Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  William landed smoothly, without jolting his rider too much, and continued to sprint, sucking in great lungfuls of air as he ran, panting and growling as pain throbbed its liquid fire through his muscles and joints. He was so focused on racing onwards that he almost failed to notice the glint of a rifle scope on the periphery of his vision, to his left. He could not afford to slow down and look, though; Chloe would have to deal with the threat.

  ‘To the left, nine o’ clock, lass! Give the scumbag hell!’

  A shot rang out and Chloe grunted, and an icy blast of panic ripped through William’s veins as he felt her body jerk atop him; he knew at once that she’d been shot. This chill of biting dread lasted for only a second, though, because with a shrieking banshee howl of primal fury Chloe swung her AK-47 around and unleashed a barrage of automatic fire in the shooter’s direction.

  ‘I got him!’ she screamed as they raced onward, her ears and William’s ringing with a shrill whine in the aftermath of the gunfire. ‘Holy fuck, I just, I just fucking shot someone! B-, but he shot me first, oh shit, he shot me, he shot me!’

  ‘Hold on Chloe, hold on!’ William shouted into her mind. ‘I’ll get you to safety, girl, I’ll get you there, just hold on!’

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay!’ she gasped, digging her knees more firmly into his flanks. ‘It, it must have hit my bulletproof vest! My, my chest feels like someone hit it with a fuckin’ baseball bat, and I’m, I’m finding it a little hard to breath, but … shit, fuck!’

  Before William could respond, Chloe screamed out a guttural screech of battle-wrath, and again pumped out a couple of AK-47 rounds in quick succession at another Huntsman soldier who had had emerged from cover.

  ‘Suck on that, you son of a fuckin’ bitch!’ she howled as William raced onwards and vaulted over a massive fallen tree. He guessed that if she was still able to scream with such vociferousness she wasn’t too grievously wounded, and he continued to course through the labyrinth of living wood at speed, his goal almost in sight.

  At the head of the broken train of beastwalkers, Njinga and Jun burst out of the trees onto the rock-strewn peak of the mountain. The summit was most flat, and it was bare of any kind of vegetation, but at the northernmost tip a series of piled-up boulders in the rough shape of a sphinx formed the highest point of the mountain, and just beyond the head of the likeness of this mythical beast, which peered out over the hilly, heavily forested vastness beyond, there was a sheer cliff with a near-vertical drop of almost a thousand feet, where it looked as if some cataclysmic seismic event had sheared almost half of the mountain off.

  Njinga was breathing hard and was on the point of exhaustion from her madcap flight, but she still had access to a dwindling reserve of energy. The fact that the peak wasn’t yet crawling with Huntsmen troops gave her a spurt of hope and a minor injection of fresh strength, even though the sounds of battle and gunfire were intensifying in the forest behind her.

  ‘Off my back!’ she yelled into Jun’s mind. ‘We’ve arrived!’

  Jun needed no further prompting, and he hopped off Njinga’s back, his thin legs trembling violently from the effort of gripping her flanks, and his body aching and stiff from the jarring ride. Once he had dismounted, Njinga transformed back into her human form, standing naked in front of the teen, who blushed furiously and hastily turned his face away.

  ‘Don’t act like a fool, kid,’ she said, dashing with brisk purpose in her stride over to a pile of sticks and broken tree boughs. ‘Help me uncover this crate, hurry!’

  Jun, biting his lower lip and making a point of staring at the ground, his gaze self-consciously averted, hurried over to Njinga and started helping her to move the sticks and tree limbs. Hidden beneath them was a large metal crate, painted in camouflage colours. As soon as they had moved enough boughs to expose the top of the crate Njinga opened it. Inside were four black wingsuits, four pairs of goggles, as well as four black body harnesses, which had large Velcro patches along the entire front of their torsos, and plastic clips around their upper thigh and upper arm areas. Njinga yanked out a wingsuit, a pair of goggles and a harness. She tossed the harness to Jun, who almost fumbled the catch but managed to hold on.

  ‘Put it on,’ she instructed as she began to climb into her wingsuit. ‘Velcro goes in front, by your chest. Slip your arms and legs through those loops. Move it!’

  While she and Jun were putting their equipment on, William and Chloe burst out of the trees. Chloe’s face was pale and her gaze almost vacant, and she stumbled off William’s back, staggering and lurching as if she was in a trance.

