David Morrell - The Totem

"Hey, now wait a minute. What the hell do you think you're doing?" the man demanded, blocking him.

"I've got to use your phone."

"The beer store has one on the corner."

"There's no time."

The crowd cheered on the television. As the medical examiner squirmed to get past the man, he saw beyond the sofa where the television showed two boxers slugging at each other.

"Hey, buddy, I'm through being patient." The man shoved him hard.

"Rabies."

"Don't be nuts. The dog just had her shots."

"Christ, go back and look at her."

"The collar makes her act that way."

"I can't afford to take the chance."

The two men struggled toward the middle of the room.

"I have to phone a vet."

"If you're not out of here, you're going to have to phone an ambulance."

The medical examiner slipped past the man, dodging toward the phone that he had seen beside the sofa.

"Get out," the man ordered.

But the medical examiner was dialing.

"Okay, buddy, don't forget I warned you."

As a woman's voice came on the phone to tell him "Animal Associates," the medical examiner turned just in time to see the hand that held the beer can lunging toward him. He was vaguely conscious of the other hand that set him up and held him steady. But the blow that split his lips and shocked him backward he was never conscious of at all. He had a sense of someone moaning, and he wondered through the spinning darkness what that murky cheering was about.

They ran with the bloodhounds up the steep slope through the trees. The dogs were silent, sniffing as they forged up higher, and the men who held their leashes were exhausted.

"This is crazy," one man said and pulled back on the leash to slow the dog. "If we keep on like this, we'll be useless in an hour."

He was gasping, taking in long breaths, exhaling like a bellows.

"Never mind an hour. Fifteen minutes is more like it," another man said and swallowed, breathing, reaching for a tree to get his balance. "I say take it slower."

They were five miles up from where they'd left the pickup truck. They hadn't organized the search until almost three o'clock. It took that long to get their knapsacks and their dogs. Then there had been instructions, and the dogs had needed time to find the scent. The search had really started at three-thirty. Running with the weight of knapsacks, rifles, walkie-talkies, and ammunition, they had labored through the forest, climbing bluffs and crossing ridges, stumbling down and up through gorges, and a tangle of dead timber had been just about enough to finish them. They had to carry each dog through the tangle, but the dogs had not refound the scent across there, and the men had struggled with the squirming dogs to carry them back to the first edge of the tangle. Bodine must have tried to cross, then given up. But they themselves had managed to get through here. Why not Bodine? "Never mind," one of the state policemen said. "Let's just keep moving."

So they had worked higher, and although they'd only gone five miles, they'd needed several hours.

"Christ, six-thirty."

"Hey, it must be time to eat."

"Another mile yet. If this guy's in trouble, one more mile could be enough to help him."

Which was understandable, so looking at the shadows stretching darker through the forest, they moved farther, higher, through the mountains. Slower, though. They couldn't run up ridges as if they were sprinting around the local baseball field. They knew their breathing should be constant, their heartbeats steady. Keep things smooth and even. They had hurried at the start, but that had been because they were impatient. Now that this had become routine, now that it was boring, they were moving much less frantically. Something broke a branch up to their right, and they were staring, but the deer that showed itself and ran away only made them laugh.

"I don't see why that guy went up here anyhow. If it was me, if I was chasing some wild dogs, I wouldn't try it on my own."

They heard the helicopter roaring closer. It had been a muffled droning far off to their right, but now it skimmed across the trees above them, and they saw the insignia of the U.S. Lands and Forest bureau.

"Air search to police," a man's voice crackled from the walkie-talkie.

They halted on an open bluff and squinted toward a line of trees that obscured the helicopter. They had little trouble hearing it, however.

Once again the static from the walkie-talkie. "Air search to police."

The man in charge, a sergeant, gave his dog's leash to a trooper beside him. He fumbled with the straps that looped his walkie-talkie across his shoulder. Then he pressed a button and put the walkie-talkie to his ear as he leaned back against a boulder. "Roger, air search. We can hear you. What's the problem? Over."

