Slaughter stared. "Can I at least get on the radio and tell the town we've found a case of rabies?"

  Parsons thought about it. "Yes, I see no problem. After all, we do have evidence of rabies, and the town should be informed for its protection. But don't dare mention cattle. That's a different issue. Now I have to get back home. I'm late for church, and I have relatives coming home afterward for brunch."

  He stood, and clearly Slaughter was expected to go with him. "Oh, yes, what about that magazine reporter from New York? That man named Dunlap?"

  "I cooperated as you told me," Slaughter said.

  "Well, don't let him find out what you're dealing with. That's all we need is for the rumors to get printed. Have him leave this afternoon."

  "But he's not finished with his story yet."

  "He's finished, all right. He just doesn't know it. Make sure he leaves town, and while you're at it, get yourself cleaned up before too many people see you. Really, you don't look so good. The job is maybe too much for you."

  Slaughter almost laughed. You bastard, he was thinking. You don't miss a chance to stay on top of people, do you? They walked toward the door, and Slaughter waited until Parsons went out before him, thinking this would be the way to handle things: he'd better keep his back protected.

  Chapter Two.

  Slaughter was in a phone booth, but the line was fuzzy, and the noises from the other end distracted him. "Look, Altick, I can't tell you why I need them, but I-"

  'Just hold on." To someone in the background, "Put them over there. I'm going with you. I don't want that chopper taking off without me. Good. I'm sorry, Slaughter. Everything is frantic here. I'm listening."

  "I need some men," he responded louder. "I can't give you reasons, but I'll maybe have to borrow help."

  "There isn't any way." The voice was much too final.

  "But- "

  "No, listen to me. I need everybody I can muster," Altick said. "I sent five men with dogs to look for Bodine, and there isn't any word from them. They've disappeared."

  "But Bodine-"

  "It's my men. I mean my men have disappeared. The chopper flew up where they'd camped, but they were gone, and they're not answering the radio. I don't like what I'm feeling. If you'd called five minutes later, I'd have been up in the chopper."

  "Maybe they're behind a ridge that's muting signals to the radio."

  'The chopper flew up anywhere they could have gone to. No, they're missing, and I can't waste time. I've got to look for them." More noises in the background. "I said wait until I'm ready. Yeah, we'll need that medical kit as well. Just take them to the chopper. Slaughter, there's no way for me to help you. I'll call you back when I have a chance."

  "But-"

  There were other noises in the background. Then the line was disconnected.

  Slaughter put the phone down, staring at it. Sure, another escalation. By now, he'd grown accustomed to the burning in his stomach, but he hadn't yet adjusted to the way his mind was nagging at him. Everything was moving too fast. There was hardly any time to think. His talk with Parsons. Five policemen missing. Things weren't bad enough, he had to worry about Parsons.

  He hurried from the phone booth, moving toward the hotel desk. He knew that he had planned this since he'd said good-bye to Parsons, although he wouldn't have admitted it. But why else would he have come directly here? He could have used the phone back at the station.

  "Gordon Dunlap," he told the desk clerk.

  "What about him?"

  "Damn it, tell me where to find him."

  The clerk was fumbling through cards to find the number.

  Slaughter started up the stairs as he heard the number. He ran to the balcony and scanned the arrows showing which rooms were on which side, darting to the left and down a hallway, studying the arrows once again. The halls were twisting, turning. He came around a corner, and he saw the door along a dead-end corridor and raced past the pictures on the wall. He knocked, but no one answered.

  "Dunlap. Wake up. This is Slaughter."

  No answer.

  "Dunlap." Slaughter knocked again. He tried the doorknob. It wouldn't move. But as he leaned against the door, the catch gave way. The door swung open.

  Dunlap hadn't even shut the door completely. He was sprawled across the bed, his clothes wrinkled, soaked with something. On the floor there was an empty whisky bottle, papers, cigarette butts, a broken ashtray, a toppled chair.

  What the hell had happened here? He smelled the sickness, stepping back, then going forward. Dunlap didn't seem to breathe. He wasn't moving. Slaughter grabbed him. "Dunlap, wake up. It's important."

  Dunlap didn't move, though. Slaughter shook him. "Come on, you bastard. Wake up." Slaughter felt to find a heartbeat. Then he had it, and at least he didn't have to worry about that. "For Christ sake, Dunlap." He shook him again. Dunlap groaned and tried to turn, but Slaughter wouldn't let him. 'This is Slaughter! Wake up! We've got problems!"

