Ancestor (47 page)

He slowly reached into his snowsuit, trying to control his fear, trying to stay calm. He heard a branch break somewhere off to his left. It registered that it would have to be a big branch to be heard over the wind. A
really
big branch. Gary turned, his chest roiling, already knowing what he’d see. Seventy-five feet away, at the edge of the woods, another of the big-mouthed bear creatures glowed green in the night-vision light. It, too, was looking right at him.

What little bravery Gary possessed instantly evaporated. Were there more? How
many
more? Staying very, very still, he swept the landscape.

A third by the hunter’s shop.

A fourth and a fifth near the church.

A sixth at the edge of the woods on his right.

Gary Detweiler turned and ran as fast as the bulky snowsuit would allow, his legs
swish-swishing
against each other in a dark parody of a child’s wintertime play.

SARA TOOK CAREFUL aim at the lead creature chasing Gary Detweiler. A sudden blow knocked her into a pillar. Strong, bony fingers covered her mouth. Tim had tackled her. Sara angrily brought up her hands to shove the man, but Tim leaned in so close his lips pressed against her ear.

“Don’t move!” he hissed. “Keep still, there are more right below us!”

She pushed him off, but stayed quiet. She slowly looked over the parapet and down the side of the church tower. Sara’s eyes widened in surprise and fear. Against the suffused gray-white moonlight glow of the snow-covered ground, she counted seven of the creatures. They were all looking up into the church tower.

They’re looking right at us
.

It seemed that way at first, but Sara realized the creatures were turning their heads, searching. They weren’t looking
at
her, but they sure as hell were looking
for
her.

A roar—deep and jagged and hateful and savage—erupted from the path that led to the dock.

WHEN HE HEARD the first roar, his heart seemed to stop but his feet weren’t as dumb—they kept pumping. Gary sprinted for his life. Another roar, closer this time. He poured all his energy into the sprint, heavy boots slamming against the snow-covered ground, arms pumping, legs churning.

Like an Old West gunslinger mounting his horse, Gary leaped and spread his legs, landing butt-first on the soft Ski-Doo seat. The now-warm machine fired up on the first try and he gunned the throttle, shooting down the path.

More of them
oh fuck how many are there
poured out of the tree-canyon walls, coming at him from all sides. Speed carried him past their muscular, heaving bodies. The journey that had taken five minutes while
put-putting
along took just over a minute with the throttle locked wide open. The dune crest rose before him, and beyond it would be his boat.

Another one
. It came from the harbor side of the dune, stopped on the crest, crouched like a tennis player waiting to return a serve. Gary slowed, banked hard right and drove at an angle toward the crest. The monster took its own angle down the dune face, trying to cut him off. When it almost reached the sled, Gary opened up the throttle full out. The monster curved its pursuit path to correct, but Gary was already past.

He banked hard left just in time to sail over the dune ridge, catching big air, the boat now before him like a beacon of hope.
So close
. He hit the ground and pumped the brakes. The Ski-Doo skidded and slid—Gary was off it and running before the machine even stopped moving.

Another roar
Jesus oh shit oh God
not more than a few feet behind him. So close that going for his gun would slow him down too much and the thing with the huge mouth would be on him.

Gary sprinted down the dock, his steps vibrating the ice-crusted wood. He counted six steps before he felt the heavy vibrations of the creature’s pounding feet.

He reached the dock’s end and leaped like a long jumper. Behind him, the dock rattled as something massive pushed off.

In midair, huge jaws closed around his chest. He felt a dozen piercing pokes and a crushing pressure, then he smashed into ice as hard as a
concrete floor. The ice seemed to hold for just a second, a
fraction
of a second, then cracked like a trapdoor, dropping them into the frigid water. Cold stunned him. His breath locked in his chest, frozen just like the ice covering the bay.

The biting pressure dropped away.

Swim or die
.

He kicked hard. The water soaked into his snowsuit, turning it into a lead coat that pulled him down. He kicked harder. His head popped above the surface. He forced one, short, desperate breath.

