Shadow of the Jaguar

by Steven Savile

  “How many more do you think there are?” he asked.

  “Hard to say, at least one more, look.” Stephen scraped away the mulch of fallen leaves from around a single set of tracks. “Judging by the distribution, I’d have to assume this one was moving at a pace — look at the grouping of them. But over here, not only are the prints themselves slightly larger, they sink deeper, as well.”

  “Couldn’t that just be because the creature stopped running?” Abby asked, echoing Cutter’s initial thought.

  “Possibly, but I am inclined to say no.”

  “Why?” Cutter pressed. He followed the line of tracks, trying his best to separate one set from the other.

  “See, here, the weight distribution is different. Let’s assume no two creatures walk exactly the same, this one is putting more of its weight on the rear of its paws than the other.”

  “But again, couldn’t that just be down to the fact that it’s running?”

  Stephen shook his head.

  “No, not really. That’s not how it works. You see, you have a stride pattern, a natural way of moving. Fast or slow, it doesn’t matter, you’ll inevitably distribute your weight in the same manner.”

  “Really?” Connor asked. “What about if I’m walking on tip-toes?”

  “Then you’d look like an idiot,” Stephen said. “Abby running will leave a different indentation to Connor tip-toeing like an idiot, to Cutter, to me. I’m taller, but more muscular, so there’s more weight distributed across a smaller surface area.”

  “Excellent,” Cutter said. “Then, I’d say there were at least two sets of tracks here. One male, one most likely female.”

  “How can you possibly tell the sex?” Chaplin asked, moving away from the soldiers and Jenny to question the scientists.

  “I take it you weren’t listening to Stephen, Mr Chaplin. Weight distribution, size, it all reflects in the indentation left behind by the animal’s track.”

  “Impressive,” Chaplin conceded.

  “Here,” Stephen said, “once it slows from the run —” He pointed to a place where four prints appeared remarkably closely together, and then again, some distance away where the same grouping of four occurred, then beyond that, where four became two matching pairs. “— the stride breaks into a more even gait.”

  “And that tells you it’s a male? Or a female?” Chaplin asked, still puzzled.

  Stephen laughed.

  “Not at all. That tells me it stopped running and started walking. Prowling the clearing most likely. Whatever it was hunting stood pretty much exactly where we are.”

  “Well, isn’t that a comforting thought,” Chaplin said with a visible shudder. “So how do you tell the sex?”

  “The males and females of most species have slightly different tracks, it’s quite easy to see the differences when you know what to look for. Especially when the prints are so well defined.”

  “Ahh,” Chaplin said, still obviously none the wiser.

  “Hey, guys, this is interesting,” Abby said, standing up suddenly and stalking across the open ground. She pushed through the press of branches and tangle of vines. “There’s something here,” she called back as the undergrowth closed up around her to swallow her from view.

  Cutter was the first to follow. She slowed, making less noise.

  “Can you hear that?” She whispered over her shoulder as he neared. He had to listen hard, but he could. It took him a moment to isolate the sound, and work out what it was he was hearing.

  Flies.

  He nodded and unsheathed the machete. Knowing what they were going to find long before they found it, Cutter hacked away at the trailing vines that tangled to block their way. The razor-sharp blade whistled as it sliced through the air, hammering home hard into the thick meat of the vines. It took three or four hacks to cut through the thicker tangle, one or two to sheer through the individual vines. He pushed his way forward, deeper into the belly of the underbrush, until he stood over the carcass of a sloth. The animal was most assuredly not resting, nor conserving energy. Its skull was intact but its eyes were glazed over in the blank stare of death. More horrifying was the way the skin had been ripped to shreds so its killer could feast on its warm wet insides.

  Flies swarmed around the dead animal. Its carcass was alive with writhing movement where white maggots squirmed.

  Abby backed away from the dead animal, her hand over her mouth as she spun and dry-heaved. Cutter stood over the carcass for a moment longer, then knelt, ignoring the pustular maggots to examine the damage that had killed it. The manner with which the animal’s insides had been ravaged coincided with the attack mode of a jaguar or a panther or similar big cat.

  But equally, it matched perfectly what he would have expected from a Thylacosmilus attack.

  FIFTEEN

  Stephen knelt, examining the tracks again. He hadn’t followed the others into the underbrush.

  That made six unique imprints by his reckoning, which meant they weren’t following a single predator, but rather a pack. The thought sent a shiver of dread through his body.

  He licked his lips. His tongue rasped like leather across the chapped skin. His throat was parched. He could taste the moisture in the air, but couldn’t seem to get any of it into his body. Grunting, he shucked off his pack and pulled out a bottle of water. He uncapped it and swallowed gulp after gulp, breaking all the rules of hydration by surrendering to his fearful thirst. With more than half of the litre downed in a matter of seconds, he wiped off his lips, recapped the bottle and stuffed what little water remained back into his pack.

  “Bad news,” he said, as he saw Cutter emerge from the smothering press of vines.

  “Tell me?” Cutter said.

  “We’re not looking for one critter here.”

  “How many?”

