The creature whirled around. Bared its teeth.
And charged Caplan.
Caplan had just enough time to see its savage, orangish eyes before the creature was upon him. He dove to his right. The creature raced straight ahead and slammed into his legs. He felt its fur, felt the power behind it. The glancing blow ripped the axe and flashlight out of his hands. His lower half twisted in a quarter-circle and he slammed face first to the muddy earth.
The creature, clearly some kind of wolf, ground its paws into the muck, sliding to a slippery stop. Twisting around, its paws slapped the ground, finding a footing.
Caplan struggled to his knees. His flashlight lay several feet away, its dull beam glinting along the mud-soaked ground. His axe was a little closer, but still out of reach.
Growling, the wolf charged again.
Pearson planted his legs. Taking careful aim, he squeezed his hand cannon’s trigger. Gunfire, suppressed to a dull roar by a silencer, rang out.
The wolf flinched and slid to a halt six or seven feet from Caplan.
Pearson squeezed the trigger again. The pistol reverberated in his hands.
The wolf twisted as a bullet crunched into its hide, just above its right shoulder blade. Snarling loudly, it backed up a few steps, mud slurping under its heavy paws. Its orangish eyes flashed in the dim light. As it backed up into one of the Vallerio’s dark corridors, it howled at the sky. Seconds later, blackness swallowed up the strange beast.
Caplan frowned. The snarls and howl were vicious and bloodthirsty. But they were also unfamiliar to him. Clearly, the wolf wasn’t responsible for Tony’s death.
He crawled forward, retrieving his axe and flashlight. Twisting the beam, he saw no sign of the animal.
Pearson gave him a sharp look. “You’re welcome.”
“For what?” Caplan hiked back to the remains of the pod. “I had things under control.”
“Sure you did.” Pearson’s gaze moved to the forest. “So, what was that thing? A gray wolf?”
Kneeling down, Caplan sifted through the tattered silken bonds. In the process, his beam glinted against the black box and he saw a small, heavily varnished plaque. “Canis dirus,” he read aloud.
“So, we’ve got a name for it.”
“There are just a handful of wolf species in the world,” Caplan replied thoughtfully. “And you know what they all have in common?”
“What?”
“None of them are called Canis dirus.”
Chapter 24
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pearson’s eyes cinched tight. “That it doesn’t exist or something?”
Caplan stood up and checked his watch. His heart palpitated as he noted the time. Morgan and the others had less than two and a half hours to live.
He reoriented himself toward the heat and crackling flames. He estimated they’d traveled close to three miles prior to finding the strange pod, leaving roughly four miles to go. If they kept up their fast pace of six miles per hour, they’d reach Hatcher by about 3:20 p.m. That would leave them just 100 minutes to infiltrate the station and administer the antibiotics. It was a tight window. Tight, but manageable.
That is, assuming nothing slowed them down.
He set forth again, gliding through the soggy forest. Along the way, he warded off some fresh doubts. Yes, he’d grown increasingly bold ever since meeting Corbotch in that dark alleyway. And yes, maybe that boldness bordered on recklessness from time to time. But at least he wasn’t standing around, frozen with fear as others faced imminent death. At least he was trying to help, to do something.
Pearson hustled to Caplan’s side. “I asked you a question,” he said angrily.
“I don’t know what it means,” Caplan replied after a moment. “It looked a little like a gray wolf. But it was broader, stockier, heavier. I’d say it outweighed even a large gray wolf by some forty to fifty pounds. Plus, its fur was the wrong texture and color.”
“So, this Canis dirus… it’s some kind of mutant?”
Caplan shrugged.
They continued to walk, tramping softly across the mud. The temperature climbed a few notches. It never got hot, but it was definitely warmer. The crackling rose a few decibels. Shifting his flashlight beam, Caplan saw pieces of metal, maybe 100 yards out. Painted with digital camouflage, they blended well with the greenish needles and brown branches of surrounding pine trees. Flickering streaks of orange and columns of gray smoke surrounded the metal.
Caplan picked up speed, breathing faster and tasting ash in the air. Wet branches, covered with sticky white sap, snagged at his shirt, his arms and hands. It felt like he was walking through an ancient corridor of living skeletons, their bony fingers repeatedly grabbing him, smearing his skin with awful white goo. He tried to wipe the residue onto his jeans, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get rid of it.
Skirting to the left, he entered a tiny clearing filled with tall stalks of grass. His breath caught in his throat as he stared at what remained of the Blaze. It lay squashed in the mud, mangled and stripped into so many pieces as if were a child’s plaything. Its complete destruction, this mighty instrument of man’s ingenuity, unnerved Caplan for a split-second. If civilization’s finest technology couldn’t survive the ancient evil that held court in the vast Vallerio, then what hope did he have?
Fires, small to mid-sized, impeded his view of the wreckage. They burned slowly, keeping their heat, in an almost supernatural effort to gain traction on the damp soil and soaked grass blades.
Caplan’s eyes teared up from all the smoke, the embers. “Can anyone hear me?” he shouted.
No one responded.
He hiked forward. A wall of sweltering heat, many feet thick, met him head-on. He heard the silent screams of the dead just beyond it. The smell of freshly-charred flesh and well-curdled blood hung heavy in his nostrils.
He plunged into the grassy field and his pores opened wide. Buckets of sweat poured down his body and evaporated before reaching the ground. Wiping the salty liquid from his eyes, he studied the wreckage. The cabin door hung from its hinges, mangled by the crash into a multi-sided shape unrecognizable by modern geometry. Flames roared inside the cabin as well as inside the cockpit. Despite the heat, a shiver ran through him.
Where are they? he wondered.
More sweat poured out of his body and fell prey to the heat, leaving him dizzy and dehydrated. He took a few steps forward, but the heat turned unbearable and he was forced to halt. The clearing felt like a giant grill, dialed up to the highest settings.
Spots of color appeared where none had previously existed. He stumbled backward, sideways. His feet caught on something and he felt himself turning, slipping, sliding.
Falling.
His right side smacked against the mud. Blinking, he stared at a face. The face stared back at him, eye sockets agape as if they had seen things no man should ever see.
Tilting his head, Caplan saw other faces, other bodies. They lay quietly amongst the bent grass and well-trodden mud, their souls long released into the great beyond. His fervent wish to keep others from succumbing to the Vallerio Forest had gone unfulfilled.
Large hands grabbed his armpits. A moment later, he felt himself dragged backward along the rocky, wet soil. “Dead,” he muttered. “They’re all dead.”
Chapter 25