Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (28 page)

He swam upward and, as the boat swept over him, he resurfaced in its prop wash. As he sucked air, though, one of the dogs piled into him.

He went back down, leaving the snapping jaws and churning claws behind.

Then he felt something unexpected—a current of warmer water.

This could mean only one thing, an incoming stream. He swam toward it, keeping as best he could in its warmth. No matter what, he had to remain submerged until he was in the mouth of that stream. If he went up to grab even a single breath, he was caught.

To conserve his oxygen, he forced himself to do the opposite of what instinct was screaming for him to do. He forced himself to slow down.

Moving carefully, he began to be able to see the limestone bottom rising. He was swimming up a small canyon. With just inches to spare, he passed over the skeleton of another drowned tree, this one with the stark remains of what had been a stone house below it.

The bottom rushed up, and then he was swimming in three feet of water and there were flashes in his eyes, and he was going to take another breath, and it was going to be water.

He breathed. Breathed again, deeper. But it wasn’t water, he had come up into the bed of a stream no more than ten feet wide and just three feet deep.

He lay flat on his back, letting its water sluice around him, allowing just his face to break the surface. He didn’t want a single molecule of odor to reach those dogs, nor a single sound, and he didn’t want his body heat to be detectable, much less his image.

He remained as still as possible, just pushing himself along with his heels, doing it inch by inch. Eventually, the stream would have a bend in it. Only when he was around that bend and invisible from the lake could he dare to move more quickly. Even then, he would stay with the water.

He came to a deeper pool, the water crystal, the limestone glowing tan. Around him, birds sang. He slid deeper, waiting there with just his face exposed, minimizing the chances that his scent would reach the dogs.

Finally he moved again, slipping around a turn in the narrow creek.

All was quiet. He hadn’t even stopped the birds. He raised his head and listened. Distantly, the boat’s engine screamed. Good, they were operating a search pattern.

Finally, carefully, listening to every sound and watching every shadow along the banks of the stream, he eased himself to his feet.

He froze, watching and listening. There was no sound of movement in the thick brush that surrounded the creek. He crossed to the far side, then climbed a bluff until he could see what turned out to be part of Lake Travis, a mirror of the sky dotted with sails. Small white clouds flew overhead. Nearer, the boat was now stopped. He could see the dogs on board, sitting in a group on the fantail. As they worked to gain scent, their heads turned first one way and then another.

Obviously, they weren’t picking up his scent, but they did not stop trying. Then one of them went to the rail. It stood, nose to the wind. Another joined it.

His heartbeat increased, he barely breathed. It was time for this reconnaissance to end, so he moved back into the water, and then quickly up the creek, which was as shallow as a few inches on this side.

He went a hundred yards, then climbed the bank and pushed his way through the brush. The ridge he had descended was about five hundred yards ahead and perhaps a hundred and twenty feet high. Somewhere beyond it was the ranch headquarters where he’d started.

A single bark, low and shockingly close, told him that he’d made a fundamental mistake doing that reconnaissance, and the trap he’d entered was already closing.

Only two alternatives were left to him, either to do something that they wouldn’t expect, or something that they couldn’t counter—or, for that matter, both.

One thing that might throw the dogs off would be if he backtracked along his own scent trail. He was wet now, leaving less odor behind. They might be tricked. They might lose him.

The only problem was that doing this would return him to the ranch.

Had that been the real plan all along, to induce him to go back to the compound and be captured where he’d started his escape?

He looked carefully along the ridge, then at the cactus and tufted grass below it.

Tracking is a skill that involves not only careful observation but also careful visualization. To keep a trail, you need to not only read sign, you need to be able to discipline your imagination to see the path as the person you are tracking must have seen it.

Doubling back along the lakeside, he returned to the bend. Beyond this point, he knew that it would not be safe to go. To reduce his scent further, he submerged himself completely. Then he left the water and went across toward the bluff, crossing his own trail about sixty steps later.

Turning, he looked back the way he had come. Not surprisingly, he had left a clear track.

He scanned the terrain ahead. Were they hidden somewhere, already aware of him, already waiting in ambush?

Backtracking as carefully as he could, he climbed the ridge. He would risk the dogs noticing the movement.

He could not do the safe thing, which was to keep going out to the road. He had to determine if there was any way to help Mac, assuming he was still alive. Or Diana, for that matter. If it had been him in the Rover, he would have come in to provide support as soon as communication failed. She would have done the same, and since she hadn’t, he had to assume that she was in trouble, too.

They might both be trapped in boxes somewhere, or under some other type of torture, or slated to be broken down into component parts or whatever was being done to people.

Doubling back, he made for the ranch compound. If they’d left it unguarded, he might gain some useful intelligence. Who knew, maybe he’d event turn it into a win.

Still, he had to be damn near conservative. If he lost his life, who knew what would happen then? Maybe there wasn’t anybody else left. Maybe the whole operation would fail. For sure, it would be a catastrophic setback.

Atop the ridge, his own sign was quite clear, a swathe through the tall grass that looked like it had been put down by an elephant. The dogs, all nine of them, had crossed the clearing line abreast. Their tracks were straight and light. They had worked to minimize their sign.

Moving ahead, but not so fast that he would raise his skin temperature and once again intensify his scent, he worked his way back. Soon he saw, through a thick stand of cedar, the shape of a building. He went closer, slipping deep into the cedar thicket, stopping when he came to its border.

The place was silent. No sign of movement. There was the barn, a new shed nearby, and the small rock ranch house. Under some live oaks fifty yards away was the kennel.

The barn doors were still open, the interior shadowy.

He watched some mourning doves pecking in the small patch of grass near the house. These were flocking birds that fed on the ground. They were sensitive to nearby movement and would fly up at the slightest sign of disturbance. He waited, but they continued to feed in peace.

