RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King Page 3

  She could also lead a team back in the morning, but temperatures were expected to plummet into the forties overnight. If Megan were still alive and on the mountain she might easily succumb to hypothermia.

  Jane dropped to one knee and let the binoculars dangle around her neck. She couldn’t discount the possibility of a cave; rock formations were always changing with weather and time. But it wasn’t on any geological maps she had ever seen, and literally hundreds of people had trampled or flown over the area throughout the week. How could they all have missed it?

  Yet there it was, resting on a narrow ledge that tapered its way toward the top of the bluff, and how in the world would the Girl Scout ever have found it? If Megan were already down here she would never try to ascend. Clearly the roads and parklands were below her. If she had been up there on the bluff she would have had no reason to go over the edge. You couldn’t see the cave from above, and anyway there were too many other more obvious directions to go. Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t; if Jane had learned anything in twelve years of wilderness rescue, it was that people did the unexpected.

  But the hour was getting late. If she was going to investigate she needed to find a way up there and fast. The rocks tapered to forest less than a mile to the east, but getting there and back would take time and precious daylight. The alternative was to approach it head on; to climb the face of the wall without the benefit of rope and pitons.

  Cameron knew the dangers of climbing alone. She had devoted an hour of every search and rescue course to the subject of ‘risk.’ When rescuers became victims they compounded the original threat. Their actions were detrimental to the people they were trying to reach and posed a threat to the safety of their coworkers as well. How many times had she driven that point home?

  But the bluff was less than two miles from Flatrock Gap and the trail above the Walasi-Yi where Megan Lawson had gone missing. This cave, or whatever Jane was looking at, was well within the probable range of the search. To her, it was one of those now or never moments and one too tempting to walk away from. She began to doff her binoculars and camera and tucked them in the mesh pouch on her backpack.

  Megan was last seen in a column of eleven Girl Scouts, hiking to the summit of Blood Mountain to join three other troops from the Greater Atlanta Council. She was there one minute and gone the next, according to the girl who had been walking just in front of her.

  It was first assumed that she had stopped to adjust her gear, tie a shoe lace or get a drink of water and then somehow missed the trail markers in her haste to catch up with the others. But when the Troop came back to look for her, she had vanished into thin air. She neither called out for help nor responded to their repeated shouts, a fact that promptly concerned law enforcement.

  Megan had been a Scout for three years and was trained to remain in one place if she ever got separated from the others. It was her scoutmaster’s opinion that she would not have wandered willingly from the trail.

  The cops were thinking the same. That one of the fifteen hundred visitors who had passed through state parklands last weekend might be the reason she couldn’t be found. A woman had gone missing from a camper just two months before. Had someone been lying in wait near the trail?

  Rangers spent the week sifting trash containers and dumpsters around public restrooms and campsites throughout the park. Georgia State Police amassed security videos from welcome centers, gas stations, ATM’s and every restaurant, motel and retail outlet in the area, hoping to convert license plates and credit card slips into names they could feed into the FBI’s national database for known sex offenders and pedophiles.

  And then there were volunteers on ATVs, horseback and foot, civil air patrols, and for three nights a National Guard helicopter that scanned the mountains with sophisticated heat-seeking infrared lenses.

  With one hand Jane shielded her eyes; the sun was teetering on the summit, large and red and easy to look upon. Soon it would slip below the horizon along with any chance to investigate. Think quickly, Jane: ten minutes to the base of the bluff and ten minutes to climb the rock wall. That would leave her with just enough daylight to explore the crevice and get safely down off the rocks.

  She took a mental inventory of her belongings: pocketknife, flash light and compass in her cargo shorts. If she found the girl alive there were energy bars in her backpack along with bottled water, thermo blanket and a medical kit. They would have to weather the night or descend in the dark, but her cellphone would begin to pick up signals once she reached the service road, about thirty or forty minutes away.

  She tucked the backpack into the crook of a stubby tree, pulled on fingerless gloves and started jogging toward the bluff.

