Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  Bam! The last jug flew off the table.

  “Excellent, Lisa! OK, that’s it for shooting practice, guys. Let’s just clean this stuff up, then head out there and set up the equipment.”

  Jason and Lisa nodded.

  “Sorry, but I don’t have time to set up equipment, Craig.”

  Summers turned to Phil Martino. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have time?”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  Jason couldn’t believe this. “What things, Phil? Typing more notes? Since we’ve been here, there haven’t been any more notes to—”

  “I don’t have to justify what I do to you, Jason.”

  Jason was stunned into silence.

  Craig wasn’t. He threw his hands into the air. “You know what? I don’t want you coming. Stay here. Lisa, Jason, come on.”

  Phil walked back to the cabin, and the other three headed for the storage shed. They were about to enter when Darryl and Monique walked silently out of the woods. They approached quickly, Darryl shaking his head. “It’s not out there.”

  Craig gave him a look. “What do you mean it’s not out there?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “With all due respect, Hoss, we’ll set up this equipment and see what’s really out there.”

  “FINISHED.”

  Craig, Jason, and Lisa were near the edge of the forest, close to the cornfield. Draped in dark shadows, they’d just finished setting up sixteen big white radar guns and twenty even bigger black thermal cameras. Sweating in his undershirt, Craig nodded in satisfaction. If the killer returned to the scene of the crime, they’d see it. Then find it and kill it. He noticed Jason, at the very edge of the forest, and he walked over to him.

  “What’s up, Jason?”

  “Just wondering. If Darryl’s right and that thing’s not here, where is it?”

  Craig glanced at the black mountains in the distance. “Well, Darryl’s not right. Now let me show you how this equipment works. Lisa, you too.”

  They walked toward an enormous duffel bag, on top of it a pair of monitors, one radar, one thermal. Turned on and operating on batteries, the radar’s screen was divided into sixteen credit-card-size boxes, each with its own sweeping green line, like miniature spotlights. The thermal’s screen was divided into twenty boxes, separate monochrome images of the forest.

  “Now this radar is tuned to filter out stationary objects and pick up moving ones, so to show you how it works . . .” Craig turned. “Lisa, can you walk toward one of those radar guns?”

  “Sure.” As she did, Craig pointed at the screen. “Look what happens, Jason. . . .” Just then, in the bottom-right sweep, a blinking green dot appeared. Craig touched the image, blowing it up to full screen. As Lisa continued walking, the blinking dot moved across the sweep, reached the edge of the screen, then the next sweep popped up and the dot continued. “Get the idea? OK, come on back, Lisa.” When she returned, Craig pointed to the thermal monitor. “OK, now this is the thermal. As you can see, everything’s in monochrome.”

  Indeed, all twenty forest images were in blacks, grays, and whites.

  “Now, these cameras are tuned to ‘white-hot,’ and that doesn’t refer to my dance moves. It means anything that’s physically hotter than the air—you, me, a skunk, a car engine—will appear in white. Just watch this image right here”—he touched it, blowing it up—“then see what happens when I come into the frame. . . .”

  As he trotted off, Lisa eyed the image and thought it looked like a twisted Ansel Adams photograph come to life, with a dark gray redwood trunk, lighter gray ferns, black soil, and then . . . Craig Summers. Only it wasn’t Craig exactly but a ghostly approximation of him. His face, hands, and visible forearms were all colored in eerie bright white light, his T-shirt a much darker gray. Then the ghost spoke. “Get the idea?” He trotted back. “Anyway, that’s it. Let’s get out of here. I bet this stuff will turn up something; you watch.”

  Jason glanced at the distant looming mountains once more. He wondered.

  “WHY WOULDN’T it be out there?”

  It was late afternoon, pieces of a bright blue sky peeking through the treetops. Craig, Jason, Lisa, and Phil had just returned from another round of shooting practice, and everyone was gathered on the cabin’s front porch.

  Arms crossed, Darryl turned to Craig. “You haven’t spent much time in the woods, have you, my little friend?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means cameras, radar guns, and tripods aren’t exactly part of nature. It means animals see things. Smell things. In some cases, detect things electronically. You think seeing a thermal camera on top of a tripod in the middle of a redwood forest is normal? No way in hell does that stuff pick up what we’re looking for. A smart animal wouldn’t go anywhere near it. Besides, I don’t think we’ve got the right weather now anyway.”

  Jason glanced up at the sky. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this thing has powerful instincts to hide. That jogger disappeared at night, and we found his body on a very foggy day. I don’t think that was an accident.”

  “You’re saying it will only come out at night or when there’s fog?”

  “Fog sure would be a great place to hide, don’t ya think?”

  Jason looked up at the sun, scanning all around it very carefully. He had to admit there wasn’t a cloud up there. And not a trace of fog, either.

  THE BLACK eyes didn’t move. They were looking at the sun too.

  The creature had been watching the sun since the very early morning, when it first appeared on the horizon. Indeed, it had been watching the sun for days. At the mouth of the cave, the predator was completely exposed, but it didn’t care. There was nothing here to see it on this lifeless mass of rock, just a few dozen seagulls gliding overhead. It continued to watch the sun.

