"Wouldn’t be the first time."
Jack headed for his car, relishing the look of concern on Oz’s face before he’d turned away. Had he sounded confident enough? Good act. Because he was feeling anything but.
Jack hurried to the food area and bought half a dozen bottles of Snapple, plus an Atlantic City souvenir T-shirt, a ciggy lighter, and a newspaper. Then he moved his car to a far corner of the rest area by the
RIDESHARE INFO sign and emptied the Snapple bottles onto the asphalt.
Shame to waste the stuff but it seemed Snapple was about the only thing that came in glass bottles these days.
He pulled a glasscutter from his burglary kit and began scoring the flanks of the bottles. A trick he’d learned from an old revolutionary. Upped the chances these babies would shatter on contact.
He began tearing up the shirt. Then he opened the trunk and fished out the gas can and a flashlight. He filled the bottles with gas and recapped them.
He gently placed the six gasoline-filled bottles into a canvas shoulder bag and worked sections of newspaper between them to keep them from clinking, then threw the pieces of T-shirt on top.
6
Jack trained his flashlight beam on the scrub at the base of the slope. He’d crossed the southbound lanes and trotted down to the 51.3 mile marker and stopped at the tree line. He was looking for broken branches and found them. Lots of them. Something big had torn through here not long ago.
He stepped through and followed the path of destruction. When he was sure he was out of sight of the highway, he stopped and pulled out the electronic locator. He was facing west and the blip was at the top edge of the screen. Had to move. Scar-lip was almost out of range.
He pressed forward until he came to a narrow path. A deer trail, most likely. Flashed his beam down and saw what looked like deer tracks in the damp sand, but they weren’t alone: deep imprints of big, alien, three-toed feet, and work-boot prints coming after. Scar-lip, with Hank following—obviously behind because the boot prints occasionally stepped on the rakosh tracks.
What’s Hank thinking? Jack wondered. That he’s got a gun and maybe he learned how to hunt when he was a kid, so that makes him a match for the Sharkman?
Maybe he wasn’t thinking. Maybe a belly full of Mad Dog had convinced him he could handle the equivalent of taking on a great white with a penknife in a sea of ink.
Jack began following the deer trail, keeping one eye on the locator and turning his flashlight beam on and off every so often to check the ground. Scrub pines closed in, forming a twenty- to thirty-foot wall around him, arching their branches over the trail, allowing only an occasional glimpse of the starlit sky.
Quiet. Just the sound of insects and the branches brushing against his clothes. Jack hated the great outdoors. Give him a city with cars and buses and honking cabs, with pavements and right angles and subways rumbling beneath his feet. And best of all—streetlights. It wasn’t just dark out here, it was dark.
His adrenaline was up but despite the alien surroundings, he felt curiously relaxed. The locator gave him a buffer zone of safety. He knew where Scar-lip was and didn’t have to worry about it jumping out of the bushes at any second and tearing into him. But he did have to worry about Hank. An armed drunk in the woods could be a danger to anything that moved. Didn’t want to be mistaken for Scar-lip.
The trail wound this way and that, briefly meandering north and south, but taking him generally westward. Jack moved as fast as the circumstances allowed, making his best time along the occasional brief straightaway.
The green blip that was Scar-lip gradually moved nearer and nearer the center of the locator screen. Looked like the creature had stopped moving.
Why? Resting? Or waiting?
He guesstimated he was about a quarter mile from the rakosh when a gun report somewhere ahead brought him up short. Sounded like a shotgun. There it was again. And again.
And then a scream of fear and mortal agony echoed through the trees, rising toward a shriek that cut off sharply before it peaked.
Silence.
Jack had thought the woods quiet before, but now even the insects had shut up. He waited for other sounds. None came. And the blip on the locator showed no movement.
That pretty much told the story: Scar-lip had sensed it was being followed so it hunkered down and waited. Who comes along but one of the guys who used it as a pincushion when it was caged. Chomp-chomp, crunch-crunch, good-bye, Hank.
