Maneater
by Jack Warner[ Thriller/Suspense ]
Most hunts end in a death. This hunt begins with one--Lanelle Jackson’s. A wild tiger has escaped its cargo truck and now roams the dense forests of the Appalachian Mountains. When deer and wild boar run out, the tiger turns its growing hunger towards man. Now it has a taste for easy prey. With a body-count on the rise and the media coming in, Sheriff Grady Brickhouse calls upon Jim Graham, a tiger hunter trained in India to end the man-eater’s killing spree.
However, Graham is retired, and at 73 his body isn’t as fast as it used to be. The only edge Graham holds now is a nine-year-old boy who has somehow bonded with the tiger. But, it’s a bond that makes him protective of the beast, even as it circles ever closer to hurting the ones he loves. This hunt will probably be Graham’s last. The question is, will it end with the tiger’s death or his own?
In MANEATER, author Jack Warner crafts a tightly suspenseful adventure novel, where death hides in the shadows of small town life. It will have you straining to hear the low growl of the wild before it's too late...
SEPTEMBER 8
Only three houses overlook Georgia Road 113 on the 30-mile stretch between Sandville and Fairview and each of them is abandoned and nearly collapsed, gray, rain-fissured wood with no paint like the bones of a shattered skeleton.
The farmhouses still occupied sit hundreds of yards back from the two-lane road, only a break in the tree line and a mailbox to announce the dirt lanes leading to them. At night a driver could easily overlook most of them, dimly outlined by the floodlight set in every yard and a few lights in the windows if someone's still up.
No one was up at two a.m. on the ninth of September along the highway where it crosses the Sallisaw River 10 miles north of Richey. No one saw the line of nondescript trucks of various sizes and colors trundling over the bridge.
No one, except the driver behind it, saw the seventh truck in the procession, a panel truck with small round ports lining both sides of the cargo box, edge slowly toward the shoulder of the pavement. Its front tire caught the gravel and it plunged down the embankment, spinning until the cab was pointed back at the river. Then it hit the other side of the ditch with the panels, making a mushy kind of "whump," and fell over about 45 degrees. Its headlights pointed upwards, skimming the outermost edge of the trees. The only sound came from the right front wheel, still spinning.
The next driver pulled over quickly, picked up his CB microphone as he did, spoke briefly and then leaped out of the truck. The whole line pulled over, and men came running back, some with flashlights.
The driver of the truck in the ditch was cursing in a steady monotone as he punched off the lights, turned off the engine and clambered awkwardly out the passenger door.
"You okay?" asked another driver, softly.
"Yeah, I'm fine," grunted the driver, a small man with a stubble of beard. He was rubbing his shoulder.
A rail-thin man in a fedora instead of the prevailing baseball cap trotted up to the knot of drivers.
"What happened?" he snapped.
"Well," the driver said, "I went to sleep."
"Went to sleep? You drunk?"
"Hell, no."
"What about Andy?"
"He oughta be all right," said the little driver. "We hit soft."
"Well, for God's sake make sure," the thin man said.
The little man inched back down into the ditch and walked along the side of the truck, looking into the dark ports in the side white panel. He grunted, then turned to the men on the road. "Throw me a light," he said. One of the men tossed him a flashlight.
He shined it in one of the ports, angling around, and then moved quickly to the back of the truck.
"Oh, shit," he said.
"For Chrissake, what is it?" the thin man asked. "Is he hurt?"
"No," the little man said. "He's gone."
"Gone? Whaddya mean, gone?"
"Door's open. Must've gotten knocked open when we hit the ditch. No sign of him."
There was silence. The wheel had quit spinning, and the little man turned slowly to look back up at the road.
"What'll we do?" one of the other drivers asked.
The thin man turned, walked to the other side of the road and stared up at the sky as if he was counting the stars hanging over the ridges to the north. The others waited, some looking nervously up and down the road.
After a few minutes, the thin man turned around, adjusted his hat and began issuing orders.
"Carl, get Jimmy up here with the winch, get that thing outta the ditch. It looks like it'll drive. If it will, flash your lights and we'll get going."
"You gonna call, let somebody know?" Carl asked. The boss had a phone in his truck.
"I do that, we're finished, done for," he said, looking at Carl. "That what you want?"
"No," said Carl, after a while. "I guess not."
The men drifted back to their trucks and a big Ford pickup, the last in line, moved up near the truck in the ditch. A winch motor moaned briefly and the truck was righted. The cable was reconnected, the winch started again and the truck heaved up out of the ditch like a mammoth escaping a tar pit. Its engine started, its lights blinked and the entire procession returned to Highway 113, headed toward Alabama.