Primal Threat (19 page)

“Daddy says he doesn’t think you’re good enough for me and that any other guy in your position would bow out politely. He said you simply don’t have the common sense to select yourself out. He thinks life is this Darwinian thing. Well, it’s not worth talking about, because I don’t listen to him anymore. Of course I’m going out with you.”

30

August

Z
ak felt something whir past his ear and then heard a sonic-boom crack open the morning; it was a moment or two before he connected the events. Somebody was shooting at them, and the bullet had passed so close he wondered why it hadn’t ripped through the back of his brain at two thousand feet per second.

After the first shots resounded, Giancarlo sped ahead as if scalded, and so did Stephens. Muldaur was already in the lead, which gave Zak the number four position on a road that cried out to be ridden single-file: steep, barely negotiable, full of loose rock and off-camber grades on either side. Without hesitation, he tried to pass Stephens, who now was slowing him down. Out of some sense of fair play, he took the worst part of the track and left the better section for Stephens, but Stephens felt him coming and swerved in front of him, rubbing Zak’s front tire with his rear. For a moment Zak was on the verge of crashing.

Regaining his balance, he tried to move up once more, but again Stephens swerved in front of him until it became obvious that his plan was to hold Zak back. Although Zak was the stronger rider, he was being forced to linger behind Stephens, who didn’t want to be the last man in line and the first target any more than Zak did. Apparently it wasn’t strength that would decide the last man, but dirty tricks.

After they rounded the bend, they continued to press on at a rapid pace, knowing that this next stretch through the trees was steep and straight for almost an eighth of a mile; if the Jeep people got motivated, they might sprint up the road on foot in time to pick them off one by one.

As the road opened, Zak pushed harder on the pedals until he pulled alongside Stephens, who gave him a leering grin, and then alongside Giancarlo. Both were breathing hard, maybe too hard.

Zak knew he wouldn’t catch Muldaur, at least not on this first stretch—he was already fifty feet in front—but he tried anyway. He felt sick to his stomach, both with the effort and the thought that his friend Giancarlo was now last in line and in the first position to take bullets.
Devil Take the Hindmost
was the informal name of a race on the bike velodrome. The last guy around on specified laps had to drop out. This could turn into the same game, except here the last guy might be dead.

By the time they’d ridden the long straight stretch, Zak realized they were probably safe for a while. “They think we have guns. That we’re waiting for them.”

“That’s why they’re not rushing us,” said Muldaur, from up in front. “If I hadn’t set off those firecrackers, we’d be dead now.”

As the road climbed to the right, the surface turning into hard-packed clay, Zak took a quick look behind him. He saw Giancarlo and, tight on his tail, Stephens, who was trying to edge him out the same way he’d edged out Zak.

“Okay,” said Muldaur. “We’re out of sight, so it’s time to slow down. Riding like this screws up your system.” Muldaur had dressed as Hugh once again, the helmet loosened so that it rode low, the sunglasses askew, false teeth in place. They carried water packs on their backs, enough to drink for at least a couple of hours in this heat, the plastic feeding tubes dangling near their cheeks. Their pockets bulged with gel packs, Clif Bars, small bags of raisins and dates. The three slowed their pace and pedaled more or less as a trio, while Stephens steamed up the road ahead of them and around the next bend.

“I thought we were going to slow down,” said Zak.

“Don’t ask me,” Muldaur said. “He wants to blow up, that’s his business.”

Giancarlo came up alongside them. “What was with all the pushing and shoving?”

“He gets like that if there’s any competition,” Muldaur answered.

“Or if somebody’s shooting at us?”

“I should have warned you.”

“I was on the verge of smacking him,” said Giancarlo.

Two minutes later they found a tree down across the road, Stephens sitting on it, his hands shaky when he pushed the CamelBak tube into his mouth. The tree hadn’t been down when Zak and Muldaur traversed this road the day before, and it confounded Stephens. It confounded Zak, too.

Muldaur dismounted, lifted his bike over the tree, and continued to pedal up the mountainside at a measured pace. “I left it attached to the trunk, so they’re going to need a saw or an ax to get it loose.”

“You did this?” said Stephens.

“Yesterday when I took that ride by myself. I had a feeling they were going to haze us for the whole trip, and this was one way to stop them.”

