“What?” Davis cried. “Are you mad?”
James never took his eyes off the forest, his senses were becoming more attuned to the subtleties around him—the creak of a tree moving in the wind, the sound of the soldiers closing in on them from along the track, the breeze coming in short gusts. He shut out every other sight and sound, mentally eliminating anything other than the presence of the big cat.
“We should pull back”
“You don’t understand,” James said quietly, still looking through the trees. “This is not just any monster. This is probably the most intelligent predator the world has ever known. Flush the woods with soldiers and you’ll never find it. You’d lose another four or five men, but you’d never catch it.”
“How can you know that?”
“Did you see its fur, the mottled pattern of black markings, almost like daubs of camouflage paint? Pound for pound, jaguars are the strongest of the big cats. Their teeth are like spears, and their jaw strength can crush a turtle shell. They’re adapted to low-light conditions, that’s what makes them so damn good at hunting. They have strength, speed and stealth. And this beauty took out two of our men before we even knew it was there.”
James pointed at a large tree obscured by saplings and new growth. “The jaguar is using the trees. It’s as swift as the wind, as quiet as the night.” Squinting, he could just make out the dark outline of the large cat some fifty yards away. The jaguar snarled, baring its thick, white, canine teeth. A human arm hung limp from the branch.
“See?”
Davis looked. “I see him.”
The jaguar dropped down from the branch, leaving its prey and disappearing into the shadows without so much as a sound.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Davis said.
“No. If we run now, he’ll just follow along until sunset, and that’s when the real slaughter will begin. He’s already killed twice. He’s not after meat, he’s after sport. He’s just playing with us, toying with us. When night falls, he’ll be invincible. The darkness will make him invisible.”
“You want to go after him?” Davis asked, incredulous. “Are you crazy?”
“Send a runner to McIntyre,” James replied. “Tell him we’ll rejoin the main group once we’ve dispatched this monster.”
James could see the young commander shaking. The troop of nine remaining soldiers formed up around them, spreading out with crossbows and pikes at the ready, but this was no mountain lion rushing in, this was no wolf pack or bear looking for a full on assault. There would be no attack, not while they were watching.
Through the tangle of bushes, James caught a glimpse of the dark beast staring back at them for a second before it disappeared into the long grass.
The jaguar was larger than a mountain lion, its eyes more intense.
Davis sent a runner, telling him to cut straight back onto the interstate and only then to head up after the main convoy.
James suggested the remaining eight split into teams of two, an archer and a pike-man each. He had them fan out, with instructions to converge on the first sign of attack. Davis covered him with a crossbow while he stalked out into an open patch of ground alone, acting as bait.
James found himself moving through the clearing before he realized quite what he was doing.
With two arrows clenched between his teeth and an arrow half-drawn and ready to fire, his hands were trembling. He crept forward, listening carefully before placing each step. His mind was alive with feedback from the forest around him.
As if in slow motion, he tracked the subtle shadows dancing through the forest, the noise of the leaves rustling around him, paying attention to the shifting wind. He suspected the jaguar would prefer to attack from downwind.
Twigs cracked softly under foot.
Grass waved with the breeze.
There was no sound of life, no talking, no birds, no insects.
In that moment, James felt alone with the devil. The silence set his nerves on edge. The jaguar had already shown the instinct to attack from blind spots, but James hoped that by having Davis and the troop in those regions behind him, he’d force the animal to come at him from the front.
James turned, making as though he were returning to the others while deliberately exposing his flank, hoping to provoke the monster, to give it an opening. The soldiers held their positions some forty feet away. Just far enough so as to make him look vulnerable, but not so far as to be out of range.
Suddenly, James became acutely aware that the grass to his left was swaying, but not in harmony with the wind.
He fired rapidly, cycling through three arrows in rapid succession. No one else fired. They probably thought he was shooting at the wind, but James was sure the massive beast was there, creeping up on him unseen.
Slowly, with an arrow drawn taut before him, he edged through the waist deep grass. Part of him wanted to look around, to check his periphery, to be wary of any movement from the side, but his hunting instinct kept his eyes locked on the shadows swaying across the patch of grass he’d fired upon.
As he approached the edge of the clearing, he could see blood streaks on the grass.
One arrow had lodged into a tree, the others must have hit, but the animal was gone.
The snap of a twig behind him made his heart leap in his throat.
Had the jaguar outflanked him?
He swung around with an arrow drawn and almost killed Davis as the commander crept in some twenty feet away. Without missing a beat, James swung back, looking at the blood smeared trail leading into the dark forest, fearful the wounded beast might return and lunge in attack.
Once the pike-men came up beside him with their outstretched spears, James breathed a little easier.
“You got it,” Davis said.
“It’s wounded,” James replied, releasing the tension on his bow. He rubbed some of the blood between his fingers, feeling the smooth texture, the slightly thick, congealed nature of the blood. “We got lucky.”
“So we pull back and leave it to lick its wounds.”
James looked around, peering into the woods.
“The only thing that big cat wants to lick is our blood. We have to finish this.”
