Jump Zone: Cleo Falls (4 page)

Four

W
hat kind of idiot made
camp so close to a waterfall?

Cleo strained to hear over the incessant thrum. She gave another visual sweep of her surroundings before closing her eyes and tapping into her years of training to achieve a focused state. She concentrated on the movement of her diaphragm as her lungs filled and emptied, pushed the oxygen lower into her belly before letting it out slowly. Each cycle took her deeper into a state of intense meditation. She tuned into the suck and push of blood through her heart and mentally slowed her system until she felt centered. When she entered the zone, she filtered the sensory input of her surroundings, listened with an acute awareness.

She felt every molecule of air that entered her ear canal, vibrated the tympanic membrane, and sent a burst of energy through the cochlear nerve. Her cerebral cortex took over, comparing what she heard with her mental inventory.

Unlike hearing, which was mechanical, sight, smell, and taste were harder to amplify because those senses depended on a chemical reaction.

But she could. It was her gift. Learning to maximize her senses had taken her years of intense training, but she mastered it in time for the Leadership Challenge. In the singular darkness of her mind, Cleo was able to filter through the distractions and become one with her environment.

Snake, slithering into a rock pile, twenty-five feet to the west of the clearing.

Four chipmunks, chattering while they ran up and down the spruce trees in the grove between the camp and the river. Nope, five.

Branch snapping—

Chickadees, sparrows, a lone female cardinal, red-breasted sapsuckers, and the familiar sounds of Canada Geese flying at approximately one hundred and twenty feet, two miles to the east.

Splashing, downstream, a couple of otters.
Her nose picked this up even before her ears. Cute little critters, but otters had a distinct pungency.

Cleo switched her focus to smell as she continued to inhale deeply. The air around their campsite was permeated with spruce and pine, the earthy smell of composting foliage—a sure sign of autumn’s fast approach, and something else. Something else out there stirred her senses, tugged at her concentration.

Raccoons—burrowed somewhere upwind.

As mischievous as they were, raccoons wouldn’t make the hair on the back of Cleo’s neck tingle. No, there was something else.

Wolverine scat. Days old, no threat. And…

Cleo took a final breath and tensed as a rush of adrenaline flooded her system.

Alphacat.

“Pay attention to the rocks. You know all about rocks, don’t you, boy?”

“Yeah, I know about rocks. They’re big, heavy, and hot.” Libra flashed the old man his acid-burned hands.

“Never mind those kind. You need to look for peculiar patterns or formations, evidence of mining, tapping a vein, or stripping. I’ll want a full report.”

Libra almost forgot that part of the conversation. At the time, he’d reckoned Achan was giving him a personal dig about the way the inmates were clearing contaminated rubble and debris from the Dead Zone, but now, surrounded by the unfamiliar geography of the Ameradan Shield, he understood. Tons of zhanging rock, everywhere he looked, everywhere he stepped. But what constituted an odd formation? He had no clue.

He stared at the outcropping stone two times his height that blocked the path ahead. It had an angled peak, like it had been driven upward through the soil. Instead of navigating around it, he took a running leap and caught the toe of his boot about a third of the way up, then used his hands to spring his body up sideways, twisting in mid-air to give him upward momentum, scoring a perfect landing on the uneven cap.  Anyone watching would have been impressed. He let one corner of his mouth slide up and did a mock bow.

And thinking of Cleo, because that’s exactly who he had in mind when he bowed, he realized that he had three options. He had enough ampoules of psychoactive drug to have her willingly walk out of here with him, but he had serious reservations about using it. The side effects could permanently warp her mind, and Libra didn’t want to zhang-up her brain, savage or not.

Especially now that he’d met her.

Since she wasn’t the undomesticated ape-woman he’d expected, he loathed the thought of a bag-and-drag approach. To be cautious, he had injected the implant, so knocking her unconscious wouldn’t be a problem if it became necessary.

