Untying his boots, Casey looked about to object.
“Ssh, not so loud,” said Jenny. “He may still be out there, listening.”
Sandy shivered. “Don’t say things like that!”
“Mom, he’s not coming back, is he?”
They joked and talked, voices growing steadily lower. Snickering loudly, Sandy teased Casey, poking him in the ribs while he fended her off with one hand. “C’mon, gang. Sleep.” Alan unrolled the twin bags he shared with Sandy, zipped them together. “Fearless Leader will most likely have us up at dawn again.”
“Damn right.” Casey slurred his words, feeling the sugary bourbon a bit.
“Where’s that bug stuff? Next time can we hike north, say, to Alaska?”
“Don’t give him any ideas for tomorrow.”
“I don’t even want to think about tomorrow.” Sandy unbuttoned her blouse. “Ssh, everybody. Look at Amelia. She’s out already.”
They dragged their sleeping bags to various parts of the clearing, and soon all save Casey were bedded down. “Aren’t you going to bed, Case?”
Everything got quiet. Under their pup tent, Sandy and Alan whispered and giggled softly, and later there came a small, brief cry.
In the dimness, Casey sat, yawning and refilling his pipe. He nipped at the bourbon, decided to finish it before climbing into the sleeping bag that lay beside Jenny. Finally tapping his pipe out on a log, he watched the fire die through half-shut eyes.
And blackness closed on the diminishing sphere of light.
Sounds of the night crowded in, louder, nearer. The insects chirped in unison, and overhead the air thrummed as a horned owl dropped down and sank sharp talons into the squirming back of a field mouse that had been nibbling garbage at the edge of the camp. Long feathers flashed again in the moonlight as the great bird regained altitude with a noise like the shaking of cloth.
The stench had returned, stronger than before.
Catching the heavy scent, the owl screeched its terror and rushed off on flailing wings. The forgotten mouse, already stiff with death, landed on the sand with an almost imperceptible plop.
The woods grew hushed. Soon there remained only small noises, tiny clicks made by the insects that spent their lives foraging on the bleak forest floor. They had moved in toward the campers, toward this unexpected source of food, but now even the crickets ceased. Small black beetles sang out with rattles and dry rasps. Yet, one by one, those too dropped off, leaving only the muffled thump of clumsy feet against the sand.
…mad shouts…screams of pain…
Conscious only of the others running in different directions, Casey blinked awake. He hopped up, cocooned in his sleeping bag, then pitched forward on his face. Despairing howls and wild activity surrounded him as he struggled with his bound legs. The zipper stuck. He fumbled with it, and someone tripped over him, crying out. Kicking free, he stood, the bag still tangled around one leg.
A snarl ripped the night.
He was slammed against with fury—something slicing through the flesh of his arm—and thrown, rolling in the black sand. As he groped about him, agony raged, throbbing in his arm, and his hand struck something that rolled.
He grabbed the flashlight, switched it on, swung it wildly about the clearing. His eyes took in too much, too many awful images for his brain to sort: the liquid spilling from his lacerated arm, the wreckage of the campsite, the rent and mangled corpse in the sand. His eyes fixed idiotically on the dark-soaked remnants of a double sleeping bag—the blood appeared crimson only in the bright center of the beam.
The throb of the crickets. Everywhere. The throb of blood rushing in his ears. Deafening. The mistiness was not his vision—thin fog curled through the clearing. He realized someone had been shrieking the same thing over and over, but he couldn’t make out the words. There was movement. “Jenny, where are you?” Swinging the tiny arc of light, he stumbled bleeding into the pines, and they closed around him. Crickets rose to a dense pitch. He could hear running. Cries came from all around him. But, near fainting with shock and pain, he could see no one, the flashlight providing only fleeting, distorted glimpses.
Now he heard something else, a growling, a thrashing. The child’s white face, blank with fear, flashed at him, then vanished, lost in the blackness.
“Amelia!” Sickened with dread, he held the flashlight out in front of him. The beam thrust forward, the shaft of light striking…
…a visage out of a nightmare.
All thought of fighting, of trying to help the others fled his mind. Casey screamed once, an ugly chopped-off sound; then he dropped the flashlight and plunged into the night.
They all ran, scattered, screaming. They blundered onto trails and off again, losing them where the pines grew thickest. “Alan, where are you?” They ran in winding circles. “Help me! Please, Alan! It’s near me, oh God!”
Casey wore only jockey shorts, and branches whipped his legs. Long grasses stung hotly. Behind him, Sandy’s screams became gurgles. As his mind whirled in nausea and panic, the pines sped past him, sometimes striking him hard. His heart thundered, and blood pumped from the ruptured flesh of his arm.
He crashed into a tree, and front teeth broke with a sharp crunch. Pain hammered in his brain, and he staggered back, whimpering, then stumbled heavily onward. Darkness came in denser waves, shadows more solid than the night, black pulsations he suspected were internal. He knew he had to get farther away before he lost consciousness, and he clutched at his arm, tried to squeeze off the bleeding, feeling the thick, slow warmth ooze over his fingers.
He sucked burning gouts of air into his lungs. The pines spun, and they made noise, but the noises lay behind him, and he plowed through bushes that clawed the flesh of his chest and legs. Where they fell on dried leaves, beads of blood made a rapid pattering, but when they dropped on parched sand or pine needles, they were silent as soft rain. Mists spiraled across the face of the moon. In the pale light, invisible birds skittered from tree to tree.
Behind him, the haze broke, and from the deep shadows something glowed, cold and green with phosphorescence. The flashlight? Had he run in a circle?
As the ground dropped away beneath him, he shouted wordlessly, clawing at air.
Moonlight glinted off the black surface of the water.
Splashing, choking, he thrashed in panic, then found the soft bottom. The water was chest deep, and he plowed through it, mouth filled. Dead reeds snapped under his clutching hands as he fell across a submerged sandbar.
In a swirl of fog, he fought his way, gasping, through mats of water plants, thoughts of poisonous snakes slithering through his mind. Gases bubbled up around him, and mosquitoes clouded in a suffocating swarm—they covered his bare chest and back. Sinking, he tried to run, but his legs barely moved through the mire, pushing through rushes. Blood clouded the water behind him, coiling and swirling.
Something rose ahead, where whitish vapor tangled through long reeds, something black as the withered pines surrounding it. Dark and squat. A shed of some sort. Shelter. Nearing the end of the marsh, he staggered through deep foulness. All around him, talons of stunted trees clawed into the slippery ground. He fell on his face, plowing a furrow in the fetid muck with his chin. Struggling to his feet, he fell again, knees sinking. As he yanked himself loose, something clicked agonizingly in his ankle. He slid, crawled, slithered. When he tried to listen for the sounds of pursuit, he could hear only the sucking mire and his choking breath.
The hut stood windowless and abandoned in the moonlight. At last, stumbling across hardened mud, he cried out and beat at the walls with black-caked arms. Limping painfully, he pressed between the crowding pines and groped along the walls for the door.