by Tim Curran
It’ll know, he thought. It’ll know we’re here. If it considers cars out on Route 50 a threat, it will like them even less this close to its nesting ground.
Maybe that was true and maybe that was bullshit. The bird did not attack Pettis’ Jeep and they had come out here three nights in a row. So maybe what happened out on the highway was a fluke. Maybe every time it happened out there was a fluke. He wanted to believe that. Just like the past three nights, he was going to be very glad when they parked and got out on foot. Maybe that made them more vulnerable to attack, but at least they could hit the dirt if need be.
“Is something bothering you?” Nina asked.
He shook his head, but that wasn’t true because for the past five minutes or so he had been getting restless, very restless. Like a kid in church he couldn’t seem to sit still. He shifted, he moved, he crossed his legs and uncrossed them. His hands were shaking and he was starting to sweat.
“Jim?”
He heard her, but he couldn’t seem to speak. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and his throat was impossibly dry. Whatever he had felt those other times he was feeling again. It was crawling under his skin. It’s coming, he thought. That bitch is coming for us. He tried like hell to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t so, to convince himself it was strictly nerves, but it wasn’t working.
“Pull over,” he said to Nina.
He didn’t have to repeat himself. Maybe it was the stress in his voice, but she got the message just fine. She stopped the Land Rover there in the desert wastes. The sun was nearly down. Out in the distance, a coyote howled with a lonely, mournful sort of sound.
“What is it, Jim?” she said, her voice very calm.
“I…I thought…I thought I could feel it out there. I thought it was coming.” He wiped a dew of sweat from his brow. “Maybe I imagined it.”
He looked to all sides, but saw nothing. In the back window of the Land Rover there was a yellow triangle. It read: SNAKES ON BOARD. Nina claimed no one ever parked very close to her in crowded lots.
She didn’t say anything for a few moments during which he began to feel increasingly foolish because whatever he was sensing and whatever had gotten inside him was now gone as it if never were.
Nina cleared her throat. “Jim, I’m willing to accept a lot of things or at least approach them with an open mind…but you can’t really expect me to believe that you’re in some kind of psychic rapport with this bird. I can’t buy that anymore than I can buy that your punk rock friend is…what’s her name?”
“Reese.”
“Yes. She’s not connected to it and neither are you. I’m sorry, but that’s a delusion and if you just relax and think about it, you’ll see I’m right.”
No, Nina, he wanted to say, you’re wrong, terribly wrong. There is a connection—it’s ethereal and tenuous, but it’s most definitely there. I don’t know how deep Reese’s connection runs, but mine is really no more than an early warning system. But even that would be unthinkable for Nina. She was a scientist. Something like that was mysticism, not science. He wanted to explain it to her in a way that she would understand. He wanted her to believe him, but he knew that was impossible. It’s not crystal balls and ouija boards and fucking tarot cards. It’s something real. Something solid that runs very deep and is probably very old in respect to the human race. I wish I could make you see that. That what has been activated in me does not in any way nullify the empirical logic of your science. If anything, it enhances it.
But, knowing it was impossible to really put any of that into words that would make sense, he just said, “Okay. Drive on.”
“You really think you felt something back there?”
“I did.”
“Tell me about it.”
He had to choose his words carefully. “It’s not mind reading or table knocking, you know. It’s just a very strong feeling of danger. A sort of early warning system that lets me know when that creature is coming. I’ve felt it several times since the accident and it’s never been wrong.” He shrugged. “That’s the best I can do. Haven’t you ever been really afraid?”
“Everyone has.”
He shook his head. “No, I mean a fear beyond that. A fear so big it takes the wind out of you.”
“Yes. In Australia. The Tirari Desert. I saw an extremely large Inland Taipan escape into a cave,” she explained. “The Inland Taipan is the most venomous snake in the world. A single bite carries enough venom to kill a hundred men. I had to decide whether I wanted to go in after it. Crouched down before the cave entrance, I had a wild rush of terror like nothing I ever experienced before. I decided not to crawl in after it and that’s probably why I’m here today.”
“Then you know what I’m feeling.”
They said no more about it. Nina regaled him with tales of her college days as a radical back in 1960s and her lifelong distrust of anyone in power.
“Shit,” Jim suddenly said, interrupting her story.
He could feel it again. This time it wasn’t a brush with that sense of rising fear, but almost a targeted attack. His face ran with cold sweat. His palms were greasy. It felt like needles were sliding into his stomach.
“It’s coming,” he said, barely able to breathe. “It’s…it’s fucking coming.”
“Jim, now just try to relax—”
The sun had set and the desert was like some forbidding alien landscape—lying craggy and sinister around them. The moon was coming up, its light silvering rocks and ridgelines.
The wind kicked up and the Land Rover shook, sand blew against it and the light of the moon was blotted out. Jim smelled a foul, flyblown odor and there was a booming of thunder and something hit them. Nina cried out as the wheel spun in her hands and she stomped on the brakes, skidding to a halt on the dry dusty earth.
It hit them again.
Then again.
The Land Rover was pushed sideways ten feet, nearly tipping over.
