‘That a universal opinion?’
Dana nodded once beneath her tightly tied hood, and Proctor shrugged. ‘Guess so,’ he replied nervously. ‘Y’all seem like you’ve got something on your minds other than the man-eating creature from hell that’s on our case, which surprises me a little.’
‘That part wasn’t in our briefing,’ Kurt said. ‘Guess they must have omitted it.’
‘And what are you omitting, Kurt?’ Duran pressed him. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’
‘I don’t have to tell you a goddamned thing,’ Kurt snapped.
‘About your mission, no,’ Duran replied. ‘But I’m eight thousand feet up in the mountains with low supplies and my granddaughter to think about, and that wasn’t in my briefing either. You’re the commander of a heavily armed team of soldiers, so I’m going to ask you again: why are we running away from that thing, back up the mountain?’
Kurt swallowed, seeming to quiver on the spot with impotent rage before he turned away and looked at his men.
‘Good question,’ he snapped. ‘I’m about done with this shit. Any of you guys fancy making a stand and sending that goddamned thing back to hell?’
Ethan heard a chorus of ‘Hell, yeah’ ripple through the soldiers as they gripped their rifles tighter. Kurt turned to Ethan.
‘You, marine. My suggestion is that we find somewhere to hunker down and use Duran’s advice. Let it come to us.’
Ethan stared at Kurt for a moment. ‘You asking me, or telling me?’
‘Both,’ Kurt said. ‘We’re not leaving until the job’s done and right now we’re three men down.’ He reached to the ground by the stretcher, lifted Simmons’s M-16 and tossed it toward Ethan, who caught it instinctively. ‘You’ll take his place, and your partner there can cover the science team and our guides. Oh, and one more thing.’ Kurt gestured to Simmons’s bergen. ‘That’s yours now.’
Ethan walked across to the bergen and hefted it onto his shoulders. Despite the overall weight of the backpack, maybe sixty pounds or so, he could still feel the twenty pounds extra from the stashed explosives.
Sergeant Agry turned to Duran Wilkes.
‘Okay, old man, this is how it’s going to play out. One way or another we need to get out of this valley and we’re going to do it in the direction that I tell you because that’s where I need to go. We may find some kind of shelter in that direction and a place where we can rest and reorganize ourselves defensively. What I need from you is everything you know about this damned thing that’s following us.’
Duran hesitated for a few moments and then nodded.
‘That, I can help you with.’
Kurt turned to his men. ‘Wrap the body real tight in the stretcher bag. We’ll rig a line up into one of the trees and hoist it off the ground. Last thing I want is for his family to be handed his corpse after it’s been chewed into little pieces by wolves.’
Ethan and Lopez helped the soldiers with the body-bag, double-wrapping the body and then rigging a jury line. One of the soldiers weighted the end of a para-cord and used it to loop a rope over a large tree branch in the forest some twenty feet above the ground.
Moments later and the body was dangling out of reach of anything that lived in the woods.
‘A bear might plausibly climb up for it,’ Duran said as he got his breath back, rubbing his hands from the rope. ‘But hopefully it won’t detect any scent of food for a few days with all that plastic around it.’
Kurt hefted his bergen onto his back.
‘Let’s move out. Duran, with me. Ethan, you too. Lopez, you join Klein and Jenkins as rearguard.’
Lopez scowled irritably but obeyed, heading to the rear of the group with her pistol drawn.
Ethan fell in alongside Kurt and Duran as they led the way up an animal trail that climbed a slope through the forest. The rain was still falling heavily but within the dense trees it was reduced to fat, heavy drops that splashed down around them in a constant patter.
‘Talk to me,’ Kurt said to Duran. ‘Everything you know.’
The old man took a long breath before he began.
