The Flock (26 page)

Suddenly, the Scarlet had burst free of the trees. He was out on the open savanna and saw his chance to put some distance between himself and the Flock. And, better than that, he saw the first of the men as he sped across the grasses, leaving great, dark furrows in the earth wherever his talons met the ground and pushed his bulk along at breakneck speed.

Out on the savanna he saw the man. He immediately recognized the scent as belonging to
The Man Who Watches
. The human was small and slow, running in their plodding manner. The Scarlet realized that the man was also being pursued by his own kind. It was a situation not unlike that of the Scarlet. A trill of humor came up out of the great bird's beak as he turned directly toward the man, bearing down on him.

Men, the Scarlet decided, were nearly blind in the night. Their eyes must not be suited for seeing the starlight world in the stark contrasts that made everything obvious to those of the Flock. He looked at the small man as he lowered his head for speed, tucking his short, powerful arms in tight to his chest. This man would serve as something to help him. This man would soon be a heavy portion of meat sprawled on the grasses and waiting for the Flock to find it. At worst, it would delay their progress toward him as he continued on, into the midst of the other men who were chasing
The Man Who Watches
.

Too late the man realized what was coming toward him from the edge of the forest. At the last moment he tried to duck under the heavy slashing claws that the Scarlet was bringing down on him. There was nearly half a ton of weight behind those talons as they connected with the human and bore him down onto the ground. The smell of blood welled up, finding its way into the Scarlet's vast nasal cavities and tempting him with the thought of meat. But he didn't have time. Better that the downed human becomes a marker that would delay the others and allow
him
to press on.

The Scarlet left the prone figure behind him and took aim at the other human who had been chasing the first. He looked. The human was standing fast, and there was no fear coming from him. It had something in its long arms, was holding something not unlike a branch, pointing it at the Scarlet. The histories of the elders came to him. Histories of the first humans who had come down from the cold north and who had driven the old Flocks before them, killing them from a distance. Those histories had told of claws thrown from a long way, or teeth delivered from farther than any creature could possibly reach. The Scarlet saw that this human felt no fear, that it stood its ground and was preparing to
do something
. Sensing this, the Scarlet did the first thing that came to mind. He decided to hide in plain sight.

Hundreds of tiny muscles throughout his legs and torso suddenly shifted. His mottled, striped feathering
moved
on their hard shafts, edged in dozens of different angles,
blending
with the grassland surroundings. The Scarlet suddenly became virtually invisible. He sped on, toward the human, from which it could now detect emotions equivalent to confusion.

And just a spark, perhaps, of fear.

 

Gant spoke into his radio. He had disdained it until then, not wishing to alert Holcomb. But now he felt the need to contact the others, to let them know what was happening. He began to speak quickly.

“Gant here. One of those…
birds
. It got Holcomb.”

The fuzzy rasp of Grisham's hard voice replied. “Make sure he's dead. Wait there for us.”

“I lost the bird, though. It. It's really big, Colonel. Bigger than we thought.”

“Where is it?” Grisham asked.

Gant wished the others were already there. He peered this way and that down the barrel of his rifle, looking through the scope at the greenish landscape, looking for movement, for the bird. “I don't
see
it,” he yelled.

“Where did it go, Gant?”

Gant was aiming the barrel of his rifle left and then right, scanning the horizon for something, movement of any kind. He was completely surprised to feel his gun torn from his grasp, to see it go cartwheeling away from him as something big and very heavy smashed into him. It was only at the last that he realized his right arm was also spinning through the air, trailing a stream of blood after it.

On their way toward their fellow soldier, the others listened to the voice coming to them over the small radios.

“Jesus,” Gant's voice was shrill. “Jesus Christ, it
killed me
.”

And then the forest was silent again. But for the mad screaming of the insects.

“Hold our position
he
re,” Grisham commanded. He could sense that his team did not like his decision. But they were good soldiers and would do what he told them to.

Redmond cleared his throat.

“Forget it,” Grisham said. “We hold right here and wait.”

The night was silent except for the constant background screech of the bugs. The crickets and cicadas nearby continued to chirp, which let them know that nothing was stalking them or creeping in on where they were hunkered down. They had formed a defensive circle, each man crouching low to the ground, allowing the sedges to offer cover and keep them from being good targets. Their scopes were up; each of them scanning his portion of the horizon for anything that might indicate an attack of any kind.

