[Project Nemesis] Jungle Fever (3 page)

            The knife in her
waist wasn’t much comfort when confronted with an animal three times her size. 
It wouldn’t be shit to these animals, but it was better than nothing.  Maybe
it’d be enough if she got jumped again to at least be a deterrent.

            Everything sliced
or cut or jabbed in the brush, and as she moved, she couldn’t help wincing in
pain.  Her skin felt on fire as sweat seeped into perforated skin, stinging
everywhere she’d been cut, scraped, and scratched.  Bruises she hadn’t felt
until she started mentally examining her aches and pains threatened to stall
her progress.  She wasn’t sure how long she could go on with nothing to drink, and
still have the energy to fight the dense jungle.

            Finally, voices
muffled by the jungle thickness sounded to her.  Someone was left.  They hadn’t
managed to all get killed or kill each other.  Elation quickened her step, and
she pushed herself harder.

            Shots fired,
whizzing by her head.  She crouched low, yelling to her men, “Don’t shoot!”
just in case one of them got trigger happy and tried to take her out.

            The foliage
trembled with the passing of something huge behind her--the unmistakable crash
of
something
that didn’t belong….

            She didn’t have
time to think, only to react.  Yvonne ducked and rolled, hoping the sudden change
in direction would throw the cat off long enough for her to get to her men. 
The cat recovered quicker than she’d supposed, easily catching her. 

            It bit at her
neck, she flinched in sudden fear, but instead it started to drag her by the
scruff of her shirt she still wore. Her arms flailed for a second as she was
dragged over the rough undergrowth.  The unerring sound of fabric ripping met
her ears.

            “Fuck,” she
screeched, nearly losing her knife.  She hacked backwards at the creature, trying
to slash at the beast´s face and neck to break its hold on her.  She stabbed at
him, and all the while dug her feet into the ground to try and slow or stop it.
 Her struggles were weak against the great cat.  Blood made the blade slippery,
but she kept stabbing.  The cat growled in the back of its throat and shook her
until her ears rang and her head rattled, it shook her until she screamed and
lost the hold on her knife.  The jaguar continued moving once the threat had
been disposed of, it´s hold on the back of her neck strong and sure.  Her head
hung like a rag doll, she couldn´t focus or aim her knife anywhere with ease. 
She tried to hit it in the face but she just felt the collar of her shirt tighten
around her body, almost suffocating her.  Instead of releasing her, it took
more of the fabric into its mouth to secure her position.

            This cat wasn´t
normal, she´d never known of anything like it.  For the first time, she let
panic set in, the bloody thing wouldn´t release her, her team were all busy
fighting their own personal tabby cat, so who the fuck was going to stop her
from being dragged deep into the jungle? No one.  Shit.  They probably hadn’t
heard her screaming for her life over their own screams.

            “Agh!”  Thrashing
about on the ground, she tried to break free from the cat´s grasp on her.  It
wouldn´t let go.  It´s head swayed with her movements.  She could feel her
panic threatening to overwhelm her. 

            Her struggles
were getting her nowhere, she hated being trapped, couldn´t handle it. Hadn´t
been able to, ever since one of her foster parents had locked her in a closet
for being a bad girl.  The closet had been so small and so filled with things,
that she hadn´t been able to move. She´d had to sit with her knees tucked into
her chest, and her head angled to the side for three hours.  Ever since then,
she couldn´t handle her movements being restricted for a prolonged amount of
time.  This was more than prolonged, it was an age. What the hell was going on
here?  She´d never known a big cat to be so strong, smart and unbeatable.  Every
animal had a weak point, but this one didn´t seem to have any!  Just her luck. 
Why wasn’t she dead yet?