  The sun doused the mountainside around it in a rusty red light. The closer Jane got, the clearer the aberration became. It was nearly forty feet above the base, a small black crevice just large enough for a person to crawl in.

  The climb proved more difficult than she had anticipated, boots clawing ineffectively at loose shale until she reached the wall of solid rock. It took all of the next ten minutes to scale it hand and toe, but at last she reached the ledge and mantled it with a heel hook, planting her knees firmly on the ground. And was immediately rewarded with the fetid breath of a cave.

  “Jesus,” she whispered in awe. It was real.

  She looked down at where she had come from and saw shadows creeping to the base of the rocks. The sky above her had dimmed to pale gray and the horizon was faintly sprinkled with stars.

  “Megan,” she called out, moving closer to the opening.

  “Me-gan …” her voice returned in hollow echo.

  She listened, but the only sound on the ledge was the sound of breaking twigs beneath her knees. She was about to call out again when the word “Meg –” lodged in her throat. Slowly she pulled the flash-light from a pocket and pointed it downward. It wasn’t twigs that were snapping under her weight; it was a hand-woven gate made of cane, just large enough to cover the mouth of the cave. When raised and leaned against the rocks it would camouflage the entrance the same dusty hue of the bluff.

  This was the reason the cave hadn’t been visible to rescue workers throughout the week! This was the reason no one had spotted it from the air!

  She felt the adrenalin course through her body, nerve-ends tingling in response to urgent signals firing from her brain, telling her to flee.

  She let one boot slip back over the edge and lowered a leg until she found a foothold, hanging there by her elbows.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, staring at the opening.

  She shifted her weight and lost a toehold, plummeting a foot before grasping the ledge with her fingers, pebbles raining noisily upon the rocks below. She held her breath and listened until the sound diminished to a patter, wondering how far distant it had been heard.

  Sweat trickled down the back of her neck. She was conscious now of every noise she made.

  What should she do?

  She thought about the meaning of the gate. The Indians had long used woven cane to construct walls known as wattles. The presence of one here implied at least some degree of permanency. Someone had spent time in the cave. And not two miles from the place young Megan Lawson went missing.

  Since the gate was not in place, it was likely the cave was unoccupied. Whoever had taken it down had probably waited until dark and then left to hunt or scavenge at night. Perhaps she had missed them by a matter of minutes.

  If Megan were really in there, this might be her one and only chance to get her out.

  Putting the flashlight between her teeth, she began to pull herself back onto the ledge. Then she lay on her belly and used her elbows and knees to propel herself into the opening. The air inside was cool and musky with the pungent smell of bats and ammonia.

  She kept moving until the rocks tunneled to her left. Pushing off the toes of her shoes and using her legs like pistons, she propelled herself forward a foot at a time. The air turned rancid as the
tunnel opened into a chamber, but at least she was now able to rise to her knees. Here in the small dome of rock the smell was almost overpowering.

  “Megan,” she called out, covering her mouth and nose. “Megan, can you hear me?”

  She aimed her flashlight into the darkness, playing it slowly across the floor –

  She gasped.

  A human skeleton lay against one wall, arms to its sides. Black brittle skin stretched taut across a grimacing face, limbs threaded with brown ligaments and decomposed muscle. The hair was long and dark. The hands and feet were small, and around the bone of one wrist was a yellow rubber wristband etched with the one word – LIVESTRONG. A pair of khaki shorts stuffed with underwear, and two Columbia hiking boots had been placed between her ankles.

  Jane panned the light to a pile of ashes, then above to a rock ceiling blackened by charcoal. In a corner she saw a man’s jacket and empty tins of food. In another corner there were heaps of branches and scraps of old paper. And a fire pit containing small bones.

  “Megan,” she whispered, moving her light over the walls. “Megan … are you here?”

  Breathe, she commanded herself. Breathe!

