He looked over to the pickup truck, still laying on its side. Maybe.
The thing was swooping toward him again. He fired two more bursts, held his ground until it seemed he could reach out and grab it, then dropped to his back and fired two more. It shot past him and rounded up, banking into a tight turn. Hatcher flipped onto his feet and bolted for the truck, making a show of ditching his rifle.
This better work.
He dove into the bed, felt the creature’s talons rake his back, claws ripping through his shirt and gashing his flesh but unable to grasp. Those feet punched against the cab of the truck, talons smashing the rear glass and puncturing the roof as it clamped down.
Bursts of wind on his back. He felt the truck shift, sensed it break loose from its traction on the ground. The rear of the bed started to hang.
He slid over to the grappling catapult, spinning it around and wedging himself between it and the tailgate. The truck swung beneath him and he felt gravity go negative for an instant, sensed everything below falling away, then the truck swung back and his own weight pressed him down, trying to pin him.
Struggling against the schizophrenic g-forces, he leveled the sight of the catapult at the creature. The thing’s wings would not stay in one place, whipping back and forth, presenting a broad side for just a flash, then disappearing. There would be no perfect shot; at best, it was a Hail Mary. He pulled back the heavy spring on the charge bolt, and tugged the enormous trigger.
The mechanism snapped and the umbrella of hooks shot like a spear. Cable spun out behind it, the reel whirring. The tip tore through the lower part of the left wing, barely.
Barely was good enough.
The creature let out a high-pitched shriek. The sound cut through the ringing in Hatcher’s ears, stabbed at his brain. A second later, the thing dropped the truck. Hatcher tried to brace himself, his body light and swimming. He tucked his head, wrapping it with his arms, and forced all the breath out of his lungs. The truck crashed into the ground.
His next conscious thought was that he was still alive. He could tell by the competing pain, his hip screaming to be heard over the shouting of his ribs, his wrist hollering even louder when he went to move.
He was on the ground. Breathing was a challenge, as every expansion of his ribcage sent shockwaves through his torso. He managed to sit up. The night-vision goggles were askew on his head and he fought through the pain in his wrist to adjust them back over his eyes. The scene tumbled back into perspective when he saw the truck on exploded tires a few feet away. Through the buzzing in his ears he became aware of the whirring of the reel, the cable still letting out.
Then there was a clank, the groan of metal, followed by a vibrating twang, and the truck started to move. Across the ground in fits and starts at first, surging up and crunching down, until soon it wasn’t touching the road anymore, just swinging forward, rising into the night. Dipping, jerking up, dipping, jerking up, penduluming forward, then back.
There wasn’t much time to decide. There were only two choices; go back for Ivy and Zorn, or go after the creature. That thing was too smart, too strong, not to figure out a way to free itself. And if it managed to do that before they could all get to safety, it wouldn’t end well, he was certain of it. There was too much night left.
He scrambled to retrieve the M4. No choice. He had to go after the thing, find a way to kill it. He hurried back to the safari truck, checked the ignition, the visor, the seat, found the keys hanging from the rear-view mirror on a lanyard.
The vehicle started right away, sputtering until he revved it. The transmission clunked into drive and the truck lurched forward and was moving again, doffing the NVDs and using the headlights, and tried to keep the truck from fishtailing as he sped down the road at a far higher speed than he knew was wise.
Over a mile had passed before the truck came into view. Still following the road, still swinging in spasms. Never getting higher than fifteen or twenty feet. He closed the distance, studying the tree shadows of the jungle surrounding him.
It can’t clear the treeline. Or it’s scared to try. It wants an open path.
Hatcher gunned the engine. It whined and he saw the tachometer was practically redlined, but he only needed it to last a few more minutes. Seconds, if he caught a break.
There it was. Up ahead, a curve in the road. He held the accelerator down until the hood of the truck was almost touching the dangling end of the pickup. The front end of the pickup swayed over the hood then down over the road. Hatcher bumped it a few times as he tried to keep pace.
A blink before the turn in the curve Hatcher stomped on the gas, pressing the pedal to the floor as hard as he could. The truck slammed into the pickup. The safari railing smashed through the windshield, stabbing into the upholstery, hooking itself over the dashboard and steering column. Hatcher held the wheel straight, the pain in his wrist howling curses that burned their way up his arm. He felt the front wheels lift even as he held the accelerator down until he threw himself out the door the moment before the truck impacted a tree.
He separated his shoulder on impact and tumbled almost twenty feet over the rocky dirt road. He thought he could hear the cracking of several ribs, but whether he actually did or not didn’t matter, as he knew several were fractured whether he heard them crack or not. He had a hard time finding a part of his body that wasn’t on fire in some way.
No time for a survey of injuries. He struggled to his feet, favoring his left arm. A few of the lights from the safari truck were still on, visible a few yards into the jungle. He took a step and noticed a glint on the ground. The M4. He hefted it, gingerly minimizing the use of his left arm, felt its balance, reseated the magazine and racked another round into the chamber, just to be sure.
The walk to the truck was excruciating, each step a mix of sizzles and stabs. When he reached it, he saw it was still entangled with the pickup, both of them enmeshed in the foliage. He managed to reach through a broken window and retrieve the goggles. Only one lens still worked. It was cracked, but he was able to see through it after a few adjustments.
He followed the cable from the pickup, fighting his way through the webbed reach of plants and limbs. A couple of hundred feet later, he saw the creature. It was impaled in several spots. It had taken a long, thick bone through the stomach on its way down, and one wing was completely broken. Several other long shards of skeleton — ribs, from the look of them — had pierced it in various places. Hatcher could picture the fall, an accelerated arc swinging it down like a huge sledge hammer, pounding it through the growth. Down into a Garden of Bones.
Through the functioning NVD lens, Hatcher could see the parts of it up close, parts invisible to the naked eye. Tentacled appendages wriggling; a skull overlay that looked like a cadaverous vulture; a serpentine tail.
To his surprise, it moved, not without difficulty, but enough to cause Hatcher to take a step back. The thing looked at him with eyes that burned a strange shade in the monochrome. It opened its beak-like jaws and made a grating, squawking roar, like the death rattle of a thousand souls. Maybe more.
Hatcher leveled the M4 and squeezed the trigger.
No three-round bursts this time. He unloaded the magazine in barely a second, retrieved another, then unloaded that. He seated his final magazine and moved closer. The thing was no longer trying to move, but a series of hisses and snarls were still coming out of it. He positioned himself as close as he could, held his ground as a tentacle rose like it was going to strike, and shoved the barrel into the thing’s mouth.