            The pressure of
the collar, tightening with every step against her throat, made her feel like
she was choking.  She couldn´t get enough air into her system.  She felt
light-headed, dizzy from sustained panic.  Short, rapid breaths were all she
could manage to take in.  When a fucking jaguar picked something up with its
mouth, it was food.  The grip he trapped her with wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t
feel endangered like she had before.  She was more threatened by the vest
tightening around her throat than the cat himself.  She was large and could be
considered prey, so why wasn´t it eating her?

            Her thoughts came
to a screeching standstill when the cat suddenly stopped.  It´s hold on her
tightened until she saw spots, and started to wheeze, within seconds she knew
that if she didn´t hold it together, she´d pass out.  She opened up her senses,
trying to focus on anything that would get her through.  She noticed the
brightness of an unusual flower that was wrapped around a tree, felt the
dampness of her skin from the humidity, and finally she heard cacophony of
insects and birds.  No sound of her men.  The cat had dragged her further into
the depths of the jungle so she wouldn´t be able to escape.

            At the prospect
of imminent death, her senses shuddered and closed down.  Her focus returned to
her need for oxygen, the pants and wheezes increased until the cat dropped her
onto the ground.  Sobbing in relief, she gasped air into her lungs.  She
couldn´t move, she was exhausted from battling the cats then the awful journey
she´d just suffered through.

            Panting for
breath, she took in as much air as she could.  She needed more oxygen, the
sooner her breathing regulated, the sooner she could be on the defense.  She
stretched the collar from her throat and felt something slick coat her palms.
She looked at her hands and saw blood--it must be from the cat.  Good, it
deserved some kind of injury for the hell it had just put her through!  Out of
the corner of her eye, she watched it alternatively look at her, and then
monitor the bushes that surrounded them.  It´s head cocked to one side, it
looked almost as though it were considering its options.

            She didn´t expect
it to pounce on her again.  This time, it didn´t grab her by the scruff of the
neck, it ripped her shirt.  She fisted her hands and punched it in the sides
and on the top of the head, but that didn´t stop the cat from pulling her shirt
from her chest and latching on to the vial held in her waistband.

            With a loud rip,
some material gave way, and she punched it on the head, knowing she had no
other choice.  She wouldn’t go down without a fight.

            She could feel
the primal anger vibrate through the beast´s belly, and hit at it again. When
she smacked it on the jaw that held the small vial, it shattered instantly. 
Glass ruptured, flying everywhere, and with it, the remainders of the
pheromone.

            The remaining contents
gushed out everywhere, mostly over her.  If she wasn’t before, she certainly
was saturated by the contents now.  Just what she fucking needed.

            Yvonne stared at
the jaguar for a couple of seconds.  She was so close she saw its eyes dilate
as it smelled the pheromones that covered her chest, arms, and stomach.  His nostrils
flared repetitively, the muscles of his shoulders bunched and clenched.  The
cat seemed to tilt his body so that it leaned over her more fully.

            Knowing she was
in the utmost of danger, she had no idea how the beast would react to the
pheromone on her body.  Slowly, she used her stomach and back muscles, thanking
God all the while that she trained a hell of a lot in the gym, and used the
strength of her torso to inch her way backwards and away from the cat.  She
didn´t want the damned thing to react as though she were prey and was trying to
escape from it, if she moved quickly then it would give chase and more than
likely would tear her to shreds.  If she was lucky, it might start to toy with
her, and maybe she would be able to find a way to escape it.  If it wasn´t a
necessity that she be strong, she would have burst into tears, she´d never been
so scared in all her life.  She’d never encountered anything like this in all
her years—she just hadn’t been prepared.

            She didn´t know
what the hell it would do when she moved, how it would react to the pheromone,
these past painful and frantic moments could be some of the last minutes of her
life.  Focusing on the need to inch away from the cat, she only heard the
crinkle of leaves underneath her back, and her and the animal´s harsh
breathing.  Until she saw a blur of spotted fur in the corner of her eye, she
hadn´t known that anything else was in the clearing with them.

            Within a second,
the other cat, a leopard jumped onto the jaguar.