Davis looked over his shoulder and James could see him mentally calculating how exposed they were. They’d strayed a couple of hundred yards from the interstate. The convoy had moved on and was probably a good half mile ahead, if not further. The longer they stayed in the field, the more likelihood there was of being attacked by something else.
“I think we need to go,” Davis said, unable to turn his eyes away from the fleeting glimpse of the raised interstate through the trees.
“We stay,” Simon said, the youngest soldier in the troop. His blonde hair, small physique and baby face made him look somewhat effeminate, but the determination with which he spoke commanded everyone’s attention.
Technically, Simon was on the verge of insubordination, but James was glad to have his support.
“I agree,” Anders said. “We stay. We fight. We don't run.”
Davis was panicked. He wasn’t thinking straight. Fear got the better of him and he ran, not directly away from them, but on an angle, apparently wanting to intersect the highway as close to the main force as possible.
Davis made it no more than fifty yards. That he had run had stirred up something primal within the big cat.
James was shocked by how close the jaguar had been to them and how swiftly it attacked, rising up out of the long grass at full pace and crashing down on the commander’s neck and shoulders.
The big cat dragged Davis off into the undergrowth within seconds.
Simon and one of the other soldiers fired short bolts from their crossbows, but they were wide and high of the mark. Whether that was out of fear or a desire to avoid hitting Davis, James wasn’t sure, but he got a glimpse of red blood on the beast’s speckled fur. One of his arrows had struck the animal on the side of its shoulder.
The
troop ran over to where Davis had fallen, only to see his torn body lying lifeless in a dried-up stream bed. His throat had been ripped out.
The remaining soldiers were manic, but Simon and Anders remained calm. James realized his own heart was racing at a million miles an hour.
“We can kill this monster,” Anders said. “But only if we work together, or it will keep picking us off one by one.”
“At this point, our enemy is fear,” Simon said. “If we waver now, we die.”
One of the older soldiers spoke. “Who the hell put you two in charge? Davis was right. We need to get out of here before that thing takes another one of us. I say, we work our way back to the interstate and get out of this goddamn forest.”
“Don’t you get it?” James replied. “They're right. The only chance we have is if we stick together and go on the offensive.”
From where they stood, they had a clear view of the raised berm leading up to the interstate. It seemed so close. Even James felt the urge to run, but he knew it was a mistake.
“It’s bleeding,” Anders said. “It cannot hide any longer. It's own wounds will lead us to it.”
Anders was a good man. Ever since they’d worked the honey wagon following the debacle with painting the harvester, James and Anders had got on like brothers. Anders was not prepared to debate the issue any further. He began moving along the riverbed, looking for more signs of blood.
“I’ve got your back, big guy,” Simon said, loading another bolt into his crossbow and moving up on the bank.
James was grateful to see Simon and Anders being assertive. Their action forced the rest of the troop to follow, dragging the others along and finishing all talk of running.
James pointed, signaling for the others to follow along on either bank while he hung back, following Anders over the smooth rocks within the riverbed. He was determined not to lose another man, especially not Anders or Simon.
Anders was a giant of a man, some seven feet tall with a muscular frame, but he moved quietly, like the big cat he was hunting.
James was happy to trust Anders and his instinct in tracking, so he kept his eyes up, looking into the distance. If the monster saw them coming, it would use stealth to attack and James wanted as much forewarning as possible.
The trail led up out of the riverbed, crossing a large rock where the jaguar could have lain in wait without being seen.
Anders stopped short of the outcrop and James instinctively knew what he wanted. He signaled to the men to fan out and approach from either side before Anders and he proceeded up out of the riverbed.
From the top of the rock, James could see patches of blood at irregular intervals—a smear on the bark of a tree, ruddy marks on the long, spindly leaves of a low-lying bush, and the dark drops that had fallen on a rough granite slope some thirty yards ahead.
Anders bent down, running his fingers through the impression of a paw print in the soft mud, looking at how it angled forward betraying the speed with which the jaguar had run.
He continued forward as James held back some fifteen to twenty feet, wanting to use the rock as a vantage point to gain a better view of where the monster was leading them.
As Anders crept forward James noticed something red dripping on his back, running down his jacket. He looked up as Anders passed beneath the jaguar, lying on a branch some twenty feet above the trail, its eyes watching intently as the big man crept on.
James wanted to yell, he wanted to attract the other’s attention but without spooking the beast and stirring it to action. The predator had shown cunning, doubling-back on its own tracks. It sat on the branch, its muscles twitching as it waited until they passed beneath before attacking from behind. No one else had seen the monster lurking in the trees. Their eyes were all looking straight ahead, expecting the jaguar to come at them in two dimensions, not three.
James pulled back on his bow, raising it up and aiming at the animal’s neck, hoping to hit the jugular vein.
He fired, and the sound of his bowstring snapping cut through the forest. The jaguar turned, taking the arrow just above the sternum.
The soldiers looked up, seeing the beast in the trees and fired. Even bloodied by the impact of several crossbow darts and an arrow, the big cat alighted from the tree with grace, barely making a sound as it landed behind Anders.
