“Which isn’t that odd, according to you,” Hawk said.
“True. Such fossil evidence, especially if the species was new, could have been missed or lost due to the extinction event.”
“What we cannot deny is whoever or whatever tracks us has tried to help us. Nyet?” Svet said.
“Like I said before. No monkey can fire a gun. Would have a gun,” Hawk said.
“Are you saying there’s another person like us here?” Max said.
“It’s possible.”
“How?” he pressed. “We were in space. Everything that was on Earth is gone.”
“True, but we know nothing about how we got here. Maybe some burp in space-time threw back another unlucky bastard?”
Max said, “Then why not announce yourself? What’s with the sneaking around? Living in the shadows?”
“Also true.” Hawk had another idea, and it was crazier than his last. “It could be an alien from the beacon station. An outcast? The creature could be AWOL. Afraid of us, but watching, waiting for the right moment to show itself.”
Max and Svet said nothing.
The breeze picked up and wind pushed through the fern leaves, the whistling of their sharp tips creating a sad melody that made Hawk think of a crackling fire.
Max coughed, and said, “Say the missing bullet and me not remembering aiming at the dinosaur was a coincidence and went down the way you said. So that one is on me. What of the other two?” Max said. “The yell in the woods and our supplies being saved? Those our dino-man could have done. Or some being hitherto fore unknown. A creature of intelligence missed by the fossil record. I must remind you again, we knew very little this far back. There was much evidence to support what science believed to be true, but they didn’t know for sure. Colors of dinosaurs being the perfect example.”
Hawk didn’t know what to make of it, but Max’s explanation made the most sense. He said, “Alright? What do you propose we do?”
“We set a trap,” Max said.
27
Hawk searched the forest, his unease growing. How close was their stalker? Close enough to listen to their conversations? Hear them breathing at night as they slept? Had their prowler been in their shelter while they were sleeping? Stood over them while they dreamt? Hawk didn’t think so. A lookout was posted every night, though he fell asleep on his shift most nights.
Svet and Max’s eyes darted from each other to the dark forest, the endless trees, creepers, weeds and flowers somehow different than they’d been just moments before. Out there in the green void something watched them. Something that didn’t want to hurt them, yet Hawk still felt stalked. Nobody likes being followed, their every move observed and dissected, but military veterans felt the presence of watchful eyes more keenly as their internal radar was more acute. Hawk didn’t like that his radar hadn’t picked up whatever this thing was.
Hawk whispered, “We have to assume from here on out that we’re being watched.”
“Why do you whisper?” Svet said. “You think our tracker is that close?” She looked at the jungle again, then back at Hawk. The tough-as-nails Russian looked rattled, and that more than anything else put the hair on the back of Hawk’s neck on end.
“Ja.” Max answered for Hawk. “The jungle hides much.”
Hawk found his voice. “Maybe close, maybe not. We must assume we are being monitored at all times and possibly in danger, though I feel obligated to say that if whoever or whatever is tracking us wanted us hurt, or dead, that end could have easily been achieved a long time ago.”
“Logical,” Max said. He hadn’t reverted to his Spock-self in sometime and Hawk thought the Vulcan had departed for good, yet here he was. “How else would…” Max stopped, a new thought making him frown. “How the hell could whatever’s tracking us understand English?”
Hawk sucked in a breath. He hadn’t thought of that. Dino-man, a monkey, or an unknown lifeform wouldn’t know English. “Who knows. If it’s a being from another planet perhaps it has a way to understand us.”
Svet laughed. “Like E.T.?”
“Not like E.T. at all,” Hawk said, but he smiled.
“What kind of…” Max lowered his voice so only his companions could hear him. “What kind of trap should we make?”
Hawk motioned with his hand, and the three companions huddled together within a spreading fern. The buzz of the jungle, the push of the wind, and the constant chatter of birds, reptiles, and dinosaurs made it impossible for the party to be heard without a high gain microphone.