  “Six by my count,” Stephen said.

  “Six? Oh, God.”

  “Yeah. What did you find back there?”

  “Nothing good. The carcass of a sloth. Its insides had been ripped out.”

  “Which is consistent with what we know about the hunting behaviour of the borhyaenids.”

  Cutter nodded.

  “I’m all for going home any time you guys want,” Connor offered. “Just so you know.”

  “That doesn’t feel like such a bad idea right now,” Stephen said.

  “Nando, are there any settlements around here?” Cutter asked. The notion hadn’t even occurred to Stephen, but now that it had been voiced, he felt that shiver of dread seep into his blood and freeze it in his veins. He looked at the Peruvian, willing him to shake his head.

  “The nearest is maybe fifteen minutes away as the crow flies.”

  “Fifteen minutes is far too close for comfort,” Cutter said.

  Stephen ran the numbers in his head; a big cat could travel anywhere between thirty and sixty miles an hour, in short bursts. A pack of hungry predators catching the scent of fresh meat could stalk their game patiently for hours. No settlement so close was entirely safe.

  Blaine asked the question that was on all of their minds.

  “Is it in the same general direction as the temple you’re taking us to?”

  “Very much so,” Nando confirmed.

  “That’s not the best news I’ve heard today.” Cutter wiped the sweat from beneath his eyes. He looked slightly manic, with the machete hanging loosely in his grip.

  “Thank God the trees cut out most of the wind. Keeps the scent from carrying too far.” Stephen offered.

  “Let’s hope it’s enough.”

  Following a warning look from Jenny, Cutter drew Connor to one side, away from Nando, Genaro and Chaplin. “Check the anomaly detector.”

  The burst of static pulsing told them all they needed to know.

  The sweat clung to Connor. His shirt was saturated with it. The dark stains from under his armpits reached all the way down to the waistband of his shorts. He shrugged. The cloth didn’t move with the gesture. Sweat trickled down his
calves. Even his socks were soaked through. It felt as though he were walking on water.

  He knew what he must look like — a rebel without a clue, dressed up in his big brother’s cast-offs.

  He trudged along behind the others, trying to take everything in; all of the colours and scents and sounds. He put the small detector in the side pocket of his cargo shorts. Nervous energy tingled through his skin, prickling with life.

  According to Nando, the village was just over fifteen minutes walk away, down a steep decline. As they peered in that direction, they could see that a mist covered the valley.

  The anomaly detector had fallen silent long before they reached the settlement, which meant one of two things. Either the original anomaly had closed, or they had moved out of range of it. He knew which one he would have put his money on. Given that the maximum radius for the detectors seemed to be somewhere shy of a mile, it was likely they had just moved out of range. Without consulting a map, he couldn’t be sure, but he suspected all of the readings he had taken lay along the same vector. He tried to picture it in his mind, using the map he had seen on Nando’s wall to frame his reference.

  He had been toying with an idea about the anomalies for a while, but didn’t dare broach it with Cutter, at least not while he was in the mood he was in. It was one thing to detect and play storm chaser with the anomalies, but shouldn’t they be looking for ways to control them? To hold them open, or more importantly snap them closed? It was only a step away from being able to open them themselves, removing the risk that an anomaly would open, a creature come through — from the past or the future — and become stranded out of time.

  It was all very sci-fi, but it made sense to him that they should at least be exploring the possibility. He knew exactly what Cutter would say though: it wasn’t their job to play God. Scientists didn’t make things happen, they observed, they recorded, they discovered, but they didn’t make things happen! And that was the crux. If they gained control over the anomalies and learned how to open and close them at will, what price would be paid for their discovery? What politico or military genius wouldn’t want to tear a hole in the fabric of space and time, to put right what once went wrong?

  He shuddered at the thought.

  Connor wanted to believe that for once — just once — they could do something good that wouldn’t be turned into something awful.

  He was brought up short from his mental rant by the sudden curious absence of noise. He hadn’t noticed it at first, with the others blundering through the undergrowth, but as he had fallen behind he had become more and more distant from their clumsy feet and hushed chatter.

  He stood there for a moment, eyes wide, knowing exactly what the silence meant. He held his breath, listening desperately for any out of place sound, any noise that would tell him he was panicking over nothing.

  But in the thirty seconds he stood stock still, there was nothing.

  He started to run, shouting “Cutter!” as he blundered through the undergrowth, chasing the others. “Wait for me!” He slapped aside trailing branches and thick leaves, looking about frantically for the predator that had driven the wildlife away.

  Breathing hard, he ran blindly into the back of Stephen, who grabbed him.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “No noise!” Connor gasped, trembling as the adrenalin pumped through his system. “Listen!”

  Everyone fell silent, caught suddenly in the preternatural silence of the empty trees.

  For a full minute they were shrouded in complete and utter stillness, not even the whisper of the wind through the high canopy to conjure a rustle and break the silence. Then a deep-throated growl rumbled through the press of trees.

  They weren’t alone.

  Connor heard the hunger in the growl, and wanted desperately to pretend he had imagined it.

