
Straight ahead. Nothing. Just a wall of snow-blanketed pines standing shoulder-to-shoulder, skirted by skeletal clusters of scrub oak and evergreen shrubs.
Another step in reverse.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
One shot.
Make it count.
Distance. Another step backward. Baumann’s head against his left calf.
Steady the rifle. Steady…
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
His nerves frayed, then snapped.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted, spittle spraying from his bloody lips. “Show yourselves!”
His voice echoed back at him from the canyon behind him before the wind obliterated it with a scream.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
Movement. Slow. Silent.
A mere bending of branches, at odds with the motion of the wind in the boughs.
Coburn raised his head and tilted the barrel to better see past his useless scope.
One shot.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
One…
“Umph.”
Movement.
THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.
“Umph.”
The source of motion, just to the left of the broad trunk of a pine tree, behind a juniper bush, right where a drift of snow had formed against-
That wasn’t a drift of snow.
It rose up from the ground, a hunched shape seemingly molded from the snow.
THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.
“Umph.”
It reached out with two long arms, parted the bushes, and lumbered cautiously out into the open. It moved like a gorilla, one fist down in the accumulation, its haunches low to the ground. Its long hair was stark white and blew sideways on the wind, replicating the movement of the snow. Had he not actually watched it emerge from the forest, Coburn could have stared right at it and never seen it. As it was, it started to blend into the scenery before his very eyes, save for the crimson streaks clumped into its hair from its chin down to the center of its chest.