What must it be like, to produce minds as fine as Morris’s, but so filled with rage? Or those things in the village—were they part human? Why were they so sad?
The universe is a dark place.
The last thing Flynn heard from Morris as he ran out the door into blazing morning sunlight was a roar—as it changed into laughter.
He had an inkling as to why. It was all part of breaking his will. They’d done it during the Inquisition, done it in Nazi Germany, done it in the Soviet Gulag. The technique was to let a prisoner think he had escaped, then, just as he touched freedom, drag him back.
So his aim was clear: he needed to go farther than they thought possible.
He ran across the barnyard and vaulted its weathered wooden fence. Without looking back, he knew from the silence that Elder and Morris were not following him. This meant only one thing: somebody else was. He thought it would not be the tiger, not in broad daylight, and not as close as this to the heavily developed shoreline of Lake Travis.
From somewhere nearby, there was a sudden burst of barking. An instant later it was silenced.
His heart seemed to twist against itself, his throat to twist against itself from sheer terror.
One of the outbuildings they’d seen had been a kennel.
Dogs were a problem. Big time.
Too bad he’d lost Mac, Mac knew dogs and knew them well. As he ran, he continued to listen, but the dogs were no longer giving voice.
So, were they also smart, maybe as smart as the tiger?
He had to force himself not to run wildly.
This was going to be hard. It was going to be very, very hard.
CHAPTER THIRTY
As he ran into deeper brush, Flynn inventoried. His only weapon was the pocket knife. He had no compass, no cell phone, and no GPS, only the knowledge that he was running in a generally southerly direction.
He did not hear the dogs, but he also did not believe for a moment that he was beyond the perimeter of the trap Morris and Elder had set for him.
He knew that he was leaving a scent trail. Worse, the harder he tried to get away the more he sweated, and the stronger it was getting. His effort to escape was making him easier to catch.
To break his trail, he needed to get to water. He needed the lake, but how far was it? More than a mile, certainly, and this shore was not developed, so he wasn’t going to be stumbling across any roads.
They’d chosen their location with characteristic skill. Being near a large city and a population in constant flux around the lake gave them access to plenty of genetic material—if that was even what they were after—but they were also isolated enough for them to keep themselves well hidden.
He forced himself to move more slowly, to tend his track as best he could, to reduce his visual and scent signatures.
The sun was strong, and he was sweating ever more heavily. He was exhausted from his ordeal and so dehydrated that he was beginning to struggle with muscular control.
Then he heard something—a quick rustling sound to his right. The instinctive reaction was to turn away, but you can’t escape a dog like that. He is going to be faster than you are, and you cannot hide from his nose.
Flynn’s hands were good enough to give him a chance to stop maybe one of them, but probably not for more than a few moments. So he turned toward the sound, and charged into the cedar thicket that the animal was sliding through.
He screamed, he couldn’t help it—a short, sharp cry, instantly stifled. The dog was black except for the face, which was long and lethal-looking, but as pink as human skin. The eyes were green. They were entirely human.
Immediately on seeing Flynn, the dog turned away, careful not to expose its nose to his fists.
His gut frothy with disgust, Flynn broke off the assault, leaped out of the thicket and continued running.
Behind him, he could hear complicated, guttural sounds as the dogs communicated among themselves. They were fanning out, preparing to outrun him and capture him in a pincers movement.
A steep hillside appeared ahead. Forty feet up, the limestone emerged as a cliff, and in that cliff there were a number of low openings. Caves.
Could be good.
But no, no way. They were deathtraps. Even if they were large—huge—the dogs would gain an unbeatable advantage. They didn’t need light, he did. Worse, the damp air of a cave was an ideal carrier of scent.
So he continued following the terrain lower and lower, until at last he came to water—or rather, a dry creek bed. Still, though, it led downward toward his only hope.
It began to be possible to discern the voices of individual dogs, as they muttered and growled among themselves.
As he got closer to water, the plant life grew more dense, and the thickening stands of cedar were getting harder and harder to move through.
The voices of the dogs stopped.
He thought, “they’re coming in for the kill.” Maybe he should have gone for the caves. Maybe he should have done a lot of things, chief among them not moving ahead with this until contact with some sort of headquarters had been reestablished. He’d gotten Mac killed. God only knew what had become of Diana.
Now there was silence around him. But why? He turned around and around, wishing he could somehow pierce the glowering stands of cactus and the dark cedar thickets with his eyes. What was the holdup? He must have some advantage, but what could it be?
He looked up the long rise he’d just descended. Then he turned a half turn. Nothing there but cedar. Another half turn—and winking through the choking underbrush there was a metallic gleam.
Metal, hell, that was water. Of course, the dogs had already scented it. And he saw one of them, just for an instant, a black flank gleaming with tight fur. It was moving quickly, staying low behind a stand of cactus on his right.
He saw their problem: he had a better run to the water than they did. They’d stopped here in hope that he wouldn’t see it before they could maneuver in front of him.
No longer concerned with being detected—they knew where he was to the inch—he hurled himself wildly ahead, throwing himself into the foliage between him and whatever water was below him.