The big man fired his crossbow as the pike-men charged at the monster with their spears.
Within a minute, the jaguar was dead.
The soldiers were still celebrating as James leaned down, looking at the magnificent animal. With shorthair fur hiding its lean muscles and its distinct coloration, the jaguar looked magnificent. His father had taught him about apex predators like lions, tigers and jaguars, showing him pictures from books, but he never thought he’d see one up close. As tragic as the death of three soldiers was, James felt a pang of remorse at seeing such an exotic animal die. Its eyes looked hollow, and it was hard to fathom that just minutes beforehand it had viciously sought his death.
Simon cut down a long branch.
Anders strung the jaguar carcass over the makeshift pole and together they carried their kill back to the convoy.
The soldiers were so full of excitement they never thought about burying Davis and the others. James did, although he knew it would be a futile, token gesture at best, as without a deep burial pit their bodies would be exhumed by some other monster within a day or two. For him, this was the harsh realization that had haunted him since childhood, ever since he’d seen his father taken and almost killed by an eagle. Man was part of the food chain. Sentiments were a luxury, one they couldn’t afford while on the move.
Gainsborough and McIntyre were fascinated by the jaguar. They had the skin cleaned and cured, and ate the meat. James had proven himself again in their eyes.
“Be careful,” Lisa warned him as they sat alone by an open fire that evening. “They mean to win you over with their praise.”
As usual, James didn’t say too much in reply, but he took her words to heart. She sounded more and more like his father.
Chapter 10: Flight
As they approached Washington DC, James noted how Gainsborough skirted the outer edges of the city. The General ensured his army circled around the city to the north without passing through the former capital. Lisa was right. The campaign was a farce—a theatrical show. They weren’t going to take Washington, they just needed the expedition to brush past the city.
“What does the sign say?” Simon asked.
“It's describing the distance to Maryland, 20 miles.”
“Merry land?” cried Simon. “What is that? Some kind of joke?”
“No,” James replied. “Not Merry. It's Mary, as in the woman's name.”
“Mary? You mean they named this area after a woman?”
“Apparently.”
Simon seemed a little put out by that, James just shrugged.
The scouts had identified several places of interest and the force headed to a large hangar complex below Washington-Dulles airport. James could see that the thick woods surrounding the hangar made McIntyre nervous, but Gainsborough was intent on exploring inside the derelict buildings.
“Johnson has hooked up a portable generator,” McIntyre said after the scouts had moved through the building, checking for monsters. “He says he can bring at least some of the lights on.”
“Good. Good,” Gainsborough said, walking into the darkened hangar. “Fire it up. Let’s see what’s in this house of treasures.”
McIntyre talked into the radio and moments later lights flickered on the broad, curved ceiling spanning the length of the vast hangar. Some places were better lit than others, but the dark shapes and shadows suddenly took form; whereas before there had been murky, indistinct smudges, now there was an explosion of color.
James bent down and picked up a muddied tourist guide. He wiped the dust from it.
“Oh, my,” Gainsborough said, momentarily lost for words as he looked around the vast ha
ngar. He turned to James and said, “Tell me what I’m looking at.”
The general’s voice carried in the air, echoing throughout the vast hangar. James began describing the various aircraft around them. Lisa limped along beside him.
Over fifty soldiers followed along behind them while the others waited outside. No one said a word. It seemed the grand building commanded reverence.
“Ah,” James began, looking at a sea of meaningless names like Concorde, Blackbird, Phantom, Shuttle. He looked up, quickly matching the shapes on the guide with the airplanes before him.
Gainsborough walked over toward a bright yellow plane with no fuselage.
“What is this?” he demanded.
“A flying wing,” James replied, reading highlights from the guide.
“It looks like half a plane. Just two wings stuck together,” McIntyre said, following a few paces behind the general.
James read from the guide.
“It was developed during World War II and was intended to carry bombs all the way to Germany, in Europe. It could cover 275 miles every hour.”
“Fascinating,” Gainsborough replied, walking around the brilliantly colored craft, holding his arms behind his back with the formality of one inspecting guards. He walked over to a small metal frame with a large propeller on top. “And this?”
There was nothing on the guide. At a guess, James said, “It’s a helicopter, designed for a single man strapped to the seat. The blades whirl around above the pilot’s head. Sitting there, it would feel like there was a hurricane beating down upon you. The markings on the tail are German, so this was an enemy craft.”
Walking around the fragile frame, James added, “I can’t imagine it was too useful. The engine and fuel tank look too small. It probably only stayed aloft for a couple of minutes at a time. It’s a prototype, something from which they learnt more about flight so they could build bigger craft.”
Gainsborough nodded thoughtfully.
Behind them, soldiers came up and touched the various planes the general had walked past, running their hands over the smooth leading edge of the wings, intrigued by the designs. It seemed they couldn’t resist touching, or perhaps it was more likely they couldn’t read the ‘do not touch’ signs, James thought.
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