Zak knew even with the aid of a truck and ropes, the tree was too big and too heavy to move. He doubted Kasey and the others had a chain saw, though most locals would probably carry one. Muldaur had taken them on this route because he knew it was the only direction where they couldn’t be followed.

“Any more roadblocks?” Giancarlo asked.

“As many as we have time for,” Muldaur said, pulling a folding camp saw out of his jersey pocket with one hand and waving it. Zak and Giancarlo lifted their bikes over the log and remounted. Stephens, who appeared too tired to get up, said, “So this is why he said to slow down?”

“You should have listened,” said Giancarlo.

“Yeah, well, uh, he should have explained himself. I thought they would get their trucks and be on us any second. I figured the last one in line—”

“We know what you figured,” said Zak.

“Well, wait, uh, wait a minute. Aren’t you going to wait for me? I need a breather.”

A few minutes later they were climbing through trees so dense they could no longer see the contours of the mountain. The road surface was smoother, almost like a clay tennis court, and from time to time Zak saw the sunlight glinting through the branches of the Douglas firs to the southeast as they traversed another of the switchbacks. Zak knew that after they reached Lake Hancock there were two separate and very long climbs above it, one south of the water and one north. But they wouldn’t reach the lake for another twenty or thirty minutes. “So what’s the plan?” asked Zak.

“To get up this mountain and out of range of those rifles,” said Muldaur. “After that we’ll figure out something.”

“You want to ride as slow as you can and still stay ahead of them,” Zak said, directing his words at Stephens. “You start filling your legs with lactic acid, you’ll be a goner. That means you need to keep your heart rate as low as you can.”

“I
was
keeping it low,” Stephens said, defensively.

“No, you weren’t. Listen, the body produces lactic acid in everything it does. Under normal conditions your body clears the lactic acid, so it doesn’t accumulate. But when you’re working out, you can go past your lactic threshold, which is the highest point at which your pumping heart is able to clear the poisonous by-products. Above that point your muscles produce lactic at an accelerated rate, and the buildup retards your ability to transport oxygen from your bloodstream to your muscles. You rapidly get weaker. When you stay below the threshold, you can maintain most of your strength. Once above it, I’d guess you’ll have twenty minutes, after which you’ll be worthless.

“I know you don’t have a heart monitor,” added Zak, “so just try to go hard, but not so hard that you can’t carry on a conversation. You get to that point, you’re overdoing it.”

“I’ll try,” Stephens said. “Thanks for the pointers. And I’m sorry about getting pushy.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The hills were beautiful this morning, Zak thought, as he caught a sliver of a view out over the valley cradling the towns of North Bend and Snoqualmie, and as he felt the warm winds wafting down from Snoqualmie Pass forty miles distant. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock, but the temperature was in the high eighties.

Giancarlo rode at the end of the train almost out of habit now. He was the tallest and heaviest rider in the group, and total weight of rider and bicycle was the most significant factor in how fast a person could ride uphill, so he would most likely be last all day. As it circled Lake Hancock, the road flattened. Other than that, all of these old logging roads shot upward with a vengeance.

“I sure as heck wish I had my gun back,” said Giancarlo.

“A gun’s not going to solve anything,” said Stephens. “We need to talk to them.”

“It was that second shot that shocked me,” said Giancarlo. “The first one could have been a mistake. But after he went down, Morse was clearly incapable of harming anyone. That second shot was pure spite.”

“They waited on that second one,” said Zak. “Like they were taunting him. Or us.”

“There has to be some legitimate explanation,” said Stephens.

Zak had been worried about so many other things, he barely had time to recognize the charcoal tang of smoke threading through the wind. Whether the smoke was traveling over the mountains from eastern Washington or from someplace closer, he had no way of knowing.

Muldaur, who had been riding in front, emitted a loud fart, then another, the latter lasting as long as any fart Zak had ever heard. Zak, who was directly behind him, moved over. “Thanks for the warning. Jesus, that was ripe.”

Muldaur’s reply was another fart. “Oh, my God,” said Giancarlo.

“Christ!” said Stephens.

