“What about Kaliis?”
“Kaliis is going with us. He always goes with me – you know that.”
“Why not let him stay here?”
“Please,” said Grandpaw, “Let’s not argue. I need you here. That’s all there is to it.”
I threw down my kit and laid my gun across the top. Kaliis assured me they would activate the video system. “You’ll be able to follow our every move. If there’s a problem…”
Pat completed Kaliis’ sentence: “Amanda will remain here.”
Aunt Liza and I stood on the porch as Grandpaw and Uncle Pat mounted their horses. Aunt Liza uncharacteristically went to Pat. He leaned down and kissed her as she tearfully told him to be careful.
“We’ll find them,” he said and he and Grandpaw prodded the horses and they moved out of the yard, headed north.
Liza and I watched them leave as a cold wind stirred. Liza paused and looked at the sky. “Storm’s coming,” she said before dabbing at her eyes, turning and entering the house.
*
With tumbling noises coming from overhead, I settled in front of the holoscreen to watch the hunt unfold. The initial sensor data indicated the beast had passed less than forty minutes prior. Not only was it headed due north but the data also revealed two additional heat signatures. There was still hope for Toby and Riley if Papaw and Pat could catch up in time.
Meanwhile, I got to sit on the couch and watch.
Outside, the wind continued to blow. Grandpaw and Pat both had winter suits rolled up inside their kits, so they were set against the weather, if required, and with the temperature rapidly dropping, it looked as though the suits would come in handy. I had a winter suit as well, rolled up inside my kit-bag, but it didn’t look like I would need mine any time soon.
Kaliis already wore a heated suit as well as a helmet and body armor. Better safe than sorry, he always said.
Grandpaw and Pat were trying to be quiet, so there wasn’t much to hear on the feed. Both had turned on their cameras and I could switch from one view to the other or watch both on a split screen, which is how I preferred it. They had picked up the trail of the kitzloc and still had an hour until sunset, so they hoped to catch up with it before darkness fell.
The trail led to the series of creeks where Toby and Riley liked to swim and play. I thought of Toby swinging from a makeshift rope tied to a tree limb and launching himself at his apex into a cannonball arch that ended with a splash in the creek. I wondered if either of them would ever get the chance to play in those waters again.
They left Kaliis at the trail head sitting high in a fortress of rocks with a clear view in all directions. His job was to insure the creature did not backtrack and escape the way it had come. He set up his motion detector and prepared himself a comfortable spot even as he waved at Grandpaw and Uncle Pat. “Good hunting,” he said.
Close by was the broken pyramid and I wondered if the animal was aware of its location, if it had ever used the ruin for shelter or a hiding spot from hunters. I called Uncle Pat on the radio and reminded him of the location of the old structure. He keyed his mic to affirm my message.
The two men pulled up their mounts at a bluff overlooking a bend in the creek. Pat pointed at something off camera before checking the mass detector. He seemed to be excited about the readings he was getting and, through gestures, indicated to Grandpaw that he intended to go up the creek where he could cross at the shallows. I believe his intent was then to work his way back up the opposite bank. Papaw nodded in agreement and Pat turned his horse away.
Grandpaw stepped down from the saddle and tied his halter to a stump. Looking around, he stretched his lanky arms and legs.
From somewhere nearby, the frightened sound of a child’s voice, Riley’s voice, floated through the air. I couldn’t make out what he said, but his voice was high and unnatural. Grandpaw’s head jerked to the right as he looked for the source.
Trees and heavy vegetation blocked his vision, yet he had a fix on the direction.
I looked to the feed coming from Uncle Pat’s camera and surmised he had not heard the cry. Pat’s horse stepped into the shallow creek waters as I watched. Over the radio came Grandpaw’s whispered revelation of what he’d just heard. Pat halted his horse in the center of the stream and asked if he should return.
“No,” Grandpaw said. “Stay with the plan. Work your way up that side of the creek. I’m moving to my right, along this side, on foot.”
