You Only Die Twice

Chapter FOURTEEN





When Cheryl Dunning saw the moose grazing at the edge of the wetlands in front of her, she initially felt a sense of dread before she realized that its presence might offer her an opportunity for escape.

It was a male bull, it stood about seven feet at its shoulders, and it had a massive rack of palmate antlers on its head that suggested it was probably around ten years old if she counted the points correctly and also took into consideration the regression of the palmate.

As a child and into her early teens, she hunted moose and deer with her father and her grandfather, who were master huntsmen and who taught her everything she knew about them, from how to hunt them to how to gut them. Hunting was a family tradition, something they did in the fall in an effort to put food on the table throughout the tough winter months.

She herself had bagged three moose. She knew how to take one down and she knew how dangerous they could be during the rutting season, which it was now.

In September and October, going anywhere near a bull was akin to poking a grizzly bear with a stick. You just didn’t do it unless you were armed with a rifle to take it down, like the Remington M700 Mountain Rifle in .280 caliber, which her father and grandfather favored.

Behind her, she could hear her attacker closing in. She took a quick glance around, couldn’t see him and stepped behind a large pine tree so he couldn’t see her when he arrived.

She pressed her back against the bark. In the near distance, she heard branches snap and the sound of him running toward her. She looked at the moose, who was looking back at her, and she saw the last thing she wanted to see―the hair on his back was raised and his ears were lowered. Worse, he was licking his lips, all sure signs that he was about to charge.

She remained perfectly still, keeping her eyes fixed on the moose, which had stopped chewing whatever it was eating and let out the sort of loud, furious snort that would break bones if bones could shatter from fear alone.

If he charged her, she wouldn’t run. Too risky. Instead, she’d wait until he was just upon her and then turn quickly to the other side of the tree in an effort to protect herself from being struck.

The problem with this is that her plan would only protect her from the moose. If she turned to the other side of the tree, she’d expose herself to her attacker, who was growing closer with each step.

She looked at the moose and willed it to wait.

But it didn’t.

It took a step toward her, its tall legs sloshing in the murky water. She watched the hair prick up higher on his back and she saw him lick his lips again. He was twenty yards away and his eyes were absolutely steady with hers. She gripped the base of the tree trunk and prepared herself for the worst when the bull suddenly charged. She felt a start, watched it close the distance between them, its head lowered, antlers poised, its coat of muscle and fat shaking right along with the ground beneath her feet, and then she prayed that her attacker would appear now and distract the moose.

But he didn’t.

With only seconds left, she scooted down, swung her body to the right, pressed her back as low as possible against the trunk and felt the tree shake when the moose’s antlers connected with it. She shrieked from the impact, which was so hard, she bounced off the trunk and landed on her stomach in a pool of standing water.

She could hear the moose behind her, stumbling backward, likely hurt and more enraged now than before. She tried to get to her feet, but her hands and feet were lodged and sinking in mud. She heard a man say, “Hey!” She heard the moose shift its body around. A gunshot sounded and Cheryl Dunning knew she was finished.

Only she wasn’t.

The earth began to tremble beneath her feet.

With an effort, she flipped over and spun away from the water and the mud. She landed on a piece of reasonably dry ground, and turned to watch the bull charge toward the man who was hunting her.

He shot again, but he missed because he didn’t get it. To kill a moose―especially a bull moose rushing toward you at full throttle―you didn’t aim at the head when you’d likely hit an antler instead of the animal’s considerably smaller forehead, as he just did. Instead, you aimed for the heart, the liver or the lungs. That’s how you brought down a moose, but generally only if you had a powerful rifle, and not the Glock he possessed.

That’s what she was raised to know. That’s the knowledge her father and grandfather instilled her with because they knew that when you chose to live in Maine, it was a trade-off. Maine offered a beautiful coast and only a trace of crime, but finding a good job with a working wage was difficult, if not impossible.

Because of the latter, families came together, as hers had for generations. To survive, you learned things. You learned how to grow your food in the summer and you learned how to kill a deer or a moose or both in the fall so you had meat to eat in the winter, a skill this man, thank God, lacked.

She watched him fire his gun again, but with the moose nearly upon him, he was so rattled, he missed it entirely and instead turned around and started to run away from it―and her. It was like a scene from some bad dinosaur movie, only the dinosaur was a moose and it was hurtling forward to take the man down.

This was her chance and Cheryl wasted no time in seizing it. She stood, shook the mud off her arms and waited for the man to recede from sight before she bolted to her right in her rotten high-heeled boots and tapped into old instincts as she ran. Her father and grandfather had taught her how to survive if she ever was lost in the woods, which sometimes happened with hunters and often with hikers.

The woods were a sensible habitat. She first needed to get to a place where she could stop, listen and collect herself. Panic also was her enemy, so she needed to avoid it. She needed to find or build the sort of shelter that wouldn’t just protect her, but also act to conceal her from him, should he find her. It wasn’t starvation or dehydration that would kill her first. It was either hypothermia or, if he did find her, her death would be delivered by him.

But she refused to allow either to happen. Cheryl Dunning already had died once. She died at the hands of Mark Rand and she was damned if she was going to die twice. At least not now. Not this soon. Not at thirty-one. Not when she hadn’t met the man of her life and married him, not until she had children of her own and watched them grow, not until she had her grandchildren around her, and not until she and her husband, whoever he turned out to be, grew old together so they could appreciate all they had accomplished at the end of their lives.

She had her entire life in front of her. And right now, she was going to secure that life. She was going to fight for that life because in spite of everything she’d been through, and especially because of the death she’d already been dealt once, her life was worth a fight. It was worth a battle. She didn’t know who this crazy motherf*cker was, but she was going to take him on and she was going to win because she was worth the fight.

And in her soul, even though she didn’t know where she was, because of her history of exploring the Maine woods with her father and grandfather, she bet she knew these woods better than that bastard ever dreamed he did.

Game on, baby, she thought as she ran. Game on.