  ‘I … I shot someone,’ she muttered, speaking to nobody in particular. ‘I shot … I think … I think I killed someone.’

  Nobody paid any heed to her ramblings; there was no time to comfort or console her. The instant William shifted out of his tiger form, Njinga – who was now fully clothed – tossed him a wingsuit. While he was putting it on Njinga spoke, her words laced with urgency.

  ‘How far behind are the others?’

  Before he could answer, the protracted jackhammering thunder of Zakaria’s M60 drummed with deathly madness behind them. It sounded as if the gorilla and his charge were close; perhaps only two or three hundred yards away.

  ‘Close enough,’ William grunted, stepping into the wingsuit and pulling it up over his naked body. Before he could say anything else, the sharp crackles of multiple bursts of M-16 fire indicated that Hunstmen troops were closing in – a lot of them.

  ‘I’ll see you at the lake, brother,’ Njinga said. ‘And by the Great Mother, I hope we see everyone else there too.’ With tears rimming her eyes she ran over to William and gave him a quick, tight squeeze, and then she hugged Chloe too. ‘You’re a good kid Chloe,’ she said, her voice cracking, ‘and I pray that you make it outta this okay. Just do everything William says, okay?’

  With tears streaming down her cheeks and her lower lip quivering, Chloe could only nod as a sob, feeling as large as a baby’s fist, tightened in her throat. Njinga handed Chloe a harness and then ran back over to Jun.

  ‘Come on kid!’ Njinga shouted, taking Jun’s hand. ‘This way, move it!’

  She scrambled up the sphinx-like boulder formation, dragging Jun behind her and almost yanking his arm out of its socket in her haste to get to the top of the rocks. William, meanwhile, hurried over to the crate to get out Lightning Bird’s wingsuit and Daekwon’s harness, pulling Chloe along with him.

  ‘Hurry lass,’ he urged, ‘get your harness on. That Velcro bit goes over your chest. Quickly, quickly now.’

  Up on the head of the sphinx, Njinga and Jun stood on the edge of the precipice. Njinga pulled the goggles down from her forehead over her eyes, and stood with her arms and legs outstretched, as if she was already in flight.

  ‘Press your chest against mine, like you were gonna give me a big hug,’ she said to him. ‘Get that Velcro stuck to mine nice an’ tight.’ Jun, staring apprehensively down the thousand-foot drop, nodded and stepped up to her, pressing the large Velcro patch on his chest against the one that on her wingsuit. ‘Now,’ Njinga continued, ‘clip your leg clips into mine, yeah, that’s it, and now your left arm. That’ll be enough to hold you up. Listen Jun, while we’re flying, you must not move at all; be totally still, okay? These wingsuits are very sensitive to movement, an’ we’re gonna be flyin’ low enough that any mistake could be the last one you or I ever make, you got it? Just be still, don’t move, don’t do anythin’, okay?’

  Jun, who had clipped himself in, gave her a nod in response. His face was mere inches from hers; it was the closest he’d physically been to another person for a very long time. He was trying to put on a brave face, but the fear in his eyes was plain enough to perceive. Njinga had no time to coddle him or reassure him about what they were about to do, though; she herself didn’t even know if this was going to work. Faced with the choice of certain death at the Huntsmen’s hands or possible death via wingsuit flight, though, she knew which was the preferable
option, as terrifying as it was.

  ‘We gotta jump now,’ she said calmly, even though raw fear was blitzing through her veins in icy surges. ‘Rest your chin on my left shoulder so I can see where I’m going.’ Jun obeyed, meek and silent. ‘All right, three, two, one!’

  With arms outspread Njinga took a step to the left, over the edge of the cliff, and gravity did the rest, sucking her and Jun earthwards with a ferocious hunger. The aerofoil nature of her suit, however, allowed her to generate lift, and turn her downward plunge into a graceful, if terrifying, arc that began to flatten, in a thrust of furious acceleration, into horizontal flight. With the wind buffeting with vengeful anger against her and Jun, she followed the course of the river a few hundred yards below, gliding like a flying squirrel and tearing through the air at over one hundred miles per hour.

  Up on the peak, William and Chloe were now strapped together, ready for flight, and Lightning Bird and Daekwon had just emerged from the forest.

  ‘I d-, d-, don’t like heights,’ Chloe murmured, her teeth chattering and her whole body trembling with fear as she stared, wide-eyed, over the edge of the yawning maw of the precipice.

