Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (8 page)

From where the team stood, they could see the rippling, leafy canopy of what looked like thick, tangled jungle below them, surrounded on all sides by sheer granite cliffs. About ten feet down from the ledge on which they were gathered, the river spewed out of the cliff face as a misty, ethereal waterfall, spilling down into a clear green pool below. High above their heads was a vaulted ceiling of the curious red ice, giving the daylight filtering through it a ruddy, perpetual-sunset hue. In the distance, at the far end of the valley, there was a large, jagged crack in the rooflike ice dome, through which a bright slash of ordinary daylight spilled in. It was hard to judge its length from this distance, but the crack looked to Gabriel to be at least twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. It also looked as if several massive plates of ice overlapped at that point, forming a kind of covered ramp leading up to the frozen world above. It could be a way out, but it was easily a half a mile above the ground. Even if they were able to scale one of the sheer cliff faces and reach the frozen ceiling, they would still need to somehow travel upside-down, gecko like, across the curved ice to make their way to the crack.

“You see?” Velda asked, breathless and husky with emotion as she took in the sight before them. “I knew it!”

“I see it,” Nils said, his faded blue eyes wide. “But I don’t believe it.”

“How can a place like this exist?” Gabriel asked. He reached down to grab a handful of crackling fallen leaves. He let the warm wind swirl them away. “How has it been able to escape satellite detection for so long?”

“Perhaps the red ice covering this valley has properties that allow it to deflect geothermal imaging?” Nils said. “I don’t know.”

“What we do know,” Velda said, “is that my father wasn’t crazy. Can you imagine how much a discovery like this might be worth?”

“It’s worth nothing if we don’t get out of here alive,” Rue said.

“What are you thinking, boss,” Millie said, “make our way over to that crack there?”

“One step at a time,” Gabriel said. “First let’s get ourselves down from here.”

Driving a piton to anchor their remaining rope, the team carefully rappelled down the cliff, following the edge of the waterfall to the jungle floor.

Once they were on the ground, Gabriel was able to take a closer look at the foliage surrounding the water. The majority of the tallest trees were a species of fragrant, silvery eucalyptus that Gabriel had never seen before. In the shorter scrub layer, he thought he recognized a variety of distinctly Tasmanian flora in addition to a couple more species he couldn’t place. Everywhere he looked, his eye fell on something new and impossible. Mysterious, unfamiliar songbirds with
flashing orange and gold wings. Heavy, lumbering beetles like walking jewels. Curious lizards and tiny possumlike marsupials with wary red eyes. Velda was right—the sheer magnitude of a discovery like this was impossible to calculate, nearly overwhelming. But Rue was right, too. It would all be worth nothing if they didn’t find a way back to the surface.

“Look,” Velda said. “A trail!”

She pointed to what appeared to be a narrow, winding path on the left, leading off into the verdant bush alongside a rill flowing with runoff from the pool.

“I’ll take point,” Gabriel said. “Millie, you take the rear.”

Millie nodded, peeling the scraps of sleeping bag off his foot and pulling on his damp boot.

“Everybody stay close and keep your eyes open,” Gabriel said. He pointed at an animal skittering into the undergrowth. “Some of these look like smaller prey animals, and that means something bigger is probably eating them.”

“Great,” Rue said as they started down the trail. “I’m gonna be the first person in history to be eaten by a jaguar at the South Pole.”

“Come, come,” Nils said, squinting and wiping sweat from his eyes. “There cannot be any jaguars here. It’s just not possible.”

“This whole place is impossible,” Millie replied. “How much more impossible is a jaguar than a mosquito?”

They trekked in silence, sweating. Within ten minutes, they’d unzipped the sleeves off their thermal shirts. After twenty, the legs came off the thermal underwear. They packed away the stripped-off pieces, knowing
they’d be sorry when they returned to the surface if they didn’t.

“Nils,” Velda said, watching the tall man as he limped along beside her. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, but it was clear that the heat was getting to him. It felt to Gabriel like the temperature was somewhere north of eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and after twenty minutes of marching, Nils was flushed and sweating profusely, his thinning blond hair plastered to his skull. Having spent the last fifteen years of his life at temperatures that rarely rose above zero, his ability to cope with the sudden shift to tropical weather was also barely above zero.

