Hunters

by Whitley Strieber

  His next step was clear. He would return to the Lake Travis area and await darkness. Then he would move on Morris and his people and his animals, and what would happen would happen.

  A machine gun is a good weapon. Used correctly, of course, and he knew how to do that.

  As he drove, he considered his chances. On balance, he thought that Morris had not expected him to return to the compound. It hadn’t been a trap at all, but a mistake. So he could be outsmarted—once, anyway. Maybe, then, twice.

  He had one objective and one objective only: waste Morris and all who were with him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  He had planned his return to the property as carefully as he could using Google maps and satellite views he examined on a computer at a copy shop. The house and the barn appeared on the satellite view, for example, but not the shed, the village, or the kennel. Diana’s images had been real time, of course, but Google satellite photos averaged about two years old.

  This meant that the dogs and the creatures in the village were all recent additions. Ominously, then, they were in the process of expanding their operations here. But it also meant that there had to be vulnerabilities. Something wasn’t properly guarded. Some plan of defense was flawed. The question was, would he be able to find that flaw?

  One thing was certain: the whole operation—compound, village, all of it—would be carefully guarded now, and in depth.

  He had waited until nine before setting out. He wanted as much time as he could get prior to moonrise, which tonight was at eleven twenty-six. But he also didn’t want to arrive any earlier than he had to. He’d used the time to find stores where he could put together a new rig.

  In his backpack was a pair of fairly decent night vision binoculars with an infrared light source. In addition to the AMG backup and the HK, he was now carrying two Tasers and a good combat knife.

  He had considered blowing the whole place to kingdom come, but you are not going to be able to buy the necessary explosive materials without tripping all kinds of alerts. It was one thing to get hold of a machine gun of a type used by the drug cartels and readily available on the black market, another to buy explosives that Homeland Security took an interest in.

  Before he left, he’d located on the map a new spot to leave the rental car, and as he drove down the main road, he ran his plan mentally, dwelling for a moment on each phase, making certain that everything was as well thought out as possible.

  He’d worked the maps carefully, and took a different approach to the ranch. He didn’t want to park anywhere near the place they’d left the Rover. For this reason he drove not past the ranch, but down to the little marina that was in an inlet about a mile away. He had hit upon the idea of playing two cards at once. He could conceal the car and also disable the boat, which was almost certainly kept there.

  He parked in the marina’s lot. There was a snack shack still open, and he strolled in and bought a Coke, then, as if he owned the place, ambled down to the single floating dock. It was not difficult to recognize Morris’s boat, a forty-foot twin built for speed. He stepped aboard, then slipped in under the protective canvas. Wiring a boat with two engines to deal with would be an annoyance, but he didn’t need to start it. He pulled up the engine cover of the port Chevy and quickly removed the distributor cap and tossed it overboard. For good measure, he ripped out the gas line. He repeated the performance with the starboard engine.

  Bon voyage, bastards.

  It would be a long trek up to the ranch compound, and it would take him closer to the village than he’d like, but the steepness also meant that getting back down here fast was going to be a lot easier.

  Returning to his car, he opened the rear deck and methodically equipped himself. He wore the knife in a sheath on his left hip. Easier to reach with his right hand. He tucked the AMG into the ankle holster he’d taken off its owner. The night vision binoculars went around his neck, with the fully loaded magazines in two big fanny packs. He carried the HK naked. If he had occasion to carry the machine gun in population, he’d use the case, but there was no need here. Dressed as he was, any cop was going to see him as a threat anyway, so there was no real point in hiding it.

  As long as he could, he kept to the road for ease of movement. Once he left it, though, he rolled on the ski mask. White skin was easy to see even on the darkest night. Of course, with night vision equipment, he would still be easy to spot. Not to mention the animals. The dogs’ noses worked all the time, but the tiger’s eyes were going to be a lot better in the dark.

  He had bought some copper screen at Home Depot, and had fitted it into the crown of the dark blue cap he was wearing, so he wasn’t worried about a MindRay. They might have something better, but there was nothing he could do about that, or any equipment of extremely advanced design, for that matter.

  His assumption was that, one way or another, he was certain to be detected. The question was, how close could he go and how much destruction could he cause before they dropped him? And they would do that, no question. He was here to kill, and therefore also to die.

  He thought he had at least an even chance against the tiger, as long as he could see it in time. With his armory, he could take the dogs, but any use of his guns would obviously end all surprise, so if they came out, he planned to fade back, then return later.

  His pace was steady, the road empty. The eastern sky glowed faintly. The moon was on its way.

  He reached the point where the road bent slightly to the right, and as he came around the curve, he heard a sound, low, not quite an engine noise, but also not natural. Not the tiger or the dogs, so probably a machine of some sort.

  Barely breathing, he slid into a cedar thicket at the roadside. Slowly, the sound grew louder. It was a motor noise. Carefully, moving just as he would when he was stalking somebody very smart, he raised the binoculars to his eyes. He looked up the road. Nothing. And yet the sound was becoming more detailed. Something very quiet, and therefore probably closer than it seemed.

  It was ratcheting now, like nothing so much as large insect wings.

