Page 28 of Fortress
The room froze, some personnel turning to stare, others just stuttering to a halt. Then a completely different kind of chaos erupted.
There was really no good way to run into a troll.
Well, Roger might have said that going fifty-five miles per hour in a semi was a decent way, and Jake would have had to agree, but that wasn’t how Toby and Jake managed it.
They’d heard rumors of strangers disappearing in a park outside of Sedona, Arizona, so they’d done their duty as hunters and had gone to check it out. The two bars Toby and Jake had hit up had been full of twitchy patrons, and the police station had been downright hostile. After a good day of searching and getting nothing as far as information or leads went, they’d decided to go tramping into the frosted state park to see what they could find. They left the Eldorado at the parking lot about a mile back, not willing to trust her wheels to the bitch of a rocky narrow road that angled sharply up a butte in this weather; Sedona was one of the few places in Arizona that rose high enough to get snow and ice in the winter.
They found what they were looking for after a ten-minute hike on a cold trail of packed earth. The wooden bridge wasa rickety thing that looked overdue for a makeover with some fresh planks. Even from a distance, something was off about the darkness under the bridge, something that would have given Jake the heebie-jeebies even if they had come across it in the heart of summer.
Then again, the troll was also a damn good giveaway.
Jake had thought bridge trolls were half myth or at least didn’t get outside Europe, but there was no arguing with the reality of eight feet of rocky gray skin and hands the size of boulders trying to eat a family of four. Judging by the coolers and gear scattered over the thin snow, not to mention the high-pitched screaming from the pickup truck, a family of campers had been trucking their gear out of the park when they were waylaid by the monster under the bridge.
There was no good way to run into a troll, but Jake would have liked a few more weapons on them. A rocket launcher would’ve been nice.
The troll had already yanked off one of the doors on the rusty blue truck, shoved the vehicle over, and had seized the father by his arm, tugging him out the window. Between the broken glass and the monster’s ferocious grip, there was blood everywhere, the man screaming as he fought to stay inside the cab. The children in the car wailed and hung onto the man as though they could keep him from being dragged into the troll’s gaping maw. The fact that they had succeeded so far was damn impressive, given the size of the monster, but soon his arm would pop off or the troll was going to lose its temper and finish smashing the vehicle to bits. Either way, no one in that metal deathtrap would survive.
Jake had time to thinkShit, we need a bigger gun, coming to a stop because running into that mess without a plan would obviously only get them killed alongside the civvies. Then herealized that Toby had not stopped. Toby was running full speedtowardthe mess.
Jake couldn’t have said he was surprised, but that didn’t help the horror stopping his breath.
Toby didn’t even try his gun, instead drawing his Bowie knife as he charged the creature. Jake raised his shotgun, wondering if he had the aim to hit the thing in a sensitive spot (assuming that trolls had sensitive spots) from this distance, andToby, what hell are you doing?followed byOh, fuckwhen Toby didn’t go for the body.
He hit the back of the truck, scrambled onto the top, and jumped straight toward the monster, driving his blade into the thing’s eye.
Trolls don’t scream. The sound they made in pain or rage was more of a basso grumble, the first harsh rumblings of an avalanche, or a semitruck engine that wouldn’t catch. The beast jerked away, taking Toby’s knife with it and drawing another scream from the father.
Then the scream abruptly stopped as the troll dropped the man and turned its attention to Toby.
The eye that had taken the knife was bleeding, a gory mess of reddish-black fluids with the hilt of Toby’s blade jutting from the center. Toby jumped out of the way of the first swing and dropped off of the truck with the second. The troll’s arm struck the old steel, bending it inward like a child popping bubble wrapping. The beast, following Toby with its one good eye, took a step toward him but got distracted by Jake emptying a clip into its back.
It probably felt the bullets, but when it turned and bared its broad, dull teeth in Jake’s direction, all Jake saw in its lone eye was rage.
“Get them out!” Toby screamed. “Take care of the civilians, I can—”
Neither of them was fast enough that time. The troll’s broad arm caught Toby in the side and sent him flying twenty feet into a white-crusted pine, where he crumpled beneath a shower of needles and snow.
Jake was pretty sure he was screaming. He was pretty sure he didn’t have the control needed to face off a monster that they weren’t prepared for. He picked up a small shovel from the scattered supplies and charged as the creature lumbered toward Toby. The troll didn’t seem to have a lot of speed, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. As Leon had said more than once: something slow and lucky could kill you just as easy as something smart and fast.
Jake stabbed the troll in the knee with the shovel and then backpedaled, almost falling as it swiped at his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the civilians struggling to get out of the vehicle. He scrambled backward to lead the troll away, barely dodging the next blow. When he caught sight of Toby, he almost sagged in relief to see him dragging himself to his knees.
And then Jake could’ve howled, because instead of retreating with the civilians, Toby headed backtowardthe battle with slow determination, one arm pressed to his side.
A boulder-like fist came out of nowhere. Jake flung himself sideways, but the fist clipped him, and the glancing blow sent him rolling, his whole body jarred, the wind knocked out of him.
“Hey, you stupid freak!” Toby’s voice was raspy with pain and not nearly as strong as usual in a fight. Jake started swearing nonstop because the monster was turning, slow as a mountain, deadly as an avalanche. “Yeah, you, rockhead, come and—” Toby broke off, but it wasn’t because of the troll. He was coughing, and Jake recognized that sound: the wet noise of something gone weird in the lungs, when ribs were poking into your organs, and Jake forced himself to his knees and then to his feet. He had to get over there. He had to get between Toby and the threat.
He’d only made it a few steps when Toby braced himself against the truck’s back end, smiling grimly as the troll stumped toward him, the family on a limping run down the path. Jake saw the lighter in Toby’s hand, but not the drop.
The explosion caught the troll full in the chest, and it roared, that hair-raising inhuman noise from deep within. Kind of like Jake was doing, except the troll wasn’t the one screaming,”Toby!”
As best he could figure out later, while he was wrapping Toby up and keeping an eye on the smoldering troll just to be sure that it wouldn’t get up again, the exploding gas tank had caught the troll squarely in the chest. Panicking, it had tried to beat it out, shoving the jagged edges of metal deeper into its own chest. Toby had thrown himself over the edge of the bridge, using the troll’s own home as cover from the explosion that had taken it out. Jake had fumbled with his cell phone to call 911 as he dragged Toby away from the disaster, his head bleeding all over the bumpy gravel path, but the civilians had already called an ambulance.
Jake fought the EMTs when they tried to take Toby away without him. He completely forgot about the IDs in their pockets and stumbled overbrother,cousin,sister, until finally they let him ride along in the ambulance for the drive to Methodist Hospital. Jake held Toby’s limp hand the whole way.
And then they saw the scarring.
Ten minutes after the nurse’s discovery, Jake found himself trapped in a room with an enormous mahogany desk between himself and Dr. Judith Cunningham, CEO and director of Methodist Hospital. His knee wouldn’t stop bouncing, and adrenaline kept him twitching for the gun he’d releasedto the security guards outside her painstakingly arranged administrative office. Neither was a great sign for the conversation to come. Dr. Cunningham, leaning forward with her arms crossed on the desk, looked as though she had bitten into a lemon.