  She took a stick from the fire pit and lifted the shirt. Saw a pair of dirty socks and badly torn blue jeans. There was old underwear and a threadbare knapsack in the corner. She opened it and found it stuffed with leaves and plant roots, crumpled up paper and a battered metal canteen. She removed the paper; a miscellany of park registration forms, newspapers and old fliers – kindling for his fires.

  She dropped them and pointed the flashlight into the crevices, turning the light sideways, then slowly up and down, illuminating each foot of the perimeter around the chamber. The ceiling was smooth and someone had taken the charcoaled end of a stick and covered it with black crosses.

  Her light fell upon something green and she tasted the acid of bile in her throat. She looked away then slowly looked back again as a bare leg, a shoe and a mound of straw colored hair swam into her vision. She dropped her head toward the floor and retched. Her hands began to tremble. Beads of sweat formed on her brow.

  Panic was the enemy, she reminded herself. Emotion had no place here. Emotion could get you killed.

  She inched forward on hands on knees.

  The young girl’s eyes were wide-open, reflecting light, her mouth agape. Flies lighted around an open tear through the girl’s stomach; hundreds more amassed on a pile of rotting intestines between her legs.

  Cameron vomited all over herself. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in spite of the pressure that was building up in her chest, nerve endings tingling to the tips of her fingers and toes. For a second her composure gave way and an involuntary moan escaped her lips.

  I must get out of here, she told herself, and fast. She turned quickly and her shoulder struck rock, knocking the flashlight from her slippery fingers. As it began to roll she lunged for it, sending it spinning into a crack in the stone floor.

  And the chamber went dark.

  Move, was all she could think of. Just move!

  She backed away from the body, scraping hands and knees. She felt the powdery ashes of the fire pit clinging to her wet skin, felt her foot striking tin cans that began to roll and clatter like an army of giant cockroaches. She cracked her head on the ceiling and realized the chamber was closing in around her. Then she caught a blessed breath of fresh air and knew she was back at the tunnel.

  She lay on her stomach, breathed in deeply and began to crawl out. Then she heard a scraping sound in front of her.

  Someone was replacing the gate over the entrance.

  Chapter 3

  Appalachian Mountain, Tennessee

  High on the summit a new undergrowth was beginning to take hold. Huckleberries and seedlings sprouted from the rich dark earth, spring's buds bursting on green branches, purple crocuses popping through last year’s peat.

  The predators roamed here: the wolf and the black bear, and an occasional large cat, existing as they had in centuries past, well above the high watermark.

  The Appalachians are an arduous range, their foothills pocked with hollows that are obscured from much of day’s light. Scattered here and there are crude pastures cut from rocky hillsides, none of it level, most of it angling uselessly skyward, exposing boulder and brush and bare edible roots that grow from the ground like long spiny fingers. It is home to a hardscrabble people who manage to eke out an existence from the unyielding earth.

  Morning was breaking on Sweetwater Gap, sunshine illuminating the forest in shimmering light and jagged pools of dappled shade. Honeysuckle breezes came and went and woodpeckers tapped monotonously in the distance.

  The snake was big as they go; five feet and thirteen rattles, thick and brown and covered with large grayish diamonds, head as big as a woman's fist. It was watching the man, silent, taut, tongue darting cool mountain air.

  The man was crouched just feet from its head, elbows resting casually on his knees. His hair was greasy, his beard unkempt and growing into his collar. Scars and patches of dead skin mottled his forearms. One hand was missing a thumb.

  The snake’s tail began to quiver and again came the eerie warning of its rattle. Everything in the forest went quiet.

  The man shifted his weight, limbs performing with extraordinary grace, movements delicate, deliberate, animal-like. His breathing was shallow and fouled by ramps and wild roots.

  The snake made a suggestion of a move and the rattling stopped.

  The man froze in a nimble pose, sunlight flickering over his face, pupils black and static like glass in a china figurine. The snake didn't rattle its tail. It just coiled itself together one last inch tighter, like a man pulling back the hammer on a gun.