  Dunlap moaned. His breath was putrid. Too rushed to mind that, Slaughter hefted him across his shoulder and stumbled down the hallway toward the bathroom. When he set him on the toilet, he started to unbutton Dunlap's shirt, but that was taking too much time, so he just ripped the shirt off. Dunlap tilted, almost falling, and Slaughter eased him onto the floor, then got his pants off, his shoes and socks and underwear. The underwear was soiled. Nostrils flaring, Slaughter threw it into a corner. He slid Dunlap into the bathtub and turned the shower on to cold. Dunlap woke up, screaming.

  "Take it easy."

  Dunlap wouldn't stop screaming.

  Slaughter slapped his cheeks. "Hey, it's me. It's Slaughter."

  Dunlap blinked at him. His eyes were red. The vomit that had caked around his lips and chin was rinsing off, and he was frowning, his head to one side. He looked as if he might begin to cry, and then his body heaved.

  "It's all right. I'm with you," Slaughter told him. "Get it out of you."

  He studied Dunlap, water spraying onto the both of them, as spasm followed spasm, and then Dunlap sighed and leaned back, coughing in the bathtub. He was crying.

  "What's the matter? Nightmares?"

  Dunlap nodded.

  "Well, I've got work for you. I need you sober. While you're stunned like this, I need some answers. And I think right now that you won't lie to me. I need to know if I can trust you."

  Dunlap closed his eyes and shivered as the cold water sprayed at him. "You know already what you want to hear. You don't need me to answer."

  "Listen, buddy." Slaughter dug his fingers into Dunlap's shoulder. "You're not quite so drunk as you pretend. I want to hear the answer."

  "Sure, all right, I'll say that you can trust me."

  "If you screw up, you'll wish you'd never met me."

  "You can trust me.

  Hey. My shoulder."

  Slaughter noticed the way the skin was turning purple and eased his fingers off. He leaned back, sitting on the toilet seat. "I need a man to cover me," he said at last. "A man from outside who has no involvement in this. I want you to watch me every second, check out everything I do and keep a record. There'll soon be trouble, major trouble, and I want to know that I'm protected."

  Dunlap had his eyes shut as he shivered in the cold spray of water.

  "Do you hear me?" Slaughter asked.

  "Is it that bad?"

  "It's that bad."

  "Hell, I'd be crazy not to go along with you."

  "You'll be crazy if you do. There's just one stipulation. All I ask is that you wait until I say that you can publish the story."

  "Now I-"

  "I don't want to have to worry about you. I have lots to watch for without that."

  The water kept spraying. Slaughter felt his wet shirt clinging to his skin.

  "All right, so long as no one else is in on this," Dunlap said.

  "It's you and me."

  "A deal then."

  Slaughter sat back on the toilet seat. He didn't know exactly where to start. "You said you wanted a story. Here's the damnedest thing you ever heard."

  Chapter Three.

  Altick scanned the trees and ridges as the helicopter swooped over them. He watched for some flash of movement, some odd color, anything, but there was nothing to attract him, just an endless sweep of forest rising sharply, boulders, deadfalls, streams and canyons, farther ridges, everything but what he wanted, and he rubbed his eyes to clear them, staring harder. There were three of them in the chopper, the pilot, Altick, and a state policeman wedged in back. They had rifles, binoculars, a portable two-way radio, and several knapsacks filled with food, water, and medical supplies. The helicopter was outmoded, small, ideal for two persons, suitable for three if absolutely necessary. With the added weight of their gear, it was unsteady, slow, and hard to keep above the trees. It burned fuel too rapidly. As they swung up the contour of these rising ridges, there were moments when they held their breath, and Altick wished that there had been another way to get up here as soon as he required.

  On the ground the other team would have already started, five men as before but this time primed for trouble, clutching their rifles, watching all around them as they used their maps to find the best way to the lake up in the mountains. There were no dogs, no way to get any soon enough, but this search team had a specific destination, and it didn't need any dogs for guidance. Altick thought about them somewhere down below him, thought about the hard job they would have to push up through the forest toward the rendezvous up here. But he had made several phone calls, and there hadn't been any other helicopters he could commandeer. He was thinking that he might wish he had more than just two men with him. There was no predicting what he might find when the helicopter touched down.

  He kept staring. Then he saw some movement, but as he pointed at it, he realized that what he'd seen were elk below him among the trees. He saw one bound across an open space, and normally he would have taken pleasure, but he had to keep his mind on his objective. More than that, he now was bothered that he hadn't seen more elk before this, deer, other signs of life down there. He should have, this high in the mountains, but the forest seemed deserted, and he wished the helicopter could go faster.

