Burial Ground (49 page)

"We have to hurry!" Merritt snapped. The
pilot stared at him through the darkness with such intensity that
Galen positively felt it. "We don't know how much time we have.
They could return at any second." He spun Galen around and shoved
him toward the exit from behind. "Run!"

Galen summoned every last iota of strength
he could muster and sprinted into the darkness toward where the
creatures had just vanished.

Andes Mountains, Peru

October 30
^th

11:09 p.m. PET

There was just enough definition to the dark
silhouettes for Tasker to know he was in big trouble. Lithe bodies
sprinting close to the ground. Slender necks and tails held
parallel to the rock ledge. Spindly legs with absurdly long
strides. He had already turned to run by the time he heard the
first
skree
.

Tasker scrambled back up the slick slope of
crumbled bricks, shoving with his feet and grabbing the loose
stones with his hands. He risked a glance back over his shoulder.
They were closing fast. Too fast. Several of them leaped down from
the cliff and slipped sideways in the mud. Once they regained
traction, they launched themselves along the northern wall of the
fortress into the dwindling torchlight. He tried to formulate a
plan on the fly. Another fifty yards and they would overcome him.
His best chance was to reach one of the stone huts. He could take
his stand with his back against the rounded rear wall where he
could cover the lone entrance. But if they could jump high enough
or somehow scale the outer walls, he was screwed.

He looked ahead again as he reached the
crumbled summit, searching for the nearest ring of stones, and
nearly ran straight into a man who appeared from nowhere. The rain
shimmered on the black paint covering the man's scarred chest and
face. A wicked smile filled with sharpened teeth. Iridescent
feathers braided into long black hair, hanging from his earlobes.
Two more natives materialized from the jungle behind the first.

A blur of motion. The man's arm lashed out
like a striking rattler.

Tasker managed to squeeze off a single shot
that grazed the native's shoulder. He registered pain in the side
of his neck at the same time that warmth flooded down over his
chest. The rifle fell from his grasp, freeing both of his hands to
grapple with the object lodged in his throat. His mouth filled with
blood, through which he could draw no breath. He sputtered and
coughed as he jerked at what felt like a handle wedged against his
clavicle. With a slurping sound, he yanked the object out of his
flesh and collapsed to his knees. His blood dripped from a hooked
talon that had been affixed to a sanded piece of wood, similar to
the implement farmers used to haul baled hay.

The painted man knelt in front of him and
tipped up his chin so that their eyes met. Rage and hatred radiated
from the man, who snarled, grabbed fistfuls of Tasker's jacket, and
lifted him back to his feet.

Avian shrieks echoed from the
mountainside.

His vision began to darken as his lifeblood
fled him. A cool, tingling sensation spread throughout his body. He
could no longer feel his hands, which pawed at the man's slippery
chest. His feet dangled uselessly several inches above the
ground.

He tried to speak, to plead for mercy, but
only managed a gurgle through the blood.

A
skree
pierced the confusion and
understanding dawned.

The two other natives retreated into the
forest and vanished, leaving only the man who held him suspended
over the rubble.

Tasker read his fate in the man's eyes.

With a growl, the native shoved him backward
over the crest of the hill.

For a moment, he felt weightless as he fell
through the air.

And then his world became a lesson in
pain.

11:10 p.m.

Merritt inhaled the fresh air as he slipped
past Galen into the spray of water. He stepped out from behind the
waterfall and eased along the rock ledge, which was barely wide
enough to accommodate his feet. He leaned back against the cliff
and inched sideways. The cries of the creatures reverberated
through the valley from where he could see their dark forms racing
up the fallen section of the northern wall. Two men stood on the
precipice, holding each other close as though in an intimate
embrace. A heartbeat later, one of them was flying out over the
nothingness. The advancing creatures leapt toward the falling man,
colliding with him in midair and tumbling down the mound of bricks
in a maelstrom of slashing claws and glinting teeth. An arm flopped
several feet away from the melee. The ferocity with which they tore
the man apart was terrifying. He had never seen anything like it.
In a matter of seconds, there would be nothing left of the
carcass.

Their window of opportunity was rapidly
closing. The creatures would only be distracted for so much longer,
and he couldn't afford to take the chance that their primal
bloodlust would be sated.

The man above the fracas looked directly at
him before turning away and merging with the forest, the black
paint blending into the shadows.

"Hurry!" Merritt called back to Galen and
Sam, who shuffled along the ledge behind him.

Below, the water crashed onto the rocks with
the sound of thunder. The mist and white spray made it impossible
to tell how far down the river might be, but if they slipped, they
would surely be killed on the breakers. Ahead, the creatures
savaged the man's remains no more than fifty yards away from where
their treacherous path let out onto flat ground. They wouldn't have
a prayer of getting past the flock, nor would they be able to
survive a leap into the rapids from here. There was no possible way
they could scale the fortification and sneak unnoticed into the
fortress, and turning around to seek refuge in the lair of the
beasts was suicide. He was out of incendiary grenades and didn't
have a single bullet left for the rifle he had already abandoned in
the cave anyway. That left only one possible means of escape.

They were going to have to follow the edge
of the high bank toward the creatures in hopes of distancing
themselves far enough from the rocks to risk leaping down into the
river. If they could keep from drowning, they might be able to
reach the shore downstream and pull themselves onto land. If not,
at least he had a pretty good idea where their bloated corpses
would end up.

As soon as there was solid ground below him,
he jumped down into the mud. He barely managed to stay on his feet.
The impact made every cut on his skin issue fresh blood. It felt as
though they had pulled even wider, but there was no time to indulge
the pain. Through the fracas of feathered bodies, he could already
see sections of bare white bone. The carcass was running out of
flesh to hold the attention of the monsters, which threw their
heads back and choked down the bloody morsels with staggering
speed.

