‘I can’t hear the soldiers,’ Lopez said softly.
Kurt Agry and his team were somewhere up ahead, and the sudden silence after the blasts of automatic fire unnerved Ethan further. More than that, the firing had sounded more sporadic, more panicked. He wondered if Kurt’s men were beginning to crack under the strain of being hunted by an unknown enemy.
‘Kurt’s hold over them is failing,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s unlikely they were briefed in detail about what they would be facing out here.’
Lopez didn’t reply as they slowly rounded the corner and ducked down to pass beneath the thick trunk of the cedar, a web of gnarled and twisted branches forming a dense net in front of them. Fat drops of icy rainwater plopped down around Ethan into the creek as he ducked beneath the trunk, trickling down the collar of his jacket and smelling of rot and stale, musty air.
They emerged from beneath the fallen cedar and edged their way down the creek. Dense coils of dead creepers spilled down from the banks to Ethan’s right, surrounding the rotten core of a tree that had probably fallen years ago, the bark black and sodden.
Ethan led Lopez up to the tangle of creepers and vines and peered over the top down the creek ahead.
A blast of noise crackled toward him and a spray of sodden woodchips spat across his face as he flinched away and ducked back out of sight.
‘Hold your fire!’ Lopez shouted.
Ethan swiped shards and splinters of wood and bark from his face as Lopez, her hands in the air, stepped out into plain view in the creek.
‘Agry?’ she called out. ‘It’s us.’
‘I told you to stay put!’ came the bellowed response.
Ethan cursed as he stepped out in time to see Kurt and three of his men emerge from the cover of pine trees flanking the creek fifty yards further downstream. They jogged through the water toward them, Kurt’s face stained with camouflage paint that had smeared in the damp conditions.
‘We were following it,’ he said to Ethan. ‘Saw you moving and assumed it was waiting for us.’
‘It didn’t come through here,’ Ethan said. ‘We left Duran and the others with the stretcher and headed down this way after it shrieked.’
Kurt nodded, wiping rainwater from his brow. ‘Yeah, we heard it too and figured it had somehow gotten around behind us.’
Lopez frowned, scanning the hills either side. ‘Where the hell did it go then?’
Ethan shrugged, but then a chill pierced him deep as he remembered the raindrops falling from the huge cedar behind them. He turned slowly as the chill crept up his neck, and looked back up the creek at the dense morass of coiled branches and dripping vegetation of the fallen giant cedar.
Now, he could see pinpricks of daylight through the branches and pines that hadn’t been there before.
‘It was in the tree,’ he said in disbelief. ‘I smelled it.’
‘You serious?’ Lopez asked, suddenly nervous.
‘The rain,’ Ethan said, ‘it’s hiding the creature’s odor, but I ducked under the tree and it smelled like rotting wood and stale air.’
Kurt Agry and his men responded instantly, weapons flicking up to aim at the tree as they fanned out across the creek and advanced toward it. Ethan and Lopez followed, circling out wide and staying behind the soldiers.
‘Freakin’ thing must have run from us and headed back toward the group,’ Jenkins uttered. ‘Why the hell did it do that? And why didn’t it drop down on Ethan and Lopez?’
Kurt Agry replied as he edged closer to the tree, his cheek pressed against his rifle.
‘It lured us toward each other, trying to force us to shoot our own.’
Ethan nodded. ‘That’s what I figured.’
‘This thing tried to outwit us?’ Lopez asked in amazement.
‘Damned near worked too,’ Kurt Agry said.
The soldiers watched as Kurt Agry moved underneath the tree, aiming up into the branches, and then lowered his rifle. ‘There ain’t nothing here,’ he said.
Ethan and Lopez lowered their pistols as the soldiers regrouped around their leader.
‘Okay, let’s re-form and get the hell out of this valley while there’s still enough light to see,’ Kurt said.
The soldiers did not move, and Corporal Jenkins raised a black-gloved hand apologetically.
‘Sergeant, we want to know what this thing is that’s following us.’
Kurt Agry turned and looked at the corporal for a long moment.
‘It’s a bear, sergeant. A very clever, very agile, very strong bear.’
Beside Jenkins, one of the troopers swallowed thickly and took a pace toward the sergeant.
‘All due respect, sir, that’s a fine line of bullshit you’re smoking.’
Kurt Agry paced across to the soldier, who stood a good three inches taller than he did, and squared up to him.
‘You got a problem with that, Willis?’
The trooper shook his head. ‘No, sergeant!’
‘Then secure that shit, take point and lead us out of this godforsaken place or I swear I’ll gut you from bow to stern and leave you here to rot, is that clear?’
‘Yes, sergeant!’
Kurt Agry glared at his corporal for a moment longer, and then dismissed him with a flick of his head.
Willis turned and dashed back underneath the tree before jogging away toward the valley exit. Kurt Agry turned to the rest of his men. ‘We’ll form a phalanx, staggered file. This thing hurls any more goddamned rocks at us, I want somebody to have a clear shot at it.’
The troops turned and were about to duck under the tree when a dull thump, like a baseball hitting the glove, echoed through the forest to be followed by a horrendous, blood-chilling scream of agony as though a grown man was having his innards torn out from within him. Ethan winced and Lopez cringed at the terrible noise as Kurt Agry and his men hurled themselves back under the tree and up the other side, sprinting away down the creek after Willis.
Ethan and Lopez crashed through the water behind the soldiers until they came to an abrupt halt in the center of the creek.
‘Oh Jesus,’ one of them uttered.
Ethan staggered to a halt and looked down into the water.
A cloud of dark-red blood was dispersing into the flow of the creek, some of it staining the smooth round rocks protruding from the water. There, lodged between two of them, was a black combat boot, a torn tangle of flesh spilling from the top and a wedge of splintered bone poking out into the air from within.
Lopez covered her mouth as Kurt Agry stepped forward. Lying in the water a few feet in front of him was Willis’s M16 rifle, unfired and abandoned where it had been dropped.
Kurt grabbed the weapon and lifted it from the water with one hand as the other kept his own rifle aiming at the valley exit. Slowly he slung the abandoned weapon over his shoulder and then began backing up toward Ethan.
‘We’re out of here,’ he uttered.
‘What about Willis?’ Lopez whispered.
Kurt Agry shook his head.
‘This thing’s running fuckin’ rings around us,’ he growled back. ‘We gotta make some tough calls or we’ll all be dead by tonight. Let’s move out.’
Lopez began backing up. ‘You think it’s trying to lure us in there?’
‘Or keep us out,’ Kurt nodded. ‘Right now I don’t give a shit. We back out of this mess and make a new plan.’
Ethan looked at the valley exit and shook his head.
‘Only way off this mountain is through that valley,’ he said. ‘We could go around if we were all on foot, but with your man on a stretcher we’ll never climb out of here.’
Kurt nodded in agreement.
‘I ain’t arguing with you, but until we figure out a weakness in whatever this thing is we can’t risk going through that choke point.’