Bestiary

by Robert Masello

  “Later—I’ll tell you later,” Carter gasped. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Del said, “I’ve got a guy who’s bleeding bad, behind the trees.”

  It had to be Greer. Carter glanced over at the golf cart, now a pile of wreckage, tumbled onto its side—the work, undoubtedly, of the escaping phoenix—and no longer usable to transport the injured Greer.

  Carter followed Del for a couple hundred yards to where Greer was propped up against a tree, tying a tourniquet, made from his own shirtsleeve, around the leg where Sadowski had shot him.

  “I knew something like this would happen!” Greer snarled. “I fuckin’ knew it!”

  “We’ve got to get out of here, now!” Carter said, grabbing Greer under one arm and hoisting him, groaning, to his feet. With Carter holding one arm and Del the other, they were able to drag him away from the bestiary and back toward the house. But by the time they reached the wooden footbridge, Greer was screaming in agony, begging for a brief rest.

  “Okay,” Carter said urgently, “but we’ve got to do it under the bridge.”

  Del looked puzzled, then followed Carter’s gaze. What he saw he would never have believed—there were creatures that had been extinct for eons roaming the green lawns and eucalyptus groves, armor-plated dinosaurs (some kind of ankylosaurids?) lumbering between the trees, rubbing their spiky backs against the bark of the trees. Not far from them a powerful, spotted catlike creature, with a glistening patch of black fur that bristled and swelled like wings above its shoulders, prowled the gravel pathway. As Del watched in amazement, the hyenalike beast (could it be a homotherium, he wondered, thought to have disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene, fourteen thousand years ago?) stealthily approached one of the peacocks preening in the late-day sun, then pounced on it with the fluid movement of a flying tiger. Purple feathers flew in a frenzied cloud.

  Del looked at Carter, as if for confirmation of what was before his eyes, but Carter just nodded, and hauled Greer deeper beneath the footbridge. Greer cupped a hand in the stream and rubbed the cold water over his face to keep from going into shock. Under his breath, he muttered an unending stream of curses and epithets.

  “We can get some help and come back for you here,” Carter said, but Greer shook his head and said, “I’ll never last—I’m losing too much blood.”

  “You want to try to move again?” Carter said, though he doubted Greer would be able to make it far.

  “I have to.” Greer propped himself up again with the aluminum bat, and after Del checked to see that the animals were still far enough off—the cat was still dining on the peacock—they skulked back toward the empty stables, then down the sloping hillside to the forecourt of the house . . . where Del’s truck and al-Kalli’s black Mercedes were still parked.

  “Let’s get him in the truck,” Carter said, and as Del threw open the door on the passenger side, Greer tossed the bat away and said, “I can do it—I can do it.” He hauled himself up onto the seat, a thick ribbon of blood coursing down his leg.

  “Take him to UCLA hospital—it’s the closest!” Carter said to Del, and Del said, “Where are you going?”

  But Carter already had a plan, if he was lucky. He ran to the limousine, ducked his head inside, and yes—Jakob had left the keys in the ignition; why not, when the car was parked on a gated estate with its own security force? “I’m going home!” Carter shouted across to Del. With the wildfires spreading—and now a pack of primeval predators roaming free—he only wanted to get to Beth and Joey and make sure they were safe. Nothing else mattered to him now.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  BY THE TlME he got to the back gates that provided the service entrance to the estate, Sadowski was huffing and puffing so hard he thought his chest would explode. He swung them wide open and, once safely outside, stopped and leaned against the wall, his head down, his palms flat against the vine-covered stone.

  Jesus H. Christ, what had happened back there?

  The plan was just to stage a little raid, kind of like the one al-Kalli himself had sponsored back in Mosul. But Sadowski had been cheated on that one—he knew that Greer took home a whole lot more, in that big sealed box, than he’d ever shared up with the other guys on the mission—and this was going to be Sadowski’s chance to even up the score. And maybe screw up whatever new moneymaking deal Greer had struck with the Arab now.

