This Deep Panic Page 37

  “Oh, I understand perfectly,” Curtis said.

  He saw it all clearly. Ethan would go in, there would be horrible screams, he’d be forced to make a dramatic decision, which of course would be to not set the fire and be a hero instead. He’d rush in to that black opening and fight the thing, rescue Ethan, drag his bleeding body out, and set the fire. In a big dramatic burst of flame, the thing would come out writhing and screaming and would die before them.

  He saw it all. And none of it would happen outside of his imagination.

  Because he wasn’t a hero.

  “We might as well pull the first aid supplies out now,” he said morosely.

  Ethan looked confused, but he simply patted Curtis on the shoulder and turned for the mine. Curtis watched him go in, watched the light of his headlamp illuminating dripping rock walls briefly before being swallowed by the darkness. He picked up the gas can and moved near the entrance. He slipped off his pack, dug out a tin of matches, and began gathering sticks to mound before the opening. He was sure they’d want the fire, fast.

  Behind him the mine opening breathed ice-cold air on him. He knew it was the changes in air pressure, the barometric differences between warmer surface air and colder underground air. He knew first hand from all his time working in the Hole, how it could be upwards of ten degrees colder in that blackness than out here. But still, it was eerie to feel the movement of earth-breath.

  His shaking hands moved fast, piling up fuel for the fire. He kept waiting for the screams to start, but only silence and his own pounding pulse filled his ears.

  When the gunshots came from inside the mine, it was so sudden, so unexpected, that Curtis yelped and pressed a hand to his racing heart. He ran to the mine opening, listened for a brief moment, and then ran back to the fire. The thing was obviously in there with Ethan. If the gun didn’t kill it, then it would be coming out any second.

  Curtis frantically pulled larger branches onto the pile of tinder, and then grabbed the gas can. He fumbled with the locking cap but couldn’t get it to come free. Breath coming fast and rapid, he twisted off the whole nozzle instead.

  From inside the cave he heard scuffling. Something coming out. He upended the can and wildly splashed gas over the wood, then fumbled out a match and struck it.

  Nothing.

  He grabbed several more and got one to light. He used the small, fragile flame to light a handful of the matches and tossed the whole thing onto the soaked wood. The fire went up in a loud whoosh of air and blue flame.

  Curtis jumped back from the heat.

  Ethan staggered out of the mine opening, threw up his hands to protect his face from the bonfire, and stumbled a few feet to the side. He fell to his knees, shuddering.

  “Did you kill it?” Curtis went to his side. “Is it dead?”

  Ethan shook his head and rubbed a trembling hand over his face. After a moment he put a fist to the ground and pushed up. “Val is in there. Our bus driver. She...she was still alive.”

  “Oh god.”

  “She’s been in there all this time. It’s been feeding on her. Strips of skin flayed off. Muscle peeled-”

  Curtis held his hand up. “No more,” he said helplessly.

  He suddenly remembered the screaming he’d heard that night when he’d been alone in the woods. The eyeball in the morning. It had to have been the Windigo bringing Val here, to this hell. The horror that poor woman went through. He gritted his teeth against the sorrow that welled up.

  “She was still alive,” Ethan repeated. “I don’t know how. But I know death. I’ve seen it so many times…she was too far gone.”

  Hot tears washed over Curtis’s cheeks. He knew what was coming.

  “I…I shot her.”

  “You had to,” Curtis said. “You couldn’t leave her like that.”

  Ethan suddenly kicked viciously at Curtis’s backpack on the ground. “God, the pain she must have been in. For days.”

  “But she’s free of that now.” Curtis stepped back from the rage in Ethan’s eyes. “I know those are just words. I know they don’t mean anything right now. But it’s true.”

  Ethan ran a hand over his face. “Maybe, but it doesn’t help. She wasn’t alone, Curtis. There are…pieces. My kids. Oh, god, my kids.”

  He bent, retching and shaking. Curtis could do nothing more put his hand on Ethan’s shoulders, a small circle of warmth, of human contact. When Ethan wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and straightened, pulling in a shaky breath, Curtis handed him a water bottle from the pack.

