Voracious - Alice Henderson [23]
For a second Madeline paused before she went out the door. She almost turned to confront him, to ask him why he was lying about Noah. But then she decided she’d go find another ranger. Something was wrong here, and her instincts told her to get away from him. Somehow she had to find help elsewhere. Noah could be out there, right then, gravely wounded.
Or worse, came a grim voice from within her. With utter clarity, the sounds of his agonized screams returned to her. She ran a nervous hand over her face and left the ranger station, stepping once more into the desolation of the backcountry.
Beyond the building she saw the lone structures of two typical National Park Service vaulted toilets, dry toilets that were a step up from pit toilets. She hadn’t stopped for anything but sleep since last night. Her bladder pressing painfully, she headed for the toilets.
The smell of pine was strong in the air as a wind kicked up, blowing down into the valley where the ranger station was settled. Overhead a few clouds had gathered during the night, and Madeline found herself shivering a bit in spite of her warm fleece. Noah’s warm fleece, she thought.
She approached the dark wooden structures and selected the one marked Ladies, surprised at how little the toilet smelled. The faint scent of citrus from an air freshener wafted in the still air, and a fly buzzed dully at a small, square window. Her boots squeaking on the smooth cement floor, she entered.
Madeline had just locked the door when something wet and warm splashed on her hand. Instinctively she jerked it back, seeing a rivulet of red dribble between her fingers. A few more splatters hit the floor in front of her.
Blood on the brown floor.
Then a thick, warm drool rained down on her head.
Gasping, Madeline reeled back, confused, and looked up. The bathroom had a high ceiling that came to a point, with rafters below it.
And hanging over one of the rafters was a corpse of a man, his face twisted in a hideous scream.
It took Madeline only a second to take in that the corpse was naked save for its underwear and one prominent piece of clothing: a hat.
A ranger’s hat.
And then, a second later, her brain registered the cause of the dripping.
The ranger she had spoken to earlier was up there in the shadows with the body, chewing on a tattered leg, digging his nails hungrily and greedily into the raw, bloody flesh.
Then she watched transfixed as the ranger’s head suddenly elongated and shifted, becoming more streamlined as the skin grew darker, darker, until it was an inky black. The fingers grew long and wiry, claws springing from the tips. It continued to tear into the body, its brown ranger’s clothes stained red, until it looked down at Madeline with the same red disc eyes that had frightened her so the night before.
“Forgive my rudeness. Meat is best when it’s still warm,” it said in a low voice, a piece of ragged flesh hanging from its mouth.
Madeline’s jaw fell open. She had never talked to a ranger at all. This … thing had killed the ranger and taken its place, shape-shifting from hideous creature to human with so much ease, and now it paused from its meal, looking down on her with hunger, readying to tear into her, just as it had probably torn into Noah up on the mountain.
Wiping its dripping mouth, it leapt down from the rafters, landing solidly in a crouch before her.
Madeline screamed.
SHE spun toward the door, the creature leaping up, claws jerking her backpack roughly and raking through the fleece jacket.
Her hiking boots, wet with blood, slid noisily on the smooth floor. In the confines of the vaulted toilet, the thing was close behind her, lunging at her back, trying to drag her down by her pack. She felt claws dig into the jacket again, holding her back momentarily before the material tore free. Quickly she wrenched open the door and ran out into the open, not daring to look back. Her eyes scanned the area for a weapon, but she saw none, just the ground sloping away into the forest. She stopped at the back entrance of the ranger station