Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Chapter 15

Gabriel pulled the trigger. This time the bullet struck home. But it seemed only to enrage the animal. It swiveled to face him, its beak dripping crimson, and then cocked its head slightly, sniffing, its interest piqued by Rue and Velda.

Gabriel fired again, the roar of the Colt drowning out the bird’s cry. This time he’d aimed for the head, but his bullet ricocheted off the creature’s thick armored skull like a BB off a brick wall. At least, Gabriel told himself, he’d gotten the bird’s attention away from the women. It was facing him directly now, screaming out a challenge. Out of the corner of one eye, Gabriel saw Rue scamper up a nearby tree, with Velda close behind her. Then he saw the bird’s powerful thighs flex. It was getting ready to charge. There might be time for one more shot, at most. Gabriel steadied his hand—but before he could pull the trigger, Millie bellowed and charged the giant bird from the side, leaping up onto its back and wrapping his thick arms around the bird’s neck.

The bird let out an earsplitting cry of alarm and staggered backward, shaking its head from side to side. Millie refused to let go, wrapping his long legs around the base of the feathered neck and throwing wild hammerfists at the softer portion at the base of the bird’s skull. It bucked like a bronco and reared back, trying to throw him off, but Millie held tight. Having failed to dislodge him through sheer force, the bird raced toward a wide-boled tree and spun, ramming Millie against the trunk. Millie held on through the first impact and the second, but his grip loosened and the third finally knocked him off.

Millie tumbled into the bush and Gabriel fired another shot at the bird to get its attention again. It reacted to the sound, leaping a foot in the air and coming down not quite close enough to reach Gabriel with a strike of its beak but not nearly far enough away for Gabriel to feel comfortable with his chances of survival. He didn’t want to go the way Nils had gone, supper for this prehistoric predator.

Gabriel and the bird circled warily around each other, the bird hissing and snapping its beak while Gabriel put another bullet into its feathered bulk. It finally seemed to be weakening—it was bleeding now in several spots—but the .45 caliber Colt just didn’t have the power for a kill shot on an animal this massive unless he could score a direct hit to the heart or brain. With only one bullet left in the chamber, Gabriel was running out of options.

“Get down!” Millie suddenly cried.

Gabriel dropped and rolled away as Millie came charging out of the brush with a boulder the size of a laundry basket held high above his head. With an enormous grunt, Millie hurled the rock, hitting the startled bird squarely in the breastbone. It squawked and stumbled backward, slipping and clawing for purchase on the rocky lip of the ravine.

Gabriel used his last bullet to blast the stones out from under the bird’s desperate, clutching feet and it tumbled backward into the ravine, splashing loudly into the shallow water below.

Silence followed.

Gabriel got back to his feet, unsteadily. “Good lord,” he said, as he fought to catch his breath. “What was that?”

“Biggest damn turkey I ever seen,” Millie said.

“I owe you one,” Gabriel said.

“Only fair, boss. I’ve owed you, plenty of times.” Millie didn’t seem to be noticeably the worse for wear; he wasn’t even breathing hard. But Gabriel had seen the force with which he’d been smashed against the tree and he knew the big man had to be hurting.

“Come on,” Millie said. “Let’s go get the girls out of the tree.”

Gabriel nodded, but he stepped toward the ravine instead. “Let’s just make sure it’s—”

With a roar, the huge beaked head sprang up over the edge of the ravine, like the world’s biggest jack-in-the-box.

Millie swore softly. Gabriel gripped his now empty pistol, silently calculating the time it would take the bird to climb back up to the path versus the time it would take him to reach his bundle and the pocket containing more bullets. It didn’t look good.

“Boys,” Rue shouted from her perch up the nearby eucalyptus. “Get your asses up here now!”

They ran. Seconds later the creature was back on the trail and thundering after them. Gabriel leapt up into the lower branches of the eucalyptus, while Millie chose a sturdier specimen on the other side of the path. The bird snapped at Gabriel, catching his left boot and pulling it off his foot. The unfamiliar object did not strike the creature as edible and it spit the boot off to one side, shaking its head with a strangely human expression of distaste. Luckily, this gave Gabriel enough time to make it up from one tree branch to the next until he was beside Velda and well above the bird’s reach.