            Practically
sobbing her relief that the leopard was focused on attacking the jaguar and
wasn´t going to join in killing her, she quickly rolled away from the fight,
flinching all the while at the hisses and screeches of fury and pain.

            How many times
would this happen?  Why had they fucked with so many species of dangerous cat
on this island?  Someone needed a bullet through their fucking skull.

            She was running
on adrenaline now, because she had no energy left.  She was physically
shattered, frightened at the intelligence of the cats, bruised and battered and
damned sore from her fights, but she knew that she had to escape whilst she had
the chance.  Deja vu rolled over her mind, making her doubt her sanity.  Were
the pheromones so strong they were driving the cats straight to her?  It
couldn’t be a coincidence that she’d now had four cats fighting over her.  And
none had really tried to kill her.  She knew damn good and well she shouldn’t
be alive right now if they had been.  No one was this lucky, especially not
her.

            It was clear to
her that the wild beasts were fighting each other over her.  And she didn’t
know why.  There was nothing else to explain it but the pheromone all over her
skin and clothes.  She had to do something to hide the scent better, if she
could.  Dirt hadn’t done shit to disguise it and she had nothing to change
into.

            She rolled on to
her knees, and started to crawl away from tangled, fighting bodies.  Blood flew
through the air.  Furious growls and hisses blotted out all other sound.

            Her knees winced
at the pressure of the dirt and bramble on already sore legs, the heavy duty
camouflage pants she wore didn’t help one iota.  Moving as fast as she could,
she tried to consider her options.  She was weaponless, she´d dropped her gun
and knife earlier on, she only had her brain and her fists to rely on.  How the
fuck could she beat these creatures without a gun?

            They were way too
… everything.  She didn´t know what the facility they´d been in had done to
them, but whatever it was, it was too fucking much.  Never in all her
experience had she seen anything like the cat attack.  And it had been the
´cat´ attack, because her team had done nothing.  She´d shot a couple down, but
the rest had either shot them dead, or allowed themselves to be attacked.  She
doubted that they´d recaptured any.  But how could they have caught them, when
they were actually fighting in a formation?  The scientists had totally fucked
with nature, it was wrong, so much worse than testing perfume on rabbits, this
went against anything and everything that was moral and right.  They were the
animal equivalent of Frankenstein´s monster, a total ´fuck you´ to the natural
world.

            She had so much
experience hunting that these cats should never have been able to get past her.
 She wasn´t being complacent, she knew her strengths and her weaknesses,
hunting was one of her biggest strengths.  David, her foster father, had taught
her the basics, and working together, she´d learned more and more, until she
was as proficient as he, only at a younger age.  She was a skilled hunts woman,
but she couldn´t fight these genetically altered creatures--they were too
smart.  Too clever and cognizant of what was happening, they were almost like
beasts but with a human´s analytic brain.  It was frightening, and it was
fucking freaking her out.

            Shaking her head
at her thoughts, as it wasn´t the animal´s damned fault that they’d been
experimented on by mad scientists--she just didn´t want to be anywhere near
them to find out what they wanted with her.  If it wasn’t to eat her, she
couldn’t imagine what else they might want.  Her hands were covered in
scratches now from the dead foliage that lay on the jungle floor, there were
sharp stones and dried, dead pieces of wood that cut and tore at the sensitive
flesh of her palms.  She sucked it up, knowing that she had to free herself,
while they were both distracted.

            Yvonne knew she
was going the wrong way to rejoin her men, but that didn´t matter at the
moment, she just wanted to get away from the two fighting beasts.  She could
still hear them in the background, hissing and growling and screams of fury,
they were odd noises and more fearsome because of that.  If she´d had a gun,
she would have watched the fight out of interest, just to see the genetically
enhanced beasts in action--but weaponless, and injured to boot, she didn´t give
a shit about what was going on.  She just wanted to get back to camp.