Shadowfires

reeeeee…
    In addition to the ceaseless cicada chorus-which had not fallen
silent because of their presence and, therefore, would not fall
silent to reveal anyone else's presence, either-there was the annoyance of a noisy wind. The breeze that had sprung up when they had come out of the sporting-goods store down by the lake, less than three-quarters of an hour ago, had evidently grown stronger. Not much of it reached as far as the sheltered forest floor, barely a soft breath. But the upper reaches of the massive trees stirred restlessly, and a hollow mournful moaning settled down from above as the wind wove through the interstices of the highest branches.
    Rachael stayed close to Benny and pressed against the trunk of the
spruce. The rough bark prickled even through her blouse.
    She felt as if they remained frozen there, listening alertly and
peering intently into the woods, for at least a quarter of an hour,
though she knew it must have been less than a minute. Then, warily,
Benny started uphill again, angling slightly to the right to follow a
shallow dry wash that was mostly free of brush. She stayed close
behind him. Sparse brown grass, crisp as paper, lightly stroked their
legs. They had to take care to avoid stepping on some loose stones
deposited by last spring's runoff of melting snow, but they made somewhat better progress than they had outside the wash.
    The flanking walls of brush presented the only drawback to the
easier new route. The growth was thick, some dry and brown, some dark
green, and it pressed in at both sides of the shallow wash, with only
a few widely separated gaps through which Benny and Rachael could
look into the woods beyond. She half expected Eric to leap through
the bushes and set upon them. She was encouraged only by the brambles
tangled through a lot of the brush and by the wicked thorns she saw
on some of the bushes themselves, which might give a would-be
attacker second thoughts about striking from that direction.
    On the other hand, having already returned from the dead, would
Eric be concerned about such minor obstacles as thorns?
    They went only ten or fifteen yards, before Benny froze again,
half crouching to present a smaller target, and raised the
shotgun.
    This time, Rachael heard it, too: a clatter of dislodged
pebbles.
    Reeeeee, reeeeee…
    A soft scrape as of shoe leather on stone.
    She looked left and right, then up the slope, then down, but she
saw no movement associated with the noise.
    A whisper of something moving through brush more purposeful than
mere wind.
    Nothing more.
    Ten seconds passed uneventfully.
    Twenty.
    As Benny scanned the bushes around them, he no longer retained any
vestige of that deceptive I'm-just-an-ordinary-everyday-real-estate-salesman look. His pleasant but unexceptional face was now an arresting sight: The intensity of his concentration brought a new sharpness to his brow, cheekbones, and jaws; an instinctive sense of danger and an animal determination to survive were evident in his squint, in the flaring of his nostrils, and in the way his lips pulled back in a humorless, feral grin. He was spring-tense, acutely aware of every nuance of the forest, and just by looking at him, Rachael could tell that he had hair-trigger reflexes. This was the work he had been trained for-hunting and being hunted. His claim to being largely a past-focused man seemed like pretense or self-delusion, for there was no doubt whatsoever that he possessed an uncanny ability to focus entirely and powerfully on the present, which he was doing now.
    The cicadas.
    The wind in the attic of the forest.
    The occasional trilling of a distant bird.
    Nothing else.
    Thirty seconds.
    In these woods, at least, they were supposed to be the hunters,
but suddenly they seemed to be the prey, and this reversal of roles
frustrated Rachael as much as it frightened her. The need to remain
silent was nerve-shredding, for she wanted to curse out loud, shout
at Eric, challenge him. She wanted to scream.
    Forty seconds.
    Cautiously Benny and Rachael began moving uphill again.
    They circled the large cabin until they came to the edge of the
forest at the rear of it, and every step of the way they were stalked-
or believed themselves to be stalked. Six more times, even after they
left the dry wash and turned north through the woods, they stopped in
response to unnatural sounds. Sometimes the snap of a twig or a not-
quite-identifiable scraping noise would be so