“You think he might be okay out there?” Redmond finally asked.

Damn,
Grisham hated that kind of comment. It meant that Redmond was
weak,
that he was distracted. A distracted man was a very poor link in an otherwise sound chain. His first reaction was to turn and slap the utter pity out of him, but that could result in further disruptions. He bit down on his anger.

“We'll find out how Gant is just as soon as we ascertain that there's not a direct danger to ourselves.”

“What about the initial target? What if he's getting away?” It was Watkins speaking now.

The colonel did not appreciate all of this speculation. He was beginning to realize he'd made a poor choice. Better he had brought along some purer soldier types and not these game hunters. Well. Live and learn. “Gant said that Holcomb was down. Dead, probably. I trust Gant's judgment. We'll check it out as soon as I decide we can move in.”

Something rustled in the grasses to the north. That was the direction where Gant had been. Grisham left his post, where he had been watching the west, and he sighted down the barrel, seeing the world in yellow-green contrasts. There was nothing. Just sedges shifting in the slight wind blowing from their backs. “See anything, boys?” he asked.

“Nothing,” both Watkins and Redmond told him.

“Joyner? You see something?”

“I…” The man hesitated, lowered his head, blinked, then looked back into his scope. “I
thought
I saw something.”

“What? What was it?” Grisham asked impatiently.

“I don't know. Like the grass went all…I don't know, kind of
misty
for a second. But not now. Must have been something in my eyes.” He jammed the stock of his rifle tight to his shoulder and continued to scan the field.

There was a rustling off to the north again.

“Damn,” Joyner said. “Thought I saw that again. That
blurry
patch. Right in front of us.”

“Where?” But before Joyner could answer Grisham, they heard a voice.

From out of the grasses, from where the slight rustling had come, there was that shrill screech they'd heard moments before.

“Jesus,” it said. “Oh, Jesus. It.”

“Gant,” Watkins yelled. “It's Jim. He's trying to crawl this way.” They could see the grass weaving as the man attempted to come to them.

“Je. Zuz.” Silence. Rustle. “Oh.” Silence. Crackle of dry grass. “Oh. Jesus. It.
Killed
.”

Watkins suddenly stood and stepped toward his wounded comrade who he could not yet see, but who was crawling closer and closer. “Wait there, Jim. I'll be right with you.” Without waiting for Grisham to give the order, he strode toward the wounded soldier.

“Oh. Oh, Jesus. Oh, JesusohJesusohJesusJesusJesus,”
said the Scarlet rogue, rearing to full height and cocking his gigantic talons for a killing slash.
“It killed me,”
the bird mimicked perfectly.
“It killed me.”
His claws came down, half a ton of impossibly muscled fiber powering the horny talons which went ripping through Watkins's chest, parting skin and tearing through bone and cartilage. Watkins was pinned to the earth, still standing, his thighbones jammed down into his shin bones and his entrails spilling out in a great warm gushing of blood and fluids. He wasn't dead in the split seconds as all of this took place, but when the Scarlet leaned in with a motion too quick to see, Watkins's head was snipped neatly off at the neck and he ceased to experience anything.

“Oh, Jesus,” said the Scarlet rogue as he dashed in among the three men and kicked out at them before any could so much as move. Each went sailing through the air; rib cages protecting their guts, but small bones cracked and broken, muscles severely bruised. Guns went sailing away, scopes and all, leaving the three in the dark, which would have filled them with fear. But all of them fell to earth unconscious, a blackness filling their minds as they thudded to the ground fifteen, twenty feet from where they had stood.

“Jesus,” said the Scarlet as he sprinted away, leaving these for the Flock, which was gaining fast. He could hear them coming out of the forest and on to the savanna. All of this blood would be too much for them to resist, he suspected.

In a second, he was gone.

Someone was coming. None of them said a thing. All three just lay where they were in the shallow gully and allowed themselves to be eaten by a few hundred gnats and mosquitoes. The urge to slap and to scratch was maddening, but to so much as twitch could mean detection, and that would also mean their deaths. So they just lay still and waited.

Ron could not tell how many were moving through the woods after them. One person, he figured, maybe two. No more than two, certainly.

