Predatory Instinct: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  PREDATORY INSTINCT

  A Thriller

  Michael McBride

  Predatory Instinct copyright © 2014 by Michael McBride

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.

  For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net

  Also by Michael McBride

  NOVELS

  Ancient Enemy

  Bloodletting

  Burial Ground

  Innocents Lost

  The Coyote

  Vector Borne

  NOVELLAS

  F9

  Remains

  Snowblind

  The Event

  COLLECTIONS

  Category V

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PREDATORY INSTINCT

  Dedicated to the Delirium Family

  RIP

  Special Thanks to Shane Staley, David Marty, and Steve Souza; Brian Keene; Gene O’Neill; Jeff Strand and “the great race”; Bill Rasmussen; my amazing family; and, most importantly, all of my readers, without whom this book would not exist.

  PREDATORY INSTINCT

  June 10, 12:35 PM EDT

  Fossil skull DNA identifies new human ancestor

  By RADLEY DUNHILL

  Associated Press Writer

  NEW YORK (AP) – Scientists have identified a previously unknown ancient human through the analysis of mitochondrial DNA from fragments of skull bones unearthed in a Siberian cave.

  A team of archaeologists investigating the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon, a spontaneous rapid and massive exodus of the indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains into distant parts of Europe and Asia during the second millennium BCE, exhumed the fossilized remains from one of twenty-two distinct layers of strata. Thermoluminescent and radiocarbon dating of the surrounding sediment suggest that this unclassified hominin (human-like creature) existed a mere 35,000 years ago at a time when both primitive humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) cohabited this isolated region of Central Asia, raising the possibility that these three distinctive forms of human could have met and interacted.

  Researchers at the Douglas Caldwell Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in New York extracted the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the maternal line, from the bones and compared the genetic sequence with those of modern humans and Neanderthals. The analysis revealed that the three last shared a common ancestor more than one million years ago, proving that the Altai individual, referred to publicly as the “Siberian Hominin” and as “Enigman” by the scientists in internal emails, represents a previously unrecognized African migration.

  “Whoever carried this genome out of Africa is some new creature we never even suspected might exist,” said Dr. Geoffrey Melton of the Caldwell Institute. “The evidence is convincing. We are dealing with a hitherto unclassified hominin, and quite possibly a new species entirely.”

  Without a more complete fossil record, scientists can only speculate as to what the Siberian Hominin may have looked like or how it may have behaved or intermingled with early modern humans. However, based on the size of the skull fragments, it more closely resembles its larger and more heavily muscled Neanderthal cousins than its human contemporaries.

  “Paleontologists are scouring the northern region of the Altai Mountains for further evidence of the Siberian Hominin,” Melton said. “While the cold weather helps preserve ancient DNA, the constant presence of so much snow at the higher elevations makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Texas. We’re dealing with thousands of acres of the most inhospitable terrain in the world, and it’s blanketed by snow and ice year-round. We may never find any sign of this miraculous new species again.”

  While archaeologists remain hopeful that their diligence will be rewarded, for now they can only look down from the sheer icy peaks like their ancestors must have done tens of thousands of years ago, and imagine a time when creatures simultaneously familiar and alien moved through the blizzardingsnow.‬‬‬‬

  I

  What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine

  The fleet limbs of the antelope?

  What but fear winged the birds, and hunger

  Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?

  —Robinson Jeffers

  ONE

  Altai Mountain Range

  Siberia

  Friday, October 5th

  3:02 p.m. NOVST

  (2:02 a.m. PST)

  The wind screamed across the sheer granite face of Mt. Belukha. Its peak hid behind a white shark’s fin of blowing snow, still five hundred meters above them. There was no sky, only the blizzard that assaulted them from all directions at once and threatened to sweep them from the ice-coated escarpment, upon which the new flakes accumulated in a layer as slick as greased glass. Progress was maddeningly slow as even their crampons and ice axes hardly secured tenuous purchase. They had passed the point of no return hours ago. There was no choice but to continue higher and pray that their ice screws held in the fractured ice. With the ferocity of the sudden storm, a descent under darkness would be suicide.

  Four days ago, a chunk of ice the size of an office building had calved from the mountain with the sound of cannon fire and thundered down the northwestern slope. From their base camp in the upper Katun Valley to the south, they had watched in horror as fragments the size of semi trucks lay siege to the timberline, exploding through the wall of evergreens as though it were no more substantial than tissue paper. Two kilometers to the north, and they would have been pulverized to such a degree that their bodies would have been unrecognizable, if they were even found at all. But fear metamorphosed into excitement when the binoculars revealed the mouth of a cave roughly one hundred and fifty meters below the nearer of the twin summits. Lord only knew how long it had been sealed behind the ice.

  It had taken several days to plot their ascent to coincide with the ideal weather forecast, which hadn’t predicted the freak storm that swept up the valley three hours ago like a tsunami of blowing flakes.