  ‘I’m not too fond of ‘em either, lass,’ William said grimly, ‘but there’s no other way. You have to trust me on this. Just close your eyes and hold on, okay? You’ll be safe and sound before you know it.’ He turned to Lightning Bird and Daekwon. ‘See you two on the other side!’ he yelled, and then he spread his arms out and jumped into the vast abyss.

  Daekwon hopped off the grizzly’s back, landing with athletic smoothness, and flung his AK-47 to the ground. There was a dent in his combat helmet from where an M-16 round had hit it, and three large holes in the back of his bulletproof vest. The fabric had been ripped open, but the armour underneath, while dented, was still intact. Daekwon had had the wind knocked out of him by the shots, and had likely cracked a few ribs, but he was otherwise all right.

  ‘Outta … a-, ammo,’ he croaked, pointing with a trembling finger at the rifle on the ground.

  Still high on adrenalin, he was about to draw his pistol, but Lightning Bird, who had just transformed back into his human form, put a gentle hand on his forearm to stop him.

  ‘No more fighting,’ the shaman groaned, his countenance a contorted grimace of agony. ‘Time to fly.’

  Blood was streaming down the outside of Lightning Bird’s left thigh, and he was hobbling with a pronounced limp; he too had been hit by a bullet, but he hadn’t had any armour, besides the naturally thick muscles and dense bones of his grizzly body, to protect him. William pointed at two piles of flight equipment on the rocks near the base of the sphinx-like formation.

  ‘The one to your right is yours, and the left is Zakaria’s. Hurry brother, get suited up!’

  While Lightning Bird was putting on his suit, Zakaria and Paola came charging out of the forest. As they emerged from the forest, Zakaria bellowed out another ear-splitting roar and sprayed the shadowy labyrinth with M60 fire, aiming low in the hope of catching as many of the Huntsmen troops as possible as he spat the last hundred bullets from his ammunition belt into the trees.

  When he dropped the machine gun Paola jumped off his back, landing hard and twisting her ankle with a squeal of pain before collapsing onto the stony ground, gasping with such intense panic and fright that she resembled a freshly caught fish drowning in air. Stark white, her eyes were bulging in their sockets to the point of bursting free, her tongue was lolling from her chattering jaw, and her breathing was ragged and shallow. Her soda bottle spectacles had fallen off somewhere along the way, and numerous holes had been ripped in the fabric of her bulletproof vest, but her worst injury drew everyone’s eyes to it with a magnetic pull. Her right hand had been blown apart by a rifle round, and the appendage was now little more than a gruesome tangle of shredded meat, shattered bones and hanging veins and tendons. Wet, slimy hues of red, purple, crimson, grey and white bore brutal testament to the destructive capability of the M-16 bullet. Blood was dripping from the grisly mess in great goops and splattering stark and red on the pale grey stones.

  ‘Oh sh-, shit,’ Daekwon gasped, staring at the wound with horror writ across his haggard face.

  Lightning Bird took one look at the wound and shook his head grimly, with both pity and helplessness flashing alternately in his dark irises; this one was beyond his power to repair, and while he could stop the bleeding and repair some of the damage, the girl would never have a functional right hand again.

  There was no time for hesitation or indecision now, though. Already the Huntsmen troops were preparing for their final assault, and when they stormed the peak everyone on it would certainly die.

  ‘I’ll do what I can for her once we’re safe,’ Lightning Bird said. ‘But now, we have to fly. Put your harness on, Daekwon.’

  ‘B-, but, her, her hand!’ the teenager protested.

  Lightning Bird shook his head.

  ‘Now, Daekwon, or you, she, my friend and I will all die.’

  Daekwon understood the terrible urgency; a shrill, monotonous whine was still screaming in his ears after the running gun-battle he’d just fought, despite having earplugs in, but now an eerie silence had fallen on the forest. All of the wild creatures had long since fled, and the only large organisms for miles were those with guns in their hands and murder in their cold eyes, and they were now advancing through the shadows towards the mountain peak.

  Daekwon knelt down next to Paola and squeezed her left hand with both of his, and with tears rimming his eyes he kissed her forehead.

  ‘I’ll d-, do whatever I can to h-, help you,’ he murmured, his voice cracking, ‘when we s-, safe. I p-, promise you that, Paola, I promise you that.’

