The Chimera Secret

30

‘Cover all points!’

Lieutenant Watson’s command snapped out harsh in the night as he and his men rushed outward from the fire in different directions, scattering to the impenetrable blackness at the edge of the treeline. Their M-16s glinted wickedly in the darkness as they hurried past.

Kurt Agry keyed his microphone and called urgently down it.

‘Klein, Jenkins, radio check and status.’

The radio clicked once, but nothing verbal came back in response. Kurt cursed and ran low and fast out of the camp toward the perimeter.

‘What was that?’ Lopez asked, shooting a nervous glance at Ethan.

‘Probably a bear,’ Lieutenant Watson replied. ‘Nothing to get too excited about, but stay close to the fire.’

Dana and Proctor were on their feet, their features taut with a volatile fusion of excitement and fear. Ethan glanced at Duran Wilkes and saw that he had not moved and still sat with his mug in his hands, looking into the fire. Mary was curled up beneath a blanket alongside him.

‘That sounded too damned big for a bear,’ Dana Ford uttered, searching the darkness uselessly with her eyes.

Ethan moved to the edge of the firelight and squatted, deliberately looking into the deepest, darkest bit of forest that he could find in an effort to let his eyes adjust to the night. He had some sympathy with Kurt Agry’s desire to not have a camp fire — the bright light and heat destroyed the human eye’s ability to see in the dark.

He heard Kurt’s anxious voice float to him from the blackness.

‘You see anything?’

Ethan started to distinguish the soldiers as they fanned out toward the perimeter of the camp, their M-16s aimed in front of them as they edged toward the treeline. Somewhere out there were the two sentries, concealed in the undergrowth.

‘No, sir,’ came a series of hushed calls.

‘Hold the line,’ Kurt Agry whispered back, and then Ethan heard him try the two sentries again on the radio. Again, Ethan heard a faint click in response and then silence. He guessed that one man was responding by keying his microphone only, and that meant that, for whatever reason, he could not speak.

Lopez crouched down alongside him.

‘What’s going on out there?’ she asked.

Ethan shook his head, not sure what to make of it. They had all heard something, but there was no point in them chasing every noise in the woods. The wilderness was filled with animals following trails.

The soldiers held their positions, all of them down on one knee with their weapons trained on the forest. Ethan was about to move forward when a hand pressed down on his shoulder. He turned and saw Duran Wilkes squat silently down alongside him. In his hand he held a rifle’s sniper-scope, and he could see a faint glow coming from the optics. It was an infra-red device, designed to detect heat signatures against the cold backdrop of the damp woods.

Duran leaned down close to Ethan’s ear and spoke so softly that he could barely hear him.

‘Hundred yards,’ he said, and pointed out into utter blackness to Ethan’s right.

Ethan pivoted on his heel and lifted the scope to his right eye.

A thick wall of trees loomed into his vision, dark blue against the deeper black of the forest beyond. The perspective shifted slightly as he moved, but he could see nothing but the empty forest.

‘Be patient,’ Duran said as though reading Ethan’s mind. ‘Just watch.’

Ethan calmed his breathing like he used to do before taking a shot when he was with the marines. The image steadied. For several long seconds he saw nothing. Then, quite suddenly, from between two large and distant trees a tall, bright sliver of heat appeared, as though something had peeked out. The object remained stationary for several seconds before vanishing once again into cover.

Ethan dropped the scope from his eye and looked at Duran. ‘A hundred yards?’

Duran nodded and then gestured to the soldiers nearby.

‘Like I said, you don’t find a sasquatch,’ he repeated. ‘It finds you.’

‘Is it out there?’ Lopez asked.

‘Something sure is,’ Ethan replied, and handed her the scope. He turned to Duran as Lopez began scanning the woods with the IR scope.

‘How did you know it would be there?’ he asked the old man.

Duran stroked his beard as he replied.

‘I’ve been out in these hills for most of my life,’ he said. ‘Time to time you see one of these things walking about. Most all the time they mind their own business, but I’ve learned that they’re like us in one real important way: they’re curious. They’re interested in what we’re doing and they’ll come have a look-see if they get the chance.’

Ethan surveyed the immense forest around them.

‘That was a pretty fast catch,’ he said admiringly. ‘It could have been hiding behind any tree in the woods within a hundred yards.’

Duran nodded.

‘Yup, but they’ll always track in from downwind so they don’t drop their scent. Then what they do is approach from a direction that allows them an easy and quick escape, while also providing a lot of cover for their approach. They watch from behind and between trees, and must have pretty decent eyesight because I’ve never seen one come as close as this. Most times they’re a couple of hundred yards away.’

