Beneath a Winter Moon (55 page)

“Let’s keep moving. It’s all we can do now.”

Half an hour passed—and the tunnel slowly closed in on the two men, especially Delmar. Soon, the big man was down on his stomach. “I can’t take much more of this,” Delmar said. “I’ll be low crawling in a minute—and what if it gets even smaller?”

It did. Thomas ignored his friend’s rhetorical question but found himself completely wedged now, with just enough room to move. Jack whimpered as he struggled behind Thomas.

“We have to turn around and make a stand,” Delmar pleaded. “We did our best—but it’s over now. This is where we have to turn and fight.”

“Like you fought at the cabin? Like you fought when it was burning down and the werewolf was only a few meters away? Like
that?”
Thomas had not meant to take out his frustrations on Delmar, but he didn’t exactly regret the words. Delmar had to realize that there was no way of knowing whether the werewolf would bring with it the same hypnotic control over his friend—or whether he would be able to resist and fight back.

Delmar didn’t reply.

“We don’t stop until we can’t move. You cannot feel the air flow the way I do up front. We have to be close to an exit point.”

“Won’t do us any good if we can’t fit through it,” Delmar grumbled.

“Then
that
is where we turn back, set up as best we can, and fight the bastard.”

They kept moving forward. Soon, Thomas felt the tunnel’s upper surface touching his shoulders, and he knew that it must have been that way for Delmar for several minutes. His friend had shoulder’s twice his size. He was about to give up when his right hand hit loose gravel and clay when he tried to move forward. At first he believed this was really it. They had failed…but his hand pushed through the clay, which was wet and soft, and he felt air flowing freely. He clawed frantically now, using both hands to push and pull huge chunks of clay and dirt away. He whooped softly when he was able to hang his head and shoulder’s through the opening. He backed up and pulled his flashlight free from his cargo pocket. Delmar was asking him questions but Thomas didn’t answer. Not yet.

He crammed his shoulders through the makeshift entrance and turned on the light. He was relieved to see another cavern. This one was small, perhaps fifty feet across and ranging from around eight feet to fifteen feet in height. He shined the light around and then he saw it. A small pack of snow on the floor near what looked like an opening. Boulders, roots, and dirt were piled waist high, but in several places snow had gathered.

“We’ve done it.” He whispered loud enough for Delmar to hear. “We have made it.” He turned the light off and let his head hand down and relax on the soft, wet clay which he had pushed through while tearing at the hole. He breathed heavily. “We are going to get out of here.”

* * * * *

“Wake up!” Deluth yelled. “Wake up you lazy bastards!” He banged on the side of the helicopter, but Snow was already awake from his slumber on one of the passenger benches. “Time to get wheels up. We’ve got skies clear enough to get us to Jeremiah’s cabin, so we are out of here.”

Snow groaned and swung his feet over the side, then hopped onto the concrete floor. “Are you sure?” he asked of Deluth.

“Absolutely. We have a break from probably now till dawn. The winds are safe, and the snowstorm has lifted temporarily. We have a good window and we have to move now.”

The men were moving slowly, rubbing their eyes, looking around for their gear.

“Move it! Get your gear and let’s move! Wake up!”

Deluth moved to the hanger door controller and smacked it hard. The huge doors began to open, letting the ice-cold wind waft inside, as their precious heat dissipated into the night.

Soon the men had the helicopter rolled out onto the tarmac and were doing a final preflight and weapons inspection—while Deluth growled at them the entire time. Finally, he threw up his hands. “It’s been thirteen minutes, gentlemen. That’s unacceptable!”

“Preflight’s done, Captain,” Snow called out from the cockpit. “Load up and let’s get moving.”

“Finally!” Deluth said as he climbed into the back. The men strapped themselves in as the rotors began to turn. They would keep the doors closed until they were near the LZ, at which time the door-gun would be utilized to protect them.

As the helicopter lifted off, Deluth snatched a small radio from his web-belt. He connected an earpiece to it and plugged it in, listening intently. None of the men noticed the frown on
Deluth’s
face, or the concerned expression as he scribbled something onto a notepad. A few minutes later, he disconnected the earpiece and put away the pen and notepad. He looked at his men and cursed under his breath while, at the same time, praying that all their work thus far would mean something—and not have been in vain. He would not tell his men that Alan’s van had not made it to the rendezvous. He would not tell them that the warning beacon was sending an emergency signal. That mission was secondary—they must first get to Jeremiah.

Thirty minutes later, turbulence and high winds began to buffet against the small aircraft, jostling the men. Kaley turned around in the co-pilot’s seat. “We are over the lake. We should be over the cabin in another half hour.”

Deluth flipped the flight helmet’s microphone to his lips. “Use thermals as soon as we are close. I want to know what is moving around down there—if we can tell.”

Kaley nodded and have him a thumbs-up.

