The Chimera Secret

36

The forest was as thick with fog as it had been at first light as Ethan checked his watch. A quarter of two, and the sun was a feeble orb of pale light hovering in the murky gray sky.

‘Easy there, watch those roots,’ said Duran Wilkes.

Ethan hefted Simmons’s stretcher onto his shoulder and carefully stepped over the thick, damp and gnarled roots of a fallen tree blocking their path. The hillside was steep, the terrain treacherous and slick with water from the incessant drizzle drifting down around then. Ethan guessed that the temperature was no more than forty degrees, probably a lot less, although the effort of shouldering his corner of the injured soldier’s stretcher was generating a lot of heat beneath his waterproof jacket.

Duran had the other corner, with two of Kurt’s soldiers manning the rear. Mary, Dana and Proctor walked ahead, picking the easiest path they could find, while Lopez and the remaining soldiers formed a loose guard around the group.

‘How much farther?’ Proctor called as he looked back at Duran Wilkes.

The old man glanced up at their surroundings for a moment before he replied.

‘Another four hundred feet.’

Proctor’s face creased with misery beneath his hooded jacket as he turned and followed Dana down a steep animal trail that descended into deep forest below the ridge line.

Ethan could see that the valley below them was deep, almost like a ravine, with thickly forested slopes either side that led to a narrow exit to the south. There was no river in the valley, although it was possible that there might be a creek deep inside the forest that he couldn’t see from up on the slopes.

‘We’re not going to get him down before the sun sets,’ Lopez said as she edged in alongside Ethan. ‘Captain America over there is getting agitated about it already.’

Ethan glanced across to where Kurt Agry was leading his men, stopping impatiently every few minutes to observe the progress of the cumbersome stretcher.

‘There’s no rush,’ Ethan said. ‘We know Cletus MacCarthy is dead and we know that his remains may well be scattered by now. I don’t give a damn about his agenda. He’s here to escort us and we’re here to find a body. Period. He’s probably just bored.’

‘After last night there’s nothing boring about this expedition. There’s something out here, Ethan, and it’s not friendly,’ Lopez said. ‘Why don’t we just hike down with our injured friend here then come back in helicopters? Preferably the gunship kind.’

Ethan smiled with gritted teeth as he and Duran slipped and slid down a muddy track and onto firmer ground, the stretcher rocking and shuddering as the soldiers followed them down.

‘The weather’s too heavy here for flying,’ he replied. ‘We’d never see a thing.’

‘Oh no,’ Lopez murmured, ‘what a great shame that would be. Then we’d have to go back to Illinois or maybe take a vacation down Bermuda way.’

‘Now you’re tempting me,’ Ethan grinned at her.

Duran Wilkes looked across at them as they walked through trees that were once again densely packed but on mercifully level ground. ‘You can’t run away from destiny.’

‘You’re damned right there,’ Lopez replied, ‘and it’s my destiny to live out my years on a beach with a small army of servants tending to my every need.’

‘Your every need?’ Ethan enquired.

‘Keep it clean, Warner,’ she said, watching him from the corner of her eye. ‘This is my fantasy world we’re talkin’ about, not yours.’

‘You might want to put that fantasy on hold,’ Duran said quietly.

‘You okay?’ Ethan asked, looking at the old man.

Duran nodded once.

‘So far,’ he replied, ‘but we’re being watched.’

Ethan turned and looked out across the forest. He saw nothing but the endless, densely packed ranks of cedars and pines, the carpet of damp foliage shivering as drops of water fell from the canopy above in a constant torrent.

‘I don’t see anything,’ Ethan replied.

‘Nor do I,’ Duran replied. ‘And I don’t hear anything either. That’s my point.’

Ethan attuned his ear to the forest around them and suddenly became aware of the absolute silence, so quiet that it almost seemed tangible. No birds sang. There was no rustle of animals in the bushes. Just the endless pattering of raindrops stretching away to infinity around them.

Lopez whispered across to Ethan.

‘You remember what Cletus’s wife said, about the woods outside her home?’

Ethan nodded. ‘The wildlife left when the sasquatch appeared.’

Ahead, Kurt Agry slowed down and raised a clenched fist into the air. Ethan stopped walking and watched with interest as the soldier stood motionless, looking around him at the forest as though uncertain. He glanced back at Ethan and the stretcher, then continued to survey their surroundings.

‘You think he’s noticed?’ Lopez whispered.

‘Definitely,’ Ethan said. ‘He may be an asshole, but you don’t lead a paramilitary platoon if you’re not a great soldier.’

‘How did he figure it out?’ Lopez asked.

‘Sixth sense,’ Ethan whispered back. ‘You’d be surprised how common it is with soldiers.’

Ethan knew that although there was little time for the supernatural among the military, there was a sincere appreciation for the strange but undeniable ability of people to detect the watching gaze of an observer, often from great distances. Ethan himself had been trained never to look too long into the eyes of a target, especially an animal if hunting for food. Sooner or later, they would sense the presence of the hunter and flee.

Likewise, human targets occasionally detected snipers with supernatural accuracy and avoided the bullet that would otherwise have opened their skull like an axe through a melon. There was no predicting when such a bizarre event would occur, but the fact that it did meant that the military took the ability seriously.

