Z. Raptor

by Steve Cole

  Loner broke open more coconuts, ripe and unripe, and the ragged party ate and drank greedily in silence. The milk tasted unbelievably gross and sour to Adam, and he found himself longing for burgers and fries and an ice-cold Coke.

  David must’ve noticed his expression. “Don’t waste a drop,” he warned. “That coconut water’s chock-full of nutrients.

  “When we die,” Harm muttered, “we’ll be in amazing shape.”

  As Adam gouged the last white flesh from a coconut husk, he heard distant animal cries and groans.

  Lisa stiffened. “Sounds like Brutes.”

  “Something’s got them stirred up,” David agreed.

  Harm looked between the pit and Loner. “Do you think they smell those two Vels you killed?”

  Loner was staring at the flies buzzing over the corpse of his pack brother in the pit, as if tracking their intricate movements. “This place will not be safe much longer,” he said at last. “Dead Vels or not, they will be coming here to gather you.”

  “For the feast,” Adam murmured.

  “Where can we go?” The way Lisa said the words, it wasn’t so much a question as a sigh of despair.

  “Isn’t there anywhere on the island that will give us cover?” Adam asked.

  “The Vel camp would give us plenty,” Harm said sarcastically. “And if we ask real nicely, maybe this Josephs woman will let us use her phone to charter us a jet out of here.”

  “I was just asking,” Adam shot back.

  “There’s a derelict supply store at the airstrip,” David reflected. “But there’s too much open ground around there, no cover. If the raptors sniffed us out along the way, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Adam turned to Loner, who was hanging back, his orange eyes taking in everything. “Hey,” he realized guiltily, “you haven’t eaten anything.”

  “I dug another trap for ostrich,” said Loner slowly. “Perhaps for now you can hide there.” He paused. “It is near the bone pit.”

  Harm shook her head. “No way. We’re not hiding out there.”

  “The smell of the dead is strong around the pit,” Loner went on. “It would help mask your living smell.”

  Lisa looked almost pleadingly at David. “I hate it there. Hate it.”

  “You think I don’t?” David looked grim. “This is about survival.”

  “What is the bone pit?” Adam looked between them, unease growing.

  “A mass grave,” said Lisa, her red swollen eyes lending violence to her stare, her voice heavy as stone. “Human bones piled high as a hill.”

  Adam took a shaky breath. “The wreck survivors who were killed here on the island?”

  Harm shook her head, not meeting his eyes.

  “When we hatched,” said Loner, “we had no parents to provide for us. . . . We did not understand anything but hunger. Hunger, and how to stop it.”

  “The hatchlings needed a large food source to sustain them until they were old enough to hunt,” David confirmed. “So they glutted themselves on the nearest meal.” He lowered his voice. “Hundreds of people brought to this island and killed.”

  “People were brought here to be raptor food?” said Adam. “No way.”

  “It is true,” Loner said, a dark shine in his eyes. He shook his head as if to clear it. “Now we must go. The Brutes are getting closer.”

  “Loner’s right,” David muttered as Harm took Lisa’s hand and helped her to stand. “We’ll talk as we move.”

  Adam wasn’t sure how long they journeyed through the jungle. Time could be judged only by the slow climb of the sun across the sky, its light clawing feebly through the thick canopy of leaves. It was a humid, shadowy world. Silence reigned there, a silence so thick it begged to be broken. Adam imagined the dragon-hawk head of a Brute swooping down from behind to bite through his neck—

  No, he thought, trying to calm himself. Loner would warn us. The crimson-dark raptor led the way, moving quietly with his curious, birdlike gait. Harm and Lisa walked just behind him, while Adam and David took up the rear. Adam’s nostrils began to twitch at a soft, sickly-sweet, rotten smell. The more they walked, the worse it became. His stomach began to turn.

  “It’s up ahead,” David murmured. Harm and Lisa held hands as they stepped through into a sunny clearing.

  Following them out, Adam found that a bare, circular area had been carved from a jungle hillside, the sides sloping down sharply and muddily into an oval pit of churned and stinking earth. And there, cracked and trampled in the mud, were the bones. A carpet of skulls and rib cages, femurs and thighbones and who knew what, some still wrapped in scraps of orange rag.