  “LOOK AT how much darker it is. . . .” Jason walked to the edge of the porch and glanced up at the sky. “Getting pretty close to twilight . . .” He eyed the trees beyond the campground. “I wonder if it will come out.”

  Monique, Lisa, and Phil didn’t respond. Darryl shook his head. “I doubt it.”

  He eyed a pair of playful squirrels near a picnic table. “I don’t think that thing’s anywhere near here.”

  “You sure about that?” Someone said from behind them.

  They all turned to Craig, entering the porch quickly, with a rifle and a very tense face. “We just got a reading.”

  Jason looked up at the darkening skies. “Is that right?”

  Craig wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Saddle up. I want to end this fast.”

  CHAPTER 67

  “I DON’T care what this damn thing says; it’s not out there.”

  Inside the cabin, the team focused on one of two monitors set up on the hearth, watching as a speeding dot zipped across a radar sweep, reached the edge of the screen, then continued as a second, then third sweep popped up.

  Craig shook his head at Darryl. “Something’s sure as hell out there. All right. Let’s go. Everybody. Guns loaded.”

  Jason nodded with conviction.

  As they walked out the door, the speeding dot suddenly moved even faster.

  “ALMOST THERE . . .” Craig walked quickly through the silent forest, leading the others past ferns and trunks. Suddenly he stopped and pointed. “The readings came from those three right there.”

  The big white radar guns just sat there on their tripods. Jason noticed they weren’t pointed up, but parallel to the dirt. Had the creature swooped down?

  Suddenly there was a violent rustling—from something behind one of the radar guns, moving very fast.

  Craig jerked his rifle toward it. So did everyone else.

  The sound rapidly grew louder.

  Craig eased down on his trigger. . . . Whatever it was was just about to show itself. . . .

  Two tiny fawns, three feet tall and razor
thin, bolted out from behind the trees, apparently chasing each other in a playful game. Monique smiled cutely as they started darting in and out of the three tripods.

  She lowered her rifle. Craig lowered his, too.

  Darryl Hollis just shook his head.

  “IT’S NOT out there,” Darryl said the next morning.

  “It’s still not out there,” he said again in the afternoon.

  “It’s just not out there,” he said yet again the next day.

  Jason couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you sure?” he demanded when Darryl repeated the vile phrase again just before sunset.

  “Old habits die hard, huh?” Darryl gave him a look. “I’m sure.”

  Jason wondered if he was right. He had to admit they hadn’t seen a single cloud. For days, the skies had been nothing but a pristine crystal blue. Jason shook his head. “Sorry, it’s just that I’m seeing Ackerman tomorrow and I was hoping I’d have something more concrete to tell him.” But his frustration aside, Jason suspected Darryl’s assessment was accurate. Craig’s equipment certainly agreed. Over the past few days, the two monitors had revealed nothing but rodents, deer, elk, and an occasional bear. Was it just a coincidence that there hadn’t been a trace of fog?

  They cooked a dinner of chicken and steaks on the huge industrial gas grill behind the cabin, ate, then made a big blaze in the fireplace. Everyone lounged around the living room, when Jason looked up from the notebook he’d been jotting in.

  “Anybody have a Latin dictionary?”

  Craig and Darryl looked at him like he was using controlled substances. Monique just laughed. Jason turned to Phil. “Can I borrow your computer later? I’m sure there’s some Latin Internet site.”

  “Sure, but the Net’s not working.”

  “You tried it?”

  “Yeah, sending an e-mail. Phones are down too. I think it’s all on the same system.”

  Lisa stood. “Jason?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Actually, I think I saw a Latin dictionary in a room back here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll show you. . . .” She entered the hallway near the bedrooms, and he followed.

  “Where is it?”

  She paused then gave him a little look. “Are you busy right now?”

  “Sort of. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She glanced into her bedroom. “It’s just . . . I’m not really doing much.”

  “Oh, well, after I check the dictionary, maybe we can talk about what I should say to Ackerman tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know if I’m in the mood for talking.”

  “Well, maybe there’s a board game we can play or something.”

  She looked at him. He wasn’t getting it. “You’ve led a sheltered life, haven’t you, Mr. Aldridge?”

  He paused, glancing into the bedroom. Then he noticed what Lisa was wearing. One sexy outfit. Tight low-rider jeans with a black sequined rock-concert T-shirt. “Lisa, my . . . hard drive hasn’t run in a very long time.”

  She cleared her throat, reddening slightly. “Neither has mine. And just so there are no misunderstandings, I’m not just looking for . . . a quick reboot.”

  “You think that’s what I want?”

  “I wouldn’t be here embarrassing myself if I thought that.”

  “You’re not embarrassing anybody. You want me to see if I can get some . . . ‘material’ off of Phil’s machine?”

  She laughed hard. “You don’t need that, do you?”

  He gently touched her hand. “Come on.” They entered the bedroom and closed the door.

  AT SIX thirty the next morning, the others were seated around the living room with bowls of cereal when Jason and Lisa entered. It took one look. Everyone knew they were a couple now. “Good morning,” the pair said. “Good morning,” the others replied with small smiles on their faces. No one bothered asking how they’d slept.