There came a chilling sound, the furious rattle of a snake. They were common in the Texas hill country, with its ample supply of small animals and the warm rocks that snakes needed to gather energy.
He knew the risk, but there was no time to stop and deal with it. He threw himself against his side of the stand of cactus, tumbling away from the fat, bristle-encrusted pears, feeling them piercing his shoulder and flank.
He was falling then, dropping through resisting, scraping masses of cedar, dropping further, stopping, clawing himself free and falling again.
Breaking free, he fell ten feet, maybe more, through clear air. Enough to shatter limbs if he hit wrong and he was completely out of control.
He landed on his back in clear, cold water and heard its silence as he sank, and saw above the sun dancing on its surface. He also saw the snake hit the water, a good eight feet of writhing fury.
Stretching himself out, blowing to reduce his buoyancy, he kicked his way deeper. Close by, the silence was profound, but he could hear a distant buzzing of engines. This wasn’t a stream, it was the lake itself.
He heard splashes behind him, at least a dozen of them. The dogs had lost a small battle, but that had only sped them up. His one advantage was that he could hold his breath, which was not so easy for a dog. But they were going to be faster.
He’d been winded before he fell, though, so he had to surface right now.
The instant his head broke the water, he both gobbled air and turned and turned, trying to see what he was up against. A quick count revealed the hideous heads of twelve sleek animals speeding toward him from three of four possible directions.
Immediately in front of him, not three feet away, was the snake. Sweeping his arms, he backed himself away from it. It raised itself up, using water tension to force a good three fee
t of its length above the surface. It couldn’t strike, at least. To inject its venom, it would need to be close enough to dig its fangs into his skin.
Sucking breath after breath, he twisted around and used the one ability that he had that none of these animals, not the snake or the dogs, could equal. He could hold his breath long enough to dive deep. And once he was underwater and too far from the dogs for them to see him, they weren’t going to have any way of determining his location.
He swam as deep as he could, passing over a drowned tree, characteristic of Texas’s many artificial lakes. He’d pulled more than one drowning victim out of such trees on Lake Menard.
Even as he went to the surface for air, he could hear the tireless churning of the dogs getting louder. He didn’t bother to turn and look at them when he broke the surface, that would eat a good second that he couldn’t afford to lose.
Again he breathed, again and again, saturating his lungs with air even as the dogs got louder. Then he saw, turning out of an inlet about a quarter of a mile away, a power boat. It swung in a graceful arc, remaining up on plane, its wake spraying behind it. Nobody would come out under that much power unless they were on a mission.
Between the dogs and the boat, he had been very neatly trapped.
Again, he dove deep, but this time did not double back toward the dogs. They were smart enough to anticipate that. They would move from line abreast to a deeper formation, and surround him and tear him apart the moment he surfaced.
The sound of the oncoming boat got louder.
He had to surface, and when he did, he saw a figure on the front of the boat. It was Morris, and in his hand was a long-barreled pistol. Some kind of a target weapon, accurate at distance.
The boat was coming fast, its wake foaming white.
He dropped beneath the surface.
The trap was sprung. Here, he ran out of options. Here, they dragged him out of the water and took him back, a thoroughly broken man.
There would be more torture, until he’d been to death and back many more times.
But why? What was it that Morris wanted him to do?
Now the boat was circling above him. As soon as he surfaced, he was going to be within range of both the pistol and the dogs.
Looking up at the hull, he could see that the twin props were on shafts that extended out behind the craft, which appeared to be about forty feet in length.
He swam upward and, as the boat swept over him, he resurfaced in its prop wash. As he sucked air, though, one of the dogs piled into him.
He went back down, leaving the snapping jaws and churning claws behind.
Then he felt something unexpected—a current of warmer water.
This could mean only one thing, an incoming stream. He swam toward it, keeping as best he could in its warmth. No matter what, he had to remain submerged until he was in the mouth of that stream. If he went up to grab even a single breath, he was caught.
To conserve his oxygen, he forced himself to do the opposite of what instinct was screaming for him to do. He forced himself to slow down.
Moving carefully, he began to be able to see the limestone bottom rising. He was swimming up a small canyon. With just inches to spare, he passed over the skeleton of another drowned tree, this one with the stark remains of what had been a stone house below it.
The bottom rushed up, and then he was swimming in three feet of water and there were flashes in his eyes, and he was going to take another breath, and it was going to be water.
He breathed. Breathed again, deeper. But it wasn’t water, he had come up into the bed of a stream no more than ten feet wide and just three feet deep.
He lay flat on his back, letting its water sluice around him, allowing just his face to break the surface. He didn’t want a single molecule of odor to reach those dogs, nor a single sound, and he didn’t want his body heat to be detectable, much less his image.
He remained as still as possible, just pushing himself along with his heels, doing it inch by inch. Eventually, the stream would have a bend in it. Only when he was around that bend and invisible from the lake could he dare to move more quickly. Even then, he would stay with the water.
