Havoc by Shannon McKenna

3

Cait froze, her heart in her throat. Goddamnit, she’d known this might happen. She’d always known it. Dad had fallen prey to a monster, and if she followed in his footsteps, she was risking the same fate. Mom knew it, too, until the dementia set in, and she stopped knowing anything. Rage and grief had worn Mom down. Shortened her life.

That monster had taken both her parents. Her childhood. Everything.

Fuckthis guy. She let all the rage explode, nothing held back. She bucked and screeched, writhing and flailing. A huge, hard hand clamped over her mouth.

“Shut up, for fuck’s sake!”

She wrenched her face partly free and bit him.

“Shit,” he hissed, wrenching his hand away.

A frantic bout of pushing, scratching, yelling and kicking followed. The monster’s coat was too thick to get at his body. He had a beard, she noticed, clawing at his face. She scratched him, and a knee-jab got pretty close to the groin, judging from his grunt of pain and the stream of profanity. But her range of motion kept getting smaller and smaller, until it felt like she was wrapped in a relentless cocoon.

No more movement possible, just fruitless wriggling.

He was talking to her. His deep voice was forceful and urgent, but she couldn’t stop yelling long enough to listen to what he said.

She stopped to gasp for breath. “…not going to hurt you, I swear. Calm down.”

“Fuck you! Let me go!” She exploded into movement again.

The huge guy’s grip was unrelenting. He kept up a constant patter. “I swear to God, I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want to get bitten or smacked, but I really, really do not want to hit you. We’re gonna stay just like this, until you’re ready to talk to me.”

“What do you mean, talk? You attacked me, you bastard! Get off me!”

“I’m sorry I scared you, but I—”

“Fuck you!”

“I heard you the first time. But you’re in danger.”

“Danger? Yah think?” Cait stopped to catch her breath, panting.

“Are you done?” he asked, after a minute or two.

“You’re smothering me,” Cait snarled. “And there’s a rock behind my back. It’s going to break my ribs.”

He shifted his weight. “Better?”

“Let go of me, and I’ll be better!”

He made a frustrated sound in his throat. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“No business of yours!”

“Didn’t you see the no trespassing signs?”

She laughed, derisively. “You jump me in a dark cave, squish me to the ground and scare the living shit out of me because I’m trespassing?”

“This place is extremely dangerous,” he said. “The cavern roof is unstable. It could fall in at any moment. And that’s just for starters, on the laundry list of dangers.”

“So why are you in here at all? Go outside, if it makes you so nervous!”

“I’m in here because you’re in here.” There was stubborn patience in his voice.

“What’s it to you if the cave falls on me? It’s not your problem.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “I own this land, and it’s already a goddamn graveyard. It doesn’t need any fresh bodies.”

A shiver of dread went through her. “Graveyard? For who?”

“We’re not having this conversation here. I say we go someplace more safe and comfortable, and you can tell me why you’re here and what you were hoping to accomplish. I’ll ask the questions. Not you.”

“And just why is that?” she demanded.

“This is my turf,” he said. “And this is my property. My name’s on the title, along with my brothers. Plus, I outweigh you by eighty pounds.”

“You’re freaking enormous! How do you even move around in here without knocking the cavern down?”

She felt his body vibrate silently, and realized, to her horror, that he was laughing.

“The fuck?” She bucked helplessly under his weight. “Do I amuse you?”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “So will you do as I say?”

“Or else what?”

His sigh was audible. “Or we stay right here, in the dark. For as long as it takes. It would be boring, but I’m very patient, and bugs and mold don’t bother me.”

Her only possible move was to feign compliance. She had no idea why it was so difficult to do. She was a logical person, trained in science. She never reacted wildly like this. This guy just crossed her wires.

Well. Getting jumped and crushed in a dark cave could do that to a woman.

Agree to it. Calm down. Play nice. Wait for your opportunity. Don’t be an idiot. Think of the long game. Think about Dad. Mom.

It took all her focus to just relax and stop resisting his grip. Her heart thudded madly against her ribs. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, I’ll be good.”

Almost imperceptibly, the crushing weight of his body and the vice of his bear-hug started to ease. Then it lifted.

She lay there for a moment, dazed, still gasping for air.

“All right.” His gravelly voice rumbled, making her sensitized nerves buzz. “Now listen carefully. This is how it’s going to go. Take off your backpack.”

She stiffened in alarm. “Why?”

“You don’t get to ask the questions.”

“I need my backpack,” she said. “There’s no reason for you to take it. There’s nothing in it that could be of any interest to you.”

“That’s for me to decide. This place is a death trap, and there’s a killer out there who wants something that’s buried in this cavern. He’s seen you follow a tracking device into this cave. Whatever it is that you were looking for, he’s looking for it, too. And he will never stop.”

“But that’s ridiculous! I was hiking! I just like caves, and this one seemed to be—”

“Don’t start. I saw you following your tracking signal, and so did he. He has this place under constant surveillance. He’ll come after you soon. And he’s not nice, like me.”

“Nice, my ass,” she snorted. “Who? What am I supposed to know? Who the hell are you talking about? I don’t know who this person is, so I can’t—”

“Shhh. We don’t have time for this. You have go before he comes for you. He’s probably already on the move.”

“If you meant to terrify me, congratulations! Mission accomplished, okay? You win! Just let me go, and I’ll run like a rabbit. I promise.”

“You can run all you want. He’ll hunt you down. And you’ll die.”

