The Trail Read online

  The Trail

  By

  Brian Francis

  Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.damnationbooks.com

  The Trail

  by Brian Francis

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-550-2

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-551-9

  Cover art by: Matt Truiano

  Edited by: Leona Wisoker

  Copyright 2011 Brian Francis

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  1st North American, Australian and UK Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Megan,

  for everything

  Acknowledgements:

  For my great editor, Leona Wisoker

  For manuscript suggestions:

  Andrew Allen, Brenda Allen, Chris Cassel, Megan Smith, Rick Topper.

  For legal advice:

  Kathy Dwyer

  For friendship and laughs along the way:

  My parents–Frank and Marcia Smith, Andrew Allen, Kathy Bonanno, Dave Brier, Chris Cassel, Kathy Dove, Ron Dove, Kathy Dwyer, Tom Dwyer, Jamie Jacobs, Kerri Klinger, Paul Larsen, Ralph Larsen, Joe LaSorsa, Brian McNamara, Chris Morita, Chuck Rivel, Joe Schrader, Ella Smith, Lola Smith, Megan Smith, Tim Stork, Rob Streit, Rick Topper, Rob Wilman, and Golan Wolkowitz

  Blood Trail

  She had passed the man in the red shirt about a mile back, near a small creek. He gave a sort of crooked grin and continued down the trail in the opposite direction. Dan, her boyfriend, muttered “crazy hick,” when the man was out of earshot, and they both giggled.

  Now the man was back. And she was scared. He followed about a hundred yards behind them. He stopped when they stopped. He walked when they walked. What is he doing? she wondered. What the fuck does he want? With each step, panic swelled inside of her until she felt like her heart was about to explode. She stopped walking and grabbed Dan’s arm.

  “Tell him to go away!”

  “I can’t tell him to leave, Amy. He’s allowed to hike, too.”

  “He’s not hiking, Dan! He’s following us!”

  Dan turned and stared down the trail. The man in the red shirt stood motionless, peering back. Dan raised both arms in a way that signaled confusion, distress. The man copied the gesture exactly.

  Dan shrugged his orange trail bag off his shoulders and rummaged through its contents. After a few moments of zipping and unzipping, he brought out a pair of binoculars. He lifted the field glasses to his eyes and adjusted the focus. “Let’s go,” he said flatly, and let the binoculars drop to his side.

  “What? What did you see?”

  “Let’s go!”

  She ignored him. She grabbed the binoculars and pointed them down the trail. The man’s features filled the scopes. Scruffy black hair. Black beard. Dirty face with streaks of cinder on his cheeks and forehead. Green eyes, empty and dead. His neck was thick and scorched with sunburn. His forearms twitched with sinewy muscle.

  Then she saw the knife. The man clutched a large hunting blade with a dull green handle in his right hand. It was so large that she thought it looked fake—like a child’s oversized Halloween prop.

  “Is that a real knife?”

  Dan didn’t reply.

  She looked again and saw the metal glinting in the sunlight—and something else. The man was slowly working the tip of the weapon into his own thigh. His tan cargo pants were crusted with blood. Fresh fluid soaked the fabric as the man in the red shirt probed the blade deeper and deeper into his flesh.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  She moved the binoculars to the man’s face. He was smiling.

  Then the man in the red shirt started to run toward them.

  Abandoning the bag, they scrambled up the trail, Dan taking the lead. Small branches snapped back into her face. She could not feel a thing. She ran blindly, chaotically. The trail narrowed. Rocky sheets of granite punctuated the path, jutting out sharply in odd directions. She glanced back and saw the man crashing through the underbrush and over the rocks with animal rage.

  She screamed, high and crazed, and couldn’t stop. This was real. A man was actually chasing them through the woods with a knife. The sting of vomit rose in her throat.

  Suddenly Dan stopped.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked at him.

  “We have to fight! Find a weapon! Fight back! Defend ourselves!”

  The noise behind them ceased; they looked down the trail. The man in the red shirt had stopped, too. They could see his body rocking slightly as he breathed in the pine-scented air. He was only fifty yards away now. He had gained considerable ground.

  Dan found a branch on the side of the trail, solid and heavy, about the size of a metal fence post.

  “What do you want?” he yelled down the trail, and his voice quivered and cracked. His fear made her even more scared. Dan had always told her not to worry about bears in the woods. Or snakes. Or murderers. And so far, he’d been right. Every hike they’d ever done, from Virginia state parks to coastal North Carolina bluffs, had been pleasant and uneventful. Picnics. Holding hands. Kissing. Sometimes more. Now this evil thing was here, in the dank woods of central Pennsylvania, changing the atmosphere of the trail into something sickly. Something deadly.

