And he only had one bullet left.
There was a splash behind him, from further up the creek.
Gerald didn’t look. He didn’t need to. Instead, he lunged to his left, across the narrow stream and toward the far bank.
He thought for a moment that he was going to make it. His feet found purchase and a surge of adrenaline gave him the strength he needed to grab onto a root with his left hand and haul himself partway up.
Then something caught his foot.
It wasn’t the bite of two-inch incisors or lethal claws that brought him down, but a gentle nudge that was just enough to drop him to his knees.
Twisting at the waist, Gerald then flung himself onto his back. He began to make whimpering sounds as he struggled to get his finger on the trigger and his other hand on the stock of the old rifle.
It was knocked from his hand.
The motion was so fast and explosive, Gerald didn’t see it coming. The rifle was simply wrenched from his hands and he watched as it spun through the air before landing in the water several feet away.
His fingers burned. They felt warm.
Still whimpering and trying to push himself backwards up the hill with his heels, Gerald held his right arm out to block the expected attack. He noticed two of his fingers were missing. There was no pain.
“H—” he licked his lips, tried to swallow, and failed. “Haw!” It was a pathetic sound. The sound of a mouse stuck in a trap. The hunted, rather than the hunter.
There were two of them. Whether they were male or female, he couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. No laws of nature mattered anymore, for either man or animal. It was all backwards and upside down.
“Upside down,” Gerald muttered, thinking back again to the dirt. The warm, moist dirt as it covered the face of Laura. His Laura. His wife and best friend of forty-six years.
The nearest cougar growled. Low in its throat so that it sounded like an insane purr reserved for nightmares.
Scented with pine needles and moss, covering the sweet faces of his daughters, the small pink lips of his two-year-old grandson.
Gerald stopped struggling.
Nothing was right.
A tug at his right foot. The other cat was taking the boot in its mouth, almost gently, so as not to damage the meal.
He should fight back. That was what you were supposed to do when attacked by a mountain lion. Fight back, because they only went after easy prey and if you made yourself big enough, or loud enough, or scary enough, they would leave you alone. Only, they weren’t scared.
They weren’t scared. But Gerald was.
A third cougar moved into view on the opposite bank, sniffing first at the dead cat before turning its yellow eyes on him. Then a fourth.
The mountain lion to his left moved in closer, like it was studying his reaction. It came to within a foot of his face, so that he could feel its hot breath caressing his skin. He could smell the fetid stench of its last meal. And he couldn’t look away.
A tug.
He was being dragged down the embankment. Taken back to be shared with the rest of them.
“Upside down,” Gerald whispered again, his eyes wild as he looked beyond his executioner, searching frantically for a way to escape. Only, there wasn’t any. He’d already figured that out the night before, when he lowered the Glock from his temple and instead put it in the backpack.
That had been a mistake.
Chapter 2
MADELINE
Lassen National Forest
Northern California
The smoldering heap of charred mattress and human remains could have been mistaken for any other normal burn pile, until you got close. Madeline stood far enough away to avoid the cloying smell of melted plastic and burnt flesh. It lingered, and there were already enough odors wafting through her house as it was. She didn’t need that to follow her inside.
Satisfied that any risk of the fire spreading to the surrounding grass had passed, she lowered the garden hose and retreated twenty more feet to the garden. It wasn’t yet noon, but she was already planning her dinner and breakfast for the next morning. It was important to add the fresh vegetables to the frozen meat she’d be grilling. Madeline didn’t have much of an appetite, but it would be several more days before she was fully recovered and she needed all the nutrients she could get.
A lot had been accomplished since she’d woken some forty hours earlier. Picking a small tomato, Madeline moved on to the carrots, ticking off the mental list in her head as she went. The cleaning was done, the generator was set up, the necessary equipment was retrieved from the trailer, and she could finally focus on more important matters.
Before her illness, she would have lacked the patience required to go methodically through the house, cleaning it the way she had. However, things had become so much…simpler. Her thoughts were clear, concise, and unmuddied by a mountain of emotional issues she hadn’t even realized were there. Oh, Madeline knew her sanity was often questioned, and that she could be reactionary at times. But as she stood there, selecting the carrots to accompany her barbequed chicken breast, it was a welcome change from the chaos that used to rage inside her head.
After her initial shower and fluid intake the evening she woke up, Madeline had closed the bedroom door behind her to seal off the stench of her own waste. There were quite a few surprises waiting in the rest of the house, and it would be a full day before she had the strength needed to return and drag the bedding