  Then he saw it, flying right up the center of the road as methodically as if it was a miniature drone, a four-inch wasp, black with yellow stripes on its abdomen.

  No wasp flew like this and no wasp was this big, not even in Texas.

  Almost certainly, it was a drone. The Pentagon could make fake insects, he’d read about them being deployed as spy cameras in Afghanistan. But this was beyond that, this was an actual, living creature that was also a machine.

  Continuing directly down the center of the road, it flew slowly past.

  He remained still, not moving the binoculars, not moving anything.

  The creature made a slow circle above the center of the road. It hovered, facing the thicket. Flynn stopped breathing. It was a calculated risk. His stillness would make it harder for the insect’s compound eyes to detect him, a fact he remembered from high school biology. Assuming that it even had compound eyes. Who the hell knew, maybe it could see the head of a pin at ten miles.

  It came closer, hovering, its yellow legs folded beneath its abdomen. As any country Texan would, he recognized it as a Cicada Killer, a big, normally benign wasp that was common in the region. Big, but not the size of a jumbo shrimp, which this thing was going to top by a good half inch.

  As it examined the thicket, the head moved from side to side, but not with the mechanical seeking of an insect. No question, it was under intelligent control.

  The thing maneuvered into the thicket, its head now jerking quickly from side to side. So it was indeed using compound eyes, and therefore it must be a genetically modified wasp, not a machine made to look like a wasp. It was, in effect, a living camera, and whoever was watching through those eyes was trying to overcome their limitations with rapid head motions. The result was a horrifyingly odd and unnatural spectacle, a wasp moving its head as if it was on a spring, all the while flying with bizarre deliberation.

  It came closer.
If he made the least motion, he was going to be seen. The operator was obviously already suspicious or the thing wouldn’t have stopped to examine this particular thicket. In any case, Flynn was soon going to have to move. In another thirty seconds, he’d have to release his breath, and when he did, he would be detected.

  Slowly, its wings humming, the wasp drifted among the branches, moving more skillfully than any wasp should. It came closer to him. Its head vibrated. It came closer yet, so close that he could feel the air of its wings on his cheek.

  Then it was silent. Where had it gone? He waited. Had it flown away?

  A tickling began, first on his cheek, then on his temple, then a scratching on his eyeball. It was on his face, crawling there, and now not only could he not breathe, he could not blink, not once, not while the tiny claws tapped his watering eye and the head vibrated, buzzing more faintly than the wings had, and the mind behind those eyes, perhaps in the village, perhaps at the ranch, tried to understand what they were seeing.

  Over his head, then, there came a sudden flutter, loud, then a great, rattling clatter and the Cicada Killer’s wings snarled and it buzzed away. For an instant, Flynn was confused. Then he realized that the creature was chasing a cicada that its presence in the thicket had just disturbed.

  Living machines had their limitations, it seemed, insofar as they remained true to their instincts.

  Breathing again at last, he reached up and rubbed his tear-filled eye.

  Then he thought, “Did the thing go off chasing the cicada, or did it make me and fly away for that reason?”

  The ranch was another world, where technology had entered animals and changed their deepest natures. Not only the tiger and the dogs, but also that snake, he felt sure, had been altered. Also, the doves, which was why they hadn’t flocked when there was movement in the house. They had been another trap, continuing to feed and express no alarm as the dogs silently approached. All the while, though, someone had been watching through their eyes, and sending information back to the dogs.

  He slipped out of the thicket and into the clearing behind it, which was now glowing with the light of the rising moon. He was moving way too slowly, he had to pick up his pace.

  He remembered as a boy lying on the plains side by side with Abby, her hand slipping into his as the moon rose, and glowing above them, the cathedral of the Milky Way.

  The mystery of the stars. The tragic face of the creatures in the village. Morris smiling like a doll smiles. The eyes of the dogs, green some and brown and blue—full of humanity and the savagery of animals.

  The tiger, curious, sorrowful, and brutal.

  By dead reckoning now, he moved toward the compound. He remembered telling Diana “Love your gun,” and it was truer now for him than it had ever been before. The metal of it vibrated under his hands with a secret life. The trigger longed to be pulled. The gun was a life changer, an engine of evolution. The gun was holy, it was god in metallic form. The gun was freedom.

  A flashlight, maybe, flickered on the path ahead.

  As he looked, he also listened to the rustlings of the night, seeking for the sighing movement of a new hunter slipping through the tall grass.

  When would he see the tiger? When would he see the dogs? Or would another snake seek him out, a big copperhead, perhaps, as swift as a shadow?

  Before him was a long rise, and beyond it a glow. The compound, it had to be. There was nothing else out here but the village, and it didn’t show lights.

  Binoculars or not, the house was just an indistinct shape. But there was more movement between it and the barn, people going back and forth. How many was he contending with, five or ten? More?

  He wondered if the humans involved here were really traitors to their species, or were they themselves in some way under control?

  If he thought he had a choice, he would not be here, not with all these unknowns involved, any one of which could destroy him.

  In the corner of his left eye, there was the flicker of a swift shadow, but when he turned it was gone.