  The man in the red shirt started running toward them again.

  Dan stood still, adjusting his grip on the branch as the man came closer. Closer. Closer. Dan swung—and missed. The branch connected with the trunk of a giant pine tree.

  The man grabbed Dan’s hair, yanked back his head, and slit his throat.

  Blood erupted from the gash and spilled down the front of Dan’s shirt, bubbled over his belt, and splattered onto the tops of his hiking boots. Dan’s eyes bulged as he stared back at her. His mouth opened as though in one last attempt at communication, but he was already dead. The man let go and Dan’s limp body fell to a heap by the side of the trail.

  Her fear reached a climax. She could not speak. She could not move. She looked at the man, his dirty face, his crooked grin.

  The man in the red shirt took a few playful swipes with his knife, delighted by her terror. He grabbed her face, smelled her hair, and let out a high, frenzied cackle. He threw her down and pounced on top. He slipped the knife just under her ribs and heard a delicate squeak.

  He felt the air rush out of her body.

  The man in the red shirt laughed again. He didn’t want to pierce her heart, didn’t want to kill her yet.

  He wanted this to last a while.

  Chapter One

  Susan Ginder checked Facebook for the third time in the last hour. She hated to admit it, but she was addicted. She worked all day as an investment analyst, and when she came home she logged right back onto the computer again. Unfortunately, Saturday morning found her in the same position. I’m pathetic, she thought. This camping trip will do me good.

  She scanned pictures of old friends. Her best friend Karen from high school had gained an amazing amount of weight. How do you let yourself go like that? Susan had always been thin. She never worked out or dieted. Just good genes,
she supposed. She was grateful for her slim fit body. Her husband was grateful for it, too.

  She stretched her long legs and took a sip of coffee as she clicked through the pictures. Her co-worker Margaret had posted shots of her two young daughters playing on the beach. The girls wore matching polka dot bathing suits.

  Susan felt a mild ache in her belly. She didn’t want kids. At least, that’s what she had told Scott. But lately, she wasn’t so sure.

  She took another sip of coffee, watched the morning sun break through the kitchen window, and thought about Margaret.

  Margaret had been the first of her friends to get pregnant. At the time, Susan had, secretly, felt superior. She thought Margaret had fallen into a trap—a trap that included no drinking, no partying, and hours and hours of Sponge Bob Square Pants.

  Then two more of her friends became pregnant within the span of six months, and for some reason, Susan felt betrayed. She still went to the trendiest bars in town and ate at the best restaurants, but suddenly the food tasted bland, and the drinks went down bitter.

  When she first held Margaret’s newborn, a gorgeous girl with precious little fingers and clear blue eyes, she cried. Scott was parking the car and didn’t witness her meltdown.

  When she turned thirty last month, she had cried again. She passed it off as too much wine, and thankfully no one suspected anything else.

  Scott always assured her that kids would only be a burden. He was a writer for a travel magazine, and his job demanded long hours and weeks at a time on the road. Not ideal for a family situation. He wouldn’t even let her have a dog.

  She did get a cat, though: Jeffery, an orange and black calico with an easy disposition and a habit of peering out of the kitchen window for hours. Jeffery had replaced her first cat Denny, who had disappeared last fall and never returned.

  Susan broke away from the screen, emptied her coffee in the sink, and flopped on the couch.

  “Jeffery, come here, baby.”

  The cat roused from his slumber, shook his head, and sprang into her lap. Susan stroked his fur distractedly.

  “Mommy and Daddy are going away for the weekend,” she said. “No, you can’t come, baby. I’m sorry.”

  She rubbed noses with the cat.

  “But I will miss you so much.”

  She put the cat down and walked into the den. Camping equipment lay scattered about: tent, chairs, boots, mosquito repellent, maps, flashlights, marshmallows, a lantern, hamburger buns, a first aid kit, beer, condoms, sleeping bags, water, lighter fluid, old newspapers, matches, rain gear, and an ax. She smiled at the condoms. Scott’s choice. A twenty pack. How much sex does he plan on having this weekend?

  Susan had been on a number of camping trips with Scott before, but these trips consisted mostly of “car camping.” Easy and stress free. They’d drive up to a campground, pay their money, park their car at a numbered campsite, and pop their tent. Scott was a more experienced camper. He often mocked the “corporate campgrounds,” as he called them, and urged Susan to accompany him on a wilderness trip. This was the first time that she’d agreed to go “backwoods” camping with him.