  Paola either did not hear Daekwon’s words, or, if she did, she did not understand them or care. She turned her head towards him for a moment, but it seemed as if she were staring right through him, her eyes like those of a zealous cultic devotee ensnared in the oblivious rapture of a trance.

  Daekwon bit his lip, waves of powerful emotion rushing through his core, and he jumped up, slipped his limbs through his harness and then scrambled up the boulder formation, where he clipped himself to Lightning Bird. He and the shaman took one final, soulful look at both Zakaria, who was in his human form and getting suited up in his wingsuit, and Paola, who was still lying on the ground shaking violently with shock, and then both of them vanished into the abyss.

  The old warrior knew that despite the pressing imperativeness of their situation, the girl would not be getting up and complying with his instructions any time soon, and he could not afford to try to convince or coerce her into obeying his orders. Acutely aware of the seconds rushing by and what the passing time meant in terms of their rapidly diminishing chances of survival, he pulled the untouched AK-47 off of her shoulders and scooped her up, and then slung her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. After picking up the rifle with his free hand he started scrambling up the boulders. His beastwalker senses picked up the sound of enemy troops advancing unchecked through the forest, so he half-turned, the AK-47 gripped in one hand, and let off a burst of hammering fire at the source of the movement. A raspy yelp of pain told him that at least one of the blindly fired shots had struck home. Dripping with sweat and breathing hard, he reached the top of the peak and the edge of the cliff. At that moment a burst of M-16 fire erupted from the trees, and the spurt of bullets kicked up dust and rock fragments around Zakaria’s feet. He knew that he had a second or two to make a decision; he could either guarantee his own survival by leaving Paola behind and jumping on his own, or risk both of their lives by attempting the wingsuit flight without her strapped to him.

  The former choice would be certain death for her, and even though the latter was virtually a guaranteed death for both of them, Zakaria could not condemn this innocent child to death to save himself.

  There was a third option though; an ugly one, perhaps, but a choice that may prove kinder in the long run. Zakaria quietly bo
ught the smoking barrel of the AK-47 up to the underside of Paola’s chin. The teen was half delirious and didn’t even seem to notice the warm steel pressing into her flesh. Swallowing slowly, with a maddeningly itchy bead of sweat inching a tortuous passage down the back of his neck, Zakaria eased his finger onto the trigger. One quick squeeze and she’d be gone; no more pain, no more terror, no more suffering … just pure serenity and eternal peace. For a second of dizzying confusion Zakaria danced this savage tarantella in his mind, but it was only a temporary window of craziness; he could not kill this innocent child.

  ‘Great Mother,’ he gasped, hurling the rifle off the cliff, ‘be with us now, I beg you.’ Then, as a number of Huntsmen troops charged out of the trees, their rifles shouldered, he slung Paola onto his back, first tucking her left arm around his neck and then pulling her legs around his waist. ‘Hold tight, child, hold tight,’ he said.

  ‘Cut the fuckers down!’ one of the soldiers roared.

  Before any of the troops could fire, Zakaria departed the mountaintop in a leaping swan dive. The surging force of acceleration yanked him earthwards like a boulder catapulted from a titan’s sling, and the broad rock-littered waters of the river below were in one second a fiery ribbon gleaming in the distance below, and the next a broad and ravenous highway of wildly rushing water, yawned rapidly wider, eager to swallow the pair of them up and pulverise their madly accelerating bodies to pulp. The lift created by Zakaria’s wingsuit allowed him to arc his vertical plummet into a hundred-mile-per-hour horizontal glide, but maintaining his flight path and a sense of stability in the air with the girl positioned awkwardly on his back was proving immensely difficult. Already the rippling wind was buffeting his wings with a ruthless wildness, threatening to flip his body into a tumbling spin from which there would be no recovery, only death for the both of them. Screaming out with the effort of keeping his arms locked and his body rigid, Zakaria swooped hawk-like around a sweeping bend, hurtling through a gap between two steep-sided, heavily wooded mountains. He was seconds away from losing control completely, and as he started to prepare for the next bend in the river, soaring above its churning waters and following its course as if it were a liquid road, a sinking realisation they weren’t going to make it hit him like a sledgehammer blow to the chest. The irresistible forces of physics could not be fought, not by the strongest muscles of the most powerful creature on the planet, and as strong as Zakaria was, he was not superhuman. And, what was more, Paola’s weakening arm was slipping off his neck, and the tightness of the grip of her thighs around his waist was slackening at an alarming pace.