  That was the only evidence he needed. That had been a dog and therefore he had run out of options. His plan had been simple. Rush the place, spraying it with machine-gun fire, all the while seeking to target Morris.

  Now, getting to the house was going to require another approach. At some point, any rush was going to be stopped by the animals.

  To his left was the long white bone of the caliche road that he had just left. To his right, a clearing full of stands of prickly pear cactus and cedar. Night-blooming flowers filled the air with fragrance.

  Something caught his eye—not a movement, but a shape that did not fit the terrain.

  In the clearing, standing so still that he almost hadn’t seen it, was the tiger. Incredibly, it was not a hundred feet away, close to its ambush range. As always, it had stalked him with almost supernatural skill.

  He didn’t move. It didn’t move.

  Three seconds passed. Five.

  He couldn’t kill it, not without the noise of gunfire reaching the house.

  Its long body was low to the ground, but he could see it clearly, almost flowing like a liquid as it edged closer to him.

  Unlike at the Hoffman place, there were no trees here to use as a backstop, just these gnarled stands of cedar, and the cat would be at a definite advantage inside one, able to make its way among the branches much more easily than he could.

  A nearby sigh drew his eye to the tiger again. Incredibly, it was now less than ten feet away. It had come on him much faster than he had anticipated, even with his knowledge of its skills. Moving slowly, he slid the little AMG into his hand.

  He could not see it anymore, but he could hear its breathing, deep and slow, completely calm, no tension in it at all. Still without moving a muscle, he attempted to determine the direction the breathing was coming from. Behind him? Possibly. Possibly also off to the left. In fact, since he was right-handed, his left rear would be his most vulnerable spot. Probably, it had even factored that in, it was that smart.

  A nervous finger kept touching the trigger on the little pistol. Once again, they were at what was becoming a familiar impasse. His only survivable situation was if his first shot was a head shot. At night, with a fast-moving target and a small, short-nosed pistol like this, it would be almost all luck.

  There was a faint sound, perhaps an intake of breath—and he realized that the tiger wasn’t behind him anymore at all, but now concealed in the cedar directly ahead.

  This time, it had outmaneuvered him. The battle of wits that had begun in Montana was over.

  The tiger had won.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  He braced the pistol. There was a streak of movement, the sound of big paws skidding in dirt—and then the frantic blowing cry of a deer.

  The tiger had run right past Flynn, moving so suddenly and so quickly that he wouldn’t have had a chance to get off even a single shot.

  Flynn watched it as it busied itself devouring the deer it had just brought down. The creature had died at once, and the tiger now lay on the ground gobbling into its entrails.

  There was no question in Flynn’s mind but that the tiger had seen him and had definitely known that it had a chance to take him.

  He recalled that moment in the storm drain, the curiosity in its face, and the sadness.

  The tiger had self-awareness, and the tiger apparently did not like the situation it found itself in. “Slaves are dangerous, Mr. Morris,” he thought to himself. Good.

  He didn’t plan to push his luck, though, so he left it to its kill, fading quickly back through the cedar thicket, then heading due east toward the highway. He was glad that he trained himself in the skills of orienteering and dead reckoning. He didn’t need a compass to make sure that he didn’t accidentally close the distance between himself and the house instead.

  As he walked, the ground rose slowly, until he had a huge view of Lake Travis, dotted with the lights of boats. Very faintly, he could hear m
usic echoing across the waters.

  He had to win this battle this night, that music must never be silenced.

  Now he was directly behind the house, and about half a mile out. He understood, though, that he was looking at an unknown world full of unknown creatures—insects that were really observation platforms, snakes infused with extreme aggression, human-dog mixes, the tiger, and who knew what else? What of the creatures from the village? Nothing would prevent them roaming these hills at night. They had overpowered him so easily that if he so much as spotted one from a distance, his only choice was going to be to blow his cover by killing it immediately.

  Never standing to full height, slipping quickly from cedar thicket to cedar grove, he moved as quickly as he could.

  When he once again reached the caliche road, he paused to see if he could gain any additional information from remaining entirely still for a time. He backed into a stand of cedar. It would somewhat cover his scent, should the dogs come around, or the tiger decide that he was, after all, to be attacked.

  Using the binoculars, he reconnoitered up and down the pale strip. No animals in evidence except an armadillo about a hundred yards away, snuffling for grubs along the roadside. Or was it only that?

  Armadillos gave dogs a wide berth, so maybe it was an indicator that they weren’t nearby. More likely, though, it was like the doves, a subtle deception. So it probably meant that the dogs were indeed nearby.

  There was another noise, but this time it was more rhythmic, not the hum of wings.

  He stepped out into the road, hesitated, then reached down and felt the ground—and felt a vibration. He pushed the binoculars to his face, and saw, just nosing around a bend in the direction of the highway, the glittering grillwork of a car with its lights off.

  It was too late for him to jump back and too late to move carefully enough to conceal his tracks. He leaped ahead and rolled into the brush. Then he froze. The car had a full view of him now, and movement attracts the human eye, especially in the dark. Even under conditions where a man can’t see a boulder ten feet ahead of him, he can pick up movement.