Jack’s tongue was dry as felt. That could have—most likely would have—been him if he’d gone after Scar-lip without the locator.
But that’s not the way it’s going to play. I know where you are, pal, so no nasty surprises for me.
He crept ahead, and the crack and crunch of every twig and leaf he stepped on sounded amplified through a stadium PA. But Scar-lip was staying put—eating, perhaps?—so Jack kept moving.
When the blip was almost center screen, Jack stopped. He smelled something and flashed his light along the ground.
The otherwise smooth sand was kicked up ferociously for a space of about a dozen feet, ending with two large, oblong gouts of blood, drying thick and dark red, with little droplets of the same speckled all around them. A twelve-gauge Mossberg pump action lay in the brush at the edge of the trail, its wooden stock shattered.
Only one set of prints led away—the three-toed kind.
Jack crouched in the scrub grass, staring around, listening, looking for signs of movement. Nothing. But he knew from the locator that Scar-lip was dead ahead, and not too far.
Waiting to do to me what he did to Hank, no doubt. Sorry, pal. We’re gonna play it my way this time.
He removed two Snapple bottles from the shoulder bag and unscrewed their caps. Gasoline fumes rose around him as he stuffed a piece of T-shirt into the mouth of each. Lifted one, lit the rag with a little butane lighter he’d picked up along with everything else, and tossed it straight ahead along the trail.
The small flame at its mouth traced a fiery arc through the air. Before it hit the ground and whoomphed into an explosion of flame, Jack had the second one in hand, ready to light.
Muscles tight, heart pounding, Jack blinked in the sudden glare as his eyes searched out the slightest sign of movement. Wavering shadows from the flickering light of the flames made everything look like it was moving. But nothing big and dark and solid appeared.
Something small and shiny glittered on a branch just this side of the flames. Warily Jack approached it. His foot slipped on something along the way: The sharpened steel rod Bondy had used to torment the rakosh lay half-buried in the sand. He picked that up and carried it in his left hand like a spear. He had two weapons now. He felt like an Indian hunter, armed with an iron spear and a container of magic burning liquid.
Closer to the flames now, he stepped over a fallen log and his foot landed on something soft and yielding. Glanced down and saw a very dead Hank staring up at him through glazed eyes. He let out an involuntary yelp and jumped back.
After glancing around to make sure this wasn’t a trap, he took another look at Hank. Firelight glimmered in dead blue eyes that were fixed on the stars; the pallor of Hank’s bloodless face accentuated the dark rims of his shiners and blended almost perfectly with the sand under his head; his throat was a red pulpy hole and his right arm was missing at the shoulder.
Jack swallowed hard. That could be me soon if I don’t watch it.
Stepped over him and kept moving. The fire from the Molotov cocktail was burning low when he reached the branch. Some of the brush had caught fire but the flames weren’t spreading. Still they cast enough light to allow him to identify the shiny object.
Scar-lip’s telltale collar.
Jack whirled in near panic, alarm clamoring along his adrenalized nerves as he lit the second cocktail and scanned the area for signs of the rakosh.
Nothing stirred.
This was bad, very bad. In the middle of nowhere and he’d given himself away with the fir
st bomb. Now tables were reversed: Scar-lip knew exactly where Jack was, while Jack was lost in the dark with only four cocktails left.
Dark . . . that was the big problem. If he could find a safe place to hide for a few hours, the rising sun would level the playing field a little. But where?
Looked around and fixed on a big tree towering above the pines ahead. That might be the answer.
Jack tossed away the locator and hooked the straps of the canvas bag around his shoulders, knapsack style. Spear in one hand, burning Molotov in the other, he edged ahead in a half crouch, ready to spring in any direction. Sweat trickled down his back as he swung his gaze back and forth, watching, listening, but heard nothing beyond his own harsh, ragged breaths and his racing pulse drumming in his ears.
Hopped over the dying flames of the first Molotov and saw that the trail opened onto a small clearing with the big tree at its center. Good chance Scar-lip was somewhere in or near the clearing, maybe behind the tree trunk. One good way to find out . . .
