The Shadowkiller Read online

  In Ronnie’s office, the glowing screen savers on her four computers, the multicolored digital displays from a bank of VHS, CD, and DVD players, along with the assorted red lights from power strips and modulators, all created a sort of Mephistophelean Christmas ambiance. Ronnie’s firm, Digiware Microsystems, and its parent company, NovaSoft Digiware Systems, had a current market share of 1.4 percent of all software sales on earth. Ty was profoundly proud of his wife’s accomplishments and was heartsick that in recent years he’d only been a drain on her.

  You’ll be free of me soon enough, honey.

  He set down the bottle, plopped in front of the home business unit, and hit a key, calling up the desktop. He stared at the blank screen.

  He typed out I l-o-v-e y-o-u. It looked stupid, trite.

  That’s all you can say?

  He tagged it with a-l-l. Worse. I love you all?

  He erased a-l-l. Back to square one. He erased I love you and then retyped it.

  Christ, I can’t even get past the suicide good-bye.

  He stared at I love you and suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to cry. He’d held it in with iron resolve but now he was losing it. He took a hefty pull off the Scotch, sucked up his courage, and left I love you. He hyperventilated to regain emotional control, then walked out.

  At the coat closet he selected his leather bomber jacket. That’ll be good to die in, kind of a James Dean effect. He paused at the door and for the last time his eyes took in the soaring entry. Under normal circumstances, Ronnie would have set aside that coming Saturday from her busy schedule to decorate for Christmas. He used to love the holidays but his descent over the last three years had erased that little pleasure. One more time he rationalized that the kids would be well taken care of. He also knew they wouldn’t be putting up decorations this year ’cause Dad would be dead. Bummer.

  It was really for the best now—dying, that is. The liquor aided in staving off any further doubt. He was ready to rock. He stepped out the door. It was cold—probably thirty-four degrees—but he was drunk enough that he didn’t really feel it. Though a long covered walkway connected the far end of the house and the garage, Ty walked out under the huge porte cochere, then across their massive circular plaza toward the six-car structure, clenching the whisky.

  He entered the garage’s side door and flipped on the lights, revealing a vehicle behind each of its six portals. Passing his work truck, a muddy Dodge Ram with a bedliner, he continued on to his baby, a mercury silver 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing coupe swaddled in a car cover. Once his dream car, it would now be his longboat to Valhalla. He took off the cover and pulled up its door—the doors on the Gullwing opened upward—and slid down into the buttery, flame red leather. Ty’s only concession to modernity had been to install a modern sound system. Ty had a technical mind tempered with the soul of an artist and felt this machine was not so much simply a great car as it was the pinnacle of a mid-twentieth-century ideal expressed by a meeting of art and engineering. He felt it would be fitting to take this car with him, as no one else could appreciate it as much as he did.

  As with all Ty’s vehicles, the key was in the ignition. No need for high security, given they were on the edge of the foothills of the Cascade range and much farther from civilization than indicated by the thirty-eight-mile ride into downtown Seattle.

  Ty twisted the key, and the big in-line six’s two hundred and forty horses roared awake. He had considered just sitting there and letting the fumes do the job, but he had another plan. He punched the clicker, and the door in front of the Mercedes rolled up. He sat there and stared into the void beyond his garage. As he put his hand on the gearshift, he paused, and his thoughts went back three summers to when all of his torment began.

  3

  It had been an unseasonably warm summer in Seattle. But on that Fourth of July weekend in central Idaho, up the middle fork of the Salmon River, it was an oven. When thirty-four employees and spouses of NovaSoft Digiware Systems gathered at the junction of Highway 93 and the dirt track leading them into the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area, there was fleeting talk of fire danger. When a few of the more prudent souls suggested they reconsider (Ty noted they were all spouses, not the gung ho NovaSoft troops), the NovaSoft gang voted them down heartily. For they were invincible.