‘Sasquatch is not a modern myth like most people think,’ Duran said. ‘Encounters with large, reclusive bipedal creatures are found among the stories of our earliest ancestors. Members of the Lummi tribe of Washington State speak of the Ts’emekwes. The stiyaha, kwi-kwiyai and skoocooms are all ancient tribal names given to species said to live in the forests, and in 1840 a Reverend Elkanah Walker spoke of stories of nocturnal, hairy giants among the native American Indians living in what is now Spokane, Washington. The natives said that the giants lived near the peaks of mountains and sometimes stole salmon from the fishermen’s nets. Even the name, sasquatch, is derived from an ancient tribal name for the creatures the Halkomelem called sásq’ets.’
‘Fascinating,’ Kurt uttered without interest. ‘Now tell me what I actually need to know. What does it eat? How does it live? Does it hibernate, or make camps, or sleep?’
Duran sighed as they walked.
‘There are so few confirmed, recorded sightings that fine details are hard to figure,’ he replied. ‘It’s omnivorous as far as we know. Large scat samples have been found that do not correspond to any known creature that contain everything from wildflowers, nuts and grasses to the remains of carpenter ants, rodents and fish. That matches other wild primate species like gorillas and chimpanzees, which are generally herbivores but will eat meat when it becomes available.’
‘Do they hibernate?’ Ethan asked.
‘Nobody knows,’ Duran replied. ‘They’re very large creatures, living in a region with harsh winters where food of any kind would be extremely hard to find. I’d say it’s likely that their activity is greatly reduced during the winter months, but sightings persist so true hibernation is unlikely.’
‘Camps,’ Kurt pressed. ‘Do they have homes or are they wanderers? Do they have territories?’
‘Every now and again in the woods I’ll find cedar trees bent over at the trunk with incredible force,’ Duran said, ‘the branches wedged beneath another tree’s branches alongside. That can’t happen naturally. Nature also doesn’t plug the gaps in the branches with smaller bushes and twigs, so yes, they make camps out of trees and they’ve been photographed and documented regularly. As for territories, it’s possible. Most reports show that they will remain in one area for a number of months. Other wildlife tends to vacate the area when they’re around, and there are literally hundreds of recordings of sasquatch howls and communications during these periods.’
Kurt nodded, taking it all in.
‘Any evidence of causing harm to humans?’
‘Almost none,’ Duran said. ‘Some people claim to have been pursued but those claims are unsubstantiated. Almost all sightings end with the sasquatch moving off as quickly as it can. They seem almost intimidated by humans despite their physical size, or shy of contact.’
‘You said they were inherently curious,’ Kurt said.
‘They are,’ Duran shrugged, ‘just like us.’
Ethan peered across at Kurt. ‘What are you thinking?’
A grim smile flickered across the soldier’s face as they walked. ‘Curiosity has a habit of killing things,’ he murmured. ‘We need to even the playing field here. This thing has wrecked our equipment, killed three of my men and we haven’t even had a good look at it yet. If we can see it, we can kill it.’
‘Why would you want to kill it?’ Duran asked. ‘You said it yourself, it’s just an animal. If it’s just an animal then it will only have killed your men out of instinct or perhaps defense. You can’t have it both ways, Kurt. Either it’s intelligent or it’s not.’
‘I want to complete this mission and return to base,’ Kurt replied, ‘and whether it’s a monster or a genius I need it dead because it’s in our way.’
Ethan chuckled as he clambered over a damp, dark tree stump.
‘Good luck with that. So far it’s outwitted us completely.’
Kurt nodded.
‘That’s what I’m counting on.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked.
‘You dangle a carrot for long enough, something’ll come looking.’
Ethan frowned in confusion and then glanced over his shoulder. Dana and Proctor were just behind them with Mary Wilkes, with Lopez and the other two soldiers were further back. Ethan did a rapid head count and realized with sudden certainty what Kurt had done. Two of the soldiers were missing.
‘You baited it.’
Duran understood immediately. ‘The body. You weren’t protecting it from vermin, you were using it as a lure.’
Kurt nodded and abruptly stopped walking. He turned back the way they had come.
‘Time for payback,’ he uttered, then raised his fist with one finger pointed at the sky and twirled it around.
All of his remaining soldiers immediately began backtracking along the animal trail.