  Loner held back from the ragged group. “I will make my ostrich trap bigger. Big enough to hold four,” he said quietly. “It is close by.” With that, he skirted the pit and disappeared into the leafy shadows across the clearing.

  Adam slumped back against a tree, his legs trembling, nausea and anger sending his heart into a driving thump. “Why?” he murmured. “Why would Geneflow go to the trouble of bringing people here to feed the raptors when they had the cloned ostriches?”

  Lisa turned to him. “Isn’t it obvious? They wanted to give their raptors a taste for human meat right from the start.” Her face twisted in a sneer. “When Geneflow is through with whatever it is they’re doing, they’ll let loose these raptors into the world so they can eat everyone.”

  “It can’t be that,” David said gently, taking hold of her arm. “If that were true, why release the ostriches onto the island for them to eat? And why would the Vels keep people prisoner—?”

  Lisa shook off his hand. “All right, if you’ve got all the answers, why’d they do it? Why’d they feed these things the people we loved?”

  Adam felt a cold prickling down his back. “What?”

  She jabbed a finger at the bones. “My husband wound up in that pit. My Andy . . . just a pile of picked-clean bones.”

  “Excuse me?” Adam wasn’t sure if he should push this, but he had to know. “I, uh, thought your husband was executed . . . back in September?”

  Lisa stared at him blankly. “What?”

  “That’s what Agent Chen said, that your husband was given a lethal injection—”

  “Andy died here. We found the name badge from his prison uniform.” She pulled out a scrap of white fabric from her pocket, where BRANNIGAN, A was printed in black capitals. Then she unfolded it to reveal a little band of gold inside. “His wedding ring. I put that on his finger and I took it from a . . . a half-chewed bone. . . .”

  Harm put her arm around her and Lisa began to sob in silence. Then she turned from the bone pit, eyes dull. “What’s left of my dad is in there somewhere too.”

  Adam didn’t understand. “But . . . I thought you said you were flying out to visit your dad when you had to land here?” He turned to David. “You were on board that plane too, right? Where was it going?”

  “It was supposed to be taking us to see family.” David pushed out a long breath. “Relatives who’d gotten off death row. Killers, given a second chance.” He wiped his eyes, gave a bitter laugh. “They had no idea what they were really saying yes to.”

  “But Agent Chen showed me the report,” Adam protested, lowering his voice. “Lisa’s husband was executed a few months back.”

  “A cover-up,” said David. “I’ll bet you’d find a similar report on Harm’s father, my sister . . . on everyone who wound up there.” He wiped his nose crossly on his wrist. “They were told they would take part in a top-secret experimental prison program—the Alta-Vita process, designed to rehabilitate even the most hardened criminals.”

  “Alta-Vita?” Adam nodded. “That’s the name of one of Geneflow’s projects.”

  David ignored him, staring into space. “The program was designed to give them a better appreciation of what it means to be human. If they responded well, they’d be eligible for parole. And if they didn’t, their sentences would be reduced to life imprisonment just for taking part.�
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  “So, nothing to lose,” said Adam. “But surely the prison governors wouldn’t just hand criminals over—”

  “They helped select candidates and handled everything in secret to avoid an outcry from the victims’ families,” David went on. “They must have been fed a good line. Imagine if we could turn death row offenders into model citizens.”

  Instead they were turned into raptor food. Adam pulled his shirt up over his nose to try and lessen the stench. “I still don’t see why they didn’t take people it’s less easy to track, like homeless people, runaways, missing persons. Wouldn’t that be easier than dealing with the prison staff and having to deceive the victims’ families and—”

  He never finished his argument. A sudden swelling sound like building thunder shook through the clearing, and the next moment two towering, rangy Brutes came crashing out of the foliage just a few meters from where they were standing.

  “Soft-skins,” crooned one, slightly smaller but meaner-looking. “Other soft-skins.” The way its huge jaws mangled familiar words reminded Adam of Zed, only more savage and hate-filled.

  The larger of the two raptors nodded. It had only one eye, and Adam suddenly realized that these were the animals he and Harm had watched from the north cliffs—the two who’d flouted their queen’s laws by hunting and eating alone. He remembered the way one had spat at the ostrich to drive it into the jaws of the other.