  Everyone who had been with the company much more than five years had long since been anointed as a millionaire, and that included the warehouse guys who wielded rolls of shrink wrap for the UPS shipments. Most of the execs, including Ty and Ronnie, had stock and options worth many tens of millions. The dot-com collapse had hurt many others, and while NovaSoft had taken a slight dip, it had come back strong and lost little since the heady days of the big run-up.

  The caravan moved slowly in the wake of a dust cloud up the one-lane fire road toward a place they were told was heaven on earth. Twenty miles of cloudy grit later, the promise was kept. They rolled their dozen vehicles into a dirt parking area. A few yards below them lay the river, a sparkling strand of aqua pura crowned in sunlit diamonds that hurt the eyes. The surrounding forest was a luxurious blue green and the mountains were nearly virgin, having suffered little at the hand of man. Everyone got out and stood silently in awe of the grandeur and dead quiet of the place.

  Then the party began.

  For two days in paradise the revelers drank and ate and shattered the silence of the woods. Ty and Ronnie had much to celebrate. NovaSoft had just formed an entirely new company called Digiware Microsystems and Ronnie was the number three player. Ty would assume a new role at NovaSoft as head of product development while retaining his position as executive vice president. The moment was so heady, Ronnie had lightheartedly cautioned her extroverted husband about drinking too much. Ty was always the life of the party, and after a stint of hiking or river rafting or even just sitting around enjoying a cold Pilsner Urquell, he would always egg someone on to break with their tight-ass sensibilities and get wild.

  On the third night, while everyone was roasting smores over a massive bonfire, Ty and the company’s founder and CEO, Bill Bender, went into the forest up above the camp. Bender and Ty both loved practical jokes. Their current mission was simple: now that everyone was comfortable in the woods, scare the shit out of them. The two techno-nerds knew how to pull a joke that would stick. Before leaving town Ty had made a digital recording and downloaded it to his MP3 player. Now hidden from the group, Ty connected the digital player to some small but ultra-high-quality battery-powered loudspeakers. A bit drunk and trying to conceal his laughter from the noisy crowd below them, Ty put the recording on standby and whispered loudly, “Ready?”

  Bender took a big pull off his beer. “What’s on there?”

  Ty could barely contain himself. “Animals!”

  They both broke into booze-enhanced hysterics and Bender gestured, “Let her rip!”

  Ty hit the play button. “I left a delay…twenty seconds and then ggrrrrrr!”

  They broke into a run toward the campfire.

  No one had missed them as they approached the rowdy crowd, bathed in the dancing firelight. Ty sat back down next to Ronnie and she handed him his beer.

  “Where did you go?”

  Ty smiled deviously. “Had to see a man about a dog. Or was it a werewolf?”

  Suddenly a frightening sound radiated from above in the woods and everyone fell silent. As the eerie growl rose in volume, a collective gasp emanated from the group. Ty fought to hold back a laugh.

  One of the programmers, a guy named Don Donovan, was incredulous. “It’s…it’s a bear!”

  Another throaty rumble issued forth and one of the wives asked meekly, “Ohmigod! Is it really a bear?”

  For more than a minute the terrible bear continued to taunt them from the dark forest.

  “Do you think it’s a big one?”

  “Who cares, a bear is a bear, stupid!”

  “Could it eat us?”

  “Of course it could eat us!”

&n
bsp; The angry bear caused the circle of petrified campers to draw closer to the fire and each other. Then, impossibly, a lion roared.

  “Doesn’t anybody have a gun?” implored someone.

  Two women began to cry.

  A trembling voice raised everyone’s worst fear: “Is that a bear and a mountain lion?”

  A fearful hush fell over the campers, and Ty and Bender positioned the bonfire between them so they wouldn’t start each other laughing.

  But when the elephant trumpeted, neither Ty nor his coconspirator could hold it in any longer. The dazed looks on the faces of everyone around that campfire caused the last good laugh Ty Greenwood had. The party dwindled at that point, partly due to the hour, but mainly because many felt the joke had gone too far. Ronnie finally laughed but later in their tent asked Ty, “Don’t you think it was in slightly bad taste?”