Mary clutched the earth and put her ear to it. There were at least three men moving toward them. Possibly, there was a fourth.

Billy Crane gripped his twelve gauge but did not move. He lay next to it, the barrel extended out from him; he was ready to aim and fire it as soon as anyone came within range. There were only four men coming for them. And he realized that there should have been five. No fire team was complete without a fifth member. The other one must have stayed behind for some reason. To clear the buildings of evidence, he supposed. These guys were damned good, and he knew that they stood as much chance of surviving as three blind mice against a pack of wolves. But they would take a few with them. There was that, at least.

The way the other men were moving, it was obvious both to Niccols and to Crane that they possessed some kind of night vision capabilities. If they were wearing goggles, then they would be moving freely but they wouldn't be able to aim and fire as well. If they were sighting with scopes and moving that way, then their fire would be more accurate, but their mobility would not be quite as fine. Either way, the three were in a lot of trouble. With nothing to guide them but their own two eyes and the slight sounds of subtle pursuit, they would have to guess where to shoot. In the case of Crane's shotgun, that wasn't too bad. He could get a shot off in the general vicinity of a target and still hit it. But the pistol was going to be useless unless Mary got very lucky and hit something while basically aiming blind.

Less than thirty feet away someone stepped on a dry twig. It cracked, going off like a rifle shot in the night. Ron bit his lip and did not move, despite rabbit fear welling up in him. Mary wanted to shift, to get into a better position to fire, but resisted the urge.

Billy Crane rose up and aimed, firing and immediately falling back down into the gully. A rifle shot had come simultaneously with the roar of the shotgun, but the scattergun's blast had all but drowned it out. Mary had detected it, but Ron had not. And only Billy realized why he had suddenly lost all strength in his legs and had toppled backward, landing in a loose heap near the bottom of the small ravine, his back lying painfully against a devil's walking stick, the thorns jutting into his flesh. Still, it was a small pain compared to the lethal wound the steel-jacketed slug had drilled through his chest. The man Crane had shot full of buckshot was screaming, and the yells hid Billy's own muffled groans.

Ron scrambled over to where the Seminole was lying. He was surprised to be crawling through a great, warm puddle to get to him. The metallic smell of blood was everywhere. The gnats were swarming crazily.

“T-take the shotgun.” Crane made an effort to thrust a canvas bag at Ron. It was wet with his blood, but heavy with shells. “Take these, too.”

Without saying anything, Ron grabbed the shotgun and hung the canvas bag around his neck. Reaching out to find Crane's head, to prop it up, he heard a long, wet breath throttling out of the Indian's lungs. Death rattle. He'd heard it a few times when he had worked in a hostel as a college student. Scrambling away from Crane's body, he said nothing and began to move away from the spot, throwing himself into the tightly packed undergrowth at the bottom of the gully. He was afraid to call out to Mary, and the man Billy had shot was now screaming.

Someone was coming up to the lip of the shallow ravine. Mary took a chance and rolled onto her back, knowing that the screaming man would hide the small sound she'd made rolling over. She just lay there, the .357 held tightly to her chest. Mary looked skyward, at the pattern of stars overhead: too many stars to count, a patchwork of brilliant little green lights against a tar-black heaven. Suddenly a shape like that of a human torso blotted out some of those stars. Mary extended her arms and fired, hearing the surprised exclamation of the man who had stepped up to take a chance. “Oh, damn,” the man had said before the slug took off the top of his skull, sending a fountain of brain matter toward those numberless stars. They'd never make it, though.

Crappy last words,
Mary thought. She followed in Ron's kneeprints. The wounded man continued to scream, and Mary wondered where Billy had nailed him.

Mary could hear Ron scrambling ahead of her. Thorns and sharp twigs ripped at her arms and scratched her face in dozens of places. But she pushed on, knowing that if she slowed down long enough to give anyone a good target then she was dead for sure. There was the crack of a rifle shot and the bullet whizzed through the brush, slammed into a tree trunk six feet to her right. That told her that they couldn't see her, at least. She was catching up to Ron and could see what looked like the soles of her friend's boots pistoning as the man crawled as fast as most people chose to run on a brisk morning jog. She would have laughed if her life hadn't been in such danger.