* * * * *

Inside the cavern, Delmar and Thomas embraced for a moment, slapping each other on the back. They drank from their canteens and then worked to free themselves, removing the rotting wood and the built up piles made up of dirt, branches, and rocks. They tossed aside small boulders and soon the hole was easily large enough to crawl through. Thomas stepped out into the cold night, breathing the chilled air into his lungs and sighing with relief. It was still snowing, but it was of no concern. He called Jack out of the cavern and once again hooked the leash to his belt. Delmar stepped out into the cold and slapped Thomas on the shoulder.

The men had failed their mission to capture or kill Alastair, but they still had a chance to make their way back to the
lake
Cabin
and to the rescue teams that surely waited there. They would have to settle for trying to convince authorities that Alastair was responsible for everything, which would be no small matter, but they at least had a chance.

First, they would have to survive the night. The werewolf would not give up, they knew, and though the beast’s size would slow it down as the tunnel cramped, they had no doubt that if Delmar could get through, so could the werewolf. They would have to move as quickly as possible and the sooner the better. As if on cue, they heard a muffled howl. The beast was close, probably having made it into the cramped tunnel just outside the small cavern.

“We’ve go to move,” Thomas said, holding his compass. “That way,” he pointed, indicating northwest.

“Wait,” Delmar said. “Hear me out.”

Thomas heard desperation in his friend’s voice. “I’m listening, but we have got to move.”

“I know where we are, Thomas.” Delmar gestured at a large rock facing. “I mean
exactly
where we are. We are only a couple of hundred meters from the cavern…the one where Daniel was…” Delmar’s voice trailed off.

Thomas looked around. He thought he recognized the area. They had maneuvered around this spot in the dark before—he was sure of it.

“Remember the hole? The huge
friggin
’ pit inside that cavern? Think about it…any animal in that hole is in it for good. Werewolf, vampire…whatever…the devil himself would be trapped if he fell into the damned thing.”

Thomas thought he understood.

“We can either keep running and damned likely be killed before the sun rises or we can trap the bastard inside that pit. If we can do that, all we need to do then is to wait for sunup.”

Thomas opened his mouth to reply…closed it…opened it again. Delmar was right about that hole. Not even Alastair’s alter ego could leap out of that.

“We do our best to camouflage it, lead him into it…and we’ve got the bastard.”

A wailing howl came from the direction of the cavern. Delmar continued, “It sounds like he is still stuck.” He took Thomas’s shoulder. “I screwed up today when I jumped into the cavern. I get it. I ruined an opportunity and we were lucky to get out alive…but now there isn’t much choice.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, “He’s going to be here pretty soon…and we won’t get far in the mean time. He’ll burst into the mountains and follow our trail—he’ll find us within an hour.”

Thomas was silent. He thought for a moment about how beautiful the snowfall was…even on a starless night. Flakes as big as his grandpa’s silver dollars.

“It will be a last stand, Hero. We will either get him or we’re dead. There aren’t any alternatives when facing that thing. We had fire before…we have nothing now.”

“We can do it.” Delmar said.

Thomas finally nodded. “I know we can. And you are right. If we try to get down this mountain tonight, we are dead.”

They ran.

* * * * *

“That cabin is gone, sir!” Kaley shouted into his
mic
. “It’s burned down. No live heat signatures nearby, either—just what is left of the cabin.”

Deluth silently cursed his bad luck “Snow, recon this area, give us just above treetop altitude so we can look for heat signatures.”

Snow nodded and veered the helicopter away from the still smoldering ruins of the cabin. He felt a lump in his throat as he thought of Jenny, but still held out hope that she had made it out alive—and that she had gotten away from Jeremiah.

Snow flew the helicopter in a wide, intersecting grid. Searching for people on the ground was his specialty, and he knew that if the fancy heat-seeking devices worked and if there were people down there, he could find them.

“Snow?” Deluth called through his
mic
.

“Roger,” Snow replied.

“I want you to run a circular pattern, stretching it out larger and larger so that we cover three-hundred sixty degrees—rather than doing one grid at a time. You understand?”

Snow nodded. “It will take longer, but I understand.”

“We don’t have any idea which way Jeremiah or those survivors would move. We need to cover as much as we can.”

“Got it,” Snow answered. He adjusted his controls and began flying a lazy, circular pattern, expanding it with each complete rotation.

* * * * *

Thomas ran right behind Delmar, Jack loping at his side. Thomas half prayed that his friend was wrong about where they were, in which case they could simply keep running. He felt safer running, knowing they had a head-start of at least a half-hour—but he also knew that the beast was supernatural, and could probably make up that half-hour in mere minutes.

The wonderment he felt after making it out of Alastair’s lair was gone now, replaced by the knowledge that those events had merely been a bend in the road—the road leading to an ultimate confrontation. This chance—this idea of Delmar’s seemed to be logical and was actually not too bad. Thomas didn’t understand how they would camouflage that huge pit…or how they would lure the creature into it, but the odds were better than simply running blindly down the mountain.