by Chris Walley
Vero tapped him gently on the shoulder. “No! Don’t lie down. You are too vulnerable. Sit!”
In a sudden surge of emotion, Merral felt certain that Vero was going mad and a wave of anger rose in him. I have had enough of this crazy sentinel lunacy.
He was about to say something when he looked up at Vero’s mud-stained face and saw his mouth drop open and his eyes widen.
Suddenly, Vero was on all fours, cringing low on the ground.
“Stay down!” he hissed in a fierce, urgent tone.
Merral, still lying flat, pressed himself against the ground.
“S–slowly,” Vero whispered, a hint of a stutter in his words, “look behind you.”
Merral rolled over and stared toward the lake.
Along the water’s edge, dark tall figures were moving.
For a second figures and moving were the only words that came to him because his eyes could not make sense of what he saw. The figures were large, walked on two feet, and had an upright stance, but they were not—and he knew it instantly—human. It was not just that they were a dark brownish black in color and were covered in hair, but that they had the wrong proportions, the wrong posture, and the wrong motion. Their arms seemed to reach well below the waist, there was an odd stooping character to their stance, and they had a peculiar loping gait that no human legs could ever have imitated. There was an oddity too about their heads that, at this distance, he could recognize but not define.
Merral realized with a sharp thrill of horror that these were definitely not men. But then neither were they apes; not only was the shape wrong, but there was a purposefulness, a sense of mission in their motion that he had never seen in an ape.
“Vero,” he heard himself whisper, “what are they?”
He saw that the figures were moving toward the sides of the gorge overlooking where the river began its plunge over Carson’s Sill. “I–I wish I knew,” Vero answered in numbed tones. “I know less now than I did. But if I do not know what they are, I can guess what they are after. . . .”
He stared at Merral. “They are after us.”
13
Merral gaped at the creatures again, oddly aware that his throat was dry. The creatures were big, nearly half as high again as a big man, and they appeared to have powerful muscles. It was all too easy to imagine one stamping on a dog and hurling it effortlessly high into a tree. Suddenly Merral became conscious of his heart pounding in his chest, his skin tingling, and his stomach twisting on itself. The deep fear that he had sensed existed last night now seemed very close. I am really afraid, he realized.
“T–time to get out, Merral,” Vero whispered in shaken tones. Merral found a strange comfort in the fact that his friend was also very scared.
“Yes, a good idea. I have a reluctance to try and dialogue. How many do you think there are?”
“Six at least. The source of the hair you found. . . .”
Merral rolled away and looked to their left. He forced himself to ignore the thudding in his chest and to reason out what to do next.
“We must plan, Vero,” he said, surprised by how level his voice sounded. “We cannot be picked up here easily by any plane or rotorcraft—there is too much vegetation. And we are too near those things for my liking.”
Vero, still staring down to the lake, just nodded.
Merral looked up through the trees. “We must climb again, I am afraid. See how this hill is flat topped?”
“Yes. . . . They are dropping into the gorge.”
Merral looked round to see the last of the creatures lowering itself over the rocks with a disturbingly human motion of the forearms.
“Yes, but we must move. They will find out shortly that we are gone and will trace our route.”
Vero looked up at the summit, his face bizarrely transfigured by the mud. “It’s another few hundred meters up. It’s steep at the top. Can we climb it?”
“I hope so. I can see a crack of some sort. I think we call for a rescue pickup as soon as we can get up there. We’d better go.”
They set off and Merral led the way, trying to avoid making any noise and vigilantly looking ahead between the trees. He was aware of Vero following closely behind him. They wound their way up through the firs, and soon the view of the lake disappeared behind the wet foliage. With the initial shock now waning, Merral asked himself, Do they have a sense of smell? How far can they see? Could they track us up this way? Mindful of his fear, conscious of tired limbs and of the soft rain wetting his face, Merral forced himself onward.