  Ty brushed it off. “C’mon, it was just a joke. And a pretty damn good one, at that.”

  The next morning the mood in the camp was damaged. A few, mostly spouses, grumbled that if anyone but Ty Greenwood and Bill Bender pulled such a gag, they would have been sent home and probably terminated. About half the gang now thought it was fairly funny, but the other half still didn’t see the humor at all.

  By around ten a.m. a large group prepared to shoot the rapids, sending several four-wheel drives downriver to retrieve the boats and ferry the passengers back. Ronnie wanted Ty to go, but he was ambivalent. It was already hot, Ronnie looked great in her bikini, and although the mood had risen somewhat since the group’s sullen breakfast, Ty could still sense a few cold shoulders among the rafters. Ty kissed Ronnie, urged her to go, and said he was going on a solitary hike. She protested but he’d made up his mind. He hoped that by afternoon the ill feelings from the previous evening would have passed and things would be back to normal.

  The rafters departed, leaving a half dozen people in camp, and Ty set off on a trail and began climbing. Though the forest stood tall and dense, the unremitting July sun beat into its heart, the hot air still and fragrant from the heated pitch of a million pine.

  A half an hour into the trek Ty stopped to drink some water. The trail was rustic, with various fallen branches and overgrowth forcing him to stop occasionally to determine the path, but he was getting used to it and had a rhythm going. He guessed it was already ninety degrees and reckoned he had the endurance to climb for another hour before heading back. That would put him into camp around one, about the time the river runners planned to return.

  After another forty-five minutes he had worked his way around the mountain above camp and finally reached the end of the trail, which culminated in a striking vantage point at the edge of a cliff. A good three hundred feet below was the river at what he guessed was a bend or two past where they were camped. The heat sucked all the moisture from his lungs and he was sweating torrents. With his water running low, the river suddenly looked very inviting and he decided to head back. The soft whooshing crunch of dry pine needles made him turn and look behind him.

  In that split second Ty Greenwood’s life changed.

  Every hair on Ty’s body, the skin on his neck and arms, everything clenched in a primeval fear stimulus response. In the thick of the woods not ten yards away stood a creature, manlike, apelike…some sort of hairy humanoid, like a gorilla standing upright on long legs. Motionless, it stared at Ty, and Ty froze dead in his tracks.

  Jesus Christ, this is Bigfoot.

  Ty judged it to be at least seven feet tall. Standing on the slope slightly above him, it was covered with shiny black hair with hints of red in the tree-filtered sunlight. With a conical head like an ape, its face and palms were bare and the hair around its midsection was thin enough to reveal dark skin. Its arms were proportionally long—nearly to its knees—and its face looked…sort of human…but not fully apelike either. But more immediately frightening to Ty was its massive physique. Its head seemed to sit directly on steep trapezoids that slanted to formidable shoulders that rose well above its chin level. Obviously tremendously strong, its arms were far larger around than Ty’s legs and its chest was humongous. In the three or four seconds it took Ty to observe all this, he concluded that it probably had ten or twenty times his strength.

  Yet despite his terror, Ty realized it looked more curious than nasty. They stared at each other for what seemed to Ty like a month but was about twenty seconds. Then it made its move—toward him.

  That’s when Ty bolted. He ran as fast as he could, knowing it was the wrong thing to do but his brainstem had seized control and ordered warp speed away from the threat. Never mind that the threat was undoubtedly faster. Ty imagined its steely grip on his neck from behind. That would be it. It would kill him and his body would never be found.

  Death is nothing compared to the wait before it hits. His fright was so vivid he felt at times he was running out of his skin.

  But suddenly he knew it was not behind him.

  Having covered several hundred yards, he realized it had chosen not to follow him. He screwed up his courage and glanced over his shoulder, then slowed to a jogging pace. It was gone.

