Linda Howard - Prey

Steeling himself, he pushed through the trees. It wasn’t much farther; they hadn’t gone more than thirty or forty yards, had they? Yes, right there. They’d been standing right there. But Davis’s body was gone. Chad moved closer, and stepped on something squishy. The smell of shit made him gag. He looked down, blinking as it took him a moment to realize his foot wasn’t in a pile of crap, but instead was tangled in a length of shredded intestine. “Shit!” He leaped to the side, then completely lost it.

He couldn’t control his reaction. He turned his head and violently vomited onto the ground, gagging on bile. He hadn’t eaten anything in hours, so in short order he had the dry heaves. Jesus! The pieces of carnage scattered around were no longer recognizable as a man, much less as Mitchell Davis. The rain had washed a lot of the blood into the ground, but nothing could cleanse this scene, nothing could make it anything less than horrible.

When he could control his stomach, he wiped his streaming eyes, then his mouth. He took small steps forward, trying not to step on anything else that had once been part of Davis. Even in the rain, the stench was almost overpowering. He tried to breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, but then he could actually taste the stench. His stomach heaved again, and he went through another convulsive spasm, bent over from the waist, snot streaming from his nose. He found himself looking at a piece of a shirt beside what looked to be a part of a hand. Yeah, that was a finger-badly mauled, but still recognizable.

Then he found that, after the initial horror, his brain either began accepting what he was seeing, or shut down any reaction at all. When he could straighten up and breathe again, even though he was wheezing like a hundred-year-old geezer, somehow the carnage didn’t seem quite as bad. Maybe one piece of body wasn’t any worse than the next piece. Forget about Davis; he’d already been dead when the bear began gnawing on his body, so it hadn’t made any difference to him.

Feeling calmer, Chad scanned the clearing until he saw a scrap of denim. He made his way to it, looking only at the fabric, not the scattered remnants of what had once been a man. When he got closer, he saw that the denim appeared to be a scrap of a lower pant leg. That was useless. There were other blue scraps scattered here and there, some too small, too shredded, to be what he was looking for. If the keys had fallen to the ground, in this muddy mess, he might never find them. Damn Davis; why hadn’t he left the keys in the tent? Or let Chad drive?

There was nothing here. Despairing, he turned in a complete circle, looking beyond the clearing into the undergrowth of bushes, and finally something that, well, it wasn’t blue, but it was-He went closer, pushed the bush aside, yelped when a thorn cut across his palm.

He swallowed hard, then dropped to his haunches and stared at what was left of the torn, bloodstained jeans. Some of Davis was still in them. Not much, but he started gagging again. He steeled himself, then reached out and stuck his hand inside the pocket that was closest to him, searching for the keys. Even the inside of the pocket felt squishy and sticky. He closed his eyes, tried to pretend that these were just another pair of jeans, just another pocket. His fingers dipped all the way to the bottom of the pocket. No keys.

Fuck! In a fit of rage, he stood and kicked the piece of carcass. Now what was he supposed to do?

Think, he commanded himself. Think! What would Davis have done with the keys?

Then he almost slapped himself on the forehead. He was an idiot. Davis was right-handed, so of course the keys would be in the right pocket. He’d poked through the mess in the left pocket, not the right.

Using the toe of his boot, he kicked and prodded until the piece of carcass was rolled onto its other side. “One more time,” he whispered as he shoved his hand into the pocket. This time he wasn’t so squeamish; he had to have those keys. If the bear had eaten them, he didn’t know what he’d do. Ride his horse into the next town, steal a car, run like hell… The odds that plan would work were slim to none, and he knew it.

His fingers brushed metal. He grabbed the keys, pulled them out, held them clutched in his fist. He almost burst into tears.

For a minute he just stood there, eyes closed, keys clutched in his hand. He was so elated and relieved he almost couldn’t believe he’d actually found them, that something had gone right after such a fucking miserable night when everything else had gone wrong.

Okay. He was back from the brink of disaster. This would still work. Maybe Angie Powell was out there, but he had a horse and she didn’t, and he had a plan and she didn’t. He’d worked too hard for this to let one woman screw it up.

Maybe he’d run into her along the trail. Maybe he’d get another chance to kill her. He wouldn’t look for her-that would take too much time and priority number one was making his escape. But if he did run across her, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. This time he’d make sure she was dead before he ran.

Holding the keys in his hands made all the difference. Things were back on track. He was in charge of his own fate again, and by God, nothing was going to get in his way.

The bear roused. After it had fed all it wanted, sated and tired, it had taken shelter from the storm under a giant deadfall that had partially blocked the wind and rain and slept through the rest of the night.

It had fed well the past few days. Early in the evening, before the storm, it had gone back to its previous kill to finish eating, and picked up the fresh scent trail of another human. He followed it to a place that was rich with odors, that of big animals mingled with more of the humans. Then the smell of fresh blood had all but exploded in his nose and he hadn’t been able to wait, the prey was there, the meat still hot and fresh, the blood still flowing. This prey hadn’t even run; catching it was much easier than before.

Now the bear had rested, and for now it was content to stay in its shelter, curled up and content. He heard some noises, but the weather and his own well-fed state gave him no incentive to investigate. There were a couple of interesting smells, but in his content, sleepy state they weren’t strong enough, enticing enough, to pull him back out into the rain.

He had scratched some debris over the uneaten remains, and when his stomach was no longer full he would go back to his kill.

The scent would still be there.

Angie jerked awake from a deep sleep, sharp pain shooting through her ankle. She must have made a sound, because the big hand resting on her stomach gave her a comforting pat.

“Ankle bothering you?” The mutter, in Dare’s gravelly voice, came from just behind her ear. He sounded as if he were barely awake.

“Just when I move it,” she answered groggily. Her head was so filled with fog she could barely form the words. Her body was still heavy with fatigue, her muscles like noodles. She managed to crack her eyes open a slit; the small space was gloomy with dark gray shadows. She knew where she was, but she didn’t know when she was. Was it twilight? Dawn? Had they slept around the clock?

“How long have we been asleep?” she asked on a sigh, her eyes already closing as she nestled deeper into the delicious warmth.

“Couple of hours.”

“ ’Zat all?”

He grunted. There was an upheaval behind her and chilly air rushed under the sleeping bag, making her hunch her shoulders as he sat up. Frowning, she cranked her eyelids open just enough to see what he was doing as he sat up and turned off the small propane heater. Oh, okay. They were warm now, so they should save the fuel.