Suddenly they were free of the brambles and undergrowth. She watched Ron stand and begin to run.
Hell with it
. She did the same. They were at the far end of the gully and it played out on a low ridge of oaks that were widely spaced, forming a canopy of limbs overhead that blocked out the sun in the day and hid the stars at night. It was very damned dark. There was another shot, and a tree less than ten feet away took a bullet meant for them; brave soul. The wounded man's screams were growing fainter, but because of distance or because he was running out of life, neither Ron nor Mary could tell.

Mary was looking at the blotch of shadow that was moving in front of her, the one she took to be Ron. She heard Riggs'
oof
of surprise, wondered what was going on, and soon discovered as the ground suddenly opened up beneath their feet. They fell. And fell. Bounced once against a fortunately soft bank of earth, and then found themselves treading water at the bottom of a very deep sinkhole.

Ron choked, spat water. “What the
heck
.”

“Sinkhole. You know what they are.”

“Jesus. Now we're screwed.”

“Maybe not. You got the shotgun?”

“Yeah,” Ron told her as his boots finally found solid purchase and he pulled himself to the almost perpendicular bank. A big chunk of limestone jutted out at them, and they both forced their bodies against it. Swimming while clenching guns had proven almost impossible.

Mary reached out and took the shotgun. “Take this,” she said, handing the pistol to Ron. “He gave you shells, right?”

Ron reached into the canvas bag, turning back the flap, and shoved a couple of shells her way. “Yeah. Poor Billy. He nailed that one bastard, though.”

“Look,” Mary whispered. “In a second or two they're going to be looking down at us. Do what I did earlier when I shot one of them.”

“You
got
one of them?”

“Yeah. Just look toward the stars. As soon as you see something get in the way of some stars, shoot at it. I got lucky, close range and all. But this shotgun will do the job. I think there might only be one of them left, anyway.”

“You think the guns will still fire? Wet?”

“Only way to find out is to try them,” she replied. “You look south, I'll look north. Just watch for
anything
that blocks the stars.”

Clutching the rough, pocked surface of the rib of Florida limestone jutting out of the sinkhole, they scanned the edge of the collapsed cavern above them, seeing the silhouette of trees and earth below the bowl of brilliant stars twinkling in the sky. They waited.

In a while, they began to hear something. At first, both thought that it was just their imaginations. It seemed to be coming from a distance, as if something were
moving
very quickly through the forest. Neither said a thing to the other. They were afraid to move, almost to breathe for fear of giving away their position to some sniper waiting just beyond the lip of the sinkhole.

But after a few minutes the sound began to increase. They could definitely hear something, or some
things
moving through the forest, sliding amidst the trees and brush. Whatever it was it was coming in their direction, as if led there somehow. And finally they could actually feel the approach of whatever it was in the earth, which they clutched in their hands and on which they lay. And it was then that they realized it wasn't a single thing coming their way, but perhaps a herd of…

“Horses,” Mary whispered. The sky was growing lighter and they could see the sun beginning to tint the dome of black above them.

“I don't think so,” Ron said. “I think it might be something else.”

“What?” Mary asked.

From the forest to the south they heard a pair of voices. First one and then the other, and they realized that the men stalking them had just been waiting for light so that they could finish them off. But something else had their attention just now.

“Shoot it,” one voice yelled.

“I
can't
. It's moving too fast!”

“Look out! Look out! There are more of them! Look ou—”

“Oh, God.”

Someone screamed. There was a strange but quick and disturbingly liquid sound from above. Ron was staring up, and he suddenly looked to where Mary was pointing her outstretched finger. For a moment, for just a second, the enormous and blood spattered head of a gigantic predatory ground bird appeared at the edge of the sinkhole. It gazed down at them with a wide, unblinking eye, and for a frozen instant they both thought that it was considering coming down after them. But as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, and soon after the forest was alive as the great flock of the creatures was stomping through the oaks.

Within a few minutes the forest was silent again.

The sun continued to light the sky. Slowly, the two found that they could tear their gaze from the top of the sinkhole. They looked at one another.

“What the heck was
that
all about?” Mary asked.

“I guess we're going to have to wait until we climb out of here to find out.” And in a while they began to pick their way up the slope, clinging to roots and bits of limestone jutting from the black, sandy earth.