Pat keyed his mic and prodded his horse up a slight embankment and into thick foliage. Branches sans leaves impeded his progress and he ducked to avoid the overhang. His wide-brimmed hat snagged on one and fell to the ground. Pat paused and looked for it, but thought better of getting off the horse. Instead, he pulled out his motion detector to take a reading. Nothing showed and he continued forward with more branches reaching out to snag his clothes and slow him down.
Papaw broke through the brush to step alongside the stream. He leaned against the massive base of a giant Dreidelian oak to get his bearings.
I knew exactly where they were. Toby, Riley, and I had visited the area dozens of times. The ruin was up the trail less than a hundred meters, but I was afraid Papaw would not see it if he wasn’t looking for it, so I keyed my mic and whispered the information. In response, Grandpaw looked in that direction.
For the first time ever, I wished Jonah would happen along. With the number of men riding with him, they could easily encircle the area and close in, turning a dangerous job into a cakewalk. Unfortunately, Jonah only showed up when he wasn’t wanted, which, up until then, had been a hundred percent of the time.
Uncle Pat rode into even thicker brush. I could tell he was having a hard time snagging his gear on the branches. He ducked as he rode into a thick patch and, without warning, both his audio and video feed disappeared. I checked my end – the receive side – and found nothing wrong. I called to Pat over the radio but there was no response. Dead air.
“What’s happening?” asked Grandpaw.
I told him it looked like Pat’s antenna had broken as he passed through the thick brush. Grandpaw stopped moving forward and looked side to side as he keyed his mic and whispered for Uncle Pat to respond. His response was the same as mine: nothing.
This was a game-changer, so they say. Without coordination in the hunt, the danger factor just spiked.
Aunt Liza came downstairs cradling the youngest Frisco child in her arms. The boy was asleep with his mouth open. She walked in and looked at Grandpaw’s single display. “Any news?” she asked.
I gave her a quick commentary and ended up telling her there was still a chance. Without comment, she turned her red eyes to the display.
A thud came from upstairs followed by running footsteps. “We need to let them out before they destroy the house,” I said.
Aunt Liza turned on me. “No!” she shouted, startling the small one awake. “Those children are to remain in the house until this is all over. Do you understand?”
I nodded. In her frame of mind it would do no good to remind her that the shield would protect us all. This particular lizard might be able to burst through walls, but it would merely bounce off manipulated plasma.
Tears started to flow from her eyes again and it made me want to cry too. Liza turned from the display with the request that I should let her know “if anything happens. I can’t watch any more of this.” She turned away and climbed back up the stairs. Subsequently, the heavy footsteps, thuds, and bangs abated.
*
Pat attempted to peer through the foliage, but it was too thick. The fading light didn’t help either. He finally removed his feet from the stirrups and slid to the ground. Fishing inside his kit, he pulled out his nightshades and placed them over his eyes. Too bright, he pulled them off, made an adjustment to the filter and slipped them back on. Not perfect, but better.
He turned in a slow circle, noting every hotspot he came across. None were large enough to indicate a predator of any real dan
ger. He saw squibs, rattatans, micelings, jernals, and trelor or two and noted that if he hadn’t been on the chase, a nice fat squib would make a succulent roast.
Pushing forward and leading the horse on foot, Pat finally broke free of the brush. He stumbled onto an animal trail no wider than a footpath and warily followed it until, through the trees, he could once again see the creek. When he remained still, he could hear the running water. There were other forest sounds as well as the wind blowing past the treetops, reminding him of the coming change in weather.
He had to find Toby and Riley soon. If the lizard didn’t kill them, then the weather could.
Why had the beast taken the boys? That was the question on Pat’s mind. The creatures were smart, all right, but smart enough to kidnap their victims? In Pat’s experience, it had never happened before.
Sure, plenty of victims had been dragged away to be eaten in a more private place, but never had they been kept alive. This new lizard was different and Pat was glad they only had one with which to contend.
