Lunar Descent Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t have moved the broken cinder blocks he had placed on top of the lids. Only bears could do that; the long winter was finally over, and they were emerging from their dens hidden along the Presidential Range, lurching down from the mountains to the campgrounds in Crawford Notch like furry muggers looking for tourists to accost. Soon, once they had reacquired a taste for half-eaten hot dogs and unwanted Wing-Dings, they wouldn’t be settling for furtive midnight forages. Lester figured that by Independence Day weekend, at least, he would be chasing one of the big bastards out of somebody’s tent.
    He righted the cans, then squatted down on his haunches and began to gather up the crap, dumping fistfuls of ripped, mildewed foodwrap into the cans. He was almost through with the cleanup when he heard a child giggle. Looking around, Lester saw a little boy standing next to the outhouse: about five years old, blond hair, wearing hiking shorts and a Bugs Bunny T-shirt. The index finger of his grubby right hand was exploring a nostril.
    â€œMessy,” the kid commented.
    â€œYep,” Lester agreed. “It’s a mess, all right.”
    The boy was with the family in Site Three, the people from New York City who had checked in two days ago. They had spent some time yesterday in the camp store, waiting out a midday rain shower; Dad had bragged that he was an investment broker from some Wall Street securities firm, trying to impress Lester with his suave urbanity, while Mom bought a load of cheap Visit New Hampshire crap: coffee mugs, a bird feeder, a couple of quarts of Ye Olde Fashioned Homemade Maple Syrup, which was actually Aunt Jemima repoured into rustic-looking porcelain jugs manufactured in Taiwan. Later that afternoon, Lester had caught the kid’s older brother trying to sneak out the door with a couple of candy bars stuck down the front of his jeans. Typical early-summer car campers—Lester would be seeing more by Memorial Day, next weekend—but the youngest was all right. Probably the only decent member of the family.
    The boy stared at the garbage. “Didja do that?”
    â€œNope. The bears did. You shouldn’t pick your nose.”
    The kid pulled his finger out of his nose, peered with scientific interest at the booger, and wiped it off on the back of his shorts. “Bears?” he asked timidly.
    â€œThat’s right. Huge black bears.” Lester spread his arms as far as he could reach. “Bigger than this.”
    The boy looked appropriately startled.
    â€œTell your folks to make sure they put all their trash up here and not to leave any food around your tents, or”—Lester dropped his voice menacingly—“they might come around to visit you tonight. Those bears are hungry. Real hungry.”
    The kid immediately turned and dashed into the outhouse, slamming the wooden door behind him. Lester grinned as he gathered up the rest of the trash. The boy would probably stay in the outhouse for the rest of the morning, or at least until one of his parents came searching for him.
    He was replacing the cinder blocks on top of the cans when he heard car tires scrunching on the gravel in the front lot. He brushed his hands across the seat of his jeans and walked to the back door of the camp store. He paused in the storeroom to rush his hands under the sink’s faucet—a vague rotten-egg odor from the water reminded him that it was time to get the well chlorinated again—then walked out into the front of the store, drying his hands on a rag.
    The store was empty. Perhaps whoever had just arrived hadn’t seen the self-service sign over the battery charger. Lester walked around the glass-front counter and pushed open the screen door.
    A car was parked in front of the charge station: a ’23 Datsun Millennium, its silver body gleaming in the morning sun, the driver’s door gull-winged open. The charge cable was still on the terminal;