Rahei fell back and pointed into the forest in the direction of his son’s voice. If anyone could find him, it was his sister-in-law. She was one of the best hunters he knew. She set off, dragging them all with her. She did not curb her pace to compensate for any deficiency in those that followed, and Cutter would have it no other way.
“Papa!”
Closer now.
After another minute, Rahei rushed forward as a figure that was all gangly limbs dropped out of the trees into her arms. She swung Jori in a full circle, then placed him on his feet, giving him one hard hug.
Cutter dropped to one knee, his arms wide.
Jori ran up to him and leaped into his embrace.
“I’m very angry with you, my dear boy.” But he hugged his son even tighter and kissed the top of his head.
From that same tree, another figure climbed down, falling the last two yards, but still landing on her feet.
Rahei looked ready to stun her into submission, but Cutter knew Jenna had not caused any of this. In fact, she likely saved Jori’s life. He crossed to her and embraced her, too, feeling her stiffen in his grip.
“Thank you,” he said.
Once loose, she swallowed visibly, looking like she was trying to say something. Her eyes were stitched with thick blood vessels, as they flicked around the forest.
She was nearly gone.
I’m sorry…
“Take her with us,” he said. She didn’t deserve to die down here, not any longer, not after saving his son. “Let’s hurry. We’ll take the secret tunnels down to the forest. I don’t know what’s happening topside, but I think we’re compromised.”
Rahei led the way again, setting a hard pace.
The road appeared ahead, but before they could reach it, the man to Cutter’s left dropped, his head falling backward, his neck cleaved to the bone. Blood spayed the branches as he toppled.
Something struck Cutter from behind, lifting him off his feet and throwing him several yards. He crashed and rolled through a thornbush. He caught sight of a massive furred flank barreling past him. He rolled to his side, staying low as gunfire erupted all around, shredding through ferns, ripping away bark, but there was no longer any sign of the attackers.
Cutter sat up, searching around.
What the hell happened?
“Jori…” Jenna said, her voice strained. “They took him.”
Cutter spun around, rising like a whirlwind, searching everywhere.
His son was gone.
Rahei stalked to his side, her face cold with fury.
“Where?” Cutter turned to Jenna. “Where did they go?”
Jenna pointed toward the darkest part of the forest, where the ancient jungle washed up against the walls of the sinkhole.
“Their caves…” he realized.
Megatherium were cave dwellers, using their thick claws to dig out burrows and dens.
Without a word, Rahei ran off, heading in that direction. Her disdain for all of them was plain. She intended to take matters into her own skilled hands. Even if it meant wiping the entire species back into extinction.
“Let’s go,” Cutter said, preparing to follow.
Jenna stepped in front of him, placing a palm on his chest. “No. That’s not… the way.”
She struggled, shaking her head as if to knock her words loose.
He tried to move past her, but she blocked him, her eyes pleading.
“They didn’t kill him,” she tried again, pointing to the dead man. “Took him. Rahei. Her way — survival of the fittest — will get him killed.”
“Then what do we do?”
She stared at Cutter, showing on her face all the sincerity and earnestness that she struggled to find in her words.
“We must go another way.”
Lisa stood at the chapel window and stared across to the neighboring airfield. A drone helicopter the size of a tank sat on the tarmac. It was boxy in shape with four propellers, one at each corner. It looked like a giant version of those toy quadcopters sold in hobby shops, but this was no plaything.
In its cargo hold was a nuclear device strapped by thick belts to a metal pallet. A group of technicians still labored alongside it. Others stood on the tarmac clearly debating. She knew one of those men was Dr. Raymond Lindahl. As director of the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command, it was appropriate he was out there, but Lisa wished it was Painter instead, someone less reactionary, more able to think outside the box.
A voice cleared behind her. “You did hear that it’s time to evacuate,” Corporal Sarah Jessup said. “Detonation is set for forty-five minutes from now. We’re already cutting matters close, especially as I heard that they might move that time frame up due to the crosswinds kicking up.”
“Just a few minutes longer,” Lisa said.
Painter has never let me down.
As if summoned by this thought, the phone rang. Only a handful of people had this number. Lisa spun to the receiver and yanked it up. She didn’t bother getting confirmation that it was Painter.
“Tell me good news,” she said.
His voice was full of static, but it was oh-so-welcome. “It’s magnetism.”
She was sure she hadn’t heard that correctly. “Magnetism?”
She listened as Painter explained how he had found Kendall and that the man did have a solution, an answer as strange as the disease itself.
“Any strong magnetic force would likely do,” Painter ended, “but according to some real-world testing, you want — and I’m quoting — to generate a field strength of at least 0.465 Tesla using a static magnetic field.”
She jotted the information down on a sheet of paper.
“The effect should be almost instantaneous as that field shreds the organism at the genetic level, while not harming anything else.”
Oh, my God…
She stared out the window, knowing the destructive force about to be unleashed needlessly here.
Painter had additional information. “Hess says that the nuclear blast will have no effect on this organism. It will only succeed in spreading it farther and wider.”
“I have to stop them.”
“Do what you can. Kat is already working up the chains of command to stop this, but you know Washington. We have less than forty-five minutes to move a stone that seldom budges.”
“I’m already gone.” She hung up, not even sparing a good-bye. She turned to Jessup. “We need to move Nikko. He’s our only hope.”
32
Dylan Wright cursed his failed shot.
He thumbed the second barrel’s hammer back, wary of the beast before him. The Volitox queen still quested for the body of its offspring, hunching higher out of the water, its glowing lure rolling along the rocky bank.
Whatever that recent volley of gunfire was, it had ended as quickly as it had started. He pushed it out of his mind for the moment, concentrating on the immediate task at hand, at the looming danger before him.
A hunter let nothing distract him from the kill.
He pushed aside the humming backwash coming from the portable LRAD to his right, the dish still pointed toward the neighboring nest. He ignored the brilliantly hypnotic glow of the Volitox’s lure before him. He even dismissed the primitive terror at the base of his brain in the face of this huge monster.
Instead, he lifted his pistol and fixed his aim at the base of that tentacle, to where the buried ganglion offered a kill shot.