  Ethan took a mouthful of cold water, spit, and then swallowed more. He capped the bottle, pressed a thumb and forefinger against his eyes a moment, and then looked at the blazing fire. “There goes the gas.”

  “And I didn’t get it close enough to the opening.” Nausea was a solid weight in Curtis’s stomach. “I’m sorry. I thought it was in there with you. I thought you were shooting it. I thought it was coming out-”

  Ethan stopped him by raising a hand. “Curtis. Knock it off. I get it.”

  “But what do we do now?”

  “We close that mine for starters,” Ethan said, anger flaring again, bringing color back to his face. “No way is that fucking thing getting back in there.”

  “Okay…but…” Curtis hesitated and then drew in a breath. “But how? I mean, if the quake wasn’t enough to close it off, how will we? Obviously the granite is pretty solid here.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Ethan turned on Curtis. “You want to just walk away? Let that thing come back here and keep feeding? Let my kids, let Val, end like that? Never buried, left to rot?”

  Curtis stepped back from the fury. “Of course not. I just don’t see how we’re going to close it.”

  Ethan drew in a ragged breath and pushed hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe-” Movement in the trees caught Curtis’s eye. He fell silent, words gone, thoughts gone.

  Ethan glanced at him then turned in the direction Curtis stared.

  It was there. Tall and thin, man-shape and yet not, its head too large, and the antlers reaching up sharp and branching. The eyes were black holes reflecting nothing. Its long fingers, ending in claws, twitched and moved as if already peeling them.

  Curtis’s heart raced, fleet and fast. Every primordial cell in his body screamed to run. But he couldn’t move.

  “What do we do?” he whispered.

  The woods stretched out on all sides, infinite and wild. There was no safe place. Not even an old Volkswagen Bug to race to.

  Ethan pulled his gun, aimed, and fired at the thing’s chest. It recoiled and put a clawed hand to the small hole in its chest where black blood flowed. And then it moved fast and silent and straight for Ethan.

  Ethan fired again, and again, as the thing rushed him. Black blood flowed freely from several holes but the wounds didn’t slow the thing down. Curtis froze as it grabbed Ethan, ripping claws down one side of his face.

  Ethan screamed.

  Curtis couldn’t breathe. His muscles were water. He couldn’t move. Terror was ice, stopping his heart.

  The thing lifted Ethan off the ground and without a glance at Curtis, took long, loping steps toward the mine opening.

  Its lair.

  Where it would feed for years on Ethan. On his friend.

  Heat like fire raced through Curtis. It felt like rage. It felt like power. He grabbed the free end of a burning branch from the fire, holding it up like a flaming sword.

  “Leave my friend alone!”

  Curtis charged forward without thought, pulled by the animal screams of Ethan. He shoved the branch at the creature’s back and shoulders. Blood poured from deep slices in Ethan’s cheek. The thing lowered his head toward Ethan’s chest, as if to bite out his heart.

  Tears poured down Curtis’s face. Flames caught and grew in the material around the thing’s waist. Curtis shoved the fully engulfed branch upward into the Windigo’s antlers, even as flames scorched his han
ds. The branch caught in the antlers and Curtis twisted it back and forth, spreading the growing flames.

  The Windigo screamed and dropped Ethan, long claws madly scrabbling at the branch, at the flames that grew and spread fast, fed by orange cloth and old antlers.

  Ethan fell to the ground, not moving.

  The Windigo spun, screeching. The dark pools of its eyes found Curtis. He jumped back, away from its burning, reaching hands.

  But claws caught at him, sank deep into his chest and neck. He felt deep, deep pain, and the hot flood of arterial blood spurting from his neck. He struggled but the thing pulled him close in a parody of a hug. He heard the sizzle of his hair catching fire, felt the agony of his skin burning. Something deep inside screamed.

  Mother.

  And she was there, in the trees, in the rising wind, the earth’s mother, the Stone Woman, arms out to take him.