He glanced back and grabbed Sam's hand as
she splashed down into the muck.

Galen fell to all fours in the mire right
behind her and fought to right himself again.

"Don't let go of my hand!" Merritt said.
"Whatever happens, just hold on."

He urged her forward, slipping while
simultaneously helping her maintain her balance. They needed to
shoot for another dozen yards and hope that would be far enough to
clear the worst of the rocks.

A
skree
summoned his attention back
to the congregation of blood-soaked creatures. One of them had
turned in their direction. Merritt caught a flash of eyeshine
before it opened its mouth and issued a horrible cry. Other sets of
eyes snapped in their direction, snouts dripping with blood and
clots of flesh.

They weren't going to make it.

11:12 p.m.

Sam's heart nearly stopped when the lead
raptor shrieked once more, spurring the entire pack to motion.

It was too soon.

Merritt tugged her to the side toward where
the river rumbled at the bottom of the steep embankment. She
couldn't even see the water from this angle, only the hint of the
far side of the trench through the mist. Was this the last thing
Hunter had seen before his death too?

A glance to her right. The creatures were
sprinting toward them, closing the gap far too quickly. Another ten
yards and the flock would be upon them.

She pushed herself to catch up with Merritt,
and together they raced to the edge.

Shrieks filled the night, drowning out all
other sounds, even her scream as she and Merritt reached the cliff
and leaped out into the air over the rapids. They fell through the
smothering mist for an interminable second before they impacted
with the water. Her body stiffened against the cold and the current
dragged her deeper. She tumbled over sharp rocks that tore at her
clothes and skin on the riverbed.

Her only thought was to hold on to Merritt's
hand.

The pressure increased in her lungs and she
opened her eyes.

All she could see was darkness.

11:13 p.m.

Galen watched Sam and Merritt disappear into
the cloud mere feet ahead of him. He didn't have to look back to
know that the flock was right on his heels. Their cries were so
close they were deafening.

Two more strides.

The splash below cleared a section of the
mist. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the river, but fortunately, no
sharp crests of stone broke the surface. He couldn't see the
others. The river was flowing so fast that they could be half a
mile away by now.

One more stride.

A shriek right behind his head.

Galen dove into the mist toward the
grumbling rapids. With a deep breath, he braced for impact with the
frigid water.

Bolts of searing pain in the backs of his
legs.

The snap of a bear trap over his right
flank.

Teeth lanced through flesh, jerking,
tearing.

He cartwheeled through the air, no longer
certain of which way was up.

A ribbon of blood unspooled from his
side.

He opened his mouth to scream---

The force of the weight on his back knocked
the wind out him when they struck the unforgiving surface of the
river. It returned with a lungful of water.

Talons slashed.

Teeth ripped.

Panic preceded the jolt when he struck the
rocky bottom.

11:14 p.m.

Merritt had surfaced a full twenty yards
downstream, sputtering and gasping, and had turned back just in
time to see Galen's shadow slice through the cloud behind him. And
then the creature's. There had been no time to shout a warning.
Legs outstretched, claws spread wide, it had struck him like an
eagle snatching a leaping trout with a ferocious
skree
.
Bodies intertwined, they had tumbled into the river with an
enormous splash.

Several more shadows had materialized on the
edge of the high bank a moment later, lowering their necks,
spreading their jaws, and shrieking their indignation at their
prey's escape. They had paused at the brink, then bolted after them
along the muddy shore.

Sam still clung to his hand, her fingers
icicles against his skin. She coughed out a flume of water and
floated beside him, unable to look away from the point where Galen
and the raptor had disappeared.

The rapids rose and fell, whisking them
downstream amid a mess of broken branches and tangled roots. They
barely managed to keep their heads above the water as they waited
for Galen to resurface, praying that he would. At the mercy of the
current, the bank sped past, but the silhouettes kept pace.

Their cries filled the valley.

A splash upstream and the feathered crown of
a head breached the surface. Its scaled snout opened around a
shriek as it floundered toward the shore, where it scrabbled
against the slick slope. Rear talons dug for purchase and tiny arms
clawed, but it was unable to gain any leverage. Its serpentine neck
thrashed and its jaws snapped uselessly at the air. Another cry and
it dropped under the waves again with a flash of feathers.

"I don't see Galen," Sam said. She coughed
out another mouthful of water.

Merritt shook his head. He didn't either.
The dark river made it impossible to see into the water. The
churning whitecaps filled the air with spray, only to be beaten
down by the siege of raindrops.

He glanced toward the ground above them. The
creatures still paralleled their downstream progress.

When he looked back, he caught a glimpse of
a swatch of fabric and tried to swim against the current with one
arm while refusing to relinquish Sam's hand from the other. As soon
as he was close enough, he grabbed the cloth and pulled it toward
him. Galen floated facedown, his arms and legs limp beneath him.
Merritt rolled him over and tried to hold the birdman's head above
the water even as the current attempted to suck them all under.

Galen made no attempt to gasp for air.

Merritt looked to either side. The bank was
too steep to drag Galen onto solid ground where he could try to
resuscitate him. And even were he able, the creatures would be
waiting.

Galen's eyelids were fixed partially open.
In the gap under the lids, Merritt could see the blood-streaked
whites and the lower crescents of the irises. Galen's mouth hung
open. There was standing fluid behind his tongue.

Merritt pressed his fingertips against the
side of Galen's neck.

There was no pulse.

He had to readjust his grip, and in the
process felt the warmth diffusing out into the water from above
Galen's hip. Following it with his fingers, he stuck his hand into
a gaping wound lined by fragments of shattered ribs and filled with
spongy viscera. A rope of small bowel had unfolded through the wide
gash and slithered through the water behind them.