There was a rustling in the dark, a lantern clicked on, and she could finally see him. The shadows distorted his bearded face, making it strange, angular and menacing. His eyes were piercingly bright. Even in the dim light that barely penetrated the cavern’s darkness. She just saw the outlines of huge, tumbled structures around them. Piles of concrete rubble and broken rock and rebar.

Cait tried not to let her voice shake. “Whoever this monster is, he’ll never find me. I’ll be out of here like a shot. Just let me go, and whoosh, I’ll disappear.”

The guy shook his head. He had the lines around his eyes that a person only got if they’d spent years squinting into the hot sun, and sharp cheekbones. His thick beard was shaggy, reddish. His eyebrows were dark, thick, and his hair was very short, like he’d buzzed it off himself with clippers.

“You think I’m nuts,” he said. “And I don’t blame you. I’m sorry I scared you. Now take off the backpack.”

“I told you, I can’t—”

She squawked as the backpack was plucked off her back. She tried to keep her arms hooked in the straps, but he soon had it in his grasp.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she yelled.

“Big, open-ended question. Requires a long answer. We’ll save it for later.”

“The hell we will! Give me back my stuff!” She lunged for it.

He held her at arm’s length. “Don’t. Try.” He bit the words out with steely calm.

Cait shrank back. “Okay,” she said. “Fine.”

“I’m trying to keep you alive,” he said. “Do not waste my fucking time.”

He rummaged through her backpack. Pulled out her rain poncho, water bottle, then her belt pouch. He unzipped it, and pried out her wallet, looking inside. “Caitlin LaMott,” he read out loud. “From Berkeley, California. You’re far from home.”

She stared back stonily as he put her wallet into his own bag. He pulled out the tracking device, examined it, and stuck it in his bag along with the wallet. He dug deeper, rummaging through the trail mix, protein bars and other random miscellany in the bottom of her pack. He pulled out her phone and her car keys, and took them as well.

But when he pulled out Dad’s journal and sheaf of research notes, she stiffened with alarm. “Not that!”

“No? What is it?” He leafed through the journal. “What’s this? Another language?”

“It’s my Dad’s,” she said stiffly. “I carry it for luck. Since he died. It’s written in code. No one can read it but me. There’s no reason to take it. It’s useless to you.”

“I see.” He shoved it into his own bag. “Listen to me. The cave entrance is being monitored, so he saw you going in, but he did not see me going in. Now, he needs to see you go out, alone. Just like you came in.”

“You have another way in and out?”

He ignored her question. “I’ll just take your stuff for now, to keep you honest. Wallet, tracker, car keys, phone, and your magic book of spells. Put your backpack on and go back on out, the way you came.”

“But I need that journal!” Panic made her voice shake.

“You can have it back if you do as I say. Go outside, and go straight down the side of the hill, alongside the waterfall. Go all the way down, both falls. It’s a long scramble, but you can do it. I’ll meet you at the bottom. Shouldn’t take more than a half an hour.”

“And this monster won’t nab me in the meantime?”

“Not if you hurry.” She could tell from his voice that he was smiling. “It’ll take him a while to mobilize. But you should definitely get moving. See you down there.”

His teeth flashed in his beard, then the light went out.

Cait was disoriented in the pitch blackness. She heard nothing but her own heart thudding in her ears. She’d dropped her flashlight when the mystery man tackled her.

She got down on the ground, groping in the dark, trying not to panic. She was horrified at this new development. The wallet, car keys, the phone, even the tracking device, those losses were no more than an expense, a waste of time, and an inconvenience.

But Dad’s journal and those research notes—those were irreplaceable.

Yes.Finally. Her fingers bumped across something cool, smooth, metallic. She lifted up the flashlight and turned it on.

Cave guy was gone. She had a disorienting moment of doubt, wondering if she’d seen him at all. Maybe he was a stress hallucination. The embodiment of all her fears and frustrations.

But if that were true, she would still have her stuff. It was still gone.

Cait dragged the landmarks she’d fixed out of her memory with some difficulty as she crept slowly back toward the entrance. She was glad when the faraway beam of light from the hole in the cave ceiling once again became her point of reference.

Cait wiggled out the narrow space where she’d pried the door open, and tried to shove it closed again. She was back outside, in a big muddy pit. She felt horribly exposed there, after what the cave guy had said. The monster who was always watching. The predator who would hunt her down and eat her, like an ogre in a fairy tale.

The big, open sky suddenly looked cold and unfriendly.

Cave guy was probably insane. He looked like he’d been sleeping rough for a while. As if extremely harsh environments were his natural habitat. Maybe he was a paranoid recluse with questionable mental health, and he lived out here in the mountains, where he was less likely to get into trouble.

Time to decide what to do, but all of her options sucked. Keeping her appointment with the cave guy would be flat-out insane. She should run in the opposite direction. But she’d get lost out in the wilderness. Kettle River Canyon was her point of reference for getting back to the normal civilized world. She’d wander in circles without it.

And if she followed the river canyon, cave guy would see her, and follow her.

Dad’s journal and notes were irreplaceable. Without them, she had no proof with which to convince anyone else. And she needed help. No way could she do all this alone.

Besides, cave guy claimed that he owned the land up here. If that was true, then she’d encounter him again, if she wanted to pursue this matter. And he must know all about whatever cataclysmic event had turned that place into a flesh-crawling ruin.

She needed to talk to him again. No matter how unstable he might be.

And besides, who knew? He might even be right about the flesh-eating ogre coming for her. An ogre got Dad, after all.

That uneasy thought set her off at a brisk pace, heart thudding. She followed the draw down toward the falls as fast as she could go without falling head over heels.