Quivering, Tony lifted his head off the blood-splattered snow. He met Caplan’s gaze with wild, unfocused eyes. Eyes that had seen too much and might never see again.
The wounds, coupled with the sheer force with which Tony’s body had been launched out of the darkness, baffled Caplan. What kind of animal could do such a thing?
Caplan ran toward the fence. Tony’s wounds were brutal and deep, but not necessarily deadly. He could still survive the attack, albeit with permanent scars, if he received medical attention.
Caplan slid down the small hill to the fence. As he started to crawl under it, he caught sight of the forest. He could sense its energy, its seething rage. The trees, sturdy columns of nature’s most forbidden city, seemed to separate as if inviting him — no, daring him — to enter their presence. He sensed their determination, their steadfast resolve to protect whatever secrets, ancient or otherwise, lay beyond them.
His nerves frizzled like electric wires and he hesitated at the edge of the fence. Only for a minute or so, time which he spent staring into Tony’s desperate, horror-stricken eyes.
The dark corridors pulsed and expanded to even larger sizes. The darkness — snarling, frenzied, and very much alive — spread its tentacles across the ground.
Tony’s cheeks bulged as it swept over his body. Ungodly fear and clarity filled his eyes. He screamed again and again. Screams not just of pain but also of immeasurable fright. The sort of nightmarish fright one only faced in the darkest of nightmares.
The screams died away. The pulsing blackness retreated back to the tree line, taking Tony’s body with it and leaving the duffel bag and bloody scraps of clothing behind.
Sobs tickled Caplan’s throat. His body sagged and his eyes closed over. His head lowered to the snow as he relived his moment of hesitation over and over again. Tony was dead.
And it was his fault.
Chapter 26
“It looks like…” Pearson’s face twisted in disgust. “… like something ate him.”
Caplan took a few deep breaths, evacuating the last bits of smoke from his aching lungs. Then he paced across the partially scorched field. The various fires, ultimately thwarted by the dampness, had begun to die out. They’d left a variety of corpses — some charred, some mildly burnt, and one totally untouched — in their wake.
He cast a wary eye at the surrounding tree line. The black corridors reminded him of that cold January day five months earlier. He recalled stretching a trembling hand under the fence and grasping Tony’s duffel bag. Stretching a little farther, he managed to grasp one of the bloody scraps of clothing. Fortunately, Tony had brought along tools to repair the fence, so fixing the snipped wires only took a few minutes. Then he’d retreated to Roadster. For ten minutes, he’d sat alone inside the vehicle, trembling and fighting back tears.
He knew he needed to tell the truth. To reveal the mysterious fence to all of Hatcher and take whatever punishment the Foundation deemed necessary. But was that really the best move? Clearly, someone was hiding something in 48A. What if that person tried to kill him for what he knew? Or worse, what if that person targeted Amanda, figuring Tony might have shared his discovery with his sibling?
And at that moment, racked with grief and uncertainty, he made the first of many decisions that would eventually consume his life. Quickly, he’d driven the vehicle to Sector 84. After parking it in some brush, he planted the blood-soaked piece of fabric nearby. Then he hiked back to Hatcher, manually deactivated the exterior fences, and slipped into the Eye.
By that time, he’d begun to doubt his strategy. But it was too late to back down. So, he accessed and deleted the applicable video feeds, hiding all evidence of the ill-fated trek to 48A. Then he disabled the feeds to make it look like they’d been turned off since early afternoon. Only then did he report Roadster’s puzzling disappearance.
He’d initiated an investigation and quickly discovered Tony’s absence. The other rangers booted up the feeds and soon found the missing Roadster. A giant manhunt turned up nothing but the bloody cloth, buried under a couple of inches of newly fallen snow. Everything after that — his resignation, the daylong exit interview and signing of documents, and the flight to Manhattan — had been a blur.
Sighing wearily, Caplan aimed his flashlight beam at the body, identifying it as the baller from the alley. What was his name again? Oh yeah, Cam… Cam Moline.
The twenty-something’s mouth was wide open and it looked like he’d died in mid-scream. His eyes, unfocused and bloodshot like a junkie’s, stared lifelessly at the sky. They reminded Caplan of the look he’d seen in Tony’s eyes just prior to the end.
Caplan tried to close the man’s eyelids, but they wouldn’t budge. Giving up, he touched the man’s cheek with the back of his hand. The skin felt cold and rubbery.
“That’s Cam,” Pearson said tightly. “He served in the U.S. Army Rangers.”
Holding his breath, Caplan lifted Moline’s shredded shirt. Something sharp and curved — a claw? — had carved the man’s torso up like a Thanksgiving turkey. His organs, the ones that were left anyway — had been chewed into brownish, blackish pulp.
Bile rose in Caplan’s throat. “Looks like a cat attack,” he said slowly. “Maybe a lion, maybe a tiger.”
For a solitary moment, Caplan knelt in the clearing, listening to the dying flames, the buzzing flies, and the drip-drip-drip of water. Then he saw a glint of metal just past Moline’s body. Standing up, he retrieved a standard-issue U.S. Army 9mm pistol from the mud. Lifting the silenced barrel to his nose, he took a whiff. Then he checked the box magazine. “I can’t tell if it’s been fired recently,” he said. “But it’s missing a few rounds.”
“Moline was a tough sonofabitch. He must’ve seen the cat coming and gotten a few shots off.” Pearson nodded at the flashlight. “Are you sure we should have that on?”
Caplan gave him a questioning look.
“What if that cat is still hanging around? It might see the light.”
“I hope it does,” Caplan replied. “You know how it feels to get walloped with a blinding light, right? Well, animals don’t like it anymore than we do.”
Exhaustion crisscrossed Caplan’s brain and body as he walked to the smoldering wreckage. He felt slow, sluggish. God, he wished he could sleep. Sleep until the sun rose, fell, and then rose again.
He aimed his beam into the cabin, sweeping it across the long metal benches, the burnt bags of equipment. He saw plenty of blood, much of it blackened by the fire, but no bodies. Most likely, a few people were injured or died in the crash. The healthy ones evacuated them and started to make their way across the clearing. But a large cat — or maybe several of them — had other ideas.
“I count thirteen corpses.” Pearson shook his head. “You know what that means, don’t you? They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
Caplan swept his beam in a circle, passing over the gruesome baker’s dozen. When it reached a western heading, another glint caught his eye. What was that? Another gun? A piece of the helicopter? Something else?
Caplan hiked to the edge of the clearing, slipped under the overhanging canopy, and entered one of the Vallerio’s dark corridors. The ancient city of nature, constructed long ago by sheer chance and evolution, stretched before him. But although he could run its streets and scale its pillars, he knew he’d never truly be one with it. For this, he felt eternally thankful.
Stepping carefully, he entered another dark corridor and hiked past several sky-high pillars of gnarled, damp wood. Before long, he caught sight of what had caused the glinting. He wrenched to a halt. His eyeballs trembled in his head and jolts of electricity shot through his veins.