  But that just wasn’t how it had turned out so far. Man, was it not. Florio was dead—that gigantic bird had stuck a claw right through his chest cavity—and there was no telling what had happened to Tate, that cowardly piece of shit. Sadowski swallowed hard—his mouth was so dry he had almost no spit—and glanced at his watch. What was supposed to have taken no more than ten or fifteen minutes had consumed the better part of an hour. And if he didn’t get out of there fast—very fast—he’d be cooked right along with everything else that fucking Arab owned.

  Those goddamned animals included.

  He took a long, ragged breath and looked down the road, fully expecting to see the Explorer gone. Everything else had gone wrong, why not that? But there it was, parked where he’d left it, in the shade of some old oaks.

  And if he wasn’t mistaken, that was Tate, sitting in the driver’s seat and fiddling under the steering wheel . . . trying, no doubt, to hot-wire the engine.

  Sadowski slung his backpack higher on his shoulder and tromped over to the car. Even with the door open, Tate didn’t hear him coming, and only looked up from under the dashboard when Sadowski shook the car keys and said, “I ought to leave you here to burn.”

  “Stan!” Tate exploded, with patently fake enthusiasm, “you made it! That’s great—I mean, I was really worried!”

  Sadowski grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the front seat. He tossed his Browning onto the passenger side, but before he stepped up into the car, he sniffed the air. The acrid smell of smoke was already wafting up from the dry scrub a few yards down the hill. He checked his watch—the first firebomb had ignited at precisely the right time, but the flames were moving even faster than he’d planned. He could see them now—orange licks crackling through the brown grass and racing up the trunks of the dry trees. Like fireworks going off, the tops of the oaks and eucalyptus trees burst into balls of flame, first one tree, and then the next, and before he could even get the Explorer into gear, a huge flaming branch crashed down onto the road about ten feet in front of the car.

  “Wait for me!” Tate shouted, running around to the passenger side.

  But Sadowski was already backing up, hoping to get enough room to maneuver around the burning branch.

  “Wait! Stan!” Tate was shouting, as his hands scrabbled at the side of the car. “Give me a break!”

  He should have thought of that, Sadowski figured, before he ditched his bat and left him alone in that zoo from hell.

  He switched gears and started forward again, but Tate had run right in front of the car, screaming and waving his arms back and forth. Billows of black smoke were starting to drift across the road and over the stone walls of the estate. Sadowski shook his head and motioned for Tate to get out of the way. He blasted the horn, but Tate threw himself on the front of the car and clung to the hood ornament—a Liberty Bell that Sadowski had special-ordered from Philadelphia.

  Sadowski drove ahead a few yards, Tate still hanging on, when everything suddenly went crazy—a whole tree must have toppled onto the hood of the car. The windshield shattered, the roof caved in, and a thousand angry red sparks zipped around the interior like fireflies. Any second the gas tank could explode!

  The door was dented and jammed; Sadowski had to shove his shoulder against it three times before he could even get it open. Toppling onto the pavement, he scrambled through a maze of burning leaves and twigs. He didn’t even know which way he was running—the smoke was too thick and he could barely stand to open his eyes—but he knew he just had to get away from the car. The explosion, when it came, knocked him head over heels. He lay where
he fell—there was earth under him, not concrete, that much he could tell—but there was no time to dig any kind of trench or hole; with his eyes shut, he dug the asbestos sheath out of his backpack. He fumbled to open it, then pushed his feet down into one end, pulled the rest of it up and over his head, and with singed fingers yanked the zipper up from the inside. If the fire passed over him quickly enough, and he could just catch enough oxygen, he’d survive. If it lingered, he’d wind up like Tate, who was surely nothing but a cinder in the middle of the road by now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  EVEN AS HE pulled the door of the limousine shut, Carter knew this was no ordinary car. The door was heavier and more solid than any door, of any car, that he had ever felt. It closed with a thump like the sound of a bank vault being sealed. And when he looked at the front console, his suspicions were confirmed. There were enough meters and screens and dials to fill the cockpit of a 747. This, he guessed, was what you’d call an armored car, fully equipped and state-of-the-art—exactly what you’d expect a man like Mohammed al-Kalli to travel in.