"Is that you on the bluff I just passed?"

"Roger. Affirmative. Ten-four. Over," the sergeant answered.

The man beside him winced. He was well aware that there were special words you had to use with walkie-talkies. "Affirmative" was better than "yes," which sounded like a hiss. But he'd seen some men pick up a walkie-talkie, and they suddenly were like some god-damned hotshot actor in a police movie. "Roger. Ten-four." A smug look in their eyes like they were getting screwed while they were talking. Jesus.

A crackle from the walkie-talkie. "I just wanted to be certain. I'm done for today. The ground's too dark to see much."

Except us, the second man thought. Sure, you saw the bunch of us, all right. You're just eager to get back to town and celebrate Saturday night in a bar.

"Roger," the sergeant responded.

Christ, the second man thought.

The sergeant continued, "Anything that looked suspicious? Over."

"I checked all along the slope to the north of you. I checked the lakes up that way. Nothing. Some nice elk at Wind-shift Basin."

"Well, we'll keep moving with the dogs then. There's a lake another mile above us, and we'll camp there. Over."

"Just make sure you cuddle close, boys. It gets awful lonely on your own in the woods."

"We've got the dogs to keep us company. Over."

"Yeah, but you should see what I'll have. Nighty-night, boys."

"Roger. Ten-four. Out." The sergeant brought the walkie-talkie down.

"Aw, go screw yourself," the second man grumbled. He wasn't certain if he meant the man up in the helicopter or the sergeant, but the sergeant grinned at him, and so the second man decided, raising up his hand to make an obscene gesture toward the far-off roaring of the helicopter. Soon the noise dimmed, becoming fainter, at last inaudible, and the men now looked at one another. Throughout the afternoon, they'd heard the chopper roaring near them in the mountains. They had gradually become accustomed to it, at last so familiar with it that they hadn't been aware that they were hearing it. They heard it now, though, or rather heard its absence, and they missed it, somehow incomplete without its reassuring presence. "Let's get moving," the sergeant said. He reached for the leash he'd handed over, and they let the dogs go on, straining to keep up with them.

"What a way to spend a weekend," someone said.

"Saturday, and hell, we won't be back at least till Sunday evening."

"Well, if you boys worked as good as you complained," the sergeant told them, "we'd have found this Bodine long ago."

The dogs began to slacken and then cower.

It was crouched behind the deer cage, watching as the black and white police car reached the end of the lane, stopped a moment, and then drove toward the swimming pool. The thought of water made it gag again, and when it crawled out from its cover to be certain that the car continued moving, it saw people diving from the high board, splashing into the water, and it had to turn away to keep from retching. There were people over by the swings and slides, children and a mother. They were laughing. A man and a woman strolled toward the deer cage. In the cage, the deer had long since shifted toward the side away from it. They stared at it, their withers rippling nervously, and it was bothered by them just as much as by the people coming near. It only wanted to be on its own, to hole up somewhere safe, to stop the spasms racking through it. Finally the man and woman reached the deer cage, and it scurried through the bushes up the slope. It dimly recollected that a walkway angled across the slope above there, and it reached the walkway, wooden steps that cut up high across the slope, and it was running up them. In the sunlight, it pawed at its eyes and squinted. Once it stumbled, falling, and it scrambled up on all fours, rasping, whining. Then it reached the top, and it could see the mansion over there. Once its mother had taken it here to visit the place, a big, tall, old-time house with many rooms and stairways, and it still retained the image of those dark corners, all those sheltered crannies it could hide in. Squinting far around, glancing toward the park down there, the people, it shivered and turned toward the mansion again. It saw the trees around the place, the bushes, and the gravel driveway that led up to the front steps, and it saw the car parked in the front, and it was ducking toward the bushes, moving closer. All those shadowy rooms. The front door suddenly came open, and it paused among the bushes. Now a man came out, and he was talking to a woman. They had boxes in their hands.