  And he was gone.

  3

  Ethan groaned and slowly rolled over onto his back. One eye wouldn’t open and when he managed to raise a trembling hand, he felt caked and coagulated blood over the whole side of his face. His cheek burned and with that pain came the memory of the thing slicing at him with its claws.

  Curtis.

  He struggled to sit, managed to get to one knee, and then slowly, to his feet. Deep tremors shook him and it felt like ice moving from the wounds down his neck and into his chest.

  Smoke and the sweetish stench of burning flesh filled the air. Ethan had smelled that before, that distinctive scent of death.

  Curtis had done it then. Burned that fucking monster alive. Avenged his kids. Saved him. Ethan managed a twisted smile. Curtis would be the hero of the day when they got back to town.

  He took a shuffling step toward the smoking mound that was all that was left of the Windigo. Flames licked at the scorched antlers.

  There was something wrong though, and it took a moment for Ethan’s pain-filled brain to realize that a charred hiking boot rested in the burned remains. That there were too many bones. That the flames hadn’t been hot enough or big enough to completely burn the two blackened bodies.

  He couldn’t take it in. Couldn’t grasp what was there before him. Hot tears poured down his face, burning in the cuts. He sank to his knees, collapsed to the ground, and dug his fingers into the soft and loamy forest floor.

  Not Curtis.

  The best of them all. The kind and gentle light that was always in his eyes. His awkward confessions of fear. His willingness to face that fear for his friends.

  Not Curtis.

  Rage and helplessness came out in a wordless shout that split wide the drying blood. Fresh blood flowed and he didn’t care.

  Movement at the periphery of his vision made him come up on his knees.

  The wolf and the grizzly.

  The boy and the girl.

  They came forward out of the trees but Ethan didn’t move. Didn’t care. The wolf came up to him and sniffed his face. And then licked the sliced wounds. Licked away blood and tears. Ethan tried to push the wolf away but the girl knelt and caught his hands. He looked into her amber eyes but felt nothing.

  Because nothing mattered any more. He should have been the one to die, not Curtis. The loss of his friend would be on his soul forever.

  “You’re too late.” He shoved the wolf away, sobs welling up, gut- wrenching and heart-breaking.

  Too late.

  4

  Ethan walked through the forest gingerly, pain a warm burn across his face. He wore his backpack and had Curtis’s slung over one shoulder. He had to pause occasionally to pull the strap back up. Each time he did, it felt like loss.

  He didn’t recognize this new world. This wrong place where he walked, with a grizzly and a wolf pacing ahead of him, with the boy on one side and the girl on the other.

  It was all wrong.

  It should have been Curtis next to him. Curtis, clutching his backpack straps and watching the woods around him nervously. Curtis, hands shaking and fear-filled eyes, stepping forward to go with him anyway.

  Curtis’s death was his fault. If he hadn’t been so focused on wanting to kill that thing, Curtis would still be in Index. That knowledge, that sorrow, was a heavy weight on his shoulders as he walked between the boy and the girl.

  Ethan was surrounded but he was alone.

  Grief was a deep, deep cut that would never heal. Grief for Curtis. Grief for his students. It widened within him until he was nothing but seeping tears and empty shell.

  He walked through the night. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, and the thought of making camp…building a fire…sickened him. And so he kept going, walking through another day until suddenly he realized he was alone.

  He had no idea when his companions had faded away into the forest. The sun was sinking behind the mountains when his boots, somehow, found the remains of pavement.

  He stood there staring with dark eyes full of confusion and pain. Somewhere in the fog of his mind he knew he should continue, that he was close to town. But he couldn’t take another step. He couldn’t go back there and face bringing up words that would need to be said.

  Ahead of him something shifted in the gathering twilight. He took a stumbling step back in sudden panic.

  But it was Anya, rising from where she’d been seated on a log. She came forward with her rifle over her shoulder and Bird limping at her side. When she reached him, she looked deeply into his eyes and then put her hand to his injured face. The wolf had cleaned the deep gouges but the wounds were raw and seeping.