But a third, more satisfying scenario—and one that would make the mission go faster and smoother, with less complication—would be if she simply went with him, crossed the Cut Road of her own volition.

Question was, how would he get her to go?

Seduction was worth a thought. He wasn’t completely without charm and looks. Could he make a woman fall in love and drop everything when she didn’t know him, didn’t trust him? From the way she spit out the water he’d given her, he knew he had a way to go. He hadn’t thought twice before adding the vitamin supplement to the cup, never considered that she’d never had one before.
Zhang hell
, what did they do for nutrient-deprivation out here? Once he took a gulp to prove it wasn’t poisoned, she took a tentative sip, but her suspicious brown eyes stayed locked on his face the entire time. Maybe she knew about Zenwater, the poison they ladled out in Gomeda to keep everyone calm and controllable?

The trees thinned out as he approached the edge of what looked to be a sharp drop. He scanned the area following the line of the distant horizon. Nothing but rocks and trees, miles and miles of nothing. Why would anyone choose to live here?

There didn’t appear to be any easy routes through this zhang-damned country. No roads, rails, or hover paths, just endless, winding trails through ridiculously difficult terrain. How the hell did these people move?

He stopped on the edge of a stout cliff and looked down. There, at the bottom, just what Cleo ordered: yellow spiked plants.

Cleo.

She reminded him of a cat, the way her eyes tilted up in the corners, the way she tracked his every move, intently and with suspicion. She never looked relaxed or at ease, even when she slept. Her limbs were tight, like over-wound springs. He had no doubt she’d put up a good fight if he tried to physically subdue her. But oh man, a part of him would like to try.

He was told that she was some kind of warrior. He laughed at the thought. She was a bitty thing. He was six two, and the top of her head barely came to his chin.

And how would one fight with all those curves?

He shook his head to clear the image of her that was stuck in his mind so he could properly assess the series of shallow ledges between him and the yellow spike below. He leaped off the edge with the agility of a cougar, bouncing from ledge to ledge. The shale was jagged around the edges but slippery on the flat surfaces, so he was as careful as possible considering the speed at which he descended.

Time was of the essence. The quicker down, the quicker back, and the more time he had for his plan. He would use the sound of the waterfall to mask his approach. He wanted to learn more about the mysterious Cleo Rush, and, just like he had learned at the poker table, the best way to learn was to observe the subject. In this case, it was preferable to do it unseen, see how she acted in her natural habitat.

Five

L
ong habit had her grasping for the throwing knives in the harness she always wore across her torso, but of course, they were gone, lost to the river. Fight or flight time.

Running, climbing a tree, both out of the question thanks to her mashed-up leg. Besides, the cat could do both far better than a human. She scanned the campsite, looking for a tool, a stick, anything she could use as a weapon.

With options running out, she fervently hoped her nasal passages had been damaged during the drowning and she was wrong about this. But that smell was unmistakable.

Definitely alphacat.

Flesh eaters had an entirely different aroma than herbivores. And alphacats—genetic hybrids gone wrong—were anything but benign. They were rare in the Taiga, and Cleo had never encountered one alive, but she’d heard the stories. The Heron Clan lost two hunters and countless arrows bringing down the one whose black-and-gray-spotted pelt lay on her father’s bedroom floor.

She could hear it now, even in her less heightened state, getting closer, zeroing in on her scent. Fresh meat. Breakfast. The fresh blood in her wound beckoning to it. She, the injured prey.

For the second day in a row, Cleo’s survival was being tested. The second time in as many days when her heart rate climbed well beyond the zone in which she could think rationally. A second dance with death.

Damn waterfall!
She would have heard the cats approach sooner if
he
hadn’t made camp so close to the damn water.

Just the thought of her companion sparked an idea. He’d left his backpack behind, hanging on a tree. She prayed it would have something useful in it. Acid spray was a staple of sightseers, was it not? In case they had to defend themselves from itty-bitty squirrels. Maybe she could temporarily blind the cat and give her a small chance to escape.