Like Jaws coming up from the depths, the creature surfaced next to him, giant mouth gasping for air, huge clawed paws splashing at the water and fighting for purchase on thin ice that shattered from each blow.

Gary tried to swim. His arms and legs seemed slow to react. It was like swimming in quicksand. His head slipped under again. He fought to rise, but the snowsuit seemed to drag him down as surely as an anchor.

Swim or die
.

He snarled and kicked harder, forcing his body to the surface. He was so close, only a few feet from the boat.

Behind him, the creature slid beneath the waves for the last time. Gary looked over his shoulder, knowing he only had seconds to live, knowing he had to concentrate, but he couldn’t stop himself.

Cow-skinned creatures covered the dock. Diffuse moonlight played off their white fur, soaked into black patches as dark as the night itself. Dozens of monsters, packed at the edge, looking down at Gary with black eyes. They weren’t coming in after him. He was almost there …

He tried to swim, but his muscles simply stopped obeying his commands. His throat locked up as if plugged by a cork. He couldn’t take in air. The waterlogged snowsuit pulled him down again.

He reached out one more time, stretching for the ladder on the back of the
Otto II
. Wet, slick mittens hit the bottom rung and slid off. His hand fell away, and water filled his mouth.

Swim … or …

SARA AND TIM watched the seven cow-skinned creatures moving around the outside of the church—sniffing, looking, listening. They weren’t leaving.

“You’re the expert,” Sara whispered in an almost inaudible voice. “What do we do?”

Tim slowly shook his head and shrugged.

The ancestors stopped their sniffing. They lifted their heads and looked north. The creatures all seemed to hear something. Sara listened, and a few seconds later she heard it, too … a faint, faraway sound.

The sound of an engine.

As a unit, the creatures headed for the noise. Sara watched them go, watched their odd, squat, waddling gait as they disappeared into the woods.

MAGNUS SLOWED THE Bv206. Any closer and Sara might hear the diesel engine, even over the wind. He would approach on foot, slip in and kill her. Magnus preferred to be on foot anyway.

He hopped out and slung the compact MP5 over his shoulder. Extra magazines went into his pocket. Beretta in his right hand, an unlit flashlight in his left, he approached the old mine shaft. He moved carefully, calmly. If Clayton was telling the truth, Magnus was up against a female air force pilot and a small, alcoholic scientist with a bum knee. That seemed like easy pickings, but Magnus was alive because he’d learned long ago that there
was
no such thing as easy pickings—a gun was the world’s great equalizer. Sara Purinam had a gun.

Drifting snow almost completely covered the mine’s old wooden door. Wind howled through the trees, and the mine itself seemed to moan as well. Clayton had always said that was the ghosts of the men who died there, but in truth it was just wind circulating through some unseen ventilation shaft.

Magnus approached the door, sinking crotch-deep in undisturbed snow. Something was wrong. There were no tracks here. Not even indents in the snowdrift. He tried to think of how much snow they’d received in the past three days. Plenty, but not enough to make the drift completely smooth. Unless Clayton had piled snow in front of the door after letting Sara and Tim in, then the recent storm had smoothed the surface, or unless there was another way into the mine.

Or, more likely, unless Clayton was lying.

“You tough old motherfucker,” Magnus said quietly. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

A noise in the woods, from the south side of the trail. Magnus dropped flat, his body sinking lower than the waist-high snow. He holstered the Beretta and unslung the MP5. Caught in the open, Magnus lifted his head just enough to look out over the snow’s surface. He scanned the woods, but couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

Another sound. A strange, throaty noise, coming from the direction of the Bv206. He was cut off. Magnus lowered himself back down, then crawled to his left, closer to the shaft door. There was no one in the mine. That much was obvious. If this was a trap, he didn’t want to make himself an easy target by turning on the flashlight.

But he had to know what he was up against.

He gripped the MP5 in his right hand and came up to one knee, still crouched low. His left hand stretched out, held the flashlight against the top of the snowbank. He pointed it at the woods twenty-five meters away, then turned it on.

Along the trees lining the snowmobile trail, down close to the ground, the flashlight’s beam reflected off glowing animal eyes. Magnus swept the light in a steady arc from left to right, from the trees all the way back to the Bv206—everywhere the beam fell, it lit up eyes. At least two dozen pairs, spread out over fifty meters.