‘We’ve gone two hundred yards,’ he said as he started back along the trail. ‘In five minutes we’ll all be on the ridge above the hillside with our weapons trained on whatever goes near that body-bag. Archer and Milner are already there.’
Ethan felt a sudden unease trickle like nausea through his guts.
‘We’re all going back?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Kurt said. ‘We know what we’re up against now.’
‘You said we should stick together,’ Duran snapped. ‘You’ll be sitting ducks back there.’
‘We’re trained men,’ Kurt replied. ‘We know what to do.’
Ethan stopped in the forest and pointed back the way they had come.
‘Damn it, Kurt. It’ll probably see us long before we see it.’
‘I doubt that,’ Kurt replied, not stopping. ‘That thing will be dead before the sun goes down. You want to come watch?’
41
The body hung motionless from the trunk a hundred yards from where Ethan lay prone behind the rotting bulk of a Douglas fir tree that had fallen long ago. The rain splattered off ferns that quivered beneath the blows, and dripped off the front of his baseball cap as he lay with his cheek against his M-16 and his right eye sighted down the scope.
‘We could be here for hours,’ he whispered. ‘Days, even.’
‘Whatever it takes,’ Kurt Agry whispered back from his position ten yards away, completely concealed by the foliage.
The cold had seeped into Ethan’s bones again, his lack of movement over the past two hours locking his joints and aching through his muscles. Ten years ago such an exercise would have been an almost daily occurrence in the corps, but he’d also been ten years younger then. And at least he’d known that whatever appeared in the sights of his rifle would be human.
Dana, Proctor and Mary Wilkes were hunkered down beneath a plastic sheet a hundred yards behind them, sitting on a pile of folded tents to keep them off the cold earth. Duran had remained with them, his rifle in his grasp. The old man had refused to take part in what he had called cold-blooded murder, but had no problem with firing in defense.
Lopez lay in the damp undergrowth ten yards to Ethan’s right, watching and waiting. Her pistol did not have the range to be effective against anything that may or may not appear before them, but it was still in her grasp, her knuckles showing white around the handle.
‘It might not be hungry,’ she pointed out.
Kurt’s reply came back, touched with an undercurrent of weariness.
‘This isn’t about food.’
Ethan spotted a tiny motion some fifty yards ahead through the forest, a quiver of bushes and ferns that seemed out of place. Moments later he identified the position of one of Kurt’s men, further forward. The others were arranged in flanking positions to the left and right, in the hope of catching the creature in a lethal crossfire. The chances of that happening, he suspected, were minimal. Whatever was hunting them possessed intelligence far greater than Kurt Agry and his men were willing to admit. More even than Ethan was. The thought churned fear within him, a long forgotten neural tract coming alive that perhaps once harboured a more developed sixth sense, the instinct for recognition of intelligence in another, albeit not quite human, species.
Ethan shifted his weight on his elbows and was about to say something when a faint whiff of putrefaction drifted from out of the pristine forest into his nostrils. His throat tightened instinctively and his eyes flicked up to watch the tendrils of drizzle drifting down from the sullen gray sky above.
From the west.
‘Enemy,’ he whispered. ‘To our right.’
Kurt frowned uncertainly at Ethan as he slowly turned his head, unsure of how a marine five years out of the service could have beaten him to it. Then he caught the same smell on the air.
‘Fucker’s coming in from upwind,’ he hissed, slowly repositioning himself and touching his microphone earpiece. ‘Enemy to the west.’
Ethan watched as the team discreetly changed their positions, aiming their weapons out to the west through the dank forest. The light was already starting to fade as they waited, and Ethan knew that if darkness fell before they could strike then they would be forced to regroup.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Lopez whispered.
‘It’s out there all right,’ Kurt replied. ‘I can feel it.’
‘I can sure as hell smell it,’ Lopez agreed. ‘Can’t be far away.’
Ethan shook his head.
‘Olivia MacCarthy said that she could smell one of them hiding in a treeline over a hundred yards away. It might not even know we’re here.’
Kurt Agry considered this for a moment and made a decision. He keyed his microphone.
‘Convex, wedge, go. Advance.’