“The question isn’t what will trap our friend, but what will draw it in,” Hawk said.
“Da. Food not good,” Svet said.
“No, and that’s normally what we’d use, but I agree, food isn’t an issue here,” Hawk said.
“What about one of us as bait?” Max said.
“No understand?” Svet said.
Hawk said, “There have been numerous opportunities for our shadow to take one of us, and it hasn’t.”
“No, I mean do you think if one of us were alone, hurt and needed help, do you think our stalker would assist? Or leave the injured party be and stay hidden?” Max said.
Their shadow hadn’t showed itself and there had been numerous opportunities. Hawk rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. The stalker had helped them. Had intervened multiple times. On the burnt-out plain, in the flood, and when Hawk was under attack in the jungle. In all three of those instances their pursuer had helped. Hawk said, “I think it would help just like it has so far.”
“How?” Svet said.
“Depends on the situation. I think our friend is crafty, and a traditional trap probably won’t work.”
“Unless we have good bait,” Max said. “The fact that we’ve seen no signs of pursuit other than the ones we were intended to find tells me we’re outmatched in this game.”
“Maybe, but we must try,” Hawk said.
“Why?” Svet asked.
To that there was no logical answer, so Hawk said nothing. What would meeting another person mean? Not much. Everything. What knowledge would said person possess? Any individual on their trail would be in the same predicament. Survival, and the fact that their pursuer had the time to follow them around, meant daily necessities had been handled and no longer served as a challenge.
In the end, Hawk and crew agreed it would be impossible to construct physical traps without first securing the area, so it was decided that Hawk and Svet would create a better perimeter around camp. A web so tight nothing bigger than a rodent could get through it undetected. Once they were sure nobody was watching, Max constructed four basic snares using sinew line and nearby trees.
Svet was the bait. It was believed she could achieve maximum sympathy via her acting. She’d played the Lady in Macbeth in secondary school and that gave her more experience than Hawk and Max. The sexist boys made like they were going hunting, loudly proclaiming that they’d be gone for hours.
Hawk and Max circled around and hid in the underbrush where they could see the entire camp. Svet pretended to get hurt, tripping over a rock and landed by the fire. It was a brilliant performance. She cried out in pain, called for help, and then pretended to pass out. While she lay still, Hawk and Max watched. They gave it a couple of hours, but when nothing happened they decided to try again the following day.
The sun lifted its purple head above the horizon. Hawk and Max made a show of leaving camp, telling Svet they were going hunting, but circling back and hiding in the boughs of a conifer tree with thick spreading branches. Unless their stalker had the nose of a bloodhound, they were well hidden. They’d changed their position from the prior day because Hawk wanted a better vantage point and the direction of the sparrow fart wind had shifted.
Max made a cooing sound, the signal to Svet that they were ready. She pretended to fall, this time less dramatically and violent than the prior day. She made up for her poor acting with a loud dramatic scream that would be heard for a mile. She whimpered loudly
for half an hour, then fell still.
They waited. The sun crept past noon, thin beams of sunlight pierced the tree canopy like spotlights. Svet cried in pain until she was hoarse, and when the sun started its descent to the horizon they gave it up again.
At the end of a third day of failure, Hawk said, “Maybe our friend has moved along and awaits us on the road ahead.”
“Ja. I think we should move. Try again in a new spot,” Max said. “If it’s been tracking us it knows what direction we’re going in.”
The party packed up, dismantled their snares, and plunged into the primordial jungle once more, this time shouldering an unease bolstered by the idea they were dealing with something much more adept at surviving in the jungle than they were.
They hiked for two days until they reached a large depression in the ground. “This spot looks good,” Max said. “We can create a solid perimeter here.”
“Will that scare our friend off?” Hawk said.
“Unknown, but I think we should try.”
“Da.”
