Cabin Fever: Final Chapter
Twin 30-million candlepower suns illuminated a yard and a small cabin on the mountainside. The shattered remains of a door lay near an old, abandoned blue pickup. FLIR had picked up a rapidly-cooling body on the other side of a tree line, which Alpha had moved to investigate. The other two-man teams, Beta and Gamma, moved toward the cabin. As they split to flank the front, two young men came out of the front door, hunched cautiously and guarding their eyes with upraised arms. Through the comlink Agent Kincaid could hear two of his force screaming at the suspects to get down on the ground and place their hands behind their heads. Slowly, squinting in the light, the two lowered themselves down and clasped their hands behind their necks.
Beta pushed in through the front door in formation, disappearing from view of the chopper. Gamma followed close behind. “Down down down, get down, get down!” “On the floor, get on the floor, down down down!” No shots, but several seconds of yelling and heavy breathing and scuffling over the mics.
“Eleven individuals. Three children, two women. Six men. Two men unconscious. Possible need of medical support. Cabin clear.”
Agent Kincaid had been waiting for the all clear before sending the last two team members out of the helicopter, each with a laptop and evidence kit slung over their back. The field scientists. They would begin taking samples and interviewing the people involved.
Alpha checked in from Lot Two. “Body. Native American male, thirty, maybe thirty-five. Multiple GSW.”
Agent Kincaid stepped down out of the helicopter, into thin air …
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Wiley, Scott, Brickel and Dr. Thaves all kneeled in the cabin living-room. They’d never thought to check the lights, but the power was still on here. The men in black fatigues with machine guns had turned on the lights and zip-tied their arms behind their backs. Frank was still unconscious, but his hands were zipped behind his back as well. Pennick lay a little to the side, awake but too weak to sit or stand. He was zip-tied like the others. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t taking any chances. Only Craig and family were untied, and them only to quiet the children. Two of the six men with guns were watching them closely.
The other ones were, somehow, even more sinister. Two of them had come in with laptops and syringes, tape recorders and sample bags. The third stood in the doorway in his suit and tie and long black coat, watching silently. A laptop guy was taking samples of crushed bone off of the dining-room table with tweezers, putting them in baggies, taking pictures of everything with a small digital camera before he touched it. His partner was interrogating the kneeling prisoners, the tape recorder on a side table close by.
“So your … friend … attacked you?”
“Yes. No. Not at first.”
“And he’s the larger one?”
“Yes, Frank. He was … hurt … earlier. We left him behind when we ran over here because he couldn’t keep up. We left him the … the gun.” Scott said.
“But he attacked you later.”
“Just a few minutes ago … “
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Wiley picked up the small bone idol and placed it on the table. It felt warm to the touch, almost hot, and seemed to move and struggle in his hand until he put it down. He gripped the hammer tighter and raised it up. He had to fight back against a call just behind his eyes. Put it down. He shook his head. The woman. Kill her. He pulled back to strike again, didn’t look at Jerri. Just walk away. He looked up.
The door was a million miles away. It was at the end of a long dark tunnel. It pulled away and flung itself somewhere into the great Yard Beyond. Not-Frank was here. Not-Frank was hungry, and Wiley could relate. Something rumbled deep in his stomach. The statue could tell him why that was. The statue whispered Wendigo, and it was so.
“Smash it!!” Jerri screamed.
“Now!” Brickel was yelling from the kitchen. Wiley found that oddly appropriate, for some reason.
Not-Frank was bigger than the wendigo before. It barely fit through the door at all, which saved Penick from being eaten outright. Not-Frank backhanded him more or less accidentally as it tried to grab him and struggle through the small doorway at the same time. Penick fell.
Wiley slammed the hammer down on the statue. It was really rather unspectacular. No explosions. No tinkling sounds. No ghostly screams. The bone statue didn’t even crumble to dust. It shifted under the teeth of the meat tenderizer but largely stayed together until Wiley lifted the hammer. Half bent to fit into the room, Frank suddenly fell forward with a thump, himself again and wholly unconscious.
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They heard the sirens long before they saw the blue and red lights. The police had finally come. Agent Kincaid walked out into the yard. He held up a badge wallet, the letters FBI large and obvious on the white license inside. The long black coat whipped around his legs in a cold mountain wind.
“Y’know the SOB in the trench coat?” Brickel whispered to Scott.
“When he came down out of that helicopter … I swear, I think I saw him fly …”