If she didn’t get slashed to death first.

Knees bent, she positioned her left foot a few inches off the ground, rocked her body back and thrust forward, hands out, using the momentum of her body and the muscles of her right leg to get herself upright.

Fighting a wave of head-spinning nausea, she hobbled forward, eyes on her goal. She flinched and stumbled as pain radiated out of her wound. Another wave of dizziness threatened to knock her down. Lack of food, blood loss… hardly her fighting best. Cleo dropped her head to her chest and inhaled deeply. She couldn’t afford to pass out now. Not while she was being stalked for breakfast. And after it was finished with her, it would follow the urbanite’s scent—her savior would be dessert.

The bag hung twelve feet away. Her head still throbbing, she didn’t dare risk hopping the distance in case she lost her balance and toppled. If she fell, it would be The End.

She tugged the protruding end of a two-foot log from the smoldering fire, a thick-headed, dead tree branch that he’d not bothered to break up. Gripping it from the cool end, she smacked it on the ground to dislodge the loose embers that encased the bottom. Holding it out at arm’s distance, she leaned on it and jumped forward with her left foot.

Jump, grunt, breathe and repeat, eye on the bag.

The leaves rustled from the shadows beyond the clearing, branches crackling under the weight of her hunter.

Almost there. One more jump, maybe two. Holding her right leg bent, she again placed the log in front of her and, with her teeth clenched tightly, she coiled the muscles of her left leg and sprang forward. The burned end of her cane shattered under the weight. Smoldering embers scattered everywhere. Cleo gasped as the ball of her right foot slammed down. She fought to gain her balance, to keep going, to get to that sack.

A quick glance down confirmed what she feared. Her throbbing wound dripped with fresh blood. The animal would be opening his mouth, flicking his tongue between the long, razor-sharp cuspids to taste her blood in the air.

Nausea roiled her guts, more from terror than pain.

Cleo dove the last few feet and ripped the bag off the branch as her body slammed into the ground. She rolled into a sitting position and, with trembling fingers, tore through his possessions.

It approached slowly, stealthily.

Clothes, a pathetically inadequate first aid pouch, packs of powdered food, a shiny black disc that she shook, hoping a blade or something deadly would appear. She threw it to the ground. Useless, all useless.

He must have something! People just didn’t wander around the damn Taiga without some means of defense—spray, gun, laser…
oh come on, urbanite, you saved me once, please do it again.

She almost wished he’d not found her last night. She’d be dead already, her soul in limbo, or heaven or wherever souls went when they had no body to inhabit. As bad as drowning was, and it was horrific, the thought of her flesh being ripped apart by sharp teeth… well, that was too much.

Cleo’s pulse hammered in her ears, muting all other sounds.

All except the steady chuff-chuff-chuff of the alphacat’s breath.

Her skin prickled. She knew it was sizing her up from the dark foliage, smelling her blood, her fear. She imagined the slits of its predatory eyes narrowing and widening, focusing on her, its next meal.

They always paused before the attack, confusing their prey into thinking they had time to flee, and it was the moment Cleo needed to collect herself. She held her breath, her arm buried in the backpack, her hand moving methodically through its contents, searching.

Cree-ack.
A branch broke under its weight. It was settling back on its haunches, waiting for her to move. To scurry for cover. To run for her life.

Too scared to breathe, she imagined its tail, held low for balance, flick once, twice in anticipation of the pounce, the leap, the kill.

She let out a small whimper as her fingers reached the bottom of the bag. Her leg muscles tensed, prepared to run, when her fingers slipped under the reinforced bottom and landed on something long, hard, sheathed. A handle.

If lucky, she’d be able to rip the knife from its encasement before the cat emerged through the foliage. If she wasn’t lucky, she would die.

A deep growl crescendoed in Cleo’s throat as a burst of adrenaline guided her through the next few seconds. Her thumb snapped the release just as something exploded into the perimeter of camp, sending twigs, leaves, and a cloud of grit through the air.