“Get out!” Jim cried. “We have to get out!”
Then it hit them again and the Land Rover was lifted three feet in the air, crashing back and tossing them around in the cab. Only their seatbelts held them in place.
Nina let out a piercing little scream as the vehicle was struck again, the roof over their heads hit so hard that a great central dent dropped it a good three inches as if the beast had stomped on it. The Land Rover was struck again and again and there was no way they could get out of their seatbelts, let alone out of the cab.
It was battered, bumped this way then that. It was spun in a circle…then lifted right up into the air and thrown ten feet where it crashed down, windows shattering and falling away in webbed sheets.
“NINA! NINA!” Jim screeched as the beast ripped the driver’s side door free with a shriek of metal fatigue and tossed it aside. Black talons reached in for her, one of them shearing the seat belt strap with a single flick.
The beast yanked her out of the Land Rover. A hot, nauseating stench of flyblown meat wafted off it. Half out of his mind with not just fear, but anger and rage because that fucking thing was going to kill another close friend, he fought at his seatbelt latch until it let go. He scrambled up and slid through the missing window and dropped to the desert floor. The déjà vu he felt was overwhelming and surreal. It was too much like the night Dinah and Rita died, just too much.
The beast was shrieking into the night with a screeching sound that was somewhere between a hysterical human scream and an air raid siren. It was loud and booming.
Jim got around the front of the vehicle, his bad leg giving out and planting him in the dirt again. Using the grill of the Land Rover, he pulled himself up, hearing Nina’s desperate, broken cries and that echoing mordant laughter of the beast which probably wasn’t laughter at all, but the sound of sheer triumph.
In the moonlight, he saw what it did to her.
It shook her in its talons like a doll. Before he could so much as move, it smashed her corpse against the Land Rover again and again. At first it was a h
ollow thumping, then more of a loose, wet sound as Nina’s bones were smashed, her organs macerated, everything that held her together inside sloshing about in a bag of skin.
Crying out, he hobbled at the beast which towered ten feet above him if not fifteen, immense leathery wings spread a good thirty feet to either side. They were black and membranous, ridged with thick pulsing veins. Batlike, if anything, definitely not feathered.
He charged. It was suicide, but he’d had enough. Hatred and the need for vengeance pushed him forward.
The beast held Nina’s shattered corpse up and then sheared it literally in half with its talons. The sound was like a knife jabbing into a pumpkin. There was an explosion of gore that sprayed in his face and he was struck by a rain of bones and tissue that knocked him flat.
By the time he pawed the blood from his eyes, the beast had pumped its wings and jumped back up into the sky, circling high above as he crawled through the desert, crusted with blood and sand.
The need for payback was gone.
Now there was only survival.
He crawled ten or twenty feet and a voice of optimism inside him promised him again and again in the same feeble voice that he was going to make it, he was really honest-to-God going to make it. He even started thinking about getting up on his knees and maybe even trying to stand.
Then he heard the booming thunder as the beast came out of the sky for him. He looked behind him and there was a boiling cloud of dust and sand coming right at him. He got to his feet and made it towards one of the rising buttes when the cloud overwhelmed him, the force of it putting him down. As he tried to rise up again, it felt like he was kicked.
Oh Jesus, oh God, not this, not this…
He had not been kicked.
The beast had taken him.
It gripped him tightly and he felt like a mouse dangling from the mouth of an eagle as it soared higher and higher, the flapping of its wings so loud it felt like his eardrums were bursting. The sheer power of the wings created an airflow of lift that was like riding on a column of force. After it got up high—and they were up at least 500 feet, he reckoned—it stopped flapping and merely soared, riding the air currents like a gull. It dipped and climbed and wheeled about with incredible precision, grace, and speed. At first, he could see the moonlit desert far below but as the beast gained speed, he couldn’t even keep his eyes open. Even the pain of its talons, one of which was imbedded beneath the skin over his ribs, was minimal. He couldn’t even feel its grip which had popped his shoulder out of socket.
He was numb, absolutely numb, buffeted by chill winds that finally made his head reel and his body go limp.
He went out cold.
20
When he came to, he felt something bristly and hot against the back of his outstretched hand. Whatever it was, it seemed to be pulsating with life.
What the fuck?
As he made to recoil in horror, a voice in his head said to him, do not panic. Whatever you do, do not panic. It’s never been more important in your life to keep your nerve than now. Right…now. So he didn’t move. His left arm was a gauntlet of fire, the pain burning and digging deep. His shoulder felt like it had been struck by an axe. Next to it, the agony of his slashed open side was nothing.
You’re in its nest.
Jesus.
He could hear it breathing with a slow, drawn-out sibilance like wind blown through a sewer pipe. In and out, in and out.
The stink of the bird made him swoon. It made his stomach want to come crawling up the back of his throat. It was a sharp reptilian musk combined with the stench of raptor nests crowded with well-picked bones and rent carcasses. Perfectly sickening. He fought down the gag reflex because the beast was towering over him. His hand was touching one of its wings which was folded under the way bats will do when they crawl around.