Ethan knew what he was doing. Forming his men into a sort of ‘net’, they would advance and slowly encircle the creature. The tactic was as old as warfare itself and used often by the Zulus, who called it the ‘Horns of the bull’.
‘Let’s get this done,’ Kurt said, and crept forward through the dense foliage.
Lopez looked at Ethan, who nodded, and they began moving forward together, forming the right flank of the formation as it advanced toward the stale, musty odor of decaying flesh and unwashed skin. As they moved the intensity of the stench began to increase, yard by yard through the forest, staining the air around them.
Ethan watched as Kurt Agry slowed and lowered himself down onto one knee, his rifle raised up in front of him. He touched his microphone again.
‘Convex, encircle, go.’
There was no anxiety in his tone, no hurry or fear, just cold professionalism.
The soldiers to the north broke cover and jogged swiftly into position, almost directly opposite Ethan and Lopez, their rifles pointing off center toward them to avoid friendly fire as they began advancing in.
‘Convex, break now!’ Kurt whispered harshly, and broke cover.
Ethan leapt up behind him and ran with the M-16 pulled tightly into his shoulder as the forest suddenly came alive with running boots and crashing ferns as they all rushed in and converged around a patch of forest where the air was thick with the stench of decay.
‘Enemy seen!’
The soldier’s cry rang out just as Ethan saw the mass of fur crouched down in the foliage ahead, a bulky mound of russet-brown fur half-concealed by the undergrowth.
‘Open fire!’
Kurt shouted his command out loud, and in an instant dozens of high-velocity rounds slammed into the body. Ethan saw the flesh and hair quiver under the impacts as bullets bored deep into flesh. The soldiers skidded to a halt over the remains as Ethan, his nose clogged by the unearthly stench, stumbled to a halt with his rifle unfired and looked down at the remains.
‘Shit.’
The body of the elk lay curled up in a foetal position, its legs tucked underneath it to expose its broad back. Ethan scanned the remains and saw the blood and intestines spilling from its belly, which had probably been torn open by hungry wolves or a bear.
‘Goddammit!’ Kurt snapped, running his
gloved hand over his stubbled head.
Ethan looked down at the corpse, a vein of confusion pulsing in his head.
‘How come this kill was abandoned?’
Lopez’s voice seemed to reach him from afar. ‘And where’s its antlers?’
Ethan’s gaze flicked to the elk’s head. Two bloodied stumps protruded from its skull where the magnificent antlers had been torn out.
‘Poachers?’ one of the soldiers hazarded.
‘They’d have taken the whole head,’ Ethan said. ‘This elk is a bull male, probably had an enormous set of antlers.’
Kurt Agry looked down at the elk, and then at Ethan.
‘Which we’d have seen long before the body,’ Kurt said.
Ethan shook his head. ‘Damn, we should have realized. It would never have approached us from upwind and betrayed its presence.’
Ethan looked down at the remains for a moment longer, smelled the stale odor of decay still on the air, and felt something rush upon him like a wave of panic as his own warning cry struggled to make it out of his throat.
‘Duran!’
A scream that pierced the forest and rang like a bell through every tree shrieked into the lonely wilderness, and the sound of a rifle firing followed it as though hunting it down.
‘It’s a deception!’ Lopez yelled as she turned and sprinted back into the forest the way they had come.
Ethan followed her, running hard through the dense network of leaves and branches, the rain pouring down in sheets and blurring his vision. The soldiers followed them, keeping pace as they plunged frantically toward the wild gunshots ahead. Ethan heard a man screaming as though his heart was being torn from his body, a sound almost as terrifying as the inhuman howls of the previous night.
They burst out into the narrow clearing where Duran, Mary, Proctor and Dana had waited for them. Proctor and Dana were huddled on the pile of tents, their arms wrapped around each other and their faces blanched white with undiluted terror.
In the center of the clearing, on his knees and shaking with what Ethan could only guess was a volatile mixture of rage and fear, was Duran.
‘Where’s Mary?’ Lopez asked.
The Chimera Secret Page 25
