Chapter Fifty-Two
SHE SAW IT THEN TOO. A patch of darkness against the blush of gray that was breaking dawn. A quick, fluid pass between one tree and the next not 30 yards away. It wasn’t a coyote or a wolf; neither animal had that grace of movement.
She caught a glimpse of a short, furred tail and the silhouette of a very large but low-carried rump that couldn’t be hidden behind the tree. It looked bigger than the white tiger she’d found on Jim Thompson’s property. Bigger and more massive. Certainly bigger than anything she’d ever want to encounter out here without a gun.
Silently damning the color-sucking dawn, she squinted, catching the subtle gradations of dark and light.
Stripes.
A saber-tooth?
She returned the pressure on Mike’s hand with such force he almost cried out.
But was it really a saber-tooth cat? A look at the head would easily confirm it. No hiding those trademark canines that gave the genus the scientific name she’d always found so ironically endearing and comical when given an English twist: Smilodon.
Only there was nothing endearing or comical about the animal half-hidden in the trees if it was a saber-tooth cat. Not at 700-plus pounds with 10-inch fangs. If it decided to attack …
Stay calm, Donna willed herself. Sitting on the ground with their legs stretched out made her and Mike especially vulnerable. It robbed them of any defense. But if they moved, that could possibly trigger the animal’s prey instinct. No way either of them would be able to outrun the beast. She risked a look up the tree they leaned against. One of them could probably boost the other up into the branches, but whether the other one could get up in time, too …
Mike followed her glance, reaching the same conclusions, having the same doubts.
A peripheral motion drew his attention back to the animal behind the far tree. He tensed, watching the rump and tail disappear as the animal circled the tree and the massive shoulders and fringed face came into view.
The sun broke the horizon as the cat swung its head toward them. Daggered canines glinted in the light.
Mike felt the race of his heart pounding in his ears.
Snuffling the air, the big cat looked right at them.
“Tree!” Donna whispered.
Mike nodded. “You first.”
“You weigh too much for me to pull you up. You first.”
With no time to argue, they scrambled to their feet. Mike placed a foot in the step of Donna’s hands and swung up to the lowest limb some eight feet off the ground.
The cat crouched, clearly attracted by their movement.
Mike wrapped his legs tight around the limb and thrust his hand toward Donna. She put her right hand into his grip, reaching for the branch with her left as he hauled her up. Her left hand shook as she tried to grab the thick limb.
Gritting his teeth against her weight and the awkward angle of his body, Mike heaved her high enough for her to grab at the branch with her entire arm. Using her chest as leverage, she kicked her feet up and over, catching both the limb and Mike in her scissored grip.
The cat charged. Built for the short-distance ambush, it covered the ground between them in a few powerful bounds.
Donna shifted frantically to find her balance and free Mike from her scissor lock.
Below them, the big cat circled, looking up.
Looking down, all Mike could focus on were the cat’s large, curved canines. “Hah!” he yelled at the cat. “Shoo! Go!”
Donna clutched to the branch, hugging it with her body, not trusting her hands to hold on with their VTSE-induced tremors. The next branch up curved over her, taunting. She had even less trust in her body to climb higher. And for some reason Mike wasn’t making a move to climb up either. “Go on,” she told him.
He tore his eyes from the cat to stare at her, realizing she wasn’t going any farther. Probably couldn’t, even with his help. His gaze returned to the cat padding below, now falling back on its haunches every few steps and swiping towards them with its massive claws. “I’m staying with you.” Having no other weapon, he slipped his belt off, more to use as a distraction than anything else.
The cat dropped to all fours, pinned its ears back and growled, a deep staccato rumble befitting its size that echoed off the trees. Startled, Mike and Donna both recoiled at the unexpected sound.
“I think it can rear up,” Donna whispered, “like a bear. But I don’t think it can jump this high. Look at the build: too short in the back and just too massive up front. It’s a mauler, not a jumper.”