He tied his horse to a sapling just below a ridge that separated the woods from the stream. From the top of the ridge, he could watch the opposite side of the creek in both directions for forty meters or so. He expected to see Gary emerge from the brush on the right at any moment. There was a semblance of a trail that ran beside the creek and Pat was certain Gary would use it rather than face the thick, almost impassable brush.
Although it was a place Pat had been through before; in all honesty, the kids probably knew the area better than he did. The ruins Amanda had found were to the left somewhere and Pat looked in that direction, but saw nothing to indicate anything but natural terrain. Maybe, he thought, he had come too far and passed the place. He recalled a large tree nearby the ancient structure, but nothing else. A large tree? Well, there were plenty of those.
The wind came up in a gust and Pat wrapped his arms around himself. The temperature was dropping fast. He thought about the terror his two children must be feeling and a quiet desperation began to seep into his resolve.
A branch popped somewhere close, startling Ramey. He looked behind at his tethered horse. The animal was startled as well and his eyes rolled as he attempted to look back in the direction from which he’d come.
Pat Ramey peered at the trail he’d blazed through the brush. Just at the limit of his vision, there was motion. Something large. But then the heat signature faded from view.
Pat adjusted his position so that he no longer faced the creek. Now he faced the woods. Another snap of a branch to his left drew his attention and he shifted his weapon in that direction.
Well hidden by darkness and surrounding vegetation, he’d been sitting facing the stream with his Vimbacher in his lap, but he rolled over to a recumbent position on his stomach. He propped the barrel of the rifle between dirt clods, flicked off the safety switch, and stared through the viewfinder, which, like the nightshades, enhanced his field of view. There was nothing to see beyond magnified views of the forest.
He set the mass detector beside the rifle and flicked on the instrument. After running a POST routine, the device wouldn’t work properly. Jagged lines crossed the display and the displayed digits would not settle. The numbers rose and fell while interference lines made it difficult to read. He quickly surmised it was electronic interference and so he switched off the video transmitter, which wasn’t working anyway due to the broken antennae. The display on the mass detector cleared and showed his horse as being the dominant object in the immediate area. He picked up the card-sized handheld machine and tapped through a series of menus until finding the filter adjustments. Two selections later and he had ordered the device to filter out the horse. It worked and the small display showed null contact in a wide area in front of him.
Pat had set himself up to be stalked by the creature. That was all right. That was what he wanted. He wanted it to come for him, to come straight for him out of malice or anger or hunger or whatever it was that drove the bloodthirsty creature to kill. He wanted it to stand before him, to challenge him so that he could discharge his Vimbacher into its scaly hide and blow its miserable carcass into a thousand pieces.
And so he waited, occasionally checking behind so the lizard could not somehow creep up and attack from his blind side.
Chapter 26
While Pat was waiting for the creature to find him, I was lying on the couch, watching Papaw limp along the trail next to the stream. Liza wouldn’t allow the children to come downstairs and she remained upstairs with them, coming down every half hour or so to check on the hunt. She would enter the room, refusing to look at the display, and instead look to me for a report. I would shake my head and tell her, “Nothing yet,” and she would go to the kitchen for water or juice or snacks for the kids, then climb the stairs again.
I didn’t know what had happened to Uncle Pat’s video feed and radio, but I still expected to emerge from the brush at any time. He and Grandpaw would greet each other with a silent nod and continue their hunt in tandem. That’s what I expected.
Grandpaw found that proceeding on foot with his wounded leg was not such a good idea and so had doubled back and retrieved his horse. Now he was riding slowly on the trail beside the creek, very close to the old ruins. Faintly over his audio feed, there was a sound of something rushing through brush – at least, that’s what it sounded like to me – and then the roar of a Uncle Pat’s Vimbacher.
Grandpaw peered ahead before prodding his horse forward. He rounded a bend and, aided by his nightshades, he clearly saw the lizard standing on two legs in the middle of the creek. Beneath that dark shape was another mass lying in the water, struggling to free itself from the grip of the kitzloc.
