It was just standing there in the middle of a clearing. Then it fell to its front paws and began storming around in circles, striking out at the air for no apparent reason.
Craig held his rifle tightly. “Look at the size of that thing.”
Phil shook his head. “So all this time it was just a bear.”
Jason nodded. He couldn’t believe it. Nothing but a goddamn bear. “How do you like that?”
The bear jerked toward them. Jason had spoken much louder than he’d intended.
Darryl shook his head. “Not smart, Jason.”
The bear looked right at them. Then charged.
Darryl didn’t have a choice. In an instant, he removed an arrow and aimed it at the rapidly approaching fur-covered chest.
But he didn’t shoot.
Craig turned to him anxiously. The bear was really moving fast. “What are you doing?”
Strange thoughts surged through Darryl’s head. Something didn’t smell right. “What’s bothering you?” he whispered as the bear sprinted closer.
Craig’s voice rose. “Darryl, what are you doing? Shoot it.”
“We’re not looking for you, are we?”
The bear stormed closer still.
“Jesus Christ, Darryl, shoot it.”
The bear ran hard, just ten feet away, five . . .
Suddenly it stopped dead in its tracks. It glanced at the six of them, then awkwardly turned and lumbered away. Darryl just watched it go. Ornery bears often played their intimidation games, but there was no need to kill them unnecessarily. Only this bear, Darryl could tell, wasn’t trying to intimidate anyone. It was just . . . riled. He looked around.
“There’s something else here. Get back in the circle.”
The bear disappeared, and it was perfectly silent again.
They didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound.
Darryl studied the forest anew. His eyes passed over everything—redwoods, ferns, rhododendrons, some little white flowers . . . It was so quiet. But he could tell, something was here now, hiding. He gave no more commands. He simply stood where he was, watching and waiting.
Everyone’s head slowly turned, left, right, behind, straight ahead.
No one except Jason was looking up. He’d been looking up at the fog for some time and his mouth was now slightly open.
Craig suddenly jerked toward the soil. “Look at that.”
Everyone turned to it. It was a marking, about an inch deep. Shaped like a massive bird.
Then Darryl noticed Jason. He was still looking up and he had an awfully strange look on his face.
Darryl looked up too. “Jesus bloody Christ.”
Then Lisa looked up. Then Craig. Then Monique. Then Phil. No one spoke another word.
Spellbound, they simply stared at something so incredible it had to be a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was a new reality.
PART IV
CHAPTER 72
THERE IT is, Jason thought; my God, there it is. Not a dream. Not a simulated computer image. A living, breathing, flying animal. A new order of predator. He had known what to expect, of course, roughly what it would look like. But now that he was actually seeing it, it was even more incredible than what he’d imagined.
Lisa and Craig both had small smiles on their faces. The goddamn thing was more fantastic than anything they’d ever seen.
Phil was dumbfounded. He knew as well as anyone that the animal existed, but only theoretically. To actually see it, living, breathing, flying . . . It was just so real. Better than a video game, better than a movie.
Darryl Hollis, strangely, felt light-headed, even numb—like he sometimes did after a particularly severe drinking binge with Craig Summers. He had also known what to expect, but now . . . his carefully constructed concept of what it was to hunt had just been walloped by a sledgehammer.
Monique was the only one who was nervous. The goddamn thing was a living nightmare. She had the eerie feeling that it was watching them, studying them, even. She held on to her rifle tightly.
Six pairs of human eyes continued to watch it.
The predator glided silently below the ceiling of fog. Twenty stories high, it dodged in and out of the massive staffs of branchless wood.
As they looked up at it their most prominent view was of its undulating white underbelly. But then the animal veered around a tree and gave an unobstructed view of its pitch-black topside. It was beautiful, even elegant, its torso, wings, and horned head all melding into a single, seamless form. But beauty and elegance aside, there was no hiding that it was a phenomenally dangerous predator.
My God, look at that thing, Darryl thought.