“I’m not sure I want to bet on just how high it can jump,” Mike said. “I’ve seen those videos of lions and tigers that made it over ravines and fences experts didn’t think they could ever clear. If it’s hungry enough or pissed enough, I’m gonna believe it might set a few records.”
She studied it a moment longer as it resumed circling beneath them. “That’s just it. I don’t think it is hungry enough or pissed enough. It’s not acting aggressive. Not really. More like it’s expecting a handout. It probably associates people with food and doesn’t recognize us as prey. So long as we don’t antagonize it. Or get any closer to it. Maybe if—”
Something caught the cat’s attention—a flick of movement or rustle in the grass—and the saber-tooth streaked off, its massive chest low to the ground, its powerful haunches driving it forward. Leaping an easy 12 feet at the end of its charge, it dipped its head and brought up a flurry of wings and feathers. A dozen prairie chickens scattered off around it. It swatted a second bird to the ground and buried its muzzle in its breakfast, ignoring the two humans still perched in the tree.
“Appetizers,” Mike concluded. “Before ordering its main course: us.”
“It probably knows about birds since it lived in an open enclosure. Otherwise, I bet it was fed meat from animals already dead. It may not even understand it can hunt anything other than small mammals and birds.”
“Maybe, but didn’t you say that white tiger that escaped was killing livestock? I’m betting this guy learns pretty fast, too.”
While the cat made quick work of the prairie chickens, Mike risked a glance southward, toward the compound. A roll of smoke hung low on the horizon. Somewhere, the fire was still burning. He wondered if it was simply so far out of control it would have to burn itself out or would need planes and helicopters to snuff it with fire retardants. Or if there was too much else going on for civil services to respond to and be able to control it all. He’d seen the scenarios for widespread panic, knew how quickly things could go from order to chaos to bedlam. He also knew how amazingly effective civil services could be in the toughest situations. But in a small county without many resources and with the best help—the National Guard—occupied on its own mission, just how effective could small fire departments and law enforcement really be?
Then again, maybe someone in authority could see the big picture as clearly as he could. Someone with guts enough to say, “Let it burn.” Someone preaching to his superiors even now that any firefighters on the scene should be encouraging the flames to spread, not putting them out.
Beside him on the limb, Donna moaned. A low sound she obviously tried to stifle, but wasn’t successful at. One look at her told Mike she was in pain. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Feels like I’m being electrocuted. Like I put my finger in a wall socket. Is that one of the symptoms in your reports?”
Mike shook his head. “Maybe it’s what they injected you with.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe that’s what it does when it’s working. When it’s refolding the bad proteins and making them good.”
“Only we don’t know that they’re good,” Donna reminded him. “In any case, I didn’t feel anything—at least nothing really noticeable—when the good ones went bad. Maybe a headache or being tired, but I was under a lot of stress workwise, so it could have just been that. This, though—” she took a sharp breath, “this I would have noticed. How about you?”
> “I’m okay. Nothing yet. Hopefully nothing to come.”
In the distance, the saber-tooth had finished its meal. Raising up on its haunches, its front legs dangling an impressive distance from the ground, the cat scanned the land around. Mike could read the animal’s dilemma clearly enough. Out of its familiar pen, no fences, just a wide world to explore and hunt—which way to go? Away from the tree, he thought at it, encouraging it to move on.
It glanced once over its shoulder, looking directly at Mike and Donna, then strolled off toward the northeast where a scraggle of junipers grew maybe a mile away.
When it was clear the cat wasn’t turning back, Mike relaxed the death grip he’d been using on the branch. He exhaled, long and deep. But he didn’t move until the cat had disappeared into the grass and distance. Then he swung off the limb and dropped the last couple of feet to the ground.