They set up camp within the stump of a fallen tree similar to their first shelter. Svet made a large fire pit and the companions settled in, cooking some bird meat they’d caught on the trail and collecting green stuff, which they’d all become good at spotting.
Svet and Hawk searched the perimeter of the gully as Max set his snares. They’d try their play again the next morning when Hawk and Svet went hunting. This time Max would be the bait.
At sunrise, Svet and Hawk climbed the embankment out of the depression and split up, Hawk going south and Svet east. They met around the opposite side, and Svet and Hawk tucked themselves in the bows of a tree with large yellow fan leaves and a trunk with thick shedding bark like a palm.
Hawk nibbled on jerky, and drank some water. Below in the hollow Max put on his best show, falling with a shriek that sounded like he’d really been hurt. He lay prone on the ground, not moving. Then he rolled over and cried for help.
Hawk and Svet sat. And sat. And sat. Nothing happened. Even the critters seemed to realize something was afoot and stayed clear.
“I have to take a leak,” Hawk said. He shuffled off into the underbrush, leaving Svet alone. Getting through the thick vegetation without making noise was a challenge, and it took Hawk fifteen minutes to go twenty feet. He slipped behind a scrub palmetto tree, unzipped his fly and urinated.
He was about halfway done, his puddle of urine running toward his feet, when he saw a figure creeping through the jungle toward camp. The dark shape was vaguely humanoid, and amidst the dense foliage Hawk couldn’t tell whether the intruder was human or beast.
He covered up and dropped to the ground, disappearing beneath a spray of thick fern leaves and crawling through his urine. Hawk wished he could warn Svet, but there was nothing he could do. The stalker was close, and any sound he made would bring scrutiny to his position.
He waited, breathing in and out, calming himself as the newcomer vanished within the sea of green. Max cried for help, and Hawk circled around, staying out of sight behind tree trunks and within underbrush as he made his way back to Svet, who sat where he’d left her.
“You see our friend?”
“Nyet.”
“I did. He—”
At the edge of the gully, directly across from where Hawk and Svet crouched, the outline of a dark figure hid behind a bush, watching Max as he rolled around on the ground. Max must have sensed something was up, because he threw them a fast hand signal and screamed louder, weeping and wailing for help.
The shadow inched forward, its features still hidden by the shaded jungle. The intruder went to the ground, and army crawled over the dirt and through the groundcover toward Max.
Svet said, “Should we stop him? Do something?”
“Not yet.”
A dinosaur roared in the distance and the mystery man disappeared from view. Dark green leaves, palm fronds, and spreading fern branches swayed and bent as something unseen moved through them.
“We’re losing it,” Svet said.
“Wait,” Hawk said.
The vegetation stopped rustling, and other than the constant sound of insects, the jungle went still.
Svet gasped.
A figure the size of an adult slipped from the forest, working its way toward the center of the gully where Max and his traps waited. The person appeared male, mostly bald, with the telltale facial features of a person from the Orient. His sunburned skin glistened with sweat. He wore a red t-shit that was brown with age and torn in many spots. He had no shoes, and his pants were so torn there was barely anything left to them.
The stranger was ten feet away from Max when he stepped in a snare, and it pulled tight as the man’s foot was caught. The stranger went down, a thin tree snapped back, and the man was dragged across the ground. He yelled and wailed in what sounded like Chinese, and pulled at the snare as if it burned his skin. Hawk and Svet rose and showed themselves, and Max got up, brushing himself off.
For the first time since their arrival, the party would have a guest for dinner.
28
As Hawk approached, the man stopped struggling and looked up at his captor with contempt. His eyes flashed with anger, and Hawk said, “Easy. We don’t want to hurt you.”
The man ranted in a language Hawk didn’t understand.
Max, who spoke several languages, shrugged and said, “Some form of Chinese or Japanese. Unfortunately, I don’t speak either.”
“What’s your name?” Hawk asked.
The man shrank back, confusion cutting across his face. He stammered and stuttered like a child, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time and had forgotten the right words.