Ahead through the trees, he could see two house-size blocks of pitted, charcoal black lava that had come to rest after rolling down the hill. In between the great rocks, Merral could now see properly up to the top of the hill. The cloud was slowly lifting, and he could make out a steep, bare slope of broken rubble capped by a slablike expanse of rock. In the thick lava unit that formed the top of the hill, there was a dark, slitlike fracture in which small trees grew. Merral motioned Vero to stop, noticing that on his tired face the rain was running down and mingling with the mud. I must look like that.
“Look, that’s the way, Vero,” he said as he carefully looked up the hill. “Through this gap in the rocks, up to the crevasse, and then on to the summit plateau.”
“I can see. But what if the top is occupied?” Vero’s voice was urgent.
For a brief moment, a spasm of despair ran through Merral’s mind. “No,” he answered after a moment’s evaluation of the possibility, “I think it’s unlikely. It’s bare rock. They like cover.”
“So we believe,” Vero answered stiffly. “But anyway, we have little choice.”
“I’m tempted to call in a rescue now. What do you think?”
Vero thought. “Not yet,” he said, pulling off his backpack and taking out his water bottle. “I must have a drink. I don’t want to use a signal here. On the chance they can locate us on it. Besides, if the top is occupied, we may want to retreat back to somewhere else.” He hurriedly swallowed some water.
Merral flung his own pack off his back, pulled out his own bottle, and took two hasty mouthfuls. “Fine, but let’s keep moving. They may have realized by now that we aren’t coming up through the gorge.”
“Yes.” Vero slung the pack on one shoulder and started to walk ahead.
Merral replaced his own bottle in his backpack and put it back on his shoulders. He was about to follow Vero when he stopped. Somewhere there was a noise: a faint scrabbling that made his spine shiver. Merral looked around, conscious of the darkness under the firs about him. A dozen paces ahead Vero was starting to wind his way between the high, overhanging dark rocks.
There was another noise.
Something dropped down from the top of the rocks. Something that, in the fraction of the second before it struck the ground, appeared to Merral to be like a child wrapped in shiny brown rags.
“Look out!”
Vero turned as the shape fell toward him and stepped back awkwardly. The creature landed lightly on all fours ahead of him and sprang upright.
Now the shape became clear to Merral, as if the image had just focused. It was a small creature, smaller than Vero, with squat brown legs, long arms, and hands that seemed to swing and thrust as it hopped strangely forward. Despite the small size, there was an air of menace and aggression about it.
Merral began to run toward Vero. As he did, he saw the creature suddenly bound forward with a surprising speed, holding its hands out in front as if they were weapons. Vero sidestepped clumsily, swinging his backpack off his shoulder at the brown thing. The pack struck the creature on the chest with a thud and it staggered back, flailing its arms and displaying oddly flattened hands. As Merral bounded forward, he realized that he had no strategy.
With a wild chirring noise, the creature flung the pack aside and sprung to its feet with a bounce. It began to advance on Vero, who had moved back against the side of the left-hand rock. There, realizing that he was unable to retreat farther, he reached f
or his bush knife. As he pulled it out, the creature leapt at him. A polished brown arm flicked out and, even as the blade extended, the knife was swept clean out of Vero’s hand. It whistled overhead and rattled down against the rocks. Vero yelped and snatched his hand back. From the creature came a strange, high-pitched hissing noise.
Suddenly the creature seemed to recognize Merral’s approach. It swiveled its head and looked at him with small eyes as black as shadows. Merral, coming to a halt just in front of it, could see that the head was small, vaguely reptilian in its profile, and covered with brown, waxy plates. It was like nothing he had seen or imagined.
With a fast but somehow ungainly shuffle, the creature turned round to face him, its legs clattering woodenly against the stones, its arms opening wide. Merral was oddly aware of details: the rain dribbling down the carapace, a yellow scratch on a chest plate, the black, lidless, deep-set eyes with a ring of plates around them.
The strange and terrible thought that he had to fight it came into Merral’s mind. Reality seemed to have fled. Merral fumbled for the bush knife, his hand closing tight on the handle, his wet fingers reaching for the release button. With a sharp click the gray blade extended. He held it out and moved toward the thing. As if recognizing danger, the creature raised its strange arms high.
