Monster

Chapter One ;The Hunter, rifle in his hands, dug in a heel and came to a sudden halt on the game trail, motionless, nearly invisible in a thicket of serviceberry and crowded pines. He heard something. ; The first rays of the sun flamed over the ridge to the east, knifing through the pine boughs and morning haze in translucent wedges, backlighting tiny galaxies of swirling bugs. Soon the warming air would float up the draw and the pines would whisper like distant surf, but in the lull between the cool of night and the warmth of day, the air was still, the sounds distinct. The Hunter heard his own pulse. The scraping of branches against his camouflage sleeves was crisp and brilliant, the snapping of twigs under his boots almost startling. ; And the eerie howl was clear enough to reach him from miles away, audible under the sound of the jays and between the chatterings of a squirrel. ; He waited, not breathing, until he heard it again: long, mournful, rising in pitch, and then holding that anguished note to the point of agony before trailing off. ; The Hunter's brow crinkled under the bill of his cap. The howl was too deep and guttural for a wolf. A cougar never made a sound like that. A bear? Not to his knowledge. If it was his quarry, it was upset about something. ; And far ahead of him. ; He moved again, quickstepping, ducking branches, eyes darting about, dealing with the distance. ; Before he had worked his way through the forest another mile, he saw a breach in the forest canopy and an open patch of daylight through the trees. He was coming to a clearing. ; He slowed, cautious, found a hiding place behind a massive fallen fir, and peered ahead. ; Just a few yards beyond him, the forest had been shorn open by a logging operation, a wide swath of open ground littered with forest debris and freshly sawn tree stumps. A dirt road cut through it all, a house-sized pile of limbs and slash awaited burning, and on the far side of the clearing, a hulking, yellow bulldozer sat cold and silent, its tracks caked with fresh earth. A huge pile of logs lay neatly stacked near the road, ready for the logging trucks. ; He saw no movement, and the only sound was the quiet rumble of a battered pickup truck idling near the center of the clearing. ; He waited, crouching, eyes level with the top of the fallen tree, scanning the clearing, searching for the human beings who had to be there. But no one appeared and the truck just kept idling. ; His gaze flitted from the truck to the bulldozer, then to the huge pile of logs, and then to the truck again where something protruding from behind the truck's front wheels caught his eye. He grabbed a compact pair of binoculars from a pocket and took a closer look. ; The protrusion was a man's arm, motionless and streaked with red. ; Looking about, the Hunter waited just a few more seconds and then, satisfied that no one else was there, he climbed over the log and stole into the clearing, stepping carefully from rock to stump to patch of grass, trying to avoid any soil that would register his footprints. The truck was parked in nothing but loose soil, freshly chewed by the bulldozer, but he would have to deal with that problem later. He was planning his moves as he went along. ; He reached the truck, slowed with caution, and then eased around it, neck craning, in no mood for gruesome surprises. ; What he found on the other side was no surprise, but it was gruesome, and definitely a complication. Cursing, he leaned against the truck's hood, warily scanned the tree line and the logging road, and starPeretti, Frank E. is the author of 'Monster', published 2005 under ISBN 9780849911804 and ISBN 084991180X.