Reaching up, he caught Donna’s hips as she rolled herself off the branch. He braced her against his body, back to front, and let her use the length of him as a slide to ease her way down. She felt good against him. As she leaned back, his hands circled over her breasts and he squeezed. A surge of excitement rushed downward, an instinctive, sexual response to her closeness and to the need to displace the adrenalin that had built to peak levels over the past few minutes. It held him, hard, for a moment, and then, thankfully, the rush was gone. Now wasn’t the time to give in to chemical urges.
In the circle of his arms, Donna turned to face him. Her rush was in less of a hurry to leave. Drawing him into her, she placed her lips on his and ground her hips, her arms, her lips into him, kissing him most thoroughly. A greedy, prolonged kiss that was easily reawakening Mike’s urges.
There was no telling how far the resurgence might have led if not for the rattle of a twig falling through branches. Instantly they froze. A renewed flood of adrenaline displaced all other emotion as they waited for another clue as to what had made the noise. Cave bear? Mammoth? Another saber-tooth?
They jumped at the sudden chit chit chit that pierced the air. Mike’s held breath burbled out in a half-laugh. As one, he and Donna turned accusing stares on the squirrel scolding them from a nearby branch.
“With that, I think it’s time to go,” Mike said. “Are you up for it?”
“Sure. It’s just a strong tingle of electricity shooting through now. I’ll let you know if it gets worse.”
Mike was pretty sure she wouldn’t, that the only way he’d know things were worse was when she collapsed, but he didn’t press her on it. The sun was well up now and they still had a long way to go.
Chapter Fifty-Three
IT WAS ONLY 10:00 AND THEY WERE already prickled with sweat in prelude to the soaring temperatures that had been this year’s unusual summer pattern when Mike and Donna saw the kettle of vultures circling low in the sky just to the east. From their vantage on a hilly rise they had a clear view of the area that held the scavengers’ interest. A large, dark body swelled above the weedy hollow.
“It’s not far.” Donna shaded her eyes as she tried to make out what kind of animal it was.
“That way’s as good as this one,” Mike agreed, and they adjusted the direction they were heading by a few degrees in order to better see what had recently died on the prairie.
As they approached, the huge body resolved itself into one of the woolly rhinos. They hadn’t looked too healthy to begin with, Donna remembered, but beyond the disease it carried, the stress of escaping almost certainly contributed to this one’s death.
She bent near for a better look. The short fur, thinned by disease, was clearly not suited for the hot summer. Not with the incredibly thick skin beneath, too. “It may not have been the VTSE that killed it,” she told Mike. “Not directly, at least. If it wasn’t used to running around in the afternoon sun, it could easily have died from heat stroke.”
She stretched out a hand and, almost reverently, ran it across fur and skin, marveling at being able to touch a species only a handful of modern people had ever seen. “What an incredible testament to science and what we can do. Unimaginable, really, when you consider all the pieces that have to fall precisely into place in order to create such a magnificent beast from a bit of DNA.”
“Look at the size of this thing,” Mike marveled, moving around to examine its head and trace the curve of its horn. “How did herds of these beasts ever survive? I mean, you always see humongous dinosaurs surrounded by jungles of lush vegetation. But it wasn’t like these guys lived in the tropics. Can you imagine how much even one of these rhinos eats in a day? And then herds of mammoths on top of that? We’re talking Ice Age here, right? A few pockets of animals here and there I could understand. But don’t they say there were herds of millions of animals thundering over the frozen steppes the same way bison used to dominate the Great Plains? I just can’t wrap my head around that. Not after seeing this guy up close.”
“I’m not a paleontologist,” Donna said, “so I can’t do anything more than speculate. But animals are pretty amazing. One little thing in the environment can cause one group to die off like that,” she snapped her fingers, “while others seem to be able to adapt easily to most of the big changes nature throws at them. Maybe these guys were more efficient at processing what food they got. Or maybe they were able to store up enough food when it was plentiful to get them through the long winters they must have had. Kind of like bears. They just didn’t hibernate.”