Suddenly and silently, it veered up and disappeared into the thick white fog.
Rapt, the six didn’t move. They simply stared at the place where it had just been, waiting for it to return.
And then it did return, flying straight down, its mouth wide open.
Monique braced herself, but the animal didn’t attack. Before they could even become alarmed, it veered up and away, gliding just below the ceiling of mist.
“Did you see that mouth?” Craig asked quietly.
It had been wider than two of him. And its teeth . . . He’d only seen them for a moment, but he could have sworn they were as wide as his forearms and numbered in the hundreds, in more rows than he could count.
Darryl Hollis had noticed the teeth too. Darryl Hollis had noticed everything about the animal. But of all its features, one had made the greatest impression by far.
The eyes.
They were goddamn frightening eyes. Not just because they were bigger than baseballs, pupil-less, and in the strangely unnerving color of jet black. But because of what was behind them. They were cold, calculating, and, above all, intelligent. An awfully smart animal lurked behind those eyes. Darryl knew its brain weighed six pounds, but now, actually seeing the creature, he would have believed its brain weighed twenty-five pounds. Look at those goddamn eyes.
Then Darry slowly positioned an arrow on his bow and began to point it up.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jason watched him, neither doing nor saying anything, just watching with a combination of horror and fascination—horror at the fact that Darryl’s nearly instantaneous reaction upon seeing the phenomenally evolved new order of predator was to kill it—and fascination as to whether or not he’d succeed.
Jason looked up at the animal, wondering if it was as smart as Bandar Vishakeratne had said. It will know more about you than you do about it. Was the creature actually capable of recognizing that the bow and arrow were weapons? Or was it totally oblivious—and moments from being killed?
The black orbs watched Darryl closely, focused on his slowly rising arrow. Then they shifted ever so slightly, to the arrowhead. Then back to Darryl again.
As he continued, Darryl Hollis watched the eyes watch him and felt queasy. Never before had an animal watched him so closely. He actually sensed it wasn’t just “watching” him at all but studying him, even trying to understand what he was doing. But it hadn’t flown away. It was exposed, and if it continued to glide as it had been, he’d soon have a shot—and an easy one at that. Then the giant eyes shifted, focusing on Jason. That’s right, Darryl thought, look at him.
Darryl continued to raise the arrow into position. I got it, he thought, his weapon almost vertical now, a millisecond from firing.
The animal banked, darting behind a grove of redwood staffs.
“Wow,” Jason said quietly. That was no accident. The creature had not only figured out what a bow and arrow were, it had applied the knowledge and taken cover.
But it hadn’t disappeared. Why? Why had it shown itself in the first place? Jason watched as the gliding form darted in and out of the columns of wood, an obstacle course in the air. Mesmerized, he realized the creature wasn’t repeating the same flight pattern twice and he tried to guess where it would go next. Left or right? Down or up? It flew straight, gliding into a clearing beneath the fog.
Then he heard it. They all did. Very faintly, a low rumbling noise, like distant thunder.
Craig had never heard an animal make such a sound before. So deep, rolling over itself like an idling truck engine. “What the hell is that?”
Jason looked up at it. “I think it might be . . . a warning.”
The sound grew slightly louder, then faded and stopped. The animal pumped its wings and disappeared into the fog.
The six didn’t move. They stood perfectly still, staring at the white mist, waiting for it to return. But it didn’t return. The trees, the ferns . . . the entire forest was silent. They stood and stood. There was nothing up there now, just fog. The predator was gone.
After ten minutes, Darryl lowered his weapon—cautiously. “I don’t like this; something doesn’t feel ri—”
And then it happened.
The creature swooped out of the mist and let out a shattering roar. The volume was phenomenal. Craig and Jason literally fell backward. Phil, Monique, and Lisa cowered. Darryl shivered slightly and covered his ears.
Then, like a switch, it stopped. The creature swooped back into the mist and didn’t return. The six of them just looked at one another, stunned.