Now, as they faced each other, Merral saw the creature properly for the first time. Yet he felt that even now he saw it only as series of impressions of separate parts, as if its unfamiliarity made it impossible to see as a whole. He was struck by the polished-wood appearance of the creature and the massive segmented platelike sheets over the front of the chest that fused into a single hard vertical ridge along the abdomen. What made the most impression on him, though, was not the grotesque physical appearance, but the sense of malignant intelligence in the recessed, tar black, resinous eyes. What he faced was not simply an animal.
The hands moved slowly, and Merral saw that there were three fingers vaguely like those of a man and then a thumb and forefinger whose matching flat inner sections made a pair of blades with serrated edges like a pair of wire cutters. As he watched, the creature seemed to flick them open and shut almost as if to demonstrate them. It came to Merral as a cold fact that the gape was quite wide enough to take off an ankle or a wrist. Various deep, hissing noises came from the wide horizontal slit of the mouth, and Merral wondered if there was a language in them.
As the thing inched closer, making an odd clicking noise as its plates rubbed together, Merral waved the dull metal blade uncertainly in front of him. He saw new details: the swollen and armored joints of limbs that approximated elbows and knees and the clawlike feet that pivoted oddly at the ankles.
“Lord,” he prayed aloud, “I don’t know what to do.”
The creature took another rolling step forward, its body swaying slightly from side to side. Then it lowered itself down on bended leg joints.
It sprang.
Merral leaped aside, swinging the blade out as he jumped. The blade struck a plate on the creature’s arm and, with a dull clatter, bounced off. Merral landed awkwardly on the wet grass and slid into a half crouch. In a strange hopping motion, the thing was bearing upon him. I must not get knocked down. With his left hand he found the edge of a rock and pushed himself upright. As he did, the creature lunged again.
Merral swung his right boot up to ward off the attack. But the creature’s hand swiveled, opened, and seized his ankle. There was a sudden, sharp stab of agony and Merral kicked hard. The bladed hand opened wide and his ankle flew free. A new hiss came from the creature, and Merral wondered if it was a note of triumph. Now, less than a meter away, he was aware of a strange, unpleasant odor that brought back memories of college biology laboratories.
“Hit it, Merral!” Vero cried. And Merral, conscious of a surging pain in his foot, began to raise the blade again. But, as he lifted the handle, it came to him with a sharp clarity that his opponent was too armored. He had to find a weakness.
The creature moved again, this time in a crablike crouch with the head tilting and swaying this way and that, as if calculating the next attack. The broad mouth opened into a wide oval to show matching rows of sharp-pointed, brown teeth.
It is in no hurry. In a new pitch of alarm, he noticed vivid red on its left hand. A quick glance down showed blood on his right ankle and he realized that he was hurting there.
I must strike, but where? He stared at his opponent, suddenly noticing the beads of water running down the smooth surface of the creature’s skin. Skin or shell? he asked himself and pushed the question aside. The creature seemed to stretch its head, and for the briefest of moments, Merral saw a patch of wrinkled soft yellow tissue between the hard brown plates of the neck and chest. Then the thing moved slowly toward him again, and Merral realized that he could not retreat. He knew it was going to attack again and he felt certain that this time it would go for his face or neck with those scissorlike blades.
As if from nowhere Vero appeared, bearing down on the creature with a branch in his hand. He swung it down hard on the thing’s head but it was a clumsy weapon, and as it descended, the creature suddenly turned sideways. The blow landed on the armored shoulder and bounced harmlessly off. But as it did, the thing turned its flattened head upward, exposing again the yellow patch. Suddenly, with a force and speed he did not know he had, Merral stabbed the blade forward into the exposed gap. For a fraction of a second, the blade struck shell and met an unyielding resistance. Then—just as Merral thought he had failed—it shuddered, turned, slipped a fraction sideways, and with an appalling sucking sound, plunged deep down into the soft tissue.
Everything happened at once.