”That’s still a lot of energy needed to keep an engine like this going,” Mike pointed out. He squatted down in front of the rhino’s head, looking deep into the animal’s unblinking eyes, trying to glean its mysteries as no doubt many Clovis hunters had done before. His blood stirred, drumming to a beat of days not so long past. In his imagination, Mike could conjure scenes of Ice Age hunters as jubilant as the still-circling vultures at finding fresh meat so readily available. Could easily see how a creature this massive could feed a small tribe for weeks the way Inuits could survive for months off the scavenged flesh of beached whales. The flies beginning to swarm the head, though, brought him back to reality. “They still weren’t successful in the end, were they?”
“Change is inevitable. Part of the process. Old species give way to new.”
“Except for sharks. They’ve been around forever. Like crocodiles.”
“And cockroaches.” Donna smiled. “I guess nature does get it right every once in a while—then it can’t improve on perfection.”
“But it can sure find some piss-ant ways to force change. Meteors, ice ages, global warming, disease. And then here comes people to help the process out. Maybe we were destined to reach some kind of evolutionary plateau before the next big extinction came along. But no, we’re too impatient. Let’s not look at what consequences our actions will have. Let’s burn fossil fuel, strip the rainforests and clone extinct animals that have already had their heyday. Let’s tamper with whatever cosmic plan is in place because we can and because we demand instant gratification. Let’s do what will benefit us today and leave tomorrow for thinking up even more things we can do to hasten our demise.”
Donna frowned. “Maybe we have reached our evolutionary plateau. Have you considered that? Maybe nature is counting on our hubris to take us down. Maybe this,” she pointed at the rhino, “is how we are supposed to die. I’m sure the dinosaurs and the mammoths didn’t think their time should be up either when they started dying out. We can’t second-guess everything we do. We’ll just drive ourselves crazy.”
“You’re probably right.” Mike yanked out a handful of fur a few strands at a time and tucked it in his pocket. A souvenir. Something he hadn’t been able to pick up at Triple E. “We should go,” he said as he stood up. “The buzzards are hungry and we’re keeping them from their breakfast.”
He glanced back once as they tramped their way toward civilization. The still-life of a dozen great black birds sitting on a woolly rhino carcass trying to figure out how to consume it all sent an Ice Age shiver through him.
“I wonder if birds get VTSE,” Donna said, looking back with him. “Are they a vector? If they eat infected meat will VTSE prions come out the other end?”
Mike cupped her elbow and turned her away. “Let’s let someone else figure that one out, okay? Right now, we just need to find a phone.”
*
Even living in such a remote part of the state, Donna was used to more activity in the fields. The odd steer or two at least. Even the occasional glimpse of a pronghorn. Not this eerie desolation. Her father had once told her how the skies had cleared of traffic for two days after the Twin Towers had been destroyed on 9/11. During the days he’d missed the hum of planes and the sight of contrails high in the sky. It was at night, though, when he’d most felt their non-presence. The same stars were there, the same city lights. But the familiar twinkles of aircraft were simply gone. Even the flashing beacons on radio towers warding planes away became a poignant reminder that something was missing there in the night skies.
Looking out over the fenced fields where only the occasional bird flew by gave her that same sense of emptiness. Of desolation. Of a world gone wrong.
Grimly, she kept moving, knowing there was simply no other choice.
Less than an hour later they finally stumbled across a road. It was ill-maintained but it was paved. That meant a high probability of finding a concentration of people somewhere along it. They turned north, picking their pace up a bit at the thought their long trek was nearly done.
The black 4-wheeler that appeared about ten minutes later confirmed they were closing in on their target. With a shout, they stood in the middle of the road, waving their arms to flag the driver down.
The vehicle slowed as the man behind the wheel palmed his phone, either to call a friend to tell them how he’d run across two strangers stupid enough to be walking down a remote road in the middle of a summer day, Mike thought, or to take a picture to prove it.
As the vehicle came closer, Donna saw the logo plastered on its hood and doors: three interlocked E’s.
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