  “It’s still not out there,” Darryl announced for what felt like the hundredth time.

  Jason shook his head. “I’ve got to take the boat to meet Ackerman anyway.”

  “You won’t miss a thing.”

  “LOOK AT this damn thing.”

  Jason shook his head, watching Ackerman’s two-hundred-foot behemoth motor up the coast. With shiny white fiberglass, dark tinted glass, and an arsenal of sophisticated antennas on the third deck, the yacht was the size of a small cruise ship. Jason had arrived early at the desolate docks in Eureka and found nothing else here, just a couple dozen seagulls and a lot of rickety wood.

  Sporting a silk Hawaiian shirt with little palm trees all over it, Ackerman looked happy to see him, guiding the master yacht closer from a three-story-high flybridge.

  “Ahoy, Jason!”

  “Ahoy, Harry!”

  Ackerman trotted two floors down to the main deck. “Take the line, will you!”

  Jason caught a thick braided rope, tied it up, then hopped aboard. On a vast teak deck, he couldn’t help but look around. A Jacuzzi whirlpool big enough for twelve caught his eye, gurgling quietly near a huge oak table and an electric barbecue the length of a car.

  “Want a tour?”

  Jason shook Ackerman’s hand. Rich men’s toys didn’t really interest him. “Can we go over our game plan first?”

  Ackerman’s eyes suddenly looked particularly icy. “You may not want to do it after that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A glint of sun caught his eyes, but they didn’t blink. “You’re fired, Jason. The whole group of you. I’m terminating your contracts, effective immediately.”

  Jason was speechless. “What are you talking about?”

  Ackerman shrugged. From a familiar laptop case slung over his shoulder, he removed a large, unsealed manila envelope. “Your termination letters. Written by my attorney. I assure you everything’s in order, but take a look if you have any questions.”

  Jason stared at the envelope. This was actually happening. “What are you doing?”

  Ackerman just looked at him.

  “Harry, we’re in the middle of real scientific discovery here. Why on earth would you cut that off at the knees?”

  “Flying monsters that kill joggers, Jason? That’s what you call ‘real scientific discovery’? I thought you had more sense than that. Phil Martino has more sense than that.”

  “We agreed we’d follow the trail and see where it led. You gave us your word.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Jason felt like punching something. “Why?”

  “Ultimately, it comes down to dollars and cents.”

  “But . . . you said you worked out your financial problems.”

  “I did. Thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I had an unused financial asset I needed to harvest.”

  Jason paused. Harvest. The only person who used that word other than a potato farmer was a businessman. Harvest, the polite word for profit.

  “What ‘financial asset’?”

  “Your new species, of course. Turns out it has tremendous value.”

  “What are you talking about? How—”

  “DVDs, Jason. Among other revenue streams. But I’ve been working on a DVD deal specifically for months. Turns out they’re a tremendous business, and not just for the movie studios. Do you realize that the National Geographic DVD on volcanoes sold twenty million copies at nineteen ninety-five per? That’s four hundred million bucks in revenues, with extremely high margins.”

  Jason felt sick. “You’re saying . . . You’re selling the species?”

  “Effectively. A well-promoted DVD on this animal could easily move thirty million copies. There’s also going to be a book deal, a speaking tour, and a TV special with commentary from some Hollywood actor who likes nature. It all starts after I publicly announce the findings to the Species Council.”

  “What findings? You don’t have any findings. And . . . how do you even know about the Species Council?”

 
“I have all the findings I need.” Ackerman looked up as a feather flew onto his shoulder. He brushed it off casually, reminding himself to buy tickets for next month’s cancer benefit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, something to do with newborns infected with HIV. “And all you need to know is that I know all about the Species Council, too.”

  Jason eyed the gurgling Jacuzzi. He’d never so much as mentioned the twelve-person ruling body in Washington, D.C., to Ackerman. That had been an oversight on his part, but how would Ackerman know about something like that otherwise? And even if he did, the council’s requirements for new species determinations were stringent, to say the least. They demanded detailed documentation from multiple accredited scientists and a host of other supporting documents that Ackerman couldn’t possibly have. “You can’t have any findings.”

  Ackerman had been looking at a seagull. “And why is that? Because you refused to share your notes with me.”

  Jason paused. “I told you I wasn’t comfortable doing that, and you said you were fine with it.”

  “I wasn’t. It doesn’t matter now. This is my discovery: I financed it, I researched it, I own it. And if you need to confirm any of that”—he held out a twenty-page stapled contract—“just read the addendum you all signed.”

  Jason just looked at the papers, not touching them.

  Ackerman released them along with the earlier proffered envelope, and Jason watched as they hit the deck, the pages blowing slightly in the breeze. “You don’t have a body, either.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A pause. “You have a body? How?”

  “You left one behind in your friend’s freezer. I took the liberty.”

  Jason’s eyes shifted. “But that’s not enough. That’s not nearly enough.”

  “Combined with everything else it is: the expert analyses from the brain maven and all the others, team notes, the pictures . . . I have everything I need.”