  They’ll do the same to us, he thought numbly.

  “Where are the others, soft-skins?” One Eye was staring at David, his tail like a giant scorpion’s, flexing over his shoulder. “Where?”

  The female Brute started stomping toward them, blood and acid drooling from her jaws. Adam was about to run for his life when the vegetation beside the Brute crashed apart as Loner reappeared, head lowered, charging at high speed.

  “You?” the female barked—as Loner’s head crunched into her side like a scaly cannonball and the momentum sent them plunging into the bone pit in an explosion of ivory. For a few seconds, the fight was a chaotic clatter of bones and flashing claws as both raptors struggled to snare sure footing.

  David jerked into life, dragging Lisa and Harm away from the edge of the pit just as Loner struggled to his feet and drove both sets of powerful talons down into his opponent’s chest, shattering quills and splitting flesh.

  “Come on, Adam.” David grabbed hold of him.

  “Behind you, Loner!” Adam yelled as One Eye lumbered closer.

  Loner used the body of the smaller Brute as a springboard, leaping across to solid ground at the pit’s edge. But One Eye lunged with claws outstretched and landed a powerful blow against Loner’s throat.

  Adam closed his eyes for a moment as blood ran from the wound. But Loner stayed standing, staggering aside just as One Eye spat mouth acid at his face. Lisa shrieked with pain as the juices splashed her bare legs instead. She convulsed and fell against a tree.

  David put his arms around her, hauling her away from the struggling animals. “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

  Adam stared, paralyzed with fear as the attacking Brute swung his clublike tail and knocked Loner’s legs from under him. The Vel fell heavily, the tip of his tail striking Harm in the stomach. She fell like a ninepin, crying out as she cracked the back of her head on a sun-bleached skull baked into the mud. Adam tried to emulate David and drag her away. The human skull grinned blankly at his desperate efforts. Another jet of acid sprayed the earth beside him. He saw Loner was locked in a bloody bear hug with One Eye, the tough scales on his face oozing yellow and blistering, barking in pain and anger as he drove his attacker back into the undergrowth on the far side of the pit, his claws clamping its jaws shut. But the bloodied female Brute had risen like a grisly specter from the bone pit and now stamped after Loner, clearly set on revenge.

  And then he heard David and Lisa yell out in terror. Turning, Adam found that yet another Brute had appeared behind them, its face scuffed and scarred, blocking any escape the way they had come. Its dark eyes were hate-filled slits, and its crooked teeth dripped acid as the jaws widened.

  Trapped, thought Adam. This time there’s no way out.

  13

  KILLING TIME

  Athundering boom cracked out from somewhere behind Scuffed Face. The monster lurched ahead, claws slashing the air. David threw himself to the ground, taking Lisa with him. Both rolled aside as, with another explosion of noise, the Brute jerked and pitched forward, landing facedown on the ground.

  That sounded like . . . gunshots?

  A man with Asian features pushed out from the dark green shadows. He was dirty, sweat-soaked, with a big pack on his back—and he wielded a massive shotgun.

  On his knees, David stared. “Who the—?”

  “Agent Chen!” Adam rose, sheer relief washing through him to see a familiar face. “Are you—?”

  “Not now, kid.” Chen helped Lisa up and then turned back to the thick jungle. “Doc? Doc, come on, man!” He took aim with the shotgun as further crashing came from the bushes—then lowered it as Dr. Stone from the Hula Queen staggered into sight, clutching an old leather bag to his chest.

  Adam felt a weird surge of relief and anger to see again the man who’d kept him tranquilized for so many days. Stone’s gray hair was soaked with sweat, he was gasping for breath, and his face was badly cut. A fourth Brute loomed out of the undergrowth behind the doctor, and Chen opened fire. The giant raptor’s head jerked as the shot cracked into its skull, and it roared in anger.

  “Ten-gauge shot barely breaks the skin,” Chen muttered, blasting the Brute a second time, sending it reeling out of sight.