‘I can see it,’ Lopez murmured. ‘Sneaky little bastard, isn’t he?’

Ethan smiled wryly.

‘He’s not little,’ he pointed out. ‘If he’s a hundred yards out he must be over eight feet tall.’

‘Nine,’ Mary Wilkes corrected him as she joined them, a scope to her own eye. ‘A big one even by their standards, and very close to the camp.’

Lopez looked at the old man.

‘You’re not going to tell Lieutenant Watson where it is?’

Duran scowled in the darkness and shook his head.

‘Why, so his sergeant can take a pot-shot at it and carry home a trophy? Like hell. It hasn’t done anything to us.’

Ethan frowned uncertainly.

‘Then what the hell was that noise, and the growl?’ Ethan asked. ‘And if it can watch us from a hundred yards out, what was it doing right beside the camp?’

Ethan did not hear Duran’s reply. From the forest nearby a shout of alarm was followed by Kurt Agry’s voice bellowing in the darkness.

‘Man down! Light ’em up!’

In an instant the soldiers turned on the Maglites on their weapons, the bright white flashlight beams cutting like lasers into the forest. Banks of mist glowed like ethereal clouds and tree trunks gleaming with moisture as they swept the woods with the beams.

Ethan jogged with Lopez to a dense clump of foliage where Lieutenant Watson was kneeling, his rifle slung over his shoulder. As he reached the officer’s side Ethan saw the prostrate form of Simmons slumped on his back on the ground, thick blood snaking across his face from a deep wound in his head.

‘What happened?’ Lopez stared down at the fallen soldier in disbelief. ‘He didn’t make a sound.’

Kurt Agry was unpacking a reel of medical dressing as he replied.

‘I don’t know, but we need to get him into the camp right now.’

The soldiers were pulling back toward them, circling protectively around their fallen comrade, when the remaining point-man suddenly appeared from the forest and ran toward them with his breath condensing in billowing clouds in the flashlight beams that whipped around to aim at him.

‘Where the hell have you been?!’ Kurt Agry snarled at him.

Corporal Jenkins looked down at his fallen colleague, his face stricken.

‘It came right past me,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t move or speak.’

‘Who moved past you, Jenkins?’ Lieutenant Watson asked as he stood up.

The soldier rubbed his face.

‘I couldn’t see it that well,’ he admitted, ‘but I could hear it breathing. Sounded big, heavy, but it moved in total silence.’

Ethan looked at Duran, who was standing with Mary nearby.

‘We saw one of them,’ Ethan said.

‘You saw them?’ Kurt Agry snapped as he rounded on Ethan. ‘And you didn’t say anything?’

‘It was a hundred yards out,’ Ethan shot back. ‘It wasn’t a threat.’

Jenkins stared at Ethan in disbelief. ‘But I was only fifty yards away. What could move that fast in total darkness?’

In a split second, Ethan came to the conclusion that the deep crunch they had heard had in fact been caused by something hitting the fallen soldier on the head and crippling him. An image of the distant, watching figure in the woods snapped into his attention.

Ethan turned toward the camp nearby.

‘It’s a distraction,’ he uttered.

On the cold night air a stale odor drifted to stain Ethan’s nose. The smell intensified until he felt his throat contract and his eyes stream. He turned away and gagged instinctively from the smell as he heard Lopez cough beside him.

Behind his disgust he heard Lieutenant Watson shout out a command.

‘Protect the camp!’

The soldiers had barely started to move when a heavy rock slammed down into the center of their group with a heavy thud that stripped a chunk of bark from a nearby tree. Another smashed into the foliage at their feet as a third hit Kurt Agry square in the back. He stumbled forward and crashed down into the undergrowth.

‘Cover! Return fire!’

Agry’s cry was followed by a sweep of flashlight beams and a deafening clatter of automatic fire as every soldier let off a pair of three-round bursts into the forest around them. The bullets shattered tree bark and zipped through leaves and branches as Duran Wilkes shouted out above the noise.

‘Cease fire! You’re wasting your time!’

Ethan and Lopez ducked down as the soldiers ignored the old man and fired controlled bursts into the inky black woods. Ethan, squinting against the noise and the fluttering flames of the muzzle blasts, crouched down alongside Lopez and looked across at the flames of the camp fire.

In the midst of the firelight, he felt his breath catch in his throat as he saw a gigantic form plunge through the camp. The battering noise of the rifles and the sweeping flashlight beams confused his eyes, but he saw a glimpse of thick fur and a huge arm that smashed through piles of equipment. The fire flared in a blossoming cloud of sparks that spiralled up into the night sky as whatever was thundering through the camp crashed through it and sent the embers sprawling across the forest floor.