  It was roaring, straining. Even with the plexiglass, the noise came rushing at him, and he kept peering down, and the whole scene was like everything he'd been through back in Nam in 1969. While the radicals had looted campus buildings, while the marchers had converged on Washington, he had been going on patrols, his team in a chopper, staring at the wilderness below them, and the trees of course were different now, the weather, and whatever waited for him down there, but he felt the tightness in his stomach, felt the cramps around his heart as he fought to restrain his nervousness. He remembered all the shit that he had gone through, all the friends that he'd seen killed, the blood, the disease, the suffocating jungle, believing that he served his country while the demonstrators back home had weakened the country's resolve. He had come back from his tour of duty and had signed on with the state police. The valley at least had responded to him with some pride, and with his military bearing, he'd done well. Indeed he sometimes acted as if he were still in the service, and he talked about the people in the valley as civilians, building pride and character among his men, reminding them that they were different. And they all were loyal to him, as he was to them, afraid now for the officers he'd sent up and were missing. He was staring at the forest, reaching absently to touch his mustache and the scar across his lip that it disguised. He grabbed the microphone and spoke abruptly, "Chopper to patrol. Report."

  The hiss of static.

  "Chopper to patrol."

  "Yeah, Captain, everything's fine. We're moving fast. We should be up there before noon."

  "They might have headed back already. Let's hope we didn't have to do this."

  "We'll just call it exercise."

  "Some exercise," Altick answered, smiling. "Ten-four. Out."

  His smile dissolved, though, as he stared down from the helicopter. He was more and more reminded of those choppers back in Nam, the tension solid in him as the helicopter rose up past another ridge, and suddenly he saw it.

  "There's the lake," the pilot said.

  Altick nodded, studying the landscape. It was formed a basin, ridges sloping all around, then forest spreading inward, then the clearing that went all around the lake. There were few trees beside the lake itself, but Altick knew his men would have gone toward them. He pointed toward one tree by the lake, and they swept closer.

  "This was where they camped," the pilot told him. "When I couldn't find them, I went back to get some help."

  The knapsacks were in sight now and the black pit where their campfire had been. Nothing else, and Altick tapped the pilot's shoulder. "Swing around the lake. I want to check those trees beside it on the other shore. I want to check the edge of the forest as well."

  "I did that when I first was up here."

  "Yeah, well, just for me, let's do it once again."

  Altick continued staring downward. They moved around the lake, the wind whipped by the rotors causing patterns on the water. But the other trees had nothing there of interest, and the clearing all around the lake was quiet, and he saw no sign of anything around the forest's edge.

  "Okay, then, take her back and set her down."

  "I told you we wouldn't see anything."

  Altick only looked at him. He spoke into the microphone. "Chopper to patrol one. Charlie, do you hear me?"

  Static. He waited. "Chopper to patrol one."

  "I already did that, too," the pilot told him. "But I never got an answer."

  They set down, the long grass bending from the wind created by the helicopter's rotors, and back in Nam, Altick would have been in motion by now, jumping out before the chopper hit the ground or more often hovered and then swooped away, and he'd be scrambling with his men to find some cover. Abandoned. At least this way the helicopter would stay with him, and he waited for the rotors to stop before he unhitched his harness, shoved at the hatch, and stepped out, holding his rifle.

  He hurried toward the trees beside the lake, then straightened as he stared at what he'd been afraid of. Never mind the scattered remnants of the fire. Kicking at it would be one way to put it out, sloppy granted, but there was no dismissing what he found beside the charred wood. Blood. A lot of it. Huge patches of it, dry now on the mountain grass and earth. He glanced around and saw the leashes on the tree, more blood where once the dogs must have huddled. He noticed the glint of an empty rifle cartridge. In the grass, he found a flashlight, and the knapsacks had been torn, their contents missing, and a rifle butt was smashed beside a tree-the little signs he couldn't see from the air, but now he knew that there had been a fight all right, and no dog, no wolf, no bear ever smashed a rifle. At once, he saw the barrel in the shallows of the lake.

  "My God, what happened here?" his deputy blurted.

  Altick swung toward the pilot. "Can you use that rifle we brought for you?"

  "Sure, but-" The pilot looked pale.

  "Five men and five dogs, and this is all that's left of them. I don't think we can wait for help. We've got to spread out, searching," Altick said.

  "Not me. I'm not going anywhere alone," the pilot told him.

  From the right, a wind rushed toward them, tugging at their clothing, bending grass, and scraping branches in the tree. The deputy looked up at the scraping branches and pointed. Altick looked.

  "Another rifle."

  It was wedged up in the branches where it must have been thrown.

  "We'll do this together," Altick said. "These tracks in the grass. I thought they might be from our men. Now I'm not so sure. Let's follow them."

  They soon found a state policeman's shirtsleeve in the grass, the edges bloody. No one said a word or even touched it.

  They kept walking. Farther on, they found the other sleeve and then the shirt itself. The forest loomed. They studied the grass, then the forest. The wind kept tugging at them, scraping branches. All the trees were moving.

  "I'm not going in there. We have no idea what we're up against," the pilot said "It could be anything."