The team came to a bend in the path and Gabriel could see a deep ravine just off to one side. At the bottom of the ravine the small stream they’d been following flowed gracefully over mossy stones.

“Be careful,” Gabriel said. “Looks like a bit of a drop over here.”

“Should we refill our canteens?” Millie asked, looking down over the edge.

“I don’t know if we’d be able to make it back up to the trail,” Gabriel said. “The bank looks awfully muddy.”

“Do you think the water here is safe to drink?” Velda asked Nils.

“No way to know,” Nils replied, peeling off his shirt and using it to mop sweat from his flushed neck. “Strange bacteria, unknown contaminants…Show me a proper Antarctic setting, I can tell you anything you want to know—but I can’t vouch for anything in this place.”

Gabriel heard a rustle in the brush on the right side
of the path ahead and froze, one hand out to stop the team behind him. A large, wolflike creature stepped out of the underbrush about ten feet down the trail. It was lean and oddly proportioned, with a low, hunched back and thick, tan fur striped black across its hindquarters. Its ears were small and rounded and its snout long and sharp. It had small, alert dark eyes with black Cleopatra stripes at the outer corners, and it regarded Gabriel as if sizing him up to determine whether he was a threat or a meal.

Gabriel remained stationary, breathing slowly, and the animal took a wary step sideways and back, revealing two cubs of the same species. They were smaller, but only slightly, nearly full grown. The pair weaved anxiously from side to side, staying half hidden behind what Gabriel was guessing was their mother. The she-wolf suddenly emitted a growl, hissing aggressively, and then opened her long narrow jaw alarmingly wide to display ranks of formidable teeth.

Seeing this, Gabriel suddenly recognized the animal. It was the thin, gaping jaw that did it—he remembered a piece of archival film from 1933 featuring the last known footage of a now extinct marsupial predator known as the Tasmanian tiger. Extinct—yet here was that very creature, alive and well and not very happy to see Gabriel standing in her path.

His first impulse had been to reach for his gun, which he’d strapped on before they’d descended to the jungle floor; but now that he knew what the animal was he reached instead into the bundle he’d made of his cold weather gear, checking pockets and trying to remember where he’d stashed his camera. He found it and brought it out as the mother tiger stood up on her hind legs, propped up by her stiff tail in an odd,
kangaroo-like stance. She stretched her head up high on her slender neck, seemingly looking over Gabriel’s shoulder at something behind him. Before Gabriel could thumb the lens cap off his camera, the creature let out an alarmed, high-pitched cry and she and her offspring bounded away into the thick underbrush.

“What do you think she—” Gabriel began, but he didn’t get a chance to finish as a giant beaked head burst through the foliage beside them, snapping at Millie and washing the team in a blast of hot carrion breath. Millie leapt back, grunting in surprise. Gabriel swapped the camera for his Colt as the creature barreled past them in single-minded pursuit of the fleeing tigers.

It was a bird of sorts, but enormous and clearly flightless, moving across the ground with an ungainly loping stride. The towering creature had to be at least nine feet tall, with a massive head topped by a crest of long red feathers and a hooked, eagle like beak that was obviously designed for tearing flesh. Its stubby, useless wings were more than balanced out by legs as thick as tree trunks and wide, splayed feet ending in wicked talons, each easily as long as the
kindjal
now being studied in the Royal Museum.

The bird came to a stop as it realized its prey had eluded it—or at least that one set of prey had. It blinked and twisted its muscular neck back toward the group, lowering its head and regarding them with a pair of eyes the size of tennis balls.

For something so large, the bird was astonishingly fast. One second, it was ten feet away, and less than a heartbeat later, it was on them, homing in on the tallest target in the group. Gabriel fired a shot at its flank as it passed but he didn’t figure on its speed and the bullet
went wide. The beast landed upon Nils with a flurry of battering wings and slashing talons. The lanky Swede let out a scream as he found himself caught by the neck in the grip of the razor-sharp beak. The bird shook him like a terrier with a rat and then tossed him effortlessly into the air. It was a horrifying sight. He was dead before he hit the dirt, his throat carved open in a bloody gash, his neck clearly broken. The bird landed on his body, one enormous clawed foot on his chest. As Gabriel took aim for a second shot, the bird dipped down and casually bit off Nils’s head, swallowing it whole.