Lopez looked around her at the woods and shivered.

‘It’s out there, isn’t it,’ she said.

It was Duran who replied.

‘It’s been out there the whole time. There are birds ahead of us that take off too soon to have been spooked by us.’

Ethan watched for a moment as he considered what Duran was saying.

‘It’s in front of us.’

‘No more than two hundred yards.’

Kurt Agry waved a signal to his men and they began drawing back toward the stretcher, their rifles raised and aimed out into the woods around them. Ethan watched as they pulled back, and Kurt turned to them.

‘There’s something moving ahead of us,’ he said. ‘We’ll check it out. Warner, Lopez, you cover the stretcher.’

‘Great,’ Lopez uttered as the soldiers moved out, and pulled her pistol from its holster.

Ethan lowered the stretcher down onto the ground, glancing at Simmons’s pale face and guessing that he had hours to live. The build-up of pressure on his brain due to the hemorrhage would kill him before nightfall.

Ethan checked his own weapon and squatted down alongside Duran as Kurt and the troops moved out.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ Duran said. ‘We need to get out of here.’

‘You were the one voting to get this guy off the mountain,’ Ethan said.

Duran turned slowly to look at him. ‘That was before we were being hunted.’

Lopez grabbed the old man’s jacket. ‘What’s that now?’

‘High ground on all sides,’ Duran said, and gestured to the valley around them. ‘A natural choke point ahead. Perfect for an ambush.’

Ethan scanned the woods ahead. ‘You’re saying this is deliberate? The terrain is perfect for an attack, but would they even be capable of something like that?’

Duran opened his mouth to reply but he never got the word out.

A crackle of machine-gun fire smashed the silence of the forest as one of the soldiers blazed automatic rounds into the woods. Ethan barely spotted him before a dull, wet, gray rock smashed down barely three feet from where he crouched.

‘Shit, not again,’ Lopez shouted as she whirled and aimed out into the woods to their left.

‘We need to move, now!’ Duran shouted. ‘Grab the stretcher!’

Dana and Proctor lifted the rear of the stretcher as Duran and Ethan grabbed the front.

Another heavy chunk of rock sailed down from above as if tossed on a high arc out of the woods toward them. This one hit the ground just behind Proctor and made the biologist leap into the air with fright.

‘Keep moving,’ Ethan shouted as they plunged forward through the dense foliage.

Another burst of gunfire cracked the air, followed by the splatter of bullets hitting tree trunks, the impacts echoing through the forest around them as Ethan stumbled and struggled beneath the weight of the stretcher, his boots slipping on mud and dead leaves.

A pair of rocks smacked the ground nearby, one of them bouncing off the trunk of a cedar and narrowly missing Lopez’s head.

‘I can’t see it!’ she shouted, aiming wildly into the woods but not firing.

‘You’ll never hit it at this range even if you could see it,’ Duran said. ‘Keep moving.’

Ethan led the way into the ravine, hitting a slope near the bottom. He saw through the trees a narrow creek that ran through the forest toward the valley exit. The soaring slopes of the ravine rose up around them as Ethan deliberately descended toward the creek.

‘You’re giving up the high ground,’ Lopez said as they slipped and slid down the hillside.

‘It’s useless to us now,’ Ethan shouted. ‘We’ll make faster progress in the creek.’

Lopez hit the bottom first and landed in thick mud beside water that was only a few inches deep but was flecked with a thin flotsam of ice. Moments later two heavy rocks crashed into the water either side of her, fountains of frigid water splashing her jacket.

‘It’s still with us!’ she shouted, squinting up into the woods for a target.

Ethan got down the slope with Duran, Dana and Proctor struggling along behind them as they splashed into the creek. The icy water flooded into their boots, so cold it felt as though it were leaking directly into Ethan’s bones as they jogged unsteadily along the creek toward the end of the valley.

‘What the hell do we do when we get out of here?’ Lopez asked.

Ethan did not have a good answer for her.

A terrific scream shrieked across the valley from somewhere ahead, like something between a bird of prey and a cougar, and loud enough to ring in Ethan’s ears. His legs shuddered to a halt beneath him, frozen still by the terrifying pitch of the cry.

Duran, Proctor and Dana all froze at almost the same instant, the stretcher quivering and swaying as they stood motionless in the water.

‘That’s not good,’ Duran spat. ‘It’s between us and Kurt’s men.’

Ethan scanned the creek ahead and made his decision. He turned toward the bank and walked out of the water, forcing Duran and the others to follow his every move as he set the stretcher down on the mud.

Then he drew his pistol and set off on foot down the creek.

‘Where are you going?’ Lopez whispered urgently.

‘We can’t run away from it,’ Ethan said. ‘We’ve got to show it that we won’t be intimidated. It’s more wild animal than human, right? That means it can be fooled.’

Lopez stared at him for one disbelieving second, and then she drew her pistol.

‘What did I tell you about us getting in way over our heads?’ she muttered.

Ethan nodded as they started off down the creek.

‘This is the last time, trust me.’