  Dr. Ramsey Ladd, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, had to pause to summon the last of his failing strength. His arms and legs trembled as he clung to his axe handle and rope, balanced on his toes. The ledge beneath him couldn’t have been more than four inches wide, but it was the largest he had encountered in quite some time. The wind whipped the fur fringe of his parka hood into his face, which felt as though it had frozen solid even with the full neoprene balaclava facemask. Ice accumulated in the corners of his goggles, narrowing his already constricted field of view. It was hard to imagine feeling claustrophobic so exposed on the mountain, and yet his chest tightened to the point that he had to concentrate to keep from hyperventilating the already thin air. He didn’t dare risk shifting his weight to glance over his shoulder to confirm that the others were still behind him.

  Just fifty more meters, he assured himself, and again forced his trembling body upward.

  He nearly sobbed when he hooked his axe over the precipice and hauled himself up into the cave. Every muscle in his body ached. His throat was stripped raw. Ice knotted his lashes and beard, and clung to his chapped nostrils. He crawled deeper into the darkness, away from the blizzard shrieking past the orifice. When he could crawl no more, he collapse
d to the granite floor, rolled out of his rucksack, and desperately drank the water from his thermal hydration bladder. His breathing eventually slowed, and he listened from the darkness as the others clambered up with the clamor of axes and crampons and performed the same exhausted ritual.

  Saved from the elements, the cave had to be at least twenty degrees warmer. The echo of their slowing exhalations gave some indication of its size, which was far larger than he would have guessed from the valley below. He removed his flashlight from his pack and clicked it on. The beam shoved back the shadows and limned the granite walls.

  “My God,” Ladd whispered. He stood and turned a complete circle, watching in awe as the beam spotlighted ancient pictographs distorted by a layer of glimmering ice. There were angular lines and abstract representations of stick men and beasts he couldn’t immediately identify. “Can you guys see this?”

  He heard the clatter of spiked cleats behind him, but couldn’t tear his eyes from the wall. The state of preservation was miraculous. He couldn’t begin to fathom how old these finger-painted images were.

  “Judy?” he whispered.

  “The designs are different than any I’ve seen at the other proto-human sites we’ve discovered,” Dr. Judith Rivale, Professor of Anthropology at The George Washington University, said. She shed her goggles and her mask to more clearly see. Her chestnut bangs were crisp with ice and hung in front of her brown eyes and wind-chafed brow. “I hesitate to even speculate until we’re able to accurately date the strata. The level of preservation is so staggering, thanks to the ice, that this could just as easily be a hundred thousand years old as twenty.”

  She glanced back at the man behind her, whose parka was lined with so much fur he appeared more animal than man.

  “Don’t look at me,” Dr. Carlos Pascual said. As Head of Paleoarchaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, he had been called upon to authenticate and evaluate discoveries predating the Upper Pleistocene Era on every continent. Were it possible to be an expert on the inexplicable, he was as close as one could get. “This is all positively modern to me. Whoever painted these did so long after all of the other hominin branches died off.”

  “Wait a second,” Rivale said. She stepped closer to one of the walls and carefully chiseled away a section of the ice with her axe blade. “This can’t be right. These markings almost look Sumerian, like an early form of cuneiform.”

  “Take pictures,” Ladd said. “Maybe our Kyrgyz guide has seen more like this elsewhere in these mountains.”

  Nelson Spears, a doctoral candidate from the University of Pennsylvania who had insinuated himself onto their expedition team, due in large measure to his father’s company’s financial backing and political connections, removed his digital camera from his backpack and began the process of documentation.

  Ladd wandered deeper into the cave. The strobe of the flash distorted the shape of the granite walls, making them appear to alternately expand and contract, and throwing shifting shadows across the smooth stone. At the furthest reaches of his vision, he glimpsed a pyramidal stack of stones. As he neared, it drew contrast and resolved from the darkness. They weren’t rocks. Vacant-eyed skulls of all shapes and sizes stared back at him from the column of light. There had to be at least fifty of them. All of their faces were turned outward, so that no matter where he stood, they always seemed to be looking at him. He stepped closer. His beam spotlighted fossilized bones long since absolved of their flesh and aged to the color of rust. Fracture lines coursed through their sloped, elongated craniums like spider webs.

  “Get a shot of this,” he said.

  Once Nelson had taken several pictures from various angles, Ladd carefully tried to lift the uppermost skull, but it wouldn’t budge. The pyramid had petrified in that form.

  “These are the most remarkably preserved remains I’ve ever encountered,” Pascual said. “Look at this. The flat frontal bone, the prominent brow ridge, the protuberance of the occipital bun, the suprainiac fossa. Some of these are undeniably Neanderthal. And the rest? My God. A combination of archaic and modern human traits? Astounding. Do you realize what we’re looking at here? This could be the most important paleontological discovery of our lifetimes.”

  Another flash illuminated two more pyramids against the rear wall, between which a fissure split the granite. The shadows receded from his beam. As he approached, he realized that it was more than a mere alcove.