Magnus turned off the flashlight. The cows? No … the things that had been
inside
the cows. The things for which they’d built the heavy cages. But the plane had crashed only three days ago, how could the babies be that big?

A single roar erupted from the woods, quickly followed by dozens more, a cacophonous animal call-and-answer. In the faint moonlight filtering through the clouds, the creatures burst out of the trees like a line of rushing infantry.

Twenty meters. Closing fast.

Magnus stood and ran to the rickety old mine door. He lowered his shoulder and drove through it, splintering and scattering the old wood. He pointed the flashlight beam down the mine shaft as he sprinted, trying not to slip on the frozen dirt.

He’d covered only ten meters when he heard the monsters ripping through the door’s remains. Magnus stopped and spun, pointed both the flashlight and the MP5 back up the tunnel. One-handed shooting would make for shit aim, but in this narrow space it wouldn’t matter. He capped off a trio of three-shot bursts, filling the confined stone space with a deafening roar. The first creature to come through the door had a black head with a white nose-tip. Three .40-caliber bullets slammed into its skull, punching through fur and bone. The thing fell, twitching and kicking, its big body partially blocking the door.

The jostling flashlight beam made the nightmare scene shake with jittering intensity. More white-and-black monsters, big heads and black eyes
and hissing mouths filled with dagger teeth, pushing through the door, pouring over their still-kicking pack mate.

Magnus turned and ran again, trying to keep his balance on the descending, frozen ground. He followed the shaft as it turned a sharp corner to the right.

And saw the dead end.

His frantic flashlight beam played off the ceiling-high pile of boulders and broken timbers. He scrambled up the side, looking for a way through. On his right, he saw his only chance—a dark crawl space, a coffin-sized dirt pocket.

Without stopping to think, Magnus crammed himself into the tiny space. He kept the MP5 close to his body and dug with the flashlight butt, a rabid badger clawing for cover amid a shaking strobe light. He had to make enough room to turn around.

Roars filled the cave, their echoes bouncing off the fallen rocks with ear-piercing intensity. Magnus grunted as he curled into a near-fetal position, working himself around. His shoulder and face wedged against the wall, like he was being squeezed by a giant earthen fist. Frozen dirt scraped his cheek raw. He ignored the pain, forcing himself around until he sat on his ass, legs straight out in front of him, the shoulder-high dirt-coffin space forcing his head down and to the left.

An over-wide head shoved into the crawl space, filling it. The mouth gaped but couldn’t open all the way. The upper jaw knocked dirt from the ceiling, the underside of the bottom jaw pressed down against Magnus’s shins and feet, pinning them flat. Hot breath turned to vapor as it billowed out. The shaking flashlight’s beam shot all the way to the back of its throat.

Was that a tonsil?

The thing felt Magnus’s legs beneath its jaw. Teeth snapped as it tried to twist its head to the left so it could bite down on his knees, his thighs.

Magnus fired three bursts. Nine bullets snapped off teeth, ripped into the tongue, drove into the brain. Blood splattered everywhere, on Magnus’s hands, his coat, his legs, even on his face to mix into his own oozing cuts.

The creature made a choking, gurgling noise. Its mouth half closed, revealing wide, black, unfocused eyes. It slid limply from the hole and fell away.

Out in the shaft, Magnus saw another patch of black and white. He fired two more bursts but couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything.

He waited.

No more heads appeared to fill his tiny hole.

Magnus contorted his body and dug a fresh magazine out of his pocket. Slapping it home, he waited for the next attack. But none came.

He’d never really been afraid in combat, but this … this was something else. Fear was no reason to back down, though. If they came again, he’d fight.

There were far less glorious ways to die.

He heard a sound like a body being dragged across frozen dirt, then noises that reminded him of wolves tearing into a deer on some Discovery Channel special.

His back against the end of the crawl space, he pointed the flashlight out, playing it against the far wall. He saw nothing. Whatever was going on out there, it was a few meters away from his spot.