He came to a deeper pool, the water crystal, the limestone glowing tan. Around him, birds sang. He slid deeper, waiting there with just his face exposed, minimizing the chances that his scent would reach the dogs.
Finally he moved again, slipping around a turn in the narrow creek.
All was quiet. He hadn’t even stopped the birds. He raised his head and listened. Distantly, the boat’s engine screamed. Good, they were operating a search pattern.
Finally, carefully, listening to every sound and watching every shadow along the banks of the stream, he eased himself to his feet.
He froze, watching and listening. There was no sound of movement in the thick brush that surrounded the creek. He crossed to the far side, then climbed a bluff until he could see what turned out to be part of Lake Travis, a mirror of the sky dotted with sails. Small white clouds flew overhead. Nearer, the boat was now stopped. He could see the dogs on board, sitting in a group on the fantail. As they worked to gain scent, their heads turned first one way and then another.
Obviously, they weren’t picking up his scent, but they did not stop trying. Then one of them went to the rail. It stood, nose to the wind. Another joined it.
His heartbeat increased, he barely breathed. It was time for this reconnaissance to end, so he moved back into the water, and then quickly up the creek, which was as shallow as a few inches on this side.
He went a hundred yards, then climbed the bank and pushed his way through the brush. The ridge he had descended was about five hundred yards ahead and perhaps a hundred and twenty feet high. Somewhere beyond it was the ranch headquarters where he’d started.
A single bark, low and shockingly close, told him that he’d made a fundamental mistake doing that reconnaissance, and the trap he’d entered was already closing.
Only two alternatives were left to him, either to do something that they wouldn’t expect, or something that they couldn’t counter—or, for that matter, both.
One thing that might throw the dogs off would be if he backtracked along his own scent trail. He was wet now, leaving less odor behind. They might be tricked. They might lose him.
The only problem was that doing this would return him to the ranch.
Had that been the real plan all along, to induce him to go back to the compound and be captured where he’d started his escape?
He looked carefully along the ridge, then at the cactus and tufted grass below it.
Tracking is a skill that involves not only careful observation but also careful visualization. To keep a trail, you need to not only read sign, you need to be able to discipline your imagination to see the path as the person you are tracking must have seen it.
Doubling back along the lakeside, he returned to the bend. Beyond this point, he knew that it would not be safe to go. To reduce his scent further, he submerged himself completely. Then he left the water and went across toward the bluff, crossing his own trail about sixty steps later.
Turning, he looked back the way he had come. Not surprisingly, he had left a clear track.
He scanned the terrain ahead. Were they hidden somewhere, already aware of him, already waiting in ambush?
Backtracking as carefully as he could, he climbed the ridge. He would risk the dogs noticing the movement.
He could not do the safe thing, which was to keep going out to the road. He had to determine if there was any way to help Mac, assuming he was still alive. Or Diana, for that matter. If it had been him in the Rover, he would have come in to provide support as soon as communication failed. She would have done the same, and since she hadn’t, he had to assume that she was in trouble, too.
They might both be trapped in boxes somewhere, or under some other type of torture, or slated to be broken down into component parts or whatever was being done to people.
&nb
sp; Doubling back, he made for the ranch compound. If they’d left it unguarded, he might gain some useful intelligence. Who knew, maybe he’d event turn it into a win.
Still, he had to be damn near conservative. If he lost his life, who knew what would happen then? Maybe there wasn’t anybody else left. Maybe the whole operation would fail. For sure, it would be a catastrophic setback.
Atop the ridge, his own sign was quite clear, a swathe through the tall grass that looked like it had been put down by an elephant. The dogs, all nine of them, had crossed the clearing line abreast. Their tracks were straight and light. They had worked to minimize their sign.
Moving ahead, but not so fast that he would raise his skin temperature and once again intensify his scent, he worked his way back. Soon he saw, through a thick stand of cedar, the shape of a building. He went closer, slipping deep into the cedar thicket, stopping when he came to its border.
The place was silent. No sign of movement. There was the barn, a new shed nearby, and the small rock ranch house. Under some live oaks fifty yards away was the kennel.
The barn doors were still open, the interior shadowy.
He watched some mourning doves pecking in the small patch of grass near the house. These were flocking birds that fed on the ground. They were sensitive to nearby movement and would fly up at the slightest sign of disturbance. He waited, but they continued to feed in peace.
Morris could not have left this place unguarded, so its empty appearance had to be a lie.
He stepped out of the cedar and strode quickly to the barn. On the floor toward the back stood a long silver box, open, the interior lined with black plastic. His box. There was oxygen equipment nearby, a green canister lying on its side, some tubing disconnected from two nipples on one end.
He forced back the impulse to hammer the thing to bits.
Under the pecan tree by the house, the doves were still pecking at nuts.
Mac and Diana were not in the barn.
He stepped out and moved away from the structure. Turning slowly around, he listened for anything that might help him. His hearing was good and it was very quiet, but the silence was total. By now the dogs would be breathing heavily, but he didn’t hear anything that suggested their approach. Fearing the tiger, he looked, also, along the rooflines.
Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) Page 22