Drake had asked the cops to test the tower on Mount Crane to see if the lines were down up there. When the calls came through perfectly, he knew the trouble was at the lodge itself.
Helder had solemnly sworn to have all the guests in a Garrison motel by eight o’clock. Drake had called them, and they said they had expected another group of passengers momentarily. Momentarily stretched into half an hour, and the van still did not show up.
At eight fifteen he received a call from the hospital in Garrison. “It’s about that blood?”
“What blood?” Drake asked. “Oh. That blood.”
“Right. We classified Mr. Cole’s from the body you brought in. We’ve been trying to get a line on the other stuff.”
“Okay. Fine. What is it?”
The doctor paused. “Well, that answers my question. I was about to ask you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I believe you said it was a bear.”
“Did I?”
“Somebody said it was a bear. We checked that. It’s not a bear. It’s not a deer, either. Did Lester keep hogs or chickens or anything?”
“Try human.” After hanging up, Drake shouted, “Tony?” Jones looked in the door. “I hate to do this, but take Wallace and run up to Colby Lodge.”
“You mean now?”
“Yeah. You’ll have to go through Oharaville. Helder said the bridge was out. Take some extra lights and a tow truck. And all the firepower you want, short of flame throwers.”
“If I see one of those things, boss, I’ll kill it.”
“You do that. Just don’t shoot somebody in a fur coat.”
Drake poured coffee into a cup and stirred slowly. Wouldn’t you think Helder had batteries for that radio? Maybe he didn’t know where to put them. Drake would like to tell Helder where to stick his batteries.
Wallace and Jones dressed in quilted jackets next to the tow truck in the garage. Both carried heavy .30.30 deer rifles with starlight scopes for night shooting.
Wallace took down two snowmobile helmets and handed one to Jones.
“You’re kidding,” said Jones.
“I’m not kidding. They throw rocks, remember? That’s what Lester said the first time he saw one.”
Jones sighed and took the helmet. They climbed into the truck cab and started the heater. As they drove out, Wallace lowered his window a bit and put out the gun muzzle. He was ready for anything. Jones hoped the grease in the rifle didn’t freeze up just when they needed it.
15
They barricaded the lounge as best they could.
Duane reinforced the Grizzly Bar windows with chairs and propped tables, the loading entrance with a sofa, which he wedged against the corner, and the sliding wooden doors connecting the lounge to the gallery with coffee tables. The service-entrance door to the kitchen was off its hinges, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Shortly after the fire was doused, the cold began sucking heat from the room. The lantern metal gave off warmth, so Martha kept her hands close to one.
From the parking lot came the steady squeak of springs being compressed. The squeaking continued for a minute, getting louder and louder; then the wall of the shop split and burst inward.
Blankets, paintings, archery equipment, sunglasses— all the paraphernalia in the shop tumbled off the walls. Duane Woodard opened the sliding lounge doors an inch or so and looked at the shop. He was just able to see the wall, which was seamed with cracks and bulged inward. Martha Lucas’s Volkswagen had been overturned and pushed against it.
The car was pulled upright. Then it crunched against the wall again, knocking down wooden slats and buckling the ceiling.
When the car was pulled back a second time, there was a hole in the wall through which snow blew. Duane aimed the rifle, expecting the beast.
He kept waiting. He was at the door as a rock smashed against the metal sun-deck shutters behind him. The glass collapsed in tinkling sheets, and a pimple of aluminum protruded inward. More rocks hit the shutters, tattooing their way down toward the shuttered dining-room windows.
“It’s trying to draw fire,” Duane whispered to Martha. “Keep me pinned down with this hole and raise hell everywhere else.” Smart son of a bitch. The open hole was a breach in their defenses which they could not cover yet could not leave. One of them always had to keep an eye on it.
Again there came that tearing stillness, that violent silence that weighed more heavily than the bluntest attack. This time it dragged out into five full minutes. “Listen, do you think Helder kept batteries for the radio in his office?”
“He’s very disorganized. If he does, I don’t know where they are.” She still spoke of him in the present tense, as though he were alive.
“If you can find them, I can fix the radio and we’ll have some Rangers up here in five minutes. Check his office, and take a light with you.” Woodard edged back to the center of the lounge, where he could watch the shop and her in the office simultaneously.
She went through his desk. No wonder he couldn’t find anything—his food bills were in the folder with heat and electricity, a bill for a cord of wood was stuffed back in a drawer. No batteries. They probably moldered in a box down in the basement somewhere.
Alone for the first time all night, she tried to collect her thoughts. This thing was pure concentrated hatred. It or they were not merely wrecking the lodge, but trying to get at them. This was not patience living on a hill watching humans scurry about, this was a primal rage that broke all restraints, including that of self-preservation. Martha sensed that some particular incident must have caused it. Maybe the male’s return. Maybe. Though the attacks hadn’t started until the incident with Lester Cole. Perhaps there was some connection.
Glass tinkled from a bungalow down in the woods.
“Duane!” she called softly. “It’s down at the bungalows.”
“What’s it doing down there?”
“Maybe it’s going away.” She put her ear to the shuttered window to listen.
The shutters exploded on both sides of her. Two arms preceded by serpentine fingers broke through and closed around her chest like a vise, hugging her to the wall. “Duane—” she said weakly.
The beast had thrown the rocks to the bungalows to lure her to the wall. The pressure around her chest was beyond belief. Her breath squeezed out, and a groan was all she managed before blacking out in a dim haze shot with blood.
Duane Woodard smashed at those arms with his rifle. He pried at them with the muzzle and nearly sobbed in frustration as they crushed her with her feet off the floor like a bug banded against the wall with metal staples. There seemed nothing left of her body between breasts and hips.
He shoved the rifle muzzle through a crack between Martha’s body and the arm and felt it hit flesh. He pulled the trigger. The hands unclasped, the arms snaked out of the wall, and Martha slid to the floor, a small trail of blood trickling from a corner of her mouth.
He frantically searched out a pulse as the feet chuffed down the sun deck and around the corner, headed for the shop wall. Her pulse was strong and regular and her breathing deep although ragged. She had probably broken several ribs.
He ran into the lounge as the beast crashed through the wall of the shop and into the gallery. He fired toward the partially open sliding doors. The Bigfoot paused, then pushed hard, scattering the furniture like toy boxes. It ducked back as he fired again.
The door shuddered, then split, and the sliding rail tore loose from the ceiling. The doors fell inward with a final grunt of effort and seesawed over the piled furniture. Duane aimed and fired. He hit it. The thing howled. It picked up a sofa and threw it as Duane fired a third time and found himself out of ammunition.
It was a female. The chest rippled with soft breast flesh, and it was smaller and lighter than the beast that had chased him across the meadow.
He threw the puny rifle at her, and she caught it. She broke it in half and came for him, arms reaching out, the hands passing in and out of shadows from the feeble lantern light. The other one had walked fifty miles without a toe. Her fur was thick, her body massive and quick. She seemed almost unhampered by her wound.