  The late Mohammed al-Kalli.

  He put that thought from his mind as quickly as possible—there’d be time enough later to mull over all the horrors he had seen that day; right now, he just needed to pilot the car down from Bel-Air, across the freeway, and up again into Summit View; on an ordinary day it would take fifteen minutes. Today, however, as dusk began to fall and wildfires loomed, there was no telling how long it would take.

  For a vehicle of such size and weight, Carter found that it steered with the ease and delicacy of a nimble sports car.

  He made a tight circle in the forecourt of the house, and as he passed the front steps, he saw the door swing open and Jakob, his arms holding a big iron box, standing in amazement. Carter glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Jakob was shouting, then he dropped the box and groped for something at his belt. Carter couldn’t hear what he was saying—the car was virtually noiseproof—but he knew damn well that it wasn’t a good idea to wait around to find out.

  He touched the gas pedal more firmly, and the limo smoothly accelerated down the drive; he hesitated even to guess what kind of horsepower this engine could muster—or what all the brightly lighted controls were for.

  But one of them had to be a phone. Without taking his eyes off the driveway for more than a second or two, he glanced at the console, saw something that said COMMUNICATIONS, and assumed that would be it. He pressed the black button, expecting perhaps a voice prompt, but instead he got nothing. He pressed it again, and this time an ear-splitting siren went off, a sound that was so loud, so prolonged, and so forlorn in its way that it might have been the cry of some ancient beast, like one of those whose lives he’d been working to preserve in the bestiary. The siren blared for several seconds, then went dead, and just when Carter thought it was over, it went off again. Several peacocks suddenly skittered across the drive, their tail feathers dragging, crying out in alarm—and when Carter rounded a turn, passing the fountain, he saw, off to the right, a roseate glow in the sky. The windows were thick, no doubt bulletproof, and tinted black, but even so Carter could now make out flames, rising and falling, moving like a glowing tide through the trees on the western border of the estate . . .

  ... And moving before them, lurching oddly but swiftly across the hillside, a huge dark shape.

  The klaxon went off again, its plaintive wail piercing the air, and the dark shape seemed to change its direction, heading straight for the armored car.

  Oh my God, I’m drawing the gorgon, Carter thought. He slapped at the dashboard controls, while steering the limo with one hand down the hill. The siren seemed to stop, but a blue light continued to flash. Carter had no idea what it meant—global positioning? Silent alarm?

  He could see the gatehouse a few hundred yards ahead, but the gorgon was clearly tracking him now, and had even begun to adjust its course to cut him off before he got there. Carter gunned the engine—the Mercedes responded like a thoroughbred—but the driveway was narrow and curved, and suddenly he saw a white horse—with Bashir, the stable boy, riding him—right in front of the car. He hit the brakes, and the car ground to a halt just as the horse reared up in terror, throwing the boy to the side of the driveway. Before Carter could roll down the window and call out to him, the boy was running, running for his life, and the horse . . . the horse was whinnying and pawing in the air, at first at what looked like nothing, at a great black shadow, but which Carter could now see was something more. The glow of the approaching flames caught the dark green scales and the lacerating tail, snapping like a monstrous whip, of the gorgon—how could it have covered the distance so quickly?—as it savagely mauled the horse with its claws. Carter pressed the steering wheel everywhere, and the horn blasted, but the gorgon was undeterred. The horse turned to run, its white mane stained with blood, but the gorgon pounced on its back like a monstrous rider and the horse went down with its legs splayed out, broken, to either side.

  Carter hit the accelerator and tried to drive around the beast, but instead he caught its swishing tail, the front tires bouncing over its fleshy tip, and the gorgon swiped with one paw at the chassis of the car. Its claws screeched across the black metal and it swung its heavy head away from the dying horse to snap fiercely at the rear bumper.

