Likewise, human targets occasionally detected snipers with supernatural accuracy and avoided the bullet that would otherwise have opened their skull like an axe through a melon. There was no predicting when such a bizarre event would occur, but the fact that it did meant that the military took the ability seriously.
Lopez looked around her at the woods and shivered.
‘It’s out there, isn’t it,’ she said.
It was Duran who replied.
‘It’s been out there the whole time. There are birds ahead of us that take off too soon to have been spooked by us.’
Ethan watched for a moment as he considered what Duran was saying.
‘It’s in front of us.’
‘No more than two hundred yards.’
Kurt Agry waved a signal to his men and they began drawing back toward the stretcher, their rifles raised and aimed out into the woods around them. Ethan watched as they pulled back, and Kurt turned to them.
‘There’s something moving ahead of us,’ he said. ‘We’ll check it out. Warner, Lopez, you cover the stretcher.’
‘Great,’ Lopez uttered as the soldiers moved out, and pulled her pistol from its holster.
Ethan lowered the stretcher down onto the ground, glancing at Simmons’s pale face and guessing that he had hours to live. The build-up of pressure on his brain due to the hemorrhage would kill him before nightfall.
Ethan checked his own weapon and squatted down alongside Duran as Kurt and the troops moved out.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ Duran said. ‘We need to get out of here.’
‘You were the one voting to get this guy off the mountain,’ Ethan said.
Duran turned slowly to look at him. ‘That was before we were being hunted.’
Lopez grabbed the old man’s jacket. ‘What’s that now?’
‘High ground on all sides,’ Duran said, and gestured to the valley around them. ‘A natural choke point ahead. Perfect for an ambush.’
Ethan scanned the woods ahead. ‘You’re saying this is deliberate? The terrain is perfect for an attack, but would they even be capable of something like that?’
Duran opened his mouth to reply but he never got the word out.
A crackle of machine-gun fire smashed the silence of the forest as one of the soldiers blazed automatic rounds into the woods. Ethan barely spotted him before a dull, wet, gray rock smashed down barely three feet from where he crouched.
‘Shit, not again,’ Lopez shouted as she whirled and aimed out into the woods to their left.
‘We need to move, now!’ Duran shouted. ‘Grab the stretcher!’
Dana and Proctor lifted the rear of the stretcher as Duran and Ethan grabbed the front.
Another heavy chunk of rock sailed down from above as if tossed on a high arc out of the woods toward them. This one hit the ground just behind Proctor and made the biologist leap into the air with fright.
‘Keep moving,’ Ethan shouted as they plunged forward through the dense foliage.
Another burst of gunfire cracked the air, followed by the splatter of bullets hitting tree trunks, the impacts echoing through the forest around them as Ethan stumbled and struggled beneath the weight of the stretcher, his boots slipping on mud and dead leaves.
A pair of rocks smacked the ground nearby, one of them bouncing off the trunk of a cedar and narrowly missing Lopez’s head.
‘I can’t see it!’ she shouted, aiming wildly into the woods but not firing.
‘You’ll never hit it at this range even if you could see it,’ Duran said. ‘Keep moving.’
Ethan led the way into the ravine, hitting a slope near the bottom. He saw through the trees a narrow creek that ran through the forest toward the valley exit. The soaring slopes of the ravine rose up around them as Ethan deliberately descended toward the creek.
‘You’re giving up the high ground,’ Lopez said as they slipped and slid down the hillside.
‘It’s useless to us now,’ Ethan shouted. ‘We’ll make faster progress in the creek.’
Lopez hit the bottom first and landed in thick mud beside water that was only a few inches deep but was flecked with a thin flotsam of ice. Moments later two heavy rocks crashed into the water either side of her, fountains of frigid water splashing her jacket.
‘It’s still with us!’ she shouted, squinting up into the woods for a target.
Ethan got down the slope with Duran, Dana and Proctor struggling along behind them as they splashed into the creek. The icy water flooded into their boots, so cold it felt as though it were leaking directly into Ethan’s bones as they jogged unsteadily along the creek toward the end of the valley.
‘What the hell do we do when we get out of here?’ Lopez asked.
Ethan did not have a good answer for her.
A terrific scream shrieked across the valley from somewhere ahead, like something between a bird of prey and a cougar, and loud enough to ring in Ethan’s ears. His legs shuddered to a halt beneath him, frozen still by the terrifying pitch of the cry.
Duran, Proctor and Dana all froze at almost the same instant, the stretcher quivering and swaying as they stood motionless in the water.
‘That’s not good,’ Duran spat. ‘It’s between us and Kurt’s men.’
Ethan scanned the creek ahead and made his decision. He turned toward the bank and walked out of the water, forcing Duran and the others to follow his every move as he set the stretcher down on the mud.
Then he drew his pistol and set off on foot down the creek.
‘Where are you going?’ Lopez whispered urgently.
‘We can’t run away from it,’ Ethan said. ‘We’ve got to show it that we won’t be intimidated. It’s more wild animal than human, right? That means it can be fooled.’
Lopez stared at him for one disbelieving second, and then she drew her pistol.
‘What did I tell you about us getting in way over our heads?’ she muttered.
Ethan nodded as they started off down the creek.
‘This is the last time, trust me.’
37
Ethan edged forward in the bitterly cold water, keeping himself in plain sight to get a better look at the two hillsides flanking his position. Hugging the banks would get him out of the water and provide cover, but then he would not be able to see any attack coming.
The creek bubbled softly around rocks and fallen branches that were rotting in the damp, moisture-laden air. The bed of the creek was a cobbled morass of polished stones as big as his fist and as smooth as eggshells. He stared thoughtfully down at them for a moment, the water rippling around his boots. Ethan could no longer feel his feet and his hands were numb from the cold.
‘You see anything yet?’ Lopez asked.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘but it’s not throwing rocks now.’
Lopez seemed surprised to realize that the bombardment had indeed stopped. The screech that had echoed through the forest moments before had clearly spooked her and he could hear her breathing coming in short, sharp bursts as she stayed close to him.
Ethan squatted down, and picked up a handful of the big round stones from the bed of the creek. He shoved them into his pockets and zipped them up.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Lopez asked in confusion.
‘Tell you later,’ he promised as they moved forward.
The creek ahead rounded a gentle corner to the right, a cedar tree growing right out of the bank at a 45-degree angle making a huge arch that loomed over the creek. Ethan glanced up at the immense tree as he eased forward.
‘Our pistols are going to be useless against it,’ Lopez said.
Lopez was right, but he figured they were better with any weapon than without. He realized that the ghoulish scream had affected him more than he thought. He blinked rain out of his eyes and focused on rounding the corner, one finger ready on the trigger and the other tucked behind it in the guard, just in case the cold made him fire by accident.