  Almost giddy, he continued running, making a deal with himself that he would not stop until camp. That meant a solid forty minutes with that thing out there. He kicked back up to full speed. Within ten minutes the dry forest heat had turned his throat into asphalt. He reduced his pace to catch his breath, guessing he’d already covered the better part of a mile but probably had four to go.

  As he slowed, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his left eye, and got the second biggest shock of his life: it was above him in the thick of the trees and pacing him. Suddenly Ty was a mouse with the cat nearby just watching, preparing to take him at any second. He knew he had no control over the situation, and his helplessness caused him to stutter-step and almost trip. He fought to keep his mind and body from giving in to stinking animal panic.

  Though he couldn’t always see it, he heard it boldly cracking and snapping alongside, just out of view, easily following without benefit of a trail. He heard its massive lungs sucking in and blowing out air like a diesel truck. Ty toyed with the idea of stopping and trying to communicate with it but dismissed that as suicidal. His only hope was to get to camp, doubting it would attack with a group of people around. He prayed the boats would be back with the full party assembled, making noise and welcoming him into their arms.

  He thought about his kids, about Ronnie. He didn’t want to die. Not this way. After he’d just landed on top of the world, how could God be so cruel as to kill him in this terrible, ridiculous way? He ruled such a cruel death as out of the realm of reality, then two seconds later reminded himself that reality was running somewhere beside him and could do anything it wanted.

  For half an hour the thing paced him, even bursting ahead to wait until he passed, then catching up again. Ty’s world was coming undone. Nothing else could have changed him as much as the next forty minutes.

  Five minutes outside of camp he was beginning to think he might make it. Then it stepped out of the woods directly ahead of him, casually, as if racing past like the Road Runner with time to rest. As it stood astride the trail, its barrel chest barely heaved. Ty was utterly exhausted and knew the end had come. Out of breath, his legs gone, Ty stopped and waited, gasping and soaked in fear sweat, his resolve gone.

  It cocked its head and looked at him for another moment, then turned and ambled up the very steep hill into the forest. In seconds it was out of sight. Ty just watched, awaiting its return, before realizing it was really gone.

  He ran again, his body operating on adrenaline fumes. He entered camp shouting desperately for someone, anyone. The boaters had not yet returned, but a few campers were stoking the fire for lunch. He was sweat-drenched, scratched, and breathless, but the look on his face frightened them the most. The two women who first saw him later swore to the others that Ty had literally aged years in the short time since he’d left camp.

  Once
he calmed down, he began to relate his tale of horror. By the time the boaters returned, Ty had recovered his wind. The original recipients of the story, sympathetic when he first appeared, soon began having their doubts, and as the rest of the campers trickled back, Ty’s tale began to sound taller and taller. Ty’s angry insistence put many off, reminding them of the joke he had pulled only the night before.

  Ty took Bill Bender aside and told him the story. While Bender pretended to believe him, Ty quickly saw through his act. Ronnie thought Ty was kidding at first, then read her husband’s face. She knew he believed it but also knew it was just not possible. That anyone would claim to have been chased by a Sasquatch was totally ludicrous. After all, they didn’t exist.

  Around the campfire that night, Ty regaled all with the lucid minutiae of his encounter. Ronnie thought it sounded like a really great pitch for a video game, and she wasn’t alone. Ty had a reputation as a showman and many felt he seemed to be setting them up, pitching a new product, an entry into the lucrative games market. For a while the whispered buzz was infectious about Ty’s thrilling new Bigfoot video game. But as the evening wore on and no title was revealed, no release date mentioned, people began squirming over Ty’s seeming departure from sanity. Some suggested that if it had really been Bigfoot, it was apparently playing with him and he was likely never in danger. Ty was furious. Someone ventured that the thing might be up above in the woods watching them that very moment. One man was pretty liquored up and suggested they take flashlights and go look for it. He got no takers. Ironically, the people who knew Ty best were the ones who most doubted his story.