  “There’re two more Brutes back there,” Adam said, pointing in the direction of Loner’s headlong charge. Then he saw Dr. Stone was leaning heavily against a tree, clutching his chest. “You okay?”

  Stone nodded briefly as Chen turned to the speechless David. “There’s more of those things on our tail. Get Adam and this man to shelter with the rest of your party. Pete and I will hold them off.”

  “Pete?” David echoed blankly.

  On cue, a big, muscled man in a bloodied white T-shirt emerged from the humid darkness; Adam recognized him from his fleeting moments of consciousness on the Hula Queen. Pete was wielding a high-tech crossbow with a telescopic sight, but he was shaking all over.

  “Move,” Chen urged David.

  “I can’t,” Lisa whispered, eyes wet and wide with terror. “My legs, the pain . . .” She took a few faltering steps but then fell to the ground next to Harm’s unmoving body—just as Loner came staggering back from his battle in the tropical brush behind them. One of his sickle claws was broken, and his left arm hung limply at his side.

  Chen whirled around at the sudden movement. “Pete, get that one, it’s wounded.”

  “No!” Adam shouted. As Pete pulled on the crossbow’s trigger Adam knocked his arm. The bolt went wide and clattered into the bone pit. Those Brutes couldn’t kill him, Adam thought fiercely, and you’re not going to finish the job.

  “What the—?” Pete rounded on Adam.

  “Agent Chen, that’s Loner!” The words spilled from Adam’s mouth in a frantic rush. “The raptor in the video who helped Lisa and the others. Don’t hurt him—”

  “Soft-skins!”

  The unearthly shriek heralded the coming of more Brutes in pursuit of Chen’s group. As they came crashing out of the foliage, Pete shot a bolt into the quillcovered chest of the one closest. It yanked out the arrow shaft as though it were a splinter and bared its hideous teeth—just as Chen let rip again with the shotgun. The monster’s open mouth seemed to explode in a hail of shattered teeth, but even as it screamed its pain, the Brute behind it dived forward. It was smaller than the others, with a hunched, misshapen back.

  But it was no less vicious.

  It jarred the crossbow from Pete’s sweaty grip with a spray of acid and then the sickle claw on its hind leg swung up and cut him almost in half with a single slash. As Pete’s lif
eless body thudded to the ground, Chen screamed and fired two more shots at the hunchback, driving it back.

  Adam was almost sick. He turned, trying to hide his eyes from the horror—and saw Loner staggering closer to the group. The Vel’s face was a mass of weeping blisters. He pushed past Adam and stood in front of him protectively, squaring up to the Brutes.

  “Wait!” Loner rasped.

  The two Brutes hesitated.

  “They’ll kill him,” whispered Lisa as Harm’s dark eyes opened—and quickly clouded. She put a hand over her lips, stifled a gasp as the Brute with the bloodied mouth took a step closer to Loner.

  “It is him,” the creature spat.

  “This is the wrong way. The wrong way.” Loner tried to stand tall, and the gashes in his blood-caked chest reopened. “I know you want these . . . people as bait. Bait to lure out Vels so you can attack. Kill. But my plan is better. Listen to me.”

  “Where are our brother and sister?” Broken Teeth demanded. “You fought with them.”

  “I had to stop them,” hissed Loner. “But I spared their lives. They will heal.”

  The Brute’s jaws swung open. “You will not—”

  Loner shook his head. “Hurt us, and I will not help you destroy the Vels.”

  “You are a Vel,” snarled Broken Teeth. “Not of our pack.”

  “Not of any pack,” said Loner hoarsely. “The two I stopped . . . they were not clever like you. I knew they would not listen. Only a born leader is smart enough to listen.”

  Broken Teeth said nothing, glaring at Loner.

  “Only a leader would understand my plan.”

  He’s buying it, Adam realized, holding his breath. Loner’s buttering him up, and he’s buying it.

  “Wait.” The squat, hunchbacked Brute who’d killed Pete pushed in front of its gap-toothed brother. “You,” it whispered, cruel eyes fixed on Harmony. “You.”

  Adam swallowed hard. Was the Brute going to attack?

  “Perfect, sweet. Yes. You are mine,” it hissed.

  Harm’s breath came out in a whimper. “No.”