“Name?” Svet said in a soothing voice.
Hawk looked at Max who lifted an eyebrow. They’d never heard that tone from her, but it worked. The man’s face softened and in a hoarse voice straining from lack of use he said, “Enyo.”
“Nice to meet you, Enyo. I’m Jonah Hawkins. My friends call me Hawk, and this is Svetlana Savitska. Svet for short, and over there is Dr. Maximillian Schleggal. He prefers Max.” When Enyo said nothing, Hawk added, “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
Enyo nodded vigorously and Max gave him his water bottle. The man drank greedily, water spilling from his mouth and down his chest. Hawk cracked his neck, but said nothing. It pained him to see water being wasted when they had so little, but now wasn’t the time to disturb detente.
“Let me take this off you,” Hawk said. He stepped forward with the intention of taking the snare off Enyo’s leg and the man sprang back, throwing up his hands to ward off a blow. “It’s OK. I just want to take this off. OK?” Enyo looked wary, but acquiesced. Hawk knelt and carefully removed the sinew twin knotted on the man’s leg.
When Hawk was done, Max said, “Come sit by the fire.”
Hawk led the way and sat on a log they used as a bench, staring into the fire and trying not to look at Enyo. Svet and Max followed, but Enyo sat watching them, his gaze shifting from them to the forest.
“No need to run. You can come and go as you please,” Hawk said.
“Go?” Enyo said.
“If you wish,” Hawk said.
Enyo rose and looked around as though he was seeing his surroundings for the first time. His eyes lingered on the three snares that still lay strewn about. He sat where he was, not running, but not joining them by the fire either.
“Stay there, that’s fine,” Max said.
Hawk had so many questions he didn’t know where to begin, so he waited. How long had it been since Enyo had shared the company of another human? When was the last time he’d had a conversation? Was he alone? The man looked like he’d been to hell and back, but then Hawk remembered what he and his friends must look like.
Enyo had cuts and bruises all over his exposed skin. His clothes were rags, his thin beard a matted mess of dried food and dirt. His eyes gleamed like cinders, and he smelled rank. He watched Hawk and his friends, his eyes falling on
the leftover fruit from breakfast that rested on a flat stone they used as a cutting surface.
“You want?” asked Svet, noticing the same thing Hawk had.
Enyo nodded. Svet rose, lifted the stone, and placed the food a few feet away from Enyo. He cringed whenever anyone got close, and it was clear he’d suffered a trauma, though it might be no more than isolation. Being alone for long periods of time has adverse effects on a human’s mental state. Extreme isolation was known to cause a variety of mental and physical issues.
They all sat like that a long time. Enyo watching them, them staring at him. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and the world didn’t seem to notice or care that they’d added a member to their party. Or had they? Hawk still had the feeling Enyo might bolt at the first sign of danger, and Hawk didn’t know how to put the man at ease.
Hawk decided to start simple. “Do you speak English?”
To Hawk’s surprise, Enyo answered. “Yes. I studied at Oxford for a year.” The man’s voice cracked, but was steadier than before.
“Oxford?” Max said. “Are you alone?”
Enyo stared off into space. “Yes.”
“How did you come to be here?” Hawk said. That was the million-dollar question.
Enyo surprised Hawk by laughing. Not a chuckle, or casual amusement. He laughed like a madman, no control, over responding as would a child. Hawk and his mates were silent. It looked like this man had been alone a long time, and it would take time for him to rejoin humanity, if he ever fully did.
“How did you all come to be here?” Enyo asked.
Hawk saw this as progress so he told the man their entire story from first to last. The physical pain caused by the cloud, the throwback and their fall to Earth in the Soyuz capsule, and the subsequent struggles. The markers they’d found in the jungle. Enyo listened without interrupting, his face softening, muscles relaxing, as the realization struck him that Hawk and his friends were in the same predicament he was.
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