Gabriel pulled the trigger. This time the bullet struck home. But it seemed only to enrage the animal. It swiveled to face him, its beak dripping crimson, and then cocked its head slightly, sniffing, its interest piqued by Rue and Velda.

Gabriel fired again, the roar of the Colt drowning out the bird’s cry. This time he’d aimed for the head, but his bullet ricocheted off the creature’s thick armored skull like a BB off a brick wall. At least, Gabriel told himself, he’d gotten the bird’s attention away from the women. It was facing him directly now, screaming out a challenge. Out of the corner of one eye, Gabriel saw Rue scamper up a nearby tree, with Velda close behind her. Then he saw the bird’s powerful thighs flex. It was getting ready to charge. There might be time for one more shot, at most. Gabriel steadied his hand—but before he could pull the trigger, Millie bellowed and charged the giant bird from the side, leaping up onto its back and wrapping his thick arms around the bird’s neck.

The bird let out an earsplitting cry of alarm and staggered backward, shaking its head from side to side. Millie refused to let go, wrapping his long legs around
the base of the feathered neck and throwing wild hammerfists at the softer portion at the base of the bird’s skull. It bucked like a bronco and reared back, trying to throw him off, but Millie held tight. Having failed to dislodge him through sheer force, the bird raced toward a wide-boled tree and spun, ramming Millie against the trunk. Millie held on through the first impact and the second, but his grip loosened and the third finally knocked him off.

Millie tumbled into the bush and Gabriel fired another shot at the bird to get its attention again. It reacted to the sound, leaping a foot in the air and coming down not quite close enough to reach Gabriel with a strike of its beak but not nearly far enough away for Gabriel to feel comfortable with his chances of survival. He didn’t want to go the way Nils had gone, supper for this prehistoric predator.

Gabriel and the bird circled warily around each other, the bird hissing and snapping its beak while Gabriel put another bullet into its feathered bulk. It finally seemed to be weakening—it was bleeding now in several spots—but the .45 caliber Colt just didn’t have the power for a kill shot on an animal this massive unless he could score a direct hit to the heart or brain. With only one bullet left in the chamber, Gabriel was running out of options.

“Get down!” Millie suddenly cried.

Gabriel dropped and rolled away as Millie came charging out of the brush with a boulder the size of a laundry basket held high above his head. With an enormous grunt, Millie hurled the rock, hitting the startled bird squarely in the breastbone. It squawked and stumbled backward, slipping and clawing for purchase on the rocky lip of the ravine.

Gabriel used his last bullet to blast the stones out from under the bird’s desperate, clutching feet and it tumbled backward into the ravine, splashing loudly into the shallow water below.

Silence followed.

Gabriel got back to his feet, unsteadily. “Good lord,” he said, as he fought to catch his breath. “What
was
that?”

“Biggest damn turkey I ever seen,” Millie said.

“I owe you one,” Gabriel said.

“Only fair, boss. I’ve owed you, plenty of times.” Millie didn’t seem to be noticeably the worse for wear; he wasn’t even breathing hard. But Gabriel had seen the force with which he’d been smashed against the tree and he knew the big man had to be hurting.

“Come on,” Millie said. “Let’s go get the girls out of the tree.”

Gabriel nodded, but he stepped toward the ravine instead. “Let’s just make sure it’s—”

With a roar, the huge beaked head sprang up over the edge of the ravine, like the world’s biggest jack-in-the-box.

Millie swore softly. Gabriel gripped his now empty pistol, silently calculating the time it would take the bird to climb back up to the path versus the time it would take him to reach his bundle and the pocket containing more bullets. It didn’t look good.

“Boys,” Rue shouted from her perch up the nearby eucalyptus. “Get your asses up here
now
!”

