John Saul - Creature

Finally a sob shook Kelly's body and she slumped against Elaine.

Elaine said nothing for a while, but simply held Kelly close, her own eyes flooding with tears as she felt the child's acceptance of what had happened. "It's going to be all right," she assured Kelly. "Your Uncle Jerry and I are going to take care of you, and you'll never have to worry about anything."

She held Kelly for another moment, then gently disentangled herself from the little girl and started leading her out of the house. "Let's go now," she said softly. "We'll go over to our house and come back and get your things later. All right?"

Kelly, her mind numb, nodded mutely as Elaine took her through the house and out the front door. But then she paused, tugging at Elaine's hand until Elaine stopped walking.

Kelly turned and looked back at the house.

She knew deep in her heart that she was never going to see her family again.

The image of the house began to swim crazily as tears flooded her eyes. Then, once more, she turned away.

Sharon was breathing hard and her whole body had turned into a mass of aching muscles, but still she trudged onward. Ahead of her on the trail, Mark seemed to be tireless, striding ahead, pausing every now and then to wait for her to catch up. But even when she could go no farther and had to sit down for a few minutes to catch her breath, he'd kept moving, hurrying back down the trail or moving off it entirely, always searching for a spot that would give him a view of the valley. Each time he found such a spot, he would stand and stare like a frightened animal, his eyes searching the terrain below, looking for signs of the hunters they both knew must be coming after them.

When they'd arrived abruptly at the end of the road several hours ago, where there was nothing but a large parking lot at the base of a ski lift, Sharon's heart had sunk. She should have gone the other way, sped through Silverdale and headed down the valley. Now they were trapped. For a moment she was tempted to turn around, but Mark seemed to read her mind.

"We can't go back," he told her. 'They'll block the road and we'll never get through."

"Well, we can't stay here, either," Sharon replied, but Mark was already out of the car, staring up at the mountains.

"Up there," he said at last. "We'll have to hike out."

He began rummaging in the back of the station wagon, but the only thing he found that would be of any use at all was a worn blanket that looked as if it hadn't been used for anything but spreading on the ground for picnics over the past dozen years. Worn and thin, and filled with fragments of grass and leaves, it would offer little protection against the cold of the night, but it was better than nothing. With the blanket tucked under Mark's arm, they had set off.

For the first few miles they moved quickly, but as they climbed steadily upward, Sharon began to tire.

Mark, on the other hand, felt his body quickly begin to respond to the exercise. His legs seemed to take on a rhythmic stride of their own, and as he climbed the steep trail, his body began to sweat as his system struggled to keep his body temperature in equilibrium. Finally he felt the last remnants of the headache fade away, and he kept moving, breathing deeply. When his mother eventually called out to him that she had to rest, he turned back to face her without thinking.

For a moment, as he caught sight of her face, the now familiar anger built inside him, but he fought it, forcing it back down, repeating to himself over and over again that it wasn't real, that it was only something Ames had induced in him, aPavlovian response like a dog salivating at the sound of a bell. Finally, as the afternoon wore on, he found that he was able to control the rage completely.

It was still there, smoldering within him, but he was no longer afraid that at any moment he was going to strike out at his mother, close his strong fingers around her throat and begin squeezing.

The sun was setting when he spotted the search party. He wasn't certain how many of them there were, but they were moving swiftly, climbing the trail he and Sharon were following, and for a moment he wondered how they could be so certain they were following the right path.

Then he caught a glimpse of the dog-a big shepherd- straining at a heavy leash as it pressed forward, its nose close to the ground.

"Oh, God," Sharon moaned when he told her about the dog. "What are we going to do?"

"Keep going," Mark replied, his voice grim. "We're not just going to sit down and give up."

And so they'd gone on.

Darkness closed around them, and with the night came a cold breeze, slicing through their clothes to chill their skin. Sharon felt herself shiver as the wind cut through her thin jacket, but Mark, his legs still moving with an apparently endless energy, barely seemed to notice it. And then, as the dusk turned into pitch-black night, Sharon stumbled, a sharp pain shooting up her leg as her ankle twisted.

She yelped out loud and sank to the ground, rubbing gingerly at her injured joint. "Mark?" she called out. "Mark!"

He turned back, then hurried down the trail and squatted beside her. Taking her ankle gently in his large fingers, he tried to massage it. Sharon winced, partly with pain, partly from the sight of his deformed hands and the strange feel of his rough skin against her flesh. At last, with Mark supporting her, she got to her feet and tested her weight on her throbbing leg.

She was able to walk, but she was limping badly now.

Saying nothing, Mark moved next to her and slipped his arm around her, then started walking up the trail again, half supporting her, half carrying her.

After an hour Sharon could go no farther.

They were on a hillside, and the trail wound through a maze of enormous boulders. Mark left Sharon where she was and moved forward a few yards, scouting the area. Finally he found a boulder that was deeply undercut, with another, smaller rock sitting a few feet from it. Between the two rocks there was enough space for the two of them to sit for a few minutes, and the rocks themselves would provide them with at least a small amount of shelter from the wind. But even as he led Sharon to it, he knew the boulders couldn't protect them from the dog that was tracking them.

And the dog would bring the men with it.

"We can't get away, can we?" Sharon finally said after they'd been sitting for several minutes. The blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and her injured leg was stretched out straight in front of her. She felt like crying, but wouldn't give in to the urge.

"I-I don't know," Mark replied after a few more moments. "Unless I can figure out a way to kill the dog."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Sharon shuddered. But then she remembered the carnage she'd seen in the yard of the sports center, and steeled herself against the weakness of her own emotions. So Mark had once killed a dog and would do it again? So what? Compared to what Ames had done…

"How?" she asked. "How could you do it?"

Mark shook his head. "I can't, unless they let it go. But they won't let it go."

They sat silently then. After a while they began to hear the baying of the dog as it climbed the trail below. At first it was nothing more than a faint sound in the distance, but it grew steadily closer.

Even as the fear built inside her, Sharon couldn't bring herself to get up, couldn't force her body to respond to the need to get away.

Mark, as if understanding, sat next to her, apparently resigned to whatever might happen next.

The dog was close now, barking, and they could even hear the voices of the men shouting to each other and see the flickering beams of flashlights as they tried to light the trail ahead. Then, as if sensing it was closing on its prey, the dog fell silent.