“Hey,” Muldaur said, in Hugh’s best voice. “I’m up here breaking wind for you guys.” He laughed moronically. The phrase had a special context in cycling, for the riders in front did the most work—and it was called “breaking wind.” Still laughing, Muldaur turned around to grin at them. This was so like Muldaur, Zak thought, to make infantile jokes while they were riding for their lives. As Hugh, he would sometimes visit the other shifts at Station 6 and cut the cheese loudly, giggling as they escorted him and his battered old Schwinn Varsity bicycle out the front door. “Oh, fuck,” said Muldaur.

“What?” said Zak.

“Look behind us.”

Fearful of losing his balance, Zak waited until he reached a pitch on the road that was slightly less steep before turning his head to scan the road. The four of them were near the top of a long, straight stretch, one of the steepest they’d traversed this morning, and had maybe fifteen more minutes before the Lake Hancock plateau. An animal was coming up the road behind them. A bear? No, it was moving with too much agility for a bear.

“It’s Dozer,” said Muldaur.

31

“
S
hit,” said Stephens, revving up his rpms. Muldaur took the lead, Zak second, Stephens a distant third, and behind him Giancarlo.

“Fucking dog,” said Muldaur.

“Is he catching us?” asked Zak.

“I can’t tell.”

“He wasn’t running when I saw him.”

“That’s because he had his nose to the ground.”

“Is he running now?” Zak turned around to check. The dog was moving in a lope. Dozer was a large dog—120, 130 pounds—so traveling uphill wouldn’t be easy for him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t run down four men on mountain bikes. The mechanical advantage of a bike extended only so far.

“What the hell?” gasped Stephens, who was still a couple of bike lengths in front of Giancarlo. “Wait for me. You guys? Wait for me!”

For half a minute they pedaled as hard as they could. As the effort began to eat into their reserves, Muldaur and Zak gained more ground on the other two until Zak realized that by the time the dog reached them, he and Muldaur might be out of sight. “We need to talk about this,” said Zak, making a superhuman effort to get alongside Muldaur, who was slightly in front. “We can’t leave them.”

“You’re right. I think we better face him down, the four of us together. If we get strung out, he’ll take one of us down. Then the next. Maybe all of us one at a time.”

By now Dozer had halved the distance between them.

“There’s a bunch of rocks ahead,” said Muldaur. “Let’s stop. We can use the ammo.”

Zak and Muldaur headed for a cluster of stumps and new-growth trees on an embankment. In the ditch stood a row of stringy foxgloves, seedpods heavy on the stalks. On the other side of the road was a steep downslope; they could see the tops of dozens of trees and, over the trees, a skimpy view of the valley floor to the west.

They’d just gotten off their bikes when the animal hit Giancarlo, who kept pedaling despite the fact that Dozer had hold of his leg and wasn’t letting go. Towing the dog slowed his progress, but to his credit he managed to come to a full stop just below Zak and Muldaur, who began pelting the dog with the largest rocks they could heave. Zak hit the dog twice in the hindquarters, hard, while Muldaur hit him once directly across the middle of his back, but Dozer did not relinquish his grip. Three more solid strikes convinced the dog they meant business.

The moment he released Giancarlo’s leg, Giancarlo put the mountain bike between himself and the dog, a row of flashing spokes in front of the dog’s teeth. Slobber zigzagged through the air in silvery arcs as the malamute yelped and lunged.

As the others rained rocks down on the dog, Dozer switched targets and made a lunge for Zak, who backed up and used his bicycle as a shield. Soon the three found themselves trapped behind a line of bicycles, each holding his bike to fend off the attacks. Giancarlo worked his way around and was behind the barricade of bikes.

It didn’t take long for the four men to realize they’d achieved a draw, at least for now. “What we got here is a Mexican standoff,” said Zak.

“Somebody help me get a dressing on this?” said Giancarlo. Zak hadn’t really looked at it until now, but a flap of skin the size of a woman’s glove was hanging from Giancarlo’s left calf, muscle and tendon exposed to the air. It looked grisly, but it was mostly damage to the skin, and Zak had patched worse. While Stephens and Muldaur kept the dog occupied, Zak wrapped Giancarlo’s calf with several cotton four-by-fours and a roll of sterile cotton wrapping Muldaur kept in the pockets of his backpack. “We’ll have to disinfect it at the hospital,” said Zak. “It’s going to need stitches, but there’s no serious bleeding, and I don’t think he got any of the muscle. You were lucky.”

