Phantoms

Chapter 38

The Apparition Fletcher Kale woke in time to see the first light of dawn.

The forest was still mostly dark. Milky daylight speared down in shafts, through scattered holes in the green canopy that was formed by the densely interlaced branches of the mammoth trees. The sunshine was diffused by the fog, muted, revealing little.

He had passed the night in the Jeep station wagon that belonged to Jake Johnson. Now he got out and stood beside the Jeep, listening to the woods, alert for the sounds of pursuit.

Last night, a few minutes after eleven o'clock, headed for Jake Johnson's secret retreat, Kale had driven up the Mount Larson Road, had swung the Jeep onto the unpaved fire lane that led up the wild north slopes of Snowtop-and had run smack into trouble. Within twenty feet, his headlights picked up signs posted on both sides of the roadway; large red letters on a white background read QUARANTINE. Going too fast, he swung around a bend, and directly ahead of him was a police blockade, one county cruiser angled across the road. Two deputies started getting out of the car.

He remembered hearing about a quarantine zone encircling Snowfield, but he'd thought it was in effect only on the other side of the mountain. He hit the brakes, wishing that, for once, he'd paid more attention to the news.

These men would recognize him, and within an hour he'd be back in jail.

Surprise was his only hope. They wouldn't be expecting trouble.

Maintaining a quarantine checkpoint would be easy, lulling duty.

The rifle was on the seat beside Kale, covered with a blanket. He grabbed the gun, got out of the Jeep, and opened fire on the cops. The semiautomatic weapon and the deputies did a dance of death, spectral figures in the fog.

He rolled the bodies into a ditch, pulled the patrol car out of the way, and drove the Jeep past the checkpoint. Then he went back and repositioned the car, so that it would appear that the deputies' killer hadn't continued up the mountain.

He drove three miles up the rugged fire lane, until he came to an even more rugged, overgrown trail. A mile later, at the end of that trail, he parked the Jeep in a tunnel of brush and climbed out.

In addition to the HK91, he had a sackful of other guns from Johnson's closet, plus the $63,440, which was distributed through the seven zippered pockets m the hunting jacket he wore. The only other thing he carried was a flashlight, and that was really all he needed because the limestone caves would be well stocked with other supplies.

The last quarter of a mile had to be covered on foot, and he had intended to finish the journey right away, but he had quickly found that even with the flashlight the forest was confusing at night, in the fog.

Getting lost was almost a certainty.

Once lost in this wilderness, you could wander in circles, within yards of your destination, never discovering how close you were to salvation.

After only a few paces, Kale had m" back to the Jeep to wait for daylight.

Even if the two dead deputies at the blockade were discovered before morning, and even if the cops figured the killer had come onto the mountain, they wouldn't launch a manhunt until first light. By the time the police reached here tomorrow, Kale would be snug in the caves.

He had slept on the front seat of the Jeep. It wasn't the Plaza Hotel, but it was more comfortable than jail.

Now, standing beside the Jeep in the wan tight of early morning, he listened for the sounds of a search party. He heard nothing. He hadn't really expected to hear anything. It wasn't his destiny to rot in prison. His future was golden. He was sure of that.

He yawned, stretched, then pissed against the trunk of a big pine.

Thirty minutes later, when there was more light, he followed the foot-path he hadn't been able to find last night. And he, saw something that hadn't been obvious in the dark: The brush was extensively trampled. People had been through here recently.

He proceeded with caution, cradling the HK91 in his right arm, ready to blow away anyone who might try to ambush him.

In less than half an hour, he came out of the trees, into the clearing around the log cabin.-and saw why the footpath had been trampled. Eight motorcycles were lined up alongside the cabin, big Harleys, all emblazoned with the name DEMON CHROME.

Gene Teer's bunch of misfits. Not all of them. About half the gang, by the looks of it.

Kale crouched against an outcropping of limestone and studied the mist-wrapped cabin. No one was in sight. He quietly fished in the laundry bag, located a fresh magazine for the HK91, rannned it in place.

How had Teer and his vicious playmates gotten here? A two-wheel trip up the mountain would have been difficult, wildly dangerous, a nerve-twisting bit of motocross. Of course, those crazy bastards thrived on danger.

But what the devil were the doing here? How had they found the cabin, and why had they come?

As he listened for a voice, for some indication of where the cyclists were and what they were up to, Kale realized there weren't even any animal or insect sounds. No birds. Absolutely nothing. Spooky.

Then, behind him, a rustle in the brush. A soft sound. In the pretematural silence, it might as well have been a cannon shot.

Kale had been kneeling on the ground. With catlike quickness, he fell on his side, rolled onto his back, brought up the HK91.

He was prepared to kill, but he wasn't prepared for what he saw. It was Jake Johnson, about twenty-five feet away, coming out of the trees and fog, grinning. Naked. Utterly bareassed.

Other movement. To the left of Johnson. Farther along the treeline.

Kale caught it from the corner of his eye and whipped his head around, swung the rifle in that direction.

Another man came out of the woods, through the mist, with the tall grass fluttering around his bare legs. He was also naked.

And grinning broadly.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was that the second man was also Jake Johnson.

Kale looked from one to the other, startled and baffled.

They were as perfectly alike as a set of identical twins.

But Jake was an only child-wasn't he? Kale had never heard anything about a twin.

A third figure advanced from the shadows beneath the spreading boughs of a huge spruce. This one, too, was Jake Johnson.

Kale couldn't breathe.

Maybe there was an outside chance that Johnson had a twin, but he damned well wasn't one of triplets.