“Thank god,” she said, clutching Gabriel’s arm. “I thought…”

“I’m sorry about Nils,” Gabriel said.

Down below, the bird stretched its neck, beak snapping, but it could not reach them. It ducked its head, scratched at the dirt and turned away, shaking its dusty feathers.

“That’s right,” Gabriel muttered. “Go away.”

The bird didn’t go away—but for the moment, at least, it seemed stymied.

Rue, who was squatting on a branch several feet above them, called out suddenly. “Hey!” She pointed away to the west. “Gabriel, can you see that?”

“Don’t tell me it’s another one,” Gabriel said, and he followed the line of Rue’s pointing finger to a gap in the foliage some distance off. At the far edge of the gap, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was a large humped green shape almost completely obscured by vines and brush. Not another bird, that was for sure. It looked like…metal?

“What is it?” Gabriel asked, squinting.

“Tell me that’s not a propeller,” Rue said.

In the shadow of the green metal Gabriel spotted a large, paddle like blade.

“No, that’s a propeller, all right,” Gabriel said.

“Which means a plane,” Rue said, gleefully. “And that means a way out of here.”

“But then…other people besides my father must have been here before us,” Velda said.

“A long time ago,” Gabriel said. “Judging by how old that propeller looks.”

“I wonder what happened to them?” Velda said.

As if in answer to the question the giant bird suddenly reared up again and slammed its head into the trunk of the tree. Unprepared for the jolt, Gabriel swayed and nearly fell off the branch, the Colt slipping from his grasp and tumbling to the ground. The bird pulled back and slammed into the tree again, and then a third time. With each blow, Gabriel could hear the trunk creak and splinter. The bird pulled back and looked up at them. Gabriel could’ve sworn he saw a malevolent smugness in its eyes, as if the creature knew it was only a matter of time before dinner would be served.

Once more, the bird smashed the tree, and this time the branch Velda had chosen for her perch snapped, sending her slipping and clutching at branches far too weak to support her weight. She smashed through the branches, plummeting toward the bird’s gaping beak.

Gabriel cried out wordlessly and sprang forward, laying his body out flat on his own sturdy tree limb and reaching down to grab Velda’s forearm as she fell.

He caught her. She hung from his hand with her feet dangling, swinging like a tempting lure just inches above the gore-drenched beak below.

“Gabriel!” Velda cried. “Gabriel, I’m slipping!”

Gabriel tightened his grip further, feeling his fingertips sink bruisingly into her flesh, but her arm was slick with sweat and she was slipping, her arm sliding down along Gabriel’s like someone trying to slip out of a pair of handcuffs. In another second, he’d lose her, unless he grabbed hold with his other hand—but he couldn’t do that without letting go of his grip on the tree, in which case they’d both fall. Unless he could hold onto the limb with his legs alone—

Suddenly the bird let out a bloodcurdling scream as a spear flew out of the thick underbrush and stabbed deep into one of its eyes.

Gabriel looked back the way the spear had come. To his amazement, a young woman burst from a cluster of thick ferns. A second and a third, and then a half dozen more.

Each woman carried a spear, except for the first, who’d already thrown hers. They looked alike as sisters, each with dirty blonde hair and pale blue eyes, each tawny and young, nubile, their deeply tanned, honeycolored skin and lithe bodies glossy with sweat from the exertion of the hunt. They were dressed, if you could call it that, in scraps of black-and-tan-striped fur that had previously clothed a Tasmanian tiger less lucky than the brood Gabriel’s team had so recently encountered.

While Gabriel hooked his legs around the branch and used both hands to haul Velda back up to safety, the hunters leapt onto the floundering beast, jabbing it with spears and beating it with stone clubs. Gabriel watched speechless as the huge bird finally collapsed, shuddered and died.

With the beast slain at their feet, the women’s eyes all turned upward, toward the three people in the tree.