They ran. Seconds later the creature was back on the trail and thundering after them. Gabriel leapt up into the lower branches of the eucalyptus, while Millie chose a sturdier specimen on the other side of the path. The bird snapped at Gabriel, catching his left boot and
pulling it off his foot. The unfamiliar object did not strike the creature as edible and it spit the boot off to one side, shaking its head with a strangely human expression of distaste. Luckily, this gave Gabriel enough time to make it up from one tree branch to the next until he was beside Velda and well above the bird’s reach.

“Thank god,” she said, clutching Gabriel’s arm. “I thought…”

“I’m sorry about Nils,” Gabriel said.

Down below, the bird stretched its neck, beak snapping, but it could not reach them. It ducked its head, scratched at the dirt and turned away, shaking its dusty feathers.

“That’s right,” Gabriel muttered. “Go away.”

The bird didn’t go away—but for the moment, at least, it seemed stymied.

Rue, who was squatting on a branch several feet above them, called out suddenly. “Hey!” She pointed away to the west. “Gabriel, can you see that?”

“Don’t tell me it’s another one,” Gabriel said, and he followed the line of Rue’s pointing finger to a gap in the foliage some distance off. At the far edge of the gap, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was a large humped green shape almost completely obscured by vines and brush. Not another bird, that was for sure. It looked like…metal?

“What is it?” Gabriel asked, squinting.

“Tell me that’s not a propeller,” Rue said.

In the shadow of the green metal Gabriel spotted a large, paddle like blade.

“No, that’s a propeller, all right,” Gabriel said.

“Which means a plane,” Rue said, gleefully. “And that means a way out of here.”

“But then…other people besides my father must have been here before us,” Velda said.

“A long time ago,” Gabriel said. “Judging by how old that propeller looks.”

“I wonder what happened to them?” Velda said.

As if in answer to the question the giant bird suddenly reared up again and slammed its head into the trunk of the tree. Unprepared for the jolt, Gabriel swayed and nearly fell off the branch, the Colt slipping from his grasp and tumbling to the ground. The bird pulled back and slammed into the tree again, and then a third time. With each blow, Gabriel could hear the trunk creak and splinter. The bird pulled back and looked up at them. Gabriel could’ve sworn he saw a malevolent smugness in its eyes, as if the creature knew it was only a matter of time before dinner would be served.

Once more, the bird smashed the tree, and this time the branch Velda had chosen for her perch snapped, sending her slipping and clutching at branches far too weak to support her weight. She smashed through the branches, plummeting toward the bird’s gaping beak.

Gabriel cried out wordlessly and sprang forward, laying his body out flat on his own sturdy tree limb and reaching down to grab Velda’s forearm as she fell.

He caught her. She hung from his hand with her feet dangling, swinging like a tempting lure just inches above the gore-drenched beak below.

“Gabriel!” Velda cried. “Gabriel, I’m slipping!”

Gabriel tightened his grip further, feeling his fingertips sink bruisingly into her flesh, but her arm was slick with sweat and she
was
slipping, her arm sliding down along Gabriel’s like someone trying to slip out of a pair of handcuffs. In another second, he’d lose her,
unless he grabbed hold with his other hand—but he couldn’t do that without letting go of his grip on the tree, in which case they’d both fall. Unless he could hold onto the limb with his legs alone—

Suddenly the bird let out a bloodcurdling scream as a spear flew out of the thick underbrush and stabbed deep into one of its eyes.

Gabriel looked back the way the spear had come. To his amazement, a young woman burst from a cluster of thick ferns. A second and a third, and then a half dozen more.

Each woman carried a spear, except for the first, who’d already thrown hers. They looked alike as sisters, each with dirty blonde hair and pale blue eyes, each tawny and young, nubile, their deeply tanned, honeycolored skin and lithe bodies glossy with sweat from the exertion of the hunt. They were dressed, if you could call it that, in scraps of black-and-tan-striped fur that had previously clothed a Tasmanian tiger less lucky than the brood Gabriel’s team had so recently encountered.

While Gabriel hooked his legs around the branch and used both hands to haul Velda back up to safety, the hunters leapt onto the floundering beast, jabbing it with spears and beating it with stone clubs. Gabriel watched speechless as the huge bird finally collapsed, shuddered and died.

With the beast slain at their feet, the women’s eyes all turned upward, toward the three people in the tree.