  The gatehouse was just ahead, but there was no sign of Lee, the guard, and the gates themselves were closed . . . but Carter counted on the car to plow on through. He pressed down on the gas, sat back in the seat with both arms extended, his hands gripping the wheel, and hit the gates flying. The metal clanged, blue sparks shot up from the lock, and the gates flew off their hinges. The limousine spun half a turn into the road outside, its tires squealing, before Carter was able to gain control of it again and shoot off down the hill.

  No air bags? he wondered. Then thought—an armored car is built for running right through barriers. An air bag could actually incapacitate the driver. Al-Kalli’s car was made to thwart any ambush and keep on running.

  But all Carter wanted the car to do now was get him through the increasingly surreal landscape—the wispy clouds in the sky were tinged with a fiery glow, the air was bitter and acrid, the palm fronds were rustling like parchment high above—and deliver him to his wife and son. He drove down the winding road as fast as he could go, encountering dozens of other cars quickly exiting through their own private gates and drives. All the way, he had one eye on the road before him, the road back down to the city, and one eye on the rearview mirror; don’t turn around, as the saying went, something might be gaining on you. What he had left behind him, he knew no one would ever believe. And what, if anything, would be left of it once the fires had swept through, he could hardly bear to contemplate.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  HE’D NEVER BEEN the praying kind—God, when he thought about Him at all, was just some old guy in the sky to whom he might one day have to apologize—but wrapped in his fireproof blanket, the air like a furnace baking all around him, Sadowski was praying with all the earnest devotion of some medieval monk. He was sucking desperately at the oxygen in the sheath itself, and holding each breath for as long as he could, but he still didn’t know if he’d be able to outlast the fire. Fortunately, he must have been lying on a spot where the grass had already been burned away, and no bushes or shrubs were too close by, because the waves of fire seemed to pass over him swiftly, seeking new fuel. God, he was thinking, please don’t let me burn alive. Please don’t let me die here. I wasn’t really going to let Tate die out there—I’d have let him back in the car, I swear. And I wasn’t going to shoot Greer, either—much as he deserved it. The people I killed in Iraq—well, that was war, and they were Muslims anyway. They don’t believe in you—or they believe in some crazy other version of you that isn’t true—and I can’t believe it’s a sin, no matter how you look at it, to kill somebody who’s trying to kill you first.

  All around him, he could still hear the crackling of the underbrush as it bur
ned, and the occasional thump of a tree branch, severed from its trunk, crashing onto the street. Man, those incendiaries that Burt Pitt had designed sure as hell did their job—so well, in fact, that they’d nearly cost him his ass. He wondered if the others would go off with as much success—members of the Sons of Liberty had spread them all over the place, in ragged lines all across the Santa Monica Mountain Range and Topanga State Park, up and down from the Riviera Country Club to the Palisades Highlands and Summit View—and they had all been timed to cause maximum damage. Fifteen minutes after one set went off, and the fire department’s resources had been diverted to deal with the blaze, another set would go off miles away. There wouldn’t be enough firefighters or equipment on the entire west coast of the United States to stop the cataclysm that would follow.

  And wouldn’t America wake up on the fifth of July with a whole new attitude about the threat posed by open borders?

  The air in the bag was gone, and he could feel his own hot sweat pooling in the small of his back; his clothes were stuck on him like a wetsuit. The noise around him had subsided, and he thought it might be safe to pull the zipper down an inch or two and test the air. The second he did, a film of black ash fell onto his face, and he sputtered to get it off his lips and out of his mouth. But there wasn’t any fire to be seen, at least not through that tiny opening, and he had started to pull the zipper down a little more—damn, it was sticking—when he heard what sounded like footsteps, approaching from the street. Tate, he thought—he’d survived it somehow after all. And while his first impulse was to cry out for some help—come on, the danger was over now, couldn’t they just act like buddies once again?—he wasn’t sure that Tate wouldn’t harbor some grudge. He might take advantage of Sadowski’s defenseless position—wrapped in a bag with a stuck zipper—to beat the shit out of him.