Something was horribly wrong. Suddenly, it wasn't just the impossible triplets that frightened Kale. Suddenly, everything seemed menacing: the forest, the mist, the stony contours of the mountainside…

The three lookalikes walked slowly up the slope on which Kale was sprawled, closing in from different angles. Their eyes were strange, and their mouths were cruel.

Kale scrambled to his feet, heart lurching." Stop right there!”

But they didn't stop, even though he brandished the assault rifle.

"Who are you? What are you? What is this?" Kale demanded.

They didn't answer. Kept coming. Like zombies.

He grabbed the bag that was filled with guns, and he backed rapidly and clumsily away from the nightmarish show.

No. Not a trio any more. A quartet. Downslope, a fourth Jake Johnson came out of the trees, stark naked like the rest.

Kale's fear trembled on the edge of panic.

The four moved toward Kale with hardly a sound; dried leaves underfoot; nothing else. They made no complaint about the stones and sharp weeds and prickly burrs that must have hurt their feet. One of them began to lick his lips hungrily.

The others immediately began to lick their lips, too.

A quiver of icy dread went through Kale's bowels, and he wondered if he had lost his mind. But that thought was shortlived. Unfamiliar with self-doubt, he didn't know how to entertain it for long.

He dropped the laundry bag, clutched the HK91 in both hands, and opened fire, describing an are with the spurting muzzle of the gun. The bullets hit. He saw them tear into the four men, saw the wounds burst open. But there was no blood.

And as soon as the wounds blossomed, they withered; they healed, vanished within seconds.

The men kept coming.

No. Not men. Something else.

Hallucinations? Years ago, in high school, Kale had dropped a lot of acid. Now he remembered that flashbacks could plague you months-even years-after you stopped using LSD. He'd never had acid flashbacks before, but he'd heard about them.

Was that what was happening here? Hallucinations?

Perhaps.

On the other hand… all four of the men were glistening, as if the morning mists were condensing on their bare skin, and that wasn't the sort of detail you usually noticed in a hallucination. And this entire situation was very different from any drug experience he'd ever known.

Still grinning, the nearest Doppelganger raised one arm, pointed at Kale. Incredibly, the flesh of that hand split and peeled away from the fingers, from the palm. The flesh actually appeared to ooze bloodlessly back into the arm, as if it were wax melting and running from a flame; the wrist became thicker with this tissue, and then the hand was nothing but bones, white bones. One skeletal finger pointed at Kale.

Pointed with anger, scorn, and accusation.

Kale's mind reeled.

The other three lookalikes had undergone even more macabre changes. One had lost the flesh from part of his face: A cheekbone shone through, a row of teeth; the right eye, deprived of a lid and of all surrounding tissue, gleamed wetly in the calcimined socket. The third man was missing a chunk of flesh from his torso; you could see his sharp ribs and slick wet organs pulsing darkly inside. The fourth walked on one normal leg and one leg that was only bones and tendons.

As they closed on Kale, one of them spoke: "Baby killer.”

Kale screamed, dropped the HK91, and ran. Stopped short when he saw two more Johnson lookalikes approaching from behind, from the cabin. Nowhere to run. Except up toward the high limestone outcroppings above the cabin. He bolted that way, gasping and wheezing, reached the door, whimpering, waded through it to the mouth of the cave, glanced behind, saw that the six were still coming after him, and he plunged into the cave, into darkness, wishing he'd held onto his flashlight, and he put one hand against the wall, shuffled along, feeling his way, trying to recall the layout, remembering it was more or less a long tunnel ending in a series of doglegs-and suddenly he realized this might not be a safe place; it might be a trap, instead; yes, he was sure of it; they wanted him to come here-and he looked back, saw two decomposing men at the entrance, heard himself wall, and hurried faster, faster, into the deep blackness because there, was nowhere else to go, even if it was a trap, and he scraped his hand on a sharp projection of rock, stumbled, flailed, charged on, reached the doglegs, one after the other, and then the door, and he went through, slammed it behind him, but he knew it wouldn't keep them out, and then he was aware of light, in the next chamber, toward which he now began to move in a dreamlike haze of terror, passing stacks of supplies and equipment.

The light came from a Coleman lantern.

Kale stepped into the third chamber.

In the frost-pale glow, he saw something that made him freeze. It had risen from the subterranean river, up through the cave floor, out of the hole in which Jake Johnson had rigged a water pump. It writhed. It churned, pulsated, rippled. Dark, blood-mottled flesh. Shapeless.

Wings began to form. Then melted away.

A sulphurous odor, not strong yet nauseating.

Eyes opened all over the seven-foot column of slime. They focused on Kale.

He shrank from them, backed into a wall, held on to the stone as if it were reality, a last place to grip on the precipice of madness.

Some of the eyes were human. Some were not. They fixed on him-then closed and disappeared.

Mouths opened where no mouths had b-been. Teeth. Fangs.

Forked tongues lolled over black lips. From other mouths, wormlike tentacles erupted, wriggled in the air, withdrew. Like the wings and eyes, the mouths eventually vanished into the formless flesh.

A man sat on the floor. He was a few feet from the pulsing thing that had come up from beneath the cave, and he was seated in the penumbra of the lantern's glow, his face in shadow.

Aware that Kale had noticed him, the man leaned forward slightly, putting his face in the light. He was six feet four or taller, with long curly hair and a beard. He wore a rolled bandanna around his head.

One gold earring dangled. He smiled the most peculiar smile Kale had ever seen, and he raised one hand in greeting, and on the palm of the hand was a red and yellow tattoo of an eyeball.

It was Gene Tell.