of earth at all, with the eyes of a dozen different kinds of creatures noting their passage, clinging to the undergrowth and the vast bases of ancient trees, afraid to reveal their hiding places lest Voodoo find them and eat them the way monsters in storybooks ate little children.
Voodoo no longer growled. He was smart and he was hungry. Growling would only warn the prey of his approach.
When they reached the cut-off, Burgade took the dog and they hid in a shallow ravine. Burgade could see over the top of it. It was unlikely the intruders could see him at all—or wouldn’t, anyway, until it was too late.
Burgade’s first sight of them genuinely shocked him. He hadn’t put faces to the intruders in his mind—they’d just been people who shouldn’t be here and were going to pay with their lives for being here. More fun for the dogs. Or for Noah, if he wanted to get in a little extra hunting tonight.
He hadn’t been expecting Tom Tillman and Liz Turner, that was for sure.
Voodoo leapt out of the ravine. Burgade shouted for him to stop but Voodoo was beyond taking orders. At least for now.
Burgade scrambled from the ravine, his rifle ready but it was already too late.
There in the prehistoric pathways of the forest, in the shattered, alien light of the moon, Voodoo was already in the process of killing Tom Tillman.
He had gone without pause for the man’s throat, slamming him back into a tree, ripping enough out of the throat to render the man half-dead on the spot, and then, on the second pass, throwing him to the ground so that he could essentially tear the man in half vertically, feasting on the gore as he went.
“Stop him! Stop him!”
Liz Turner was beyond hysteria. She was under the panicked impression that Tom Tillman was somehow still alive. But a glance at the throat certainly told otherwise.
Burgade shouted and shouted and shouted for the dog to stop. He didn’t give a damn about Tom. It was the fact that Voodoo no longer obeyed him that stunned and worried him.
And then Voodoo vaulted from the massacred corpse on the ground to Liz Turner where he repeated almost exactly the same process he’d used with Tom Tillman. He did this without warning. He did this despite the cries of Burgade to stop. He did this with a single menacing—terrifying—glance at Burgade as his body flew toward Liz. He had warned Burgade that he was no longer in control.
Burgade started running. He had no doubt that if he didn’t get out of here, he would be Voodoo’s next victim.
“Something’s wrong,” Stephanie said. “Burgade just came running back. His dog isn’t with him and he looks kind of crazy.”
Fargo jumped up from the chair and hurried to the caged window.
She hadn’t been exaggerating. Though he couldn’t hear what Burgade was saying, he could see that Burgade was violently upset about something. He stood only inches from Noah and shouted in his face. He kept pointing to the forest and waving his rifle around.
Noah started looking at the forest, too. And then Burgade must have said something that shocked Noah because Noah’s expression and posture changed completely. He looked older suddenly. He hefted his Spencer and the two men returned to the same path Burgade had taken.
“What’s going on, Fargo?” Stephanie said.
Nancy had put her shirt on and padded over to the window.
“Something happened in the woods,” Fargo said. “Something that got to Noah pretty bad.”
“You should’ve seen his face,” Stephanie said. “He really looked sick. And old. I wonder what Burgade told him.”
Fargo said, “Hurry up and get dressed.”
Nancy looked confused. “What’s going on?”
Fargo walked over to the west corner of the cabin and said, “Remember how you told me the roof leaked pretty bad every time it rained?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, it could’ve rotted some of the cedar they used to build it. I’m going to find out in a hurry.” He grabbed a chair, carried it to the west corner, climbed up on it.
Nancy said, “You mean I got undressed for nothing, Fargo?”
“Not for nothing,” he smiled. “You gave me a nice, long look at a beautiful body.”
She laughed as she slid into the rest of her clothes. “So you’re not going to hide behind the door?”
“Not if we can get out of here before they come back.”
He worked with his fist, striking the underside of the roof’s corner. He got discouraged at first because he couldn’t find any point that the soaking rain had weakened.
“Any luck, Fargo?” Stephanie asked.
“Not yet.”
And he didn’t have any luck at all, either. Not with the western corner of the roof. He jumped down, picked up the chair and raced over to the eastern end of the cabin.
He did the same thing there. Tested the underside of the roof for weak points. He was quickly discouraged.
Then his fist practically went right through the shingles and he knew he’d found the spot he was looking for. He started tearing away the roofing, pitching the rain-soaked material to the floor as he went.
When he’d created a hole big enough to crawl through, he pulled himself up and onto the roof.
“Hurry up,” he said to the women.
They each gave little mews of excitement. This was the only real opportunity for freedom they’d had since being kidnapped and brought here. They took a moment to enjoy the fact. They sounded giddy to be free of their shackles and to be headed for the roof.
Fargo knelt next to the hole on the roof, helping them climb, climb and wriggle their way up to the hole and through it. All the time watching the edge of the forest for any sight of their captors. All he could hear was the dogs. They were still some distance away, which meant that Noah and Burgade were probably still with them. He couldn’t imagine that they’d let the dogs run free.
From the roof to the ground. Sweat blinded all three, pasted clothing to their flesh, added a briny smell to the air.
They ran.
“Where’re we going?” Nancy said as they plunged down a path.
“I think the dock is this way,” Fargo said. “I sure as hell hope so, anyway.”
The clear, simple light of the moon broke into splinters on the branches overhead. The forest became an immense land of crooked trees and looming limbs and holes that could break the bones of careless runners. Not that there was any way they could slow down. Fargo became machine-like at times like these. He had only one thought. To get to the dock and whatever boat Noah had come in on. And then to escape from the island and its dogs.
Nancy was the first to fall, stumbling and smashing her knee against a tree root that had grown across the path. She tried to muffle her cry but the pain was too much. Fargo dropped back and bent to her. All he could hope was that the knee wasn’t broken. He pulled her to her feet and said, “Try to stand on it.”
They were both panting, chests heaving. Stephanie hovered nearby, anxious to get moving again but also fearful that her sister was badly injured.
“Try and put your weight on it,” Fargo said.
She complied. But she also cried out this time with frightening ferocity. Not much doubt now. The knee was probably broken.
He grabbed her around the waist, slung her over his shoulder, and they set off again, this time at a much slower pace.
Fargo listened to the night as he made the twisted journey to the water. From what the sounds told him, the dogs had revolted. He had heard of such things. That once dogs tasted human flesh, they were no longer intimidated by the symbols of human flesh, their masters. From the shouts of both Noah and Burgade, from the snarls, growls, and cries of all four dogs, it was easy to picture what was going on. Noah and Burgade were