The beast made a sort of purring sound, followed by a low growling. Other than that, it was silent. It watched the night with huge glassy eyes that caught the light of the moon and held it. Its head swiveled owl-like back and forth, but that was it.
At any moment, he knew, it could tear him apart like Nina, toss him over the side, or simply feed on him. He was completely at its mercy.
If only he had some idea where he was.
Slowly, very slowly, he craned his head, trying to get a look at the nesting site. In the moonlight, he could see quite a bit of it. He seemed to be precariously clinging to the edge of a high mound which sat atop a flattened area that was maybe twenty feet square. That was a wild guess, but it felt about right. It could have been the top of a high butte or mesa…but there were other structures up here that just didn’t fit.
He craned his head a bit more.
Yes.
He could see two masts rising up. Antennas. They had cup-shaped transmitters near the top. The nesting site sat on a platform atop a radio tower. Yes, he remembered the night he had come out into the desert alone and the beast had swooped him. He had seen a radio tower in the distance. It would seek a high place, I’m thinking, the way an owl would. Nina. Dear God. Of course, the radio tower was the highest perch it could find.
Over there, along the edges were horn antennas for microwave relay. From the ground they looked like the backs of giant easy chairs poised above. He remembered thinking that as a kid. This must have been a switching center of the sort AT&T or Verizon might use.
It was probably abandoned.
The beast rose up and he thought for sure it was going to make a snack of him, but it didn’t. Wings spread out, it stood on the edge of the platform and jumped out into the blackness. He waited a few moments before he dared move. A wind blew over the top of the tower as it swooped overhead and then the next he heard of it was the thundering of its wings off in the distance.
His body felt stiff and numb, but he made it move.
He stretched his back—something which caused incredible pain in his shoulder—and moved his legs. His left leg had been injured in the accident and it was hurting now. Just strained probably. He was torn up and battered and lost some blood, but he was not in danger. The real problem was his shoulder. He knew what to do about it. In high school, he’d popped his shoulder out playing football. There was a technique to pop it back in.
He laid there against the mound, breathing in and out, forcing himself to relax, something which was not very easy under the circumstances. Okay, okay.
Now do it.
He balled his hands into loose fists, holding his arms out straight. It was painful, but not excruciating. Slowly, he bent his arms until his fists were before his face. The pain was bad now. It felt like a red hot spike was driven into his shoulder. Trying to regulate his breathing, arms still bent, his brought them back until they were even with his body. He let out an involuntary yelp. Sweat broke out on his face.
You can’t stop now.
Now came the hard part.
Slowly again, he lifted his bent arms and straightened them, the pain unbelievable. By the time he got his arms straight, the shoulder popped back into joint.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath, wiping sweat from his face.
He rested for a few moments until the soreness began to ebb. It was time to see what this was all about.
As he moved, he lost his grip and slid down off the mound into a soft, sluicing mush that released a violent gassy odor. He kept his stomach down, but he couldn’t stop the gag reflex. He squirmed in the wet muck, realizing he was in a collected pool of dung and rotted animal debris. Everything the beast had shit out, threw up, or cast from the nest proper ended up down here. He could feel things crawling in it. They crawled over his arms and nipped at his throat and face, swarming up over him. Some kind of scavenging beetles, perhaps. The feel of them biting and crawling over him made him go wild, pawing at them and screaming into the night.
Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you idiot! he told himself. You’ll bring that fucking monster back! If it sees you moving, it’ll put a stop to that real quick!
There were other things in mush and slime. As he wrestled around in it, his fingers found staffs of bone and the rungs of ribs. He slid his fingers accidentally into the eye sockets of a skull and then violently tossed it away. It banged off one of the horn antennas and rolled away.
By then, he had fought his way free, killing the insects that crawled on him. Yes, this was the nest. This mound. Just like the old Native American tales, it was made of sticks and branches all woven together into a moundlike shape. He kept moving up the side of it until he reached the top. In the center, right where the beast had been sitting, there was a great hollow that reached down six or seven feet and resting securely in it was what looked like an egg.
It couldn’t be anything else.
You were wrong, Reese. It wasn’t preparing to mate. It’s already mated. It’s protecting its egg.
The moonlight glimmered off it. It was a brownish sort of color, oblong and about the size of a beach ball. What science would have paid for such a thing, it occurred to him. And that made him think of Nina and he flushed with hatred.
He was going to crawl down there and smash it. That’s what he wanted to do and what he badly needed to do.
Don’t be a fucking idiot.
These platforms had ladders leading down. He was easily 250 feet in the air and going down a ladder that high would be no easy bit, but he had no choice. Steering away from the slime pool of detritus, he scouted around the edge of the platform, peering between the horn antennas which were about fifteen feet high. God, the ground looked like it was a mile below him.
The ladder.
There it was. Two steel hoops rising up above the level of the platform.
He heard something.
The beast?
No, he didn’t think so. Down there he could see lights. A car. No, two of them moving in the direction of the tower. They pulled to a stop. He shouted down to them again and again, but saw no signs that anyone down there heard him. He could see tiny figures in the headlights mulling about.
Oh, don’t leave! Don’t leave!