  “Well, Jeffery, are we forgetting anything?”

  Susan’s cell phone rang. “Hello.”

  “Hey, babe,” Scott said.

  “Hi, honey. I was just looking over the stuff. Do you think it’s enough?”

  “What do you want, more beer,” Scott joked. “I think a case will be plenty for you.”

  “No, I’m not talking about beer. I’m talking about…I don’t know. I just don’t want to be stuck in the woods and forget something. Will our phones work?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are there stores around?”

  Scott chuckled. “Not where we’re going, baby. The closest town is a couple miles away. We’re going deep in the woods. The only thing we’ll see are deer and maybe a couple of raccoons.”

  She laughed, but in truth, the idea of total isolation made her a little nervous. Scott continued talking. “Alright, well, I got what I needed from the office. I’m on my way home now. Oh—and I’ve got a surprise for you.” The line went dead.

  Scott was always surprising her. It was one of the things she liked best about him. She also liked the perks of his job. Susan sometimes tagged along on Scott’s magazine assignments. She’d been to cities like Barcelona, Prague, and Edinburgh. Although traveling to Europe was beautiful and romantic, Susan had to admit that Scott was often only half-present. Everywhere they went, she could see him composing sentences, paragraphs, and articles in his head. She was looking forward to this camping trip because it would be just the two of them. Together. No work. No distractions. Just relaxing. And maybe time to talk about a baby.

  Fifteen minutes later, Scott’s green Ford Explorer pulled into the driveway. She looked out of the window and saw Scott.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Two

  The Appalachian Trail stretches from Maine to Georgia, with hundreds of switchbacks, loops, alternate routes and dead ends. It flows like a river of land, tributaries breaking off and reconnecting with the source. In the North, the river is harsh and isolated, and in places, blindingly beautiful. In the South, the river widens to offer foggy overlooks and quiet pine-needled paths.

  The midway point of the trail is in a rural section of Pennsylvania. Nothing spectacular marks the spot except for a small brown sign declaring the location and a paint-flecked general store selling trail essentials and cold beer. For hikers, the place is more psychological than tangible.

  * * * *

  Six miles south of the store, in a boggy, sunless section of the woods, two bodies hung upside down from a tree. The one, a man, had his throat slashed, and the pressure of gravity had caused the neck to separate, revealing a gaping red maw. The other, a woman, looked serene and peaceful. Her arms dangled slack, swaying slightly from side to side with the wind, as if she were performing an interpretative dance.

  The ropes creaked.

  They had been dead for hours.

  Rainwater filled their upturned nostrils.

  * * * *

  A single hiker, with a white beard and a green nylon parka, worked his way down the trail. He had passed the general store about two hours ago and now regretted not stopping. A new blister had formed on his heel, but more importantly, he thought about the Miller Lite sign in the window.

  He sat down on a rock, pulled off boot and sock, and inspected the wound.

  “Damn foot.”

  The hiker looked up and saw the gathering of black storm clouds. Sure could use that beer right about now, he thought.

  Muffled thunder sounded in the distance. Birds whistled in the branches above. The hiker replaced his sock and boot, flipped up the hood on his parka, cinched the strings, and continued walking. Just another mile and he’d stop for the day.

  Before he’d gone a quarter mile, he lost the trail. The path tapered into nothing, a confusion of thorns and dead leaves.

  He retraced his steps, attempting to reconnect with the path. Everything looked different. Wrong.

  Then the rain started.

  First heavy, tentative drops. Then a concussion of water crashed in the woods, decreasing visibility and giving the forest a gray look, as if the trees were enveloped in spider webs.

  He marched on, unsure of the direction. He pulled out his compass, only to find that the needle bobbed lamely under cracked glass.

  To his right, birds exploded out of a tumble of branches with shattering squawks. He stepped on a rock and turned his ankle.

  “Christ!”

  He looked around and recognized nothing.

  The hiker had been on the trail for three months, and he’d only been lost once before. During that episode, he had been walking with his head down and missed the two white blaze markers on a tree signifying a shift in the path. When he realized his mistake, he had turned around and walked back to the intersection. He’d only wasted fifteen minutes.r />
  This time was different. He’d followed the trail markers exactly.

  Did someone mess with the markers? he wondered.

  The hiker hobbled now, favoring his right foot and dredging up clots of leaves with his heel. The rain continued. His boots crashed into a stagnant bog.