Voracious - Alice Henderson [24]
She knew she couldn’t outrun it, heard the door slam shut behind her as the thing entered the station.
Then she spied a fire ax propped up by the main door. Lunging at it, she grabbed the handle and whirled around at full tilt. The creature was too far away, and she spun frantically in almost a complete circle, falling off balance and stumbling. The ax connected violently with the wooden door frame and stuck fast.
Panicked, she tried to wrench it free, her hands burning with friction on the handle. The thing sped forward, a fanged black figure in a blood-soaked ranger’s uniform, now mere feet away. She gripped the ax tightly, working it quickly back and forth. Five feet. It began to give way. Four feet. She wrenched the ax head free. Three feet. Swinging the weapon with everything in her, she connected with the creature’s chest. Bones snapped audibly. Howling, it spun away, gripping its dark flesh as blood sprayed the room. The handle wrenched out of her fingers, and she backed away. Screaming, the creature loped madly away from her, retreating down the corridor, where it banged against one of the walls. At the end of the hall, near the generator room it had entered before, it stumbled, fell, and sprawled across the floor, gasping for breath.
She could hear the bubbling of blood as the thing attempted to breathe, a direct hit to the lung. It struggled to prop up on one hand, rose a couple feet, but its clawed, black hand slipped in blood, slamming its torso back to the floor.
Its body contracted violently, folding in on itself, rolling into a ball. It twitched, its arms and legs alive with a hundred spasms. Then it fell still, struggling to breathe in long, ragged gasps. After several final labored breaths, it stopped breathing and lay immobile.
Madeline turned and tore open the front door, flinging it back on its hinges and banging it against the wall. Then she was outside again, scanning the area for a safe place. Only trails met her sight, snaking off in three directions.
Not wasting another second, she took off toward a kiosk that housed several maps and trail descriptions, hoping she could hide behind it for a few minutes in order to catch her breath and think. Sliding in the dirt near the wooden display, she flung herself down behind it. She panted, her throat dry. Peering up, she studied the map. At a glance, she noted that one trail led straight into Many Glacier, one of the biggest campgrounds in the park. There would be people there. Phones. Rangers who were alive.
Instantly she rose and began running down the path, glancing behind her. She had probably killed the thing, but terror had seized her. Madeline ran until she simply couldn’t anymore. The ranger’s station was no longer in sight, and she had entered a steep, forested section. Gasping, she slowed to a walk, still looking nervously behind her.
She wondered how far behind her the thing was—if it still lay in a pool of its own blood, dead, or if it was up somehow, resurrected, following her scent. How had it found her? Beaten her to her next stop? Had it anticipated her next move? Loped down the mountain in the silver of moonlight and found the backcountry ranger station, the lone ranger up there—and eaten him?
None of it made sense.
Madeline shuddered. She could feel the terror the ranger must have felt when he saw the thing slink in through the front door of the station. And then when it came at him, claws and fangs tearing him apart …
She wondered if the ranger, not quite dead, had heard her come in. If he had been desperately trying to get her attention by banging on the wall of the station. “The generator’s been acting up.” The creature had stridden back there and savagely finished him off while she waited in the other room.
It was incredibly intelligent. It had infiltrated the ranger’s station—it spoke. The fact that it could anticipate her moves, her thoughts, was