There was a moment of pause as the creature lifted its hoary head to gaze at Papaw through large, glowing eyes. Recognizing the monster, my Grandfather raised his gun to his cheek and brought the creature to bear within his crosshairs. For fear of hitting Uncle Pat, Papaw selected the semi-automatic setting and squeezed off three rapid shots at the lizard’s heaving chest.
Acting as if every shot had missed its mark, the creature did not budge and instead, reached down with a taloned hand and ripped into my Uncle Pat. Pat made a strange, restrained sound and twisted under the weight of one large foot as icy water flowed over his face. With one of its taloned hands, the beast held him by the top of his head and Pat gripped the monster’s thick forearm in return. When the kitzloc slashed him, Pat released his grip and his hands dropped to the open wound on his belly.
Grandpaw couldn’t issue an explosive projectile without killing Uncle Pat, so he continued to pump bullets, one shot at a time into the lizard’s torso. The animal seemed unaffected.
I lost count of the number of shots Grandpaw fired. The muzzle flashes lit up the darkness beneath the trees and I could clearly see the creature outlined in the light. Although it looked similar to all those lizards my Grandfather had obsessively hunted over the years, it was different. The general shape was the same, but it was significantly larger, black as deepest darkness, with strange, large eyes that seemed to give off their own light. Of course, that was impossible and I surmised that the light from the muzzle blasts was reflected.
And then it was gone. In between flashes, it simply disappeared.
I could hear Grandpaw’s belabored breathing over the radio. He finally switched on the light slung beneath the Vimbacher’s barrel and swept the area. There was no sign of the creature, only my uncle’s broken and bleeding body lying in the center of the stream.
Grandpaw gingerly slid down from his perch on the horse while keeping watch on the opposite shore. He called to Uncle Pat but Pat made no reply. As quickly as he could move with his injured leg, Papaw approached the stream and, without hesitation, waded into the slowly moving water.
He shined his light on Uncle Pat and his gaping wounds caused me to draw in a breath. The water flowed over him and crimson stains spread. Grandpaw set his rifle on the bank before taking a grip of Pat
’s lapels and dragging him from the water to a patch of dry ground.
At that point, I thought my uncle was dead. I struggled to hold back my tears.
Grandpaw shined his light on Pat’s face and Pat opened his eyes. When Papaw saw he was alive, he retreated to his horse and fumbled inside his kit until he located the first aid box. He returned to Uncle Pat and knelt over him, placing the light so it did not shine in my uncle’s eyes.
Pat’s blood-smeared face was white and his eyelids drooped. His breathing was shallow and I could hear Grandpaw talking to him. “Hang on, buddy,” he said. “We’re gonna fix you up. You just hang on.”
Grandpaw took a handful of gauze from the med box and tried to stem the flow of blood but it was plain to see the wound was beyond help.
Pat’s lips moved as he tried to speak. Papaw told him to save his strength but my uncle kept on trying to say something. Finally, Grandpaw lowered his ear to uncle’s lips and listened to his last words. When he straightened up and looked at him again, I knew my uncle was dead.
I couldn’t see what Grandpaw was doing because the tiny camera was attached to a pocket flap on his chest and pointed straight ahead, but he stood still for a minute or so, standing over Uncle Pat’s body.
I cried and finally averted my eyes from the holographic display. That’s when I noticed Aunt Liza standing behind me in the shadows of the unlit room. Her hand was over her mouth and she too was mutely crying. I went to her and put my arms around her and we cried together until I remembered Papaw was still out there, by himself, and now facing the lizard alone.
I took Liza to the kitchen and sat her in a chair. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees with hands covering her face.
The Frisco boys had gathered at the top of the stairs, but they were quiet. I climbed a few steps and told them to get ready for bed. “What happened?” asked Jambo.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I whispered. “Now go.” They were good boys and understood their status as guests. Even so, they solemnly trudged away with this new reminder that both their parents were dead as well.
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