“Ordinarily I like dogs,” said Giancarlo. “But this one’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

Stephens gave him a puzzled look and heaved another rock. It had been awhile since anybody had connected solidly, and the dog was beginning to regain his courage, moving in for another surge.

“You guys try to hold him at bay,” said Giancarlo, hobbling up the embankment with a folded knife. Muldaur tossed him the camp saw he had tucked in his jersey pocket. Twice Dozer tried to circle and get into the trees so he could reach Giancarlo, and twice their bombardment deterred him.

“I think I know how to do this,” said Giancarlo moments later as he stumbled down the slope with a sapling in his arms. He’d already stripped most of the branches and shaped it into a spear, whittling until he had a sharp point on the thick end. “I read about this in a hunting magazine.”

“Thank God I thought to cut down that tree last night,” said Muldaur. “Or they’d be up here shooting us by now.”

“Yeah,” said Zak. “We’re lucky it’s just this good-natured animal.”

Giancarlo set the makeshift spear in the triangle of Zak’s bike frame, its shaft between Zak’s outspread legs. “What are you doing?” Zak protested.

“Just keep your legs like that. Don’t move. Now I want you to get him really pissed.”

“Isn’t he already pissed?”

“Do it,” said Muldaur. “We’ve been here too long. For all we know they’re walking up the hill. Think about it. They’re not going to leave him.”

As soon as they stopped throwing rocks, the dog began inching forward, growling at Zak. “Come on, you egg sucker,” said Zak. “Try me.”

With the bikes in a semicircle, the four of them huddled inside, Zak the centerpiece and bait. Directly behind Zak, Giancarlo squatted with the six-foot pole between his legs, the sharpened tip resting on Zak’s bicycle frame.

“Whatever you do, don’t move,” said Giancarlo.

“Don’t move? Jesus, look at him!” The dog had closed in, locking eyes with Zak. From the sounds of the snarling, Zak knew he was readying for an attack, coming in low, ears flattened, haunches skimming the ground, muscular flanks rippling with tension. Zak’s fear was that he would leap at his face and bypass Giancarlo’s spear entirely.

Zak could feel the dampness in his short-fingered cycling gloves, a trickle of sweat wending its way down his spine. He wished he had something in his hands besides a twenty-three-pound bicycle. Both Stephens and Muldaur had rocks, but every time they cocked their arms to throw one, the dog backed off. Now, in accordance with Giancarlo’s instructions, they let their arms hang slack.

The dog moved to Zak’s right, then his left, scouting for weaknesses, for a moment of inattention, leery about absorbing another fusillade of stones. He would have already attacked if they hadn’t made him cautious with all their rock throwing.

“Easy,” said Giancarlo. “Get lower.”

“Why am
I
the staked goat?”

“Because you’re the cute one. He’s stalling. He thinks it’s a trick. Bark at him. Piss him off.”

“Bark at him?”

“Do it.”

Zak barked. “Act like a poodle,” said Muldaur. “Like you’re in heat.”

“Next time you’re the goat. Arf. Arf.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” said Giancarlo. “A dog like this gives you one chance.”

“What are you guys doing?” Stephens said. “You can’t even get him to attack?”

A moment later the dog lunged, thrusting through the triangle in the bike frame. Zak felt Giancarlo’s shoulder against his back, and for a moment he thought he was being pushed into the dog. Then the snarling animal let out a sound that wasn’t quite a yelp, more like a cushion having the air squeezed out of it, and all three of them toppled forward, Giancarlo on Zak, Zak on his bike, the bike on the dog. Somehow Giancarlo had punched the shaft of the sharpened Douglas fir between the dog’s open jaws and was skewering the animal, Giancarlo’s thick shoulders and muscular arms tensing with the work.

“Move! Move! Move!” Giancarlo said.

Before he knew what was happening, Zak was jerked out of the fray by Muldaur. “Jesus,” said Muldaur. “What do you want us to do?”

“Just leave me be. It’s going to take a second.”

Astonishingly, it took almost half a minute to kill the big dog. All Zak could think was that if
he
had a spear rammed down his gullet, he’d be dead in seconds. After it was finished, Giancarlo snapped the haft off his makeshift spear, grabbed the dog by a hind leg with one hand, and dragged him across the road, tossing him down a scree into the trees.