  The sudden warmth of her hand made the deeper wound of grief bleed again and his hot tears spilled over her fingers.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  She pulled his head down to her shoulder, enfolding him tightly.

  Holding him for as long as he needed to be held.

  High overhead, high above the trees, high above the land, a raven circled on the wind.

  5

  Ethan sat on the tailgate of Ben’s truck with a wool blanket around his shoulders. June pressed a cup of hot chocolate into his hands but he simply held its warmth, not sure what to do with it. Samuel stood next to him, disinfecting his wounds and pulling the ragged edges of flesh together with butterfly bandages.

  “These are going to leave nasty scars,” Samuel said. “You should really have stitches.”

  Ethan didn’t respond, didn’t care.

  The others stood in a semi-circle around him that grew as more people joined them. Even Bert and Ernie, the town drunks, were there. They all stood, tears in their eyes. Touching each other. Why was it, that when there were no words, the only thing left was the soft touch to share the pain?

  A faint sound came from downriver and grew slowly into the steady thump of helicopter rotors. Slowly, as if drugged by their grief, people turned to watch the chopper come in, an oddly incongruous sight after so many days alone in the woods. In the openings on both sides of the chopper men watched the ground, aiming guns downward.

  The helicopter was able to land in the little park by the school and once the rotors slowed enough, two men and one woman got out. The men in the side openings remained with their guns, silently scanning the town and the woods. The pilot and co-pilot were armed and wore National Guard uniforms. Their passenger was an older man in a suit, complete with tie. They crossed Fifth Street and approached the group around the old truck. There was an odd quiet, as if these people from the helicopter were aliens from another world.

  But then the stories came, spilling over one another, telling the strangers in shaky voices what had happened. Albert, as mayor, took the lead, sharing loss, explaining about the Hole, and radon, about the monsters killed and the ones still out there. About those who had died.

  When he was done, the man in the suit introduced himself as being with FEMA’s disaster recovery team. He took up the story. Massive earthquake. Seattle toppled. Freeways collapsed. Infrastructure gone. Everett, Edmonds, up to Canada, all
along the coast flooded and gone. Landslides. Millions of decomposing corpses, human and animal. Devastation.

  And monsters.

  Everywhere.

  There were as many theories about where they came from, as there were monsters.

  There were even some, the man said skeptically, who believed not all the beings were monsters. That some helped.

  Ethan looked at Anya and Ramon, but no one spoke.

  “Right now,” the man continued, “We are simply in the triage phase. Finding the worst hit areas, finding the critically injured. With the freeways and arterials destroyed, we can only go by air. The military is sending every resource they have, and other countries have started sending aid. My job is going up the Skykomish valley here, assessing each and every town.”

  “If we take back roads, is there any place we can go?” Max asked. “Gold Bar? Sultan? Any of those towns stable enough to take us?”

  “Sir,” said the man, not able to meet Max’s eyes. “There is no place, anywhere, stable enough for refugees. There are no resources. It’s bare-bones survival.”

  “What the fuck?” Spike shoved forward. “You saying there’s no place for us to go? Did you not hear the part about fucking man-eating monsters?”

  The co-pilot stepped forward, one hand going to the butt of her gun in its holster.

  Max caught Spike’s arm. “Calm down.”

  Ethan wasn’t sure if he spoke to Spike or to the co-pilot.

  “We are absolutely clear on the danger everyone is facing,” the man said. “But the fact is, there isn’t anywhere to go at this point that isn’t facing the same things. We are working, like I said, on assessment. In the next week we hope to be able to start dropping supplies to people.”

  “Supplies?” Casey asked. “And those will include big guns, right? Monster-killing guns?”

  “Food and medical supplies,” the man said. “If we can get ways to help you defend yourself, then yes, those will be included. But our focus right now is on getting the injured to aid and setting up camps where we can evacuate people. The Red Cross is working to establish refugee camps in eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana.”