Morris could not have left this place unguarded, so its empty appearance had to be a lie.

He stepped out of the cedar and strode quickly to the barn. On the floor toward the back stood a long silver box, open, the interior lined with black plastic. His box. There was oxygen equipment nearby, a green canister lying on its side, some tubing disconnected from two nipples on one end.

He forced back the impulse to hammer the thing to bits.

Under the pecan tree by the house, the doves were still pecking at nuts.

Mac and Diana were not in the barn.

He stepped out and moved away from the structure. Turning slowly around, he listened for anything that might help him. His hearing was good and it was very quiet, but the silence was total. By now the dogs would be breathing heavily, but he didn’t hear anything that suggested their approach. Fearing the tiger, he looked, also, along the rooflines.

He dared not go close to the house. The dogs would hear the doves rising from a long way off. They would know what it meant, too, no question.

He looked toward the shed. There was a padlock on the door, a new one. His picklocks were gone, of course.

No matter how carefully he listened, only the cooing of the doves disturbed the silence of the place.

Could they have actually left him an opening? Maybe they’d never considered the idea that he’d be so foolish as to return to the compound.

He went to the shed, moving carefully and methodically. The lock was a good one. He could not force it without tools. Behind the shed, though, he found a low roof with a trapdoor in it. A storm cellar. Not surprising, given that one of the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded had touched down a few miles north of here.

He bent down, grasped the rusted iron ring in the center of the trapdoor, and pulled it up.

It was dark and silent and it felt large. Hill Country ranches didn’t have big underground chambers, just root cellars, and usually not even that. So this could be something constructed by Morris.

He wanted to call out to Mac and Diana in the darkness below, but to raise his voice was far too dangerous. As he listened, he thought he heard a faint pulsation, like a big pot boiling.

He wanted to go down the ladder, but that was beyond the limit of responsibility. He was here to make best efforts, not throw himself away.

For a long time, he listened to that sound. Boiling, he thought, definitely. No voices, no sound of movement.

As he left the shed, he heard a sound coming from the direction of the ranch house, high and sharp, that certainly was not doves. But what was it? Not a voice … or was it? Perhaps not a human voice.

And then he heard another sound, just the slightest edge of a yap, quickly stifled.

He saw movement at the house, a door opening.

Even so, the doves did not move, which meant only one thing: they were not normal doves. They were another deception, and a very clever one indeed.

At the same moment, one of the dogs appeared at the edge of the compound. It came across the field at a trot, its tongue lolling, its eyes intent on the house. It went up to somebody hidden just inside, and as it did the person crouched down to greet it.

It was one of the creatures from the village. In the sunlight, its skin was yellow-gray and its eyes seemed, if anything, more deeply sad than they had in the gloom of the structure. He could see a shadow of humanity there, but also something else. Was it a mix of a creature like Oltisis and a man?

Maybe, but it couldn’t walk the streets, not by a long shot, not like Morris could.

The high-pitched sounds became a strange, musical cooing, joined by the dog’s voice, a group of vocalizations more complex than any ordinary dog could make.

They were taking pleasure in one another, these two misbegotten creatures, a dog with a man’s eyes and this … thing. The dog licked the creature’s hands and it smiled, its teeth jutting out of its mouth like blades.

More dogs appeared, and then the snarl of engines as two four-wheelers burst out of the brush.

Flynn faded back toward the far side of the compound, trying to keep the shed between himself and the danger.

When he was back in the brush and somewhat concealed, he turned and ran toward the road he and Diana and Mac had come in on.

As far as he was concerned, the secrecy was over. Without Diana and Oltisis, he had no official recourse. So he needed to bring some level of policing authority into the situation, and damn the secrecy. Let the secret get out. Better that it did.

Problem was, he also knew that the cops wouldn’t do anything serious unless they had evidence of a crime, and so far he couldn’t offer much. Certainly not enough to enable, say, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office to get a warrant to enter onto the ranch property. No judge was going to approve a warrant on the basis of what would sound like the ravings of a lunatic. The fact was that he wasn’t going to get any police action out of a claim that there was a village full of aliens on some rancher’s property—unless they tossed him into the state hospital over in Austin.

Even if by some miracle they did move, it would not happen overnight, and this needed to get done fast. The only thing that might work against the kind of power and intelligence he was seeing was speed.

There was only one answer: he had to come back here with serious firepower, and fast, and he needed to kill them all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

He sat hunched over a beer at one of his college haunts, a place called the Scholz Garten in central Austin. He’d come here because it was deep in the inner city, and Morris and Elder might be cautious in a populated area.

He sat at his old table in the far corner of the outdoor beer garden. Across from him was Abby’s chair. It was late in the afternoon, the shadows were long, and the memories of her were as raw as blood.

Once he had reached the road, it hadn’t taken him long to find the spot where the Rover had been. It was gone, but there was no sign of anything unusual, such as tire marks that might indicate a sudden departure. The truck had remained in place for some time. He had even been able to make out scorch marks left where the catalytic converter had touched some grass.

As he sipped beer, he searched gun classifieds in a local rag. He was looking for a very specific weapon, a Heckler and Koch MP5. If he could find a dealer with a Federal Firearms License and the weapon in his inventory, he was hoping he could obtain it and let the paperwork float along behind the transaction. To own a fully automatic machine gun in Texas, he’d need to get a sign-off from a local honcho of some kind, but he was figuring that could be accomplished with a donation.

He went to the pay phone, dropped in four quarters and phoned a guy called Joe Harris in a little town called Lost Mill, who advertised a selection of weapons. He had no HK in stock, but he thought he could get his hands on one pretty quickly.

“How fast?”

“Well, I could get it brought in here—let’s see—how about seven?”