  A bumblebee circled and rose lazily into the sky. A dead tree limb crashed in the distant forest. A woods rabbit nibbled its way onto the scene and froze, too late sensing the danger.

  There was a blur of jaws and arm and the man was rocked off his heels, but a moment later he stood with his fist around the vicious neck. Then he dropped the snake in a heavy canvass sack and shouldered it behind a backpack. He scooped up a rifle and headed to a clearing on top of a knoll. The foothills of Tennessee swept away beneath him.

  To the south he could make out the faint outline of Blood Mountain, Georgia surrounded by tiny black dots that would be helicopters hovering over the summit. To the west there was Signal Mountain and to the north a spire of white smoke climbing high above the trees over Tellico Plains. He watched the smoke drift toward Knoxville and loop back like the crook of a shepherd’s hook. It was the smoke of a man clearing land, of a man with a home.

  It had been a perilous trek out of Georgia, aircraft skimming the treetops, rangers and policemen swarming the trailheads and high mountain roads. He had considered burying under the rocks until nightfall, but then the pressure let off and the helicopters seemed to drift east and then disappear. For the moment at least, the focus of the search had shifted from the mountains. He decided to descend into the foothills and set a course for the column of white smoke.

  Rolfe Ledder was raised in a West Virginia Hollow, a place of poverty, disease and misfortune. At fourteen he ran away from home and took up life as a hermit, heading south through the mountains, surviving off whatever he could scavenge or steal. He found shelter in old barns and abandoned hunters’ camps, broke into homes and trailers, pilfering food, supplies and ammunition as he crossed the Monongahela south into Kentucky, then Tennessee and then Georgia, where his father had once told him oranges grew on trees.

  He carried an old knapsack stuffed with ginseng roots and sweet birch, canteen, matches and chewing tobacco. A stitched leather pouch strapped across his shoulder contained roots and medicinal things, trinkets for luck and a handful of Devil’s Pulpit seeds. A crude looking knife with a barbed hook on the blade was tucked inside his belt; he had been told it was forged by hand in some ancestor’s blacksmith’s oven. Around his neck was a loop of catgut
threaded with snake rattles that chattered ominously as he walked.

  A filthy boy floated leaves in a puddle beneath an ancient Willow. A shirtless man with ropy muscle ran a chainsaw through scrub pines, dragging limbs to a roaring fire above a newly constructed cabin. One bicep was tattooed with a portrait of Jesus wearing a crown of bloody thorns; the other with the blue and white flag of El Salvador.

  Rolfe screwed up his eyes.

  A newly lacquered sign on the roof read Tellico River Trading Company. A raccoon paced the cabin porch dragging its chain past a dog’s water bowl. Kayaks, red and yellow, hung from the walls along with oars and snowshoes and a pair of antique skis. A two-man saw hung over the door, its long blade painted red. A double-edged axe leaned next to a whiskey barrel, and an old military gas can sat close to a partially open door.

  He stepped out of the trees, taking note of the new station wagon and an old gray pickup parked next to it in the shade.

  The roar of the chainsaw stopped and the shirtless man backed away, calling out in Spanish for the boy to join him.

  Rolfe made his way off the hillside, passing a clothesline sagging under the weight of wet jeans and T-shirts, boxer shorts, bras and women’s panties. He looked at the clothesline a long moment, then back at the cabin where the door swung wide and a young blond haired man stepped into the light. He wore his hair in a ponytail and had on wire-rim glasses and a T-shirt with the head of a howling wolf.

  “Not open, friend.” The man smiled with gleaming white teeth. “No electricity.” He pointed up at the barren telephone pole beside the cabin. “We keep hearing, ‘any day’.”

  Rolfe kept walking toward him, skirting a stack of freshly cut pine. His eyes moved between the man with the chainsaw to the man on the porch of the cabin. “Ginseng,” he said loudly. “Be ten dollars a one.” He let the canvass sack slip off his shoulder. “Diamondback rattlers are two for twenty dollars.”