  The crevice was barely wide enough to allow him passage. His jacket rubbed on the walls with the repeated sound of a quickly drawn zipper. Five meters in, the ceiling lowered and he had to duck. The circle of his beam reached a flat surface ahead, and focused smaller and smaller as he advanced. He felt the subtle movement of air against his face and smelled the damp breath of the planet: the aged scents of crumbling stone, dust, and possibly the trace residues of smoke and something unpleasantly organic. Before he reached the terminus, a hole opened in the ground. He knelt and shined his light down into a smooth chute that descended beyond the light’s reach. One side had evenly spaced half-circles of shadow. He had seen similar markings before. They were handholds, chiseled into the stone, smoothed by time and frequent use.

  “What do you see?” Rivale asked.

  Ladd shrugged in response.

  “I’m going down,” he said, and swung his legs over the edge.

  “Let us belay you. If you fall and hurt yourself, we’ll never be able to get you back down the mountain.”

  Ladd was in no mood to argue. The moment his toes found the grooves, he tucked his flashlight into his coat pocket and started down. Rivale did her best to shine her light onto the primitive rungs. It barely provided enough illumination to navigate the small ledges, which had been carved in a zigzagging fashion. He realized he should have been counting the handholds, but it was too late now. All he could do was continue until he stepped down onto solid ground. Rivale’s flashlight was the pinprick of a distant star high above him when he finally stepped away from the wall and into the waiting blackness.

  * * *

  “Are you all right down there?” Pascual called. His voice echoed around Ladd, who turned and directed his light into the darkness.

  “Yeah,” he said in little more than a whisper. The cavern was so large that his beam was about as effective as a candle’s flame. It diffused to nothingness before it encountered the far wall.

  “Ramsey! Is everything okay?” Pascual shouted, louder this time.

  Ladd could only nod as he started forward with the clacking sound of his cleats. The cool breeze followed from the tunnel at his back. It waned as he pressed deeper into darkness that grew warmer with each step. Water dripped unseen around him with discordant plipping and plinking sounds, beneath which he heard faint scritching that immediately brought rats to mind. A vile stench permeated his balaclava, forcing him to take several deep breaths through his mouth to keep from retching. Something must have crawled in here to die. He imagined a festering bear carcass crawling with rodents and felt his stomach clench.

  The clatter of crampons echoed from the chute behind him.

  He drew wide arcs across the chamber with his beam. Petroglyphs spiraled up a cluster of stalagmites, which glistened with the condensation dripping from above. The uneven ground was smooth. Eons of dissolved minerals had accreted into hardened puddles reminiscent of melted wax. The domed ceiling was spiked with stalactites. Bats shuffled restlessly in their shadows. He wondered how they had managed to find their way this deep into the mountain before the ice broke away and revealed the cave.

  A light bloomed behind him and stretched his shadow across the floor.

  “These aren’t as old as the others,” Rivale said.

  Ladd glanced back to find her scrutinizing the carvings on the stalagmites. When he turned around again, he caught movement in his beam. A quick black blur. Near the ground. There and gone before he could clearly identify it. His skin crawled at the thought of a rat scurrying up his pant leg and
nipping into the meat of his thigh. They were filthy, insatiable creatures. It might not be as effective as a flamethrower, but at least he had a flare gun in his pack. If nothing else, the sudden and blinding glare would serve to startle the vermin back into the godforsaken warrens in which they dwelled. He slowed to retrieve it from his pack and felt emboldened with his finger on the trigger, even though he knew he could only use it with the utmost caution for fear of violating the integrity of the site and destroying anything of potential anthropological significance.

  “Put that thing away before you end up setting yourself on fire,” Pascual said. “This may be little more than a peashooter, but it will definitely ruin a rat’s day.”

  The wan light glinted from the barrel of the Smith & Wesson 22A semi-automatic target pistol in his fist.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Ladd asked.

  “My backpack.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “A lot of bad things can happen to an American traveling abroad. I never leave the country without it.”

  Ladd shook his head and followed his nose toward the rear of the cavern.

  “I don’t have to tell you, Ramsey, how much a genuine hominin fossil could fetch on the black market. Entire expeditions had been slaughtered for less.”

  Ladd conceded the point. He just hoped Pascual didn’t accidentally shoot him in the back.

  The camera flashed as Nelson captured the glyphs for Rivale, and then set about documenting the cave as a whole. Ladd was finally able to take in the magnitude of his surroundings. The cavern was the size of a small warehouse. Natural stone columns connected the ground to the fifteen-foot-high ceiling at random intervals. Petroglyphs covered every available surface. Most of the individual designs were no larger than an inch square. Rivale was right. They looked like the cuneiform on the ancient tablets he had seen, which only served to heighten the sense of surreality. How had a four thousand year old form of writing found its way onto the walls inside a frozen mountain a continent away and, by all accounts, a geological era apart?