Fatalis

Chapter Forty-Two

The light and the bellowing collided somewhere over Grand's head. "Hannah, get down!" he yelled. Hannah turned back toward her photographer. "Wall, get a picture!"

"What?"

"There's time to get a shot-"

"No!" Grand screamed. "Get down!"

"Jim, we can do this-"

"Dammit, call Gearhart to get the chopper out of here then get the hell down!"

The Wall had had enough. He wrapped his big arms around Hannah and pulled her back. Hannah shouted at him. He didn't care.

Good for him, Grand thought. He admired Hannah tremendously, but she could be completely reckless.

Grand kept running but took a moment to look behind him at the animal in the thicket It was moving now. It emerged at a slow-motion gallop-big, strong steps powered by muscles that were so taut, propelling a body so long, that it took several moments for the animal to build up speed.

Incredibly, the creature was exactly what they had thought it might be: a saber-toothed cat.

As the giant came forward, the fine white fog rolled around its low-slung head and shoulders. It was almost as though the animal had taken form from the cloud itself.

Grand couldn't tell much about the saber-tooth from this distance. The animal had long, golden fur-not shaggy, but longer than the coat of a lion. It seemed stiff, like bristles.

Because the creature's head was down, averted from the spotlight. Grand could only see its eyes. They were dark, wide-set, and very narrow now.

The scientist also didn't have much time to study it. Looking back, he ran across the white-lit terrain toward the ledge. The chopper was just hovering, level with the cliff. Grand waved for it to go back, but the helicopter remained. The cat on the east was just outside the light but also running toward the ledge. It would be in the spotlight within moments. Hopefully it was headed toward the sinkhole and not toward Hannah and the Wall.

Grand watched the cat as it ran. The animal was easily over six feet in length and its tail added nearly another foot to that, held straight behind with a teardrop-shaped tuft of hair at the end. The cat had to be moving at least forty miles an hour and gaining. It moved like a cheetah, its torso extending with each long stride. But it was much larger and more muscular than a cheetah. And just seeing it turned something on in Grand. It aroused something primal, a competitiveness he didn't feel in real life. Certainly not in academia. His legs moved harder, faster, and his senses seemed more acute somehow. Challenge, stretching and expanding the human template.

Or was it the animal spirit of the earth itself entering him, he wondered, the way the Chumash said it was supposed to?

Behind him. Grand heard the stones crunch faster as the other cat picked up speed. The scientist started turning the starbursts at his side and then raised one of them above him, a dervishlike display of moat. He whistled loudly. Grand wanted the cat to know that he was running not because he was afraid but because he was protecting his own.

This was what the Maori must have felt during haka, he thought. Moving in a way that appeared mad and uncontrolled to outsiders but was sane and necessary in the context of preparing for war or intimidating an enemy.

It was liberating, not just physically but emotionally. Frenzy took the place of fear, burning away everything but the warrior within. He resisted the urge to cry out, only because Hannah or the Wall might think he was hurt and come running. But the energy to do so was there.

And yet the paleoanthropologist was still present in him too. The cat was just coming into the light on the right and Grand watched as it emerged from the darkness.

Against all logic and defying any known precedent, the animal was a saber-toothed cat. It was not a vision but a living Smilodon-genus fatalis, from the awesome size of it. And it was magnificent.

The animal was indeed nearly seven feet long from point to point, with longish, dark gold fur save for a stiff, slightly raised brownish tuft that ran along its back from the neck to the base of its tail. The animal's seven- or eight-inch-long fangs grew from a thick pocket of bone beneath those patches. Their backward curve was slight and graceful, ending in incisor-sharp points. The creature's mouth was shut; on each side flaps of skin bulged over the tops of the fangs. The animal's large ears were pointed sideways and slightly flared, almost like those of a bat. There were small white tufts of hair on the tops of the ears, like those of a bobcat. The neck was much thicker than that of a modern-day cat, packed with muscles that supported the heavy upper jaw. The animal's foreleg shoulders were massive and the hind legs were even greater still. The paws were the size of baseball mitts with claws like sharks' teeth. The body between them appeared to have scars-healed scars. The creature had to weigh a half-ton.

Grand took in these details quickly since the saber-tooth was only illuminated for a moment. The chopper finally withdrew, throwing the mountain back into darkness.

The scientist reached the sinkhole moments before the cats did. He raced around it, stopped swinging the starbursts, and vaulted the nearest boulder. Then he turned quickly to look back. He was prepared to face the two saber-tooths if he had to.

But both cats were gone.