“That was just vicious,” said Stephens.

“Zak’ll be fine as soon as he changes his shorts,” said Muldaur, laughing.

Zak started to laugh, and then Muldaur laughed louder. Giancarlo joined in. Stephens glanced from one fireman to another before trying on a weak smile. “I suppose, really, when you think about it, it was basically, uh, the dog or us…right?”

All four of them listened to the rush of the wind in the treetops and their own hearts thudding—and then, in the stillness of the mountains, the noise. It was a long way off so it took each of them a moment to recognize it, but within seconds they knew they were listening to the distant sounds of a chain saw.

“God, this is turning into a crappy trip,” said Zak.

“You just noticed?” said Muldaur.

“The trouble with you guys,” said Giancarlo, “is that you’re pessimists.”

The others followed Muldaur, Zak pulling alongside Giancarlo as they rode. “Does your leg hurt?”

“Yes, but the good news is it’s not bleeding much.”

“Can you handle the pain?”

“Why? Do you have some morphine?”

“No, but…”

“Then I can handle it.”

“It’ll feel better when they start shooting at us again,” Zak said.

“Yeah. I can hardly wait.”

Everything they’d said about pacing themselves went out the window now. The chain saw was still running, so they knew the crowd below wasn’t moving yet, but Stephens was going for broke anyway. He passed Muldaur, who would, Zak realized, ride slowly only long enough to get warmed up again. The objective here was to protect the machinery for as long as possible. Warm up the motor. Run within its limits. Save your engine as long as possible.

By the time they got to the level part of the road that bordered Lake Hancock, Stephens had vanished ahead of them through a thick stand of trees. The three slowed near the top, cocking their heads trying to hear whether the saw was still running. “Is it?” Muldaur asked.

“We’re too far away,” said Zak. “You got a plan now?” he asked Muldaur.

“I think so.”

“You going to let us in on it?”

“In a minute.”

Riding as a trio, they increased their speed significantly, Muldaur leading, Zak and Giancarlo drafting, their speed picking up as Muldaur, the strongest rider, began doing the majority of the work. By the time they caught Stephens at the three-way intersection, they were flying, and Stephens, who had slowed and was balancing in the road waiting for them, couldn’t sprint hard enough to catch their train. He shouted at them to stop, but Muldaur hooked a left at the intersection without losing any speed. From the reconnoitering they’d done the day before, Zak remembered another quarter mile of relatively flat road prior to the lake and then a spot where, despite the drought, there were puddles in the road, probably from an underground spring. The puddles were near a turnoff that led down to the lake. They were on the same route Zak and Muldaur had taken to the top of the mountain the previous day.

“Where are we going?” Stephens asked as they slowed and he caught them, then splashed through the springwater the rest of them had circumvented.

“Well,” said Muldaur, “the plan was to go around that puddle so we wouldn’t leave any tracks, but now that you’ve tracked it, we need to turn around and go the other way.”

“Why?”

“Because you left tracks telling them which way we went. There’s only two routes off this plateau, and you’ve muddied one.”

“Oh. So we were going to make them think we took the other road?”

“Right. Now we’re going to make them think we took this one,” said Muldaur, circling in the road and making his own tracks through the spring, then riding north until his tires stopped printing mud. Zak and Giancarlo did the same thing. Then, before they could stop him from making a fifth set of tracks, Stephens did it again. Once their tires had been ridden dry on the rocky trail, they turned around and bypassed the mud hole so as not to leave tracks going in the other direction. If they were lucky, the others would think they’d taken the northern route. They rode fast, Muldaur in the lead again. Zak had a knot in his stomach, knowing this was the most dangerous part of their ride so far, because they would be backtracking for a while and might easily run into the trucks. After two minutes of hard riding Zak pulled forward and towed the pace line, giving Muldaur a breather. They reached the three-way intersection and turned left, working their way down a continuation of the road they’d been on a few minutes earlier, then crossed a short bridge that spanned a stream coming out of Lake Hancock, the headwaters of Panther Creek, according to Stephens.

As they pedaled along the base of the mountain that sat at the south end of the lake, they heard a truck in the woods behind them and began pedaling for all they were worth, Muldaur and Zak changing leads while Giancarlo and Stephens drafted. The hope was that the trucks would go north, discover the muddy tracks, and keep going.