Tossed the second firebomb—another flaming whoomph! but no sign of Scar-lip—yet. Had to get to that tree. Angled around so he could see behind it—nothing. Clearing empty.
Dropped the iron spear—it would only get in his way—and hustled over to the trunk. Began to climb.
Did rakoshi climb trees? Jack couldn’t see why not. Doubted they were afraid of heights. Kept climbing, moving as fast as his battered body allowed, ascending until the branches began to crack under his weight. Satisfied that the far heavier Scar-lip could never make it this far up, he settled down to wait.
Checked the luminescent dial on his watch: just about 3:00
A.M. When was sun up? Wished he paid more attention to things like that. Didn’t matter in the city, but out here in the sticks . . .
Tried to find a comfortable perch but that wasn’t going to happen, and a nap was out of the question. He found some solace in the realization that no way was Scar-lip going to catch him by surprise up here.
Through the leaves of the big oak he could see patches of the sandy clearing below, gray against the surrounding blackness. On the eastern horizon, a dim glow from the Parkway and the rest area; but to the west, nothing but the featureless black forever of the Pine Barrens—
Jack stiffened as he saw a light—make that two lights—moving along the treetops to the west . . . heading his way. At first he thought it might be a plane or helicopter, but the lights were mismatched in size and maintained no fixed relationship to each other. His second thought was UFOs, but these didn’t appear to be objects at all. They looked like globules of light . . . light and nothing more.
He’d heard of these things but had never seen one . . . the Pineys called them pine lights but no one knew what they were. Jack didn’t want to find out and would have preferred to see them heading elsewhere. They weren’t traveling a straight line—the smaller one would dart left and right, and even the larger one meandered a little. But no question about it: those two glowing blobs were heading his way.
They slowed as they reached the clearing and Jack got a closer look at them. He didn’t like what he saw. One was basketball size, the other maybe a bit larger than a softball. Light shouldn’t form into a ball; it wasn’t right. Something unhealthy about the pale green color too.
Jack cringed as they came straight for the tree, fearing they were going to touch him—something about them made his skin crawl—but they split within half a dozen feet of the branches. He heard a high-pitched hum and felt his skin tingle as they skirted his perch to the north and south. They paired up again on the far side but instead of moving on, spiraled down toward the clearing.
Jack craned his neck to see where they were going. Toward Hank’s body? No, that was on the north side of the tree. They were moving the other way.
He watched them hover over an empty patch of sand, then begin to chase each other in a tight circle—slowly at first, then with increasing speed until they blurred into a glowing ring, an unholy halo of wan green light, moving faster and faster, the centrifugal force of their rising speed widening the ring until they shot off into the night, racing back toward the west where they’d come from.
Good riddance. The whole episode had lasted perhaps a minute, but left him unsettled. Wondered if this happened every night, or if Scar-lip’s presence had anything to do with it.
And speaking of Scar-lip . . .
Checked the clearing as best he could through the intervening foliage, but still nothing stirred.
Tried to settle down again and make plans for sunrise . . . .
7
Jack didn’t wait for full light. The stars had begun to fade around four-thirty. By five, although still probably half an hour before the sun officially rose, the pewter sky was bright enough for him to feel comfortable quitting the Tarzan scene and heading back to earth.
Stiff and sore, he eased himself toward the ground, continually checking the clearing—still empty except for Hank. Soon as he hit the sand he opened the Snapple bottles and stuffed their mouths with rag. He kept one in hand and held the lighter ready.
The plan was simple: Start at Hank’s corpse and follow Scar-lip’s footprints from there. He’d keep it up as long as he could. Didn’t know how long he could go without food and water, but he’d give it his best shot. Right now what he wanted most was a cup of coffee.
As he approached the corpse, he noticed that the pinelands insects hadn’t been idle: flies taxied around Hank’s head while ants partied in the throat wound and shoulder stump. The thought of burying him crossed Jack’s mind, but he had neither the time nor the tools.
