“Will you shoot, dammit?” snarled Hill.
The giant whistled. Like a marmot, Jason realized in astonishment.
Hill jumped to his feet. Jason squeezed the trigger. The flash split the night, and the explosion continued in the form of a snarling hound that burst out of the trees and clamped its fangs around Jason’s arm. He saw the dart splash over the helicopter.
Jason shook the frenzied animal to the ground, and it promptly attacked Hill, giving Jason time to trigger off two more darts, but the giant was heading for the woods in a humped, loping stride that swallowed great chunks of ground. The dog turned back to Jason, jumping with glowing eyes and yellowed, saliva-ribboned fangs for his throat.
Jason shouted while beating off the animal, “Nicolson, it’s headed for you!”
Hill smashed his light against the dog’s head. It dropped to the ground, a small mutt with a Doberman’s fury. The agile little body tore off toward the woods as Jason fired tranquilizer bursts that splashed on the ground around it.
To Curtis it sounded as if a tank battle had erupted into the field and spilled full-tilt into the timbers. It was the snarling of the dog that got him to his feet, pipe dropping from his mouth. It was headed for the upriver bend, to the thicket of broken branches where his friend Nicolson waited. Jason and Hill were shouting, in full pursuit.
Curtis cocked his rifle and switched on his flashlight. “George?” he cried.
A gunshot sounded from the bed. It was followed by a short, choked-off scream, then the wild, turbulent thrashing of water fading upriver.
Curtis called out, “George?” again, and again got silence for an answer. He swept the woods with his light. Probably George had turned his ankle and cried out.
Curtis walked toward the river bend. He heard Jason and Hill’s voices and he was relieved. Nicolson was all right; they wouldn’t be talking so loudly if he were not. Tragedy always silences people.
By chance he flashed his light into the river. It crossed a whitish object bobbing like a melon around the bend. Dead eyes looked at Curtis from under strands of wet plastered hair. His friend Nicolson’s head looked at him upside down.
Shattered into complete psychic numbness, Curtis sat heavily on the rocks, keeping his light on the grisly object until it disappeared downstream.
“Curtis!”
Jason slapped him hard a second time. Curtis weakly waved away the next blow.
“Easy on him, Jason,” murmured Hill.
Jason and Hill wrestled Curtis to his feet, where he adjusted his glasses and lurched forward as if about to walk into the water.
“He’s coming round,” said Jason. “Let’s get him up to the camp.”
They drag-walked him to the dead fire and seated him on a bedroll. Jason gathered the rifles and levered out the tranquilizer darts, replacing them with bullets. He shoved one into Hill’s hands. “Go start up the helicopter,” he said.
Confused by the headless form of Nicolson, which refused to leave his mind, Hill said, “What for?”
“The copter has spotlights! We’ve got to catch that thing before he gets too far away. I’ll stay on the ground. We can back each other up.” Jason tore apart the packs, searching for walkie-talkies. He tossed one to Hill and kept the other for himself. “Understand? We’re going to kill that thing! Understand?” he shouted into the pilot’s face, as though he took Nicolson’s death personally.
Curtis looked numbly from the rifle Jason had dropped into his lap to the trees. “George . . .” he began in an incoherent mutter.
“That’s right, Curtis!” cried Jason. “For George. That thing’s a man-killer, and we’re going to get him. On your feet!”
The dog’s distant mournful howl threaded through the sentinel trees, freezing them into a marbled tableau of watchfulness.
“Where’d that dog come from?” whispered Hill.
“Scavenger. He eats what the ape doesn’t. They’re moving south. If the copter scares the dog, I can follow the barking.”
“No!” said Curtis, galvanized by the howl to full furious possession of himself. “Not south. He went up the river. I heard him! Follow the river!”
Jason did not look at Nicolson’s body as he splashed up the river. He forced himself to forget that it had been his decision not to arm themselves with bullets.
His light picked up a print under three inches of water, pressed deep into the silt of the river bottom. The current was eroding it. The ape was running through water to cover his tracks.
Just ahead of him the copter’s light frosted the trees. Hill flew so close to treetop level that his rotor downwash bowed the tips and showered pine needles, twigs, and chunks of bark to the ground, some of which lodged in Jason’s collar. The splintered shadows cast by the spotlights moved with the copter’s passage. Branches became clutching hands that reached for Jason’s clothes.
He distanced himself from the river so the racketing roar of the machine did not fill his ears. He heard the dog barking in the trees. They had left the water for dry land. Jason shouted into the walkie-talkie, “Hill? Go on ahead about half a mile and swing back this way. Try herding them toward me.”
“Will do.”
The copter gained altitude; then the motor changed to a hum a mile or so ahead as it began swinging in wide arcs from left to right. Jason leaned against a fir and listened hard. The dog’s howling had stopped. Without it Jason was not sure which direction they moved.
They quartered the woods for a careful half-hour, Jason moving slowly through the brush. We’ve lost them. He despaired and pounded his fist against bark. They had changed direction all right. They were headed for deeper woods.
In the copter, Hill could hardly recognize the gun nut with brush-fire eyes as Roy Curtis, the shy, short man too afraid of heights to venture from the Land Rover. Curtis leaned halfway out of the bubble, one hand gripping the rubber rail, the other pointing the cocked rifle downward.
“Get inside!” Hill cried over the roar of the rotors. Curtis answered with a laser glare from his bloodshot eyes, comically distended by thick glasses. He thought only of his friend, Nicolson.
Ground zero was the treetop level. Hill danced the controls so close that pine tips grazed the belly. He watched his landing lights skim the bristly branches.
Curtis screamed and thumped the bubble. He jabbed the gun at the ground. “Back!” he shouted. “Back!”
Hill backed the copter up. Down below was the dog, jumping up and down at the copter in a space between the trees. Curtis fired bullets which spurted pine needles up around the animal. Something stepped out of the trees but was driven back by an explosion of bark next to its hairy arm.
Hill rose a few feet to spread the light wider. “Jason, Curtis is shooting at it. Get your ass down here!”
Jason ran through the woods, ignoring the roots tearing at his feet and the branches that slashed across his face. The copter swayed in midair, seemingly supported by the hard-edged beams of the landing lights. He heard gunfire above the motor. The dog was barking again. By coming up from the rear, he would have both in his sights within minutes.
One of Hill’s shots echoed from the east. Now that was peculiar. Jason did not remember any cliffs or mountains that way. After a moment he heard the echo again.
Curtis shouted, “I saw it! There’s something wrong with its head.”
“What?” bellowed Hill, shifting the engine pitch.
“I said there’s something wrong with—” The motor drowned out Curtis’s words. He leaned out farther and watched for it.
Something hit the rear stabilizer with a violence that sent a shudder through the fuselage. The stick jerked out of Hill’s hand, and the foot controls came up of their own accord.
Trees whirled and tilted below as if they were on a carousel dislodged from its axis. He had lost control of the rear rotor, and without that a copter will rotate in the direction of its rotor spin with an accelerating force that whirls the pilot into unconsciousness. Hill gathered the flailing controls and tried to still them. He managed to keep the belly flat as the trees rushed up to embrace them.