  The growl was echoed on the other side of them a moment later. The sound resonated chillingly inside Connor’s heart. He felt his pulse trip alarmingly and his vision sway with the shimmer of heat. He closed his eyes. The growl became a roar and was followed by a scream that sounded too human to be anything else. It was a blood-curdling sound, drenched with fear and hopelessness.

  He fumbled the anomaly detector out of his pocket and turned it on; there was no blat of static, no tell-tale pulse of an anomaly.

  “Cutter?”

  “What is it, Connor?”

  “I really want to go home now.”

  “We’re not its prey, Connor,” Cutter said, sounding almost calm.

  A second scream sounded, closer, but with the trees effectively reducing their visibility down to a few yards, it was impossible to say how far away it really was. All Connor could think was that it wasn’t far enough away. And then the reality of the screams hit him and he knew, and felt sick with the knowing.

  Without thinking, Connor started running again — this time toward the screams.

  “They’re at the village!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Come on!”

  He didn’t wait to see if the others were following him; he knew that they would.

  The creatures came out of the jungle, shrouded in death and darkness as they bounded into the narrow paths that lay between the adobe huts. At first they could not be seen, only heard, like ghosts emerging from the mist, and then they solidified into the stuff of nightmares. These great powerful beasts, bounding on all fours out of the thick white fog, huge jaws tearing into the soft flesh of the frightened villagers.

  There were screams.

  There was blood.

  There was death. Over and over, there was death.

  The beasts roared, herding the living toward the well in the centre of settlement.

  They ran, but there was nowhere to run to.

  Instead, they died as the beasts fell upon them, rending flesh and bone in vicious and bloody mouthfuls.

  The sound carried strangely up the hill. It wasn’t only that it made the cries sound closer than they were; nor that the weird acoustics seemed to amplify every sound, folding in on itself as it rose. With the high mist beginning to settle around the peaks above, and swell across the bowl of the valley below, robbing them of dimensions and points of visual reference, sound became their only guide.

  And sound lied in ways that Cutter could never have imagined.

  The path from the Land Rovers had led them through felled trees and storm-torn deadfall, through thick gorse and clogging weeds, always on a steady decline, before suddenly dropping away beneath their feet. Connor stood on the edge looking out over forever. Cutter moved up beside him.

  The world fell away beneath them, hundreds of feet down to the valley floor of treetops and the ice-blue meander of a river. It was a spectacular hidden piece of the geography of the world, but he couldn’t begin to savour it. The cries of the dying clawed up the hillside from the area below, and there was no quick way to get there that didn’t involve plunging hundreds of feet straight down.

  Across the great divide the hills became true mountains, their stone faces harsh and jagged as they stabbed up into the firmament of sky. The landscape was raw. Elemental. They were like children’s drawings of mountains. They rose and fell sharply, jagged teeth in a gap-toothed smile.

  The group took off along the edge, no longer running. The rarefied air burned in Cutter’s lungs. There had to be a way down, he knew, but the question was, how far away was it? Too far, and their weapons would be useless to the screaming tribesmen.

  Suddenly the screaming stopped.

  Cutter wanted desperately to believe it was because of the peculiar acoustics of the mountainside, but he knew in his heart it meant that the dying was done. He wasn’t a fool.

  The edge crumbled beneath his foot, forcing him to back away.

  “Connor, come on,” he yelled, grabbing the younger man by the arm and dragging him away from the drop. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “There’s got to be a way, Cutter,” Connor said, pulling away so forcefully his momentum
almost carried him out over the edge. Cutter refused to let go. He dragged Connor back toward the safety of the trees. The fear in the young man’s eyes broke his heart. He knew what they were going to find, and still he was desperate to get down there and help people who were already dead. The size of his heart and its ability to suffer for others spoke volumes about the usually flippant research student. Cutter grabbed him and held him.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, hating himself for saying it even though he knew it was the truth. “You are a good man, Connor Temple. You’ve got a good heart. But this, this goes beyond heart and courage into a world of injustice that even the biggest heart can’t conquer. I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.”

  Connor said nothing.

  He didn’t need to.

  There were times when words could never be enough. He held on tight to Cutter.

  Nando and Genaro found the way down.

  It was all wrong.

  The oppressive silence remained, the forest holding its breath.

  Everything was off-kilter, from the absence of the bird calls to the bubble and splash of the river. They knew they were walking into a graveyard. And, Cutter felt sure, the creatures were still there. It had only taken them five or six minutes to scramble down the hill. The Thylacosmilus would still be feeding, gathered around the dead in a pack, savouring the meal. He trod softly through the undergrowth, placing his feet carefully on each narrow ledge and strip of stone that had been carved into the slope. Beyond the ladder of stone there was dirt and weeds and long grasses that rolled down toward the basin below. The wind whistled all around as he skidded and slipped and stumbled down the steep slope. It sounded like the Devil singing.

  He could see smoke from the low huts where cooking fires still burned, then the dry reeds of the roofs came into sight and the mud and vegetable fibre walls themselves. And finally, the bodies.