Craig turned to Jason. “A warning, huh?”
“Territoriality,” Darryl said.
Jason turned. “Territoriality. My God, you’re right.”
The animal had just staked its claim.
CHAPTER 73
“HOW DO we know there aren’t more of those things out there?”
It was night, and they were seated in the cabin’s living room.
“We don’t know.” Next to Lisa on a couch, Jason shrugged at Darryl. “And now that I think about it, I don’t know if we’ll ever know, not for sure anyway.”
Monique turned to her husband. “I seriously doubt if there’s more than one of them.”
“Why?”
“Because if there were even two of those things out there, we’d have a lot more than a single dead jogger on our hands.”
Darryl stood. “Well, that’s good. Because just killing one isn’t gonna be easy.”
“Six of us versus one of it?” Craig nodded from the hearth. “I’ll bet on us.”
Darryl began pacing. “This thing can fly, for Christ’s sake. It’s gonna be hard as hell to kill.”
“I don’t think we should kill it at all.”
Darryl stopped pacing. “You don’t, huh?”
Jason shook his head. “No. At least not yet.”
And that was more accurate. The predator had killed a human being, so it had to be killed itself. But as a scientist, Jason wanted to study it as well. He suddenly realized everyone in the room was staring at him like he was crazy. He stood. “Guys, don’t you realize what that animal out there means? No one in the history of mankind has ever seen anything like it. We can’t just go out there and kill it.” He scanned the faces. “Can we?”
No one replied; they just sat awkwardly.
Jason focused on Lisa. “Do you think we should just go out there and kill it?”
“Honestly, Jason, I do. I understand the argument you’re making. I think we all understand that argument. But given what’s happened . . .” She paused, thinking it through. “It killed a human being, so it has to die too—no question.”
“No question? I agree it has to die eventually but . . .”
“But what?” Darryl shrugged theatrically. “What do you want to do, Jason? Let it fly around out there? Set up some sort of . . . laboratory and turn Leonard State Park into your own personal ‘wild kingdom’?”
Jason didn’t answer. It was a good point. He’d agonized over it already. If they actually found one of the predators, how exactly would they study it?
He sat next to Lisa. “We can catch it.”
“We can?” Darryl eyed him coldly. “How are we gonna do that?”
“We have tranquilizers and things, don’t we?” Jason had used tranquilizers only four times. While he’d had problems on every occasion, he assumed someone like Darryl was far more experienced.
But Darryl just shook his head. “No, we don’t have ‘tranquilizers and things.’ At least not on us. Maybe we can call for some, but . . .” He flipped open his cell. “Oh yeah, no phone service at the moment. So we’d have to go get them ourselves. What do ya think that thing would do while we’re gone? Wait for us to come back? Or do ya think it might go exploring?”
Jason didn’t answer. It was another good point.
“But for the sake of argument, say we can get tranquilizers. You’ve used them before, right? But you had problems? Well, lemme tell ya, that’s because they’re dicey. Not just for you. For everybody. Monique and I have used them a fair amount, and there’s always this little problem of getting the dosage right.”
Jason nodded. He knew this could be very difficult.
Darryl turned to his wife. “Remember Bill Crower, Monique?”
A sad nod. “Of course.”
“Old friend of ours who used to do a lot of work in the Bering Sea, with polar bears, penguins, and all that. One day Bill and a colleague had to do some testing on a walrus. So they went into the Arctic Ocean and found one sleeping on an iceberg. Pretty big walrus, too, about five thousand pounds. Now, walruses are generally very heavy sleepers, so they snuck up on it, and it didn’t even see them coming. They shot it up and the tranquilizers worked like a charm. Knocked it right out.
“But then it turned out the tranquilizers didn’t last as long as they thought. Only they didn’t find that out until they were on top of it. Bill took a tusk through the chest, and died right there on that iceberg. His colleague got a crushed spine. So I’m not trying to be dramatic here, but from personal anecdotes like that one, you could say that tranquilizers scare the hell out of me, Jason. In other words, I’m not comfortable using them. Period.”