A noise behind him. Jack whirled. Put down the bag and thumbed the flint wheel on the butane lighter as he scanned the clearing in the pallid predawn light.
There . . . on the far side, the spot where the pine lights had done their little dervish a couple of hours ago, a patch of sand, moving, shifting, rising. No, not sand. This was very big and very dark.
Scar-lip.
Jack took an involuntary step back, then held his ground. The rakosh wasn’t moving; it simply stood there, maybe thirty feet away, where it had buried itself for the night. Hank's arm dangled from its three-fingered right hand; Scar-lip held it casually, like a lollipop. The upper half of the arm had been stripped of its flesh; sand coated the pink bone.
Jack felt his gut tighten, his heart turning in overdrive. Here was his chance. He lit the tail on the cocktail and stepped over the shoulder bag, straddling it. Slowly he bent, pulled out a second bomb, and lit it from the first.
Had to get this right the first time. He knew from past encounters how quick and agile these creatures were in spite of their mass. But he also knew that all he had to do was hit it with one of these flaming babies and it would all be over.
With no warning and as little wind-up as he dared, he tossed the Molotov in his right hand. The rakosh ducked away, as expected, but Jack was ready with the other . . . gave it a left-handed heave, leading the rakosh, trying to catch it on the run. Both missed. The first landed in an explosion of flame, but the second skidded on the sand and lay there intact, its fuse dead, smothered.
As the rakosh shied away from the flames, Jack pulled out a third cocktail. His heart stuttered, his hand shook, and he’d just lit the fuse when he sensed something hurtling toward him through dimness, close, too close. Ducked but not soon enough. The twirling remnant of Hank's arm hit him square in the face.
Coughing in revulsion as he sprawled back, Jack felt the third cocktail slip from his fingers. He turned and dived and rolled. He was clear when it exploded, but he kept rolling because it had landed on the shoulder bag. He felt a blast of heat as his last Molotov went up.
As soon as the initial explosion of flame subsided, Scar-lip charged across the clearing. Jack was still on his back in the sand. Instinct prompted his hand toward the P-98 but he knew bullets were useless. Spotted the iron spear beside him, grabbed it, swung it around so the butt was in the dirt and the point toward th
e onrushing rakosh. His mind flashed back to his apartment rooftop last summer when Scar-lip's mother was trying to kill him, when he had run her through. That had only slowed her then, but this was iron. Maybe this time . . . .
He steadied the point and braced for the impact.
The impact came, but not the one he'd expected. In one fluid motion, Scar-lip swerved and batted the spear aside, sending it sailing away through the air toward the oak. Jack was left flat on his back with a slavering, three-hundred-pound inhuman killing machine towering over him. Tried to roll to his feet but the rakosh caught him with its foot and pinned him to the sand. As Jack struggled to slip free, Scar-lip increased the pressure, eliciting live wires of agony from his cracking ribs. Stretched to reach the P-98. Spitballs would probably damage a rakosh as much as .22s, but that was all he had left. And no way was he going out with a fully loaded pistol. Maybe if he went for the eyes . . .
But before he could pull the pistol free of his warm-up pocket, he saw Scar-lip raise its right hand, spread the three talons wide, then drive them toward his throat.
No time to prepare, no room to dodge, he simply cried out in terror in what he was sure would be the last second of his life.
But the impact was not the sharp tearing pain of a spike ramming through his flesh. Instead he choked as the talons speared the sand to either side and the web between them closed off his wind. The pressure eased from his chest but the talons tightened, encircling his throat as he struggled for air. And then Jack felt himself yanked from the sand and held aloft, kicking and twisting in the silent air, flailing ineffectually at the flint-muscled arm that gripped him like a vise. The popping of the vertebral joints in his neck sounded like explosions, the cartilage in his larynx whined under the unremitting pressure as the rakosh shook him like an abusive parent with a baby who had cried once too often, and all the while his lungs pleaded, screamed for air.
His limbs quickly grew heavy, the oxygen-starved muscles weakening until he could no longer lift his arms. Black spots flashed and floated in