“Of course I understand. Well, sort of. But so what? All the Brits are planning on doing is getting close enough to take a few pictures; we’ll be in and out before they even know we’re there.”
Jacob shook his head again. “My point is,” he continued, “whatever made these things, whatever intelligence sent them here, you are not going to creep up on them. They are going to know you are coming before you even do. And if they are so inclined, they will knock you out of the air with as much impunity as we swat a fly.”
“I think you’re worrying about this way too much. MacAlister’s a careful man, he’s not going to put his men at risk if he can help it,” she explained, then echoed MacAlister’s own words, “It’s just a reconnaissance mission, anyway.”
“Do you really want to risk disturbing that hornet’s nest, Emily? Right now, we’re not even on their radar.” He struggled to come up with a suitable metaphor. “Look, you own an old house; you know you have bugs, spiders, roaches, right? But if they stay in the walls, out of sight, you don’t think about them, you don’t worry. But all it takes is one of them in your kitchen or on your bed and you’re on the phone to the first pest-control company you can find.”
“You’re saying we’re bugs?”
“I’m saying that if we stay here, keep our heads down, and don’t piss them off, maybe they’ll leave us alone. But if we start sending our people to them, they are going to notice us, and if we are an annoyance to them, they might just come here and finish what they started. I have to talk them out of this madness.”
Before Emily could say another word, Jacob swiveled his chair and rolled past her toward the administrative building. The concrete path sloped at an angle and he accelerated quickly, the chair rattling every time its wheels rolled over an expansion joint in the concrete.
“Jacob, wait a second,” she called after him but he ignored her, intent on achieving his goal.
A cloud moved in front of the sun, its shadow darkening the path between Emily and Jacob as he raced away from her. When the cloud passed, the light bounced off a nearby window, dazzling her eyes. In that momentary disorientation she heard the first fear-tinged yell of warning from somewhere behind her. The shooting started a second after the first cry had died. Emily instinctively ducked to the floor and turned in the direction she thought the firing was coming from. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jacob wobble in surprise, his wheelchair almost overturning as he spun it around to face the same direction she was looking.
Two HMS Vengeance crewmen, one a lookout perched on a rooftop, the other taking cover along the side of a wall, had their guns pointed at her and Jacob, their faces contorted in fear.
No! The gun’s muzzles weren’t aimed at her or Jacob, just in their direction. The men were yelling at her to run, just fucking run! But instead her eyes followed the trajectory the sailors were aiming, back over her shoulder and into the air and… “Oh, fuck!” she blurted out and dived to the ground just as a huge pair of talons closed around the space she had just occupied, the razor-sharp claws giving a resounding click, like the sound of a tripped mousetrap as they snapped around empty air.
The impression of something huge, something with diaphanous wings that hummed as they vibrated with a thrum like a million bees, cut through the air with razor-like sharpness. An oily, rainbow-stained tail flittered behind it like a cape, and Emily felt the rush of disturbed air as the creature flew not three feet over her head and soared into the sky. She rolled over on to her belly and watched as it climbed higher into the air. It reminded her of how a stunt plane at an airshow might fly; it was as big as a plane too.
It reached its zenith, and like her imaginary plane, stalled and flipped onto its back, its four wings flicking backward to form a delta shape… then it dived.
It rocketed toward the sailor perched on the roof. He held his position, his fully-automatic weapon flaring as he fired an entire magazine at the creature in a few short seconds, then he dived into the safety of the nearby doorway. Emily was sure the creature would slam into the concrete roof but instead, its target unreachable, its wings popped out from its side and it came to an abrupt, impossible stop that would have broken the neck of a human. Its wings became a blur as it hovered thirty feet above the roof, its long neck moving back and forth as it hung in the air, searching for another target.
It was only for a second, but when its eyes locked on hers, Emily felt the most fear she had ever experienced. There was an undeniable intelligence behind those orbs that skewered her in place, reaching some primal part of her brain and readying her for extinction.
And then the creature arrowed down toward her, streaking through the sky, chased by a hail of bullets that either missed or it was impervious to. As it neared her, the two taloned feet that had missed her the first time flicked open, readying to sink into her flesh.
Her legs would not move. She was ice, frozen to the spot.
The creature grew larger, filling her vision, then it swept over her, gone except for a rush of air from its passing that dragged her hair after it.
From behind her she heard the creature give a mighty cry that resonated around the camp. She spun around and watched as it again soared into the air before shrinking into the distance, vanishing into the jungle.
Something was clamped between its claws, she realized, something that still moved.
Emily pushed herself to her feet, brushing away gravel that had lodged in a bloody graze on her left hand. People were still yelling, their voices mingling together in confusion as others who had been inside the buildings came out and demanded to know what had just happened, the event over before most had even managed to make it to a window.
Something squeaked and rattled behind her.
Emily turned to see Jacob’s wheelchair rolling slowly down the path, its rubber-coated wheels jostling and bumping over the uneven concrete before it tipped over the lip and fell on its side, exposing a bright slash of blood splashed across the wheelchair’s foam seat.
And Jacob was nowhere to be seen.
There was little doubt of Jacob’s fate. One of the sentries who had opened fire on the flying creature confirmed he had seen it pluck Jacob from his chair and fly off. Neither Emily nor the second sentry—he had still been hiding in the doorway when the creature struck, he said—had witnessed it happen, but Emily confirmed that she had seen the creature flying away with something clutched in its talons.
The logical conclusion, given the blood and Jacob’s reliance on his wheelchair, was that it had taken him. The man could not have simply gotten up and walked off, after all. No one else was missing and a search of the area revealed no trace of a body, just a small amount of blood ten feet from Jacob’s empty chair.
“We should organize a search party,” Emily said, still stunned at how swiftly death could arrive in this new world. But he wasn’t dead, was he? she reminded herself. She had clearly seen his arms waving as the thing had carried him away. And that beak, just imagine what it must have done to him.