Jason nodded. “I get your point. We have to be careful, but there’s still a way, right?”
“It’s called trial and error. If you wanna play trial and error with that thing out there, go ahead, but I’m not getting within a million miles of that.”
“There’s an even bigger problem anyway.” Craig turned to Jason. “Even if you could knock it out, what would you do with it when it woke up? You have any thoughts on that?”
Jason exhaled. He’d agonized over this scenario, too. Even if they could catch the creature, what would they do with it then? Put it in a cage? What cage? A cage didn’t exist that could contain an animal like that. The notion of constructing one was laughable. It could take months, even years, and would have to be the size of a small city. Where would they keep the animal in the interim? Could they really “keep” an animal like that anywhere?
“It’s got to die.” Darryl eyed Jason with chilling coldness. “You know that, don’t you?”
Jason let out a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess I do.” So how are we going to study it, then? he thought.
Darryl read his mind. “If you’re wondering how we’re going to study it, there’s only one way. To hunt it. Because while we’re hunting it, I guarantee it’s gonna be hunting us, too.”
Jason eyed Lisa, Darryl nodded. “Like I said, you’re in charge.”
Darryl scanned the room. “Everybody else on board?”
They all nodded. Then Craig stood. “So what do we want to call this thing anyway?”
Darryl gave him a look. “What do you mean?”
“We discovered this species, Hoss. Now we get to name it. I tried coming up with a few myself but couldn’t get anything good. Anyone have any ideas?”
There were shrugs. No one had even considered it.
Craig turned suspiciously to Jason. “Come on, you must have thought of something.”
Jason smiled. “It’s in the laptop if you want to take a look.” The machine was sequestered under lock and key in Craig’s room.
Craig exited, returned with the computer, then put it on the table. Jason pulled up the right document,
then pushed the laptop away so the others could see. “What do you think? . . .”
Lisa was closest, so she read aloud the title page of Jason’s report to the Species Council. “’Dissertation and Analysis, Previously Unknown New Species, Likely New Order, Predatory Cousin of Common Mantis birostris . . . Tentatively Named . . . ‘” She smiled. “Ooh, I like that, Jason. I like that a lot.”
Darryl leaned over, trying to see the Latin. “What is it?”
“Demonray,” Jason said. “The Clarita Demonray.”
“Ooh, that is good.”
Craig smiled devilishly. “Perfect.”
“Yeah, great name.” Jason went to the window. “Now we just have to go out there and kill it.” Killing had never been Jason’s way, of course, but if the rule of the universe was that the fit survived, then so be it. The very first Demonray to reach the land had killed a human being, and now it, too, had to die. Spotting stars through the treetops, Jason realized the fog had disappeared. As his soul darkened a shade, he wondered when it would return. Then he noticed Craig opening a park map suddenly, as if he’d just been struck by a brilliant idea. “What are you doing, Craig?”
Summers barely glanced at him. “I just figured out how we’re going to find this thing.”
CHAPTER 74
IT WAS a cold night, forty-five degrees, with a glowing half-moon lighting up the forest. A large black bear lumbering on all fours didn’t notice the white orb, but the moon was watching it. The moon was watching everything. Nothing could escape its gaze. Floating silently in the blackened skies, neither judging nor sympathizing, neither protecting nor threatening, it simply watched—coldly and without emotion.
THE PREDATOR glided just above the treetops. Already locked onto the bear’s signal, it found a hole in the canopy, then dove through it. It leveled off just above the dark soil then, carried by momentum, hurtled forward, the bear’s heartbeat and its scent rapidly closing.
THE BEAR halted. It sensed something. It turned left, right, and behind, but all it saw were redwoods, ferns, and broken strands of moonlight. But still, it knew something was near. It reared back on its hind legs, lifting its entire big-bellied body into the air. Nearly ten feet high, it scanned anew, but even from here, saw nothing.
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