The creature reeled back, striking the rocks with a cracking sound; the blade was snatched out of Merral’s hand; a high-pitched loud rasping scream echoed out of the red-foaming mouth. The bladelike fingers began flapping and clattering in desperation at the knife embedded in its throat.
Merral stood back, clutching the rock behind him, aware of fresh crimson drops on his wet legs. He shook uncontrollably and gasped for breath.
I have killed, was the thought that pounded again and again through his brain.
Over everything the terrible screaming—surely more human than animal—was continuing.
Suddenly Merral was aware of a wild-eyed Vero shaking him. “Quickly! Now! Let’s run while we can!”
Above his agony, Merral somehow recognized the truth of what was being said and began to move. He took three steps forward and looked at the creature that was now writhing like some monstrous broken insect on the wet grass.
Merral hesitated. Then, from far below, came strange bellowing howls.
“Quick!” Vero was snatching at his hand.
Merral began to run, vaguely conscious that his right ankle was on fire. He saw that Vero had recovered his bush knife and now had it ready with the blade out.
“What was it?” gasped Merral.
“Save your breath. But well done!”
Well done? Merral thought, in an astonishment that cut through his appalled and confused state of mind. Well done! An intelligent creature is dying—is already dead perhaps—because of my action. Do we applaud such things? Then he realized that he had had no option.
He pushed the idea out of his mind and, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his ankle, began to run as fast as he could.
They were beyond the great rocks now and were coming out of the edge of the trees. Ahead lay the open, desolate scree of the hill and above that stood the final black wall of the cliff. The cloud was lifting and the rain seemed to be dying away.
They stumbled out onto the wet piles of broken angular rock, heading for the narrow dark cleft that cut through the upper cliff. From below them, amid the trees, they heard a series of booming bellows followed by high-pitched chattering.
Merral moved forward with a new urgency. But increasingly, as they ascended over the rough blocks of the scree, pain took over: the pain of his lungs, the pained tire
dness of his limbs, and, above all, the pain of his bleeding ankle.
Suddenly, Vero turned, saw him lagging behind, and threw down his torn backpack.
“Quick, Merral, let me have your pack,” he said amid gasps, the sweat, mud, and rain on his face barely masking a look of intense fear. “We’ll throw away mine and anything we don’t need. . . . Let me carry it. Quickly!”
Merral, trying to take any weight off his injured ankle, passed the pack over and watched as Vero feverishly threw out the tent and camping equipment, spare clothes, and much of the remaining food. Vero, his eyes nervously searching the dark margin of the trees below, stuffed in some things from his own pack, which he then threw away. Putting the remaining backpack on his back, Vero turned to Merral.
“Does your foot hurt?”
“Not badly,” Merral replied, his voice uneven. “I’d like to wash the cut, though.”
Vero looked round. “Not here. That . . . thing came out of nowhere. If we can make the top we will have some respite. How fast would a pickup be?”
“Ten, twenty minutes. Make an emergency call and they will be in fast. It depends whether a ship is in the air.”
“That will have to do. Anyway, it’s only another ten minutes climb. You’ll be in a nice sterile rotorcraft inside half an hour. Meanwhile, let’s go.”
They climbed on up over the unstable blocks, hardly daring to look behind. Slowly, the top cliff became closer.
The wound in his foot nagged at Merral as he moved on over the uneven ground, giving him a jarring agony at every slight twist of his ankle. Not having the pack helped, but he wished he could take some painkiller. Over his pain, he became aware that it was no longer raining and that the cloud was lifting.
Soon, though, they were in the cleft of the rock and its dark walls engulfed them. There had better not be anything here, thought Merral. I cannot fight again. But here all was silent and up at the top of the crevasse was open sky.
The crevasse was steep and strewn with boulders, and soon they were reduced to scrabbling on their hands and knees. Finally, they came to the top of the cleft, where the way to the summit was blocked by a final sheer wall of smooth gray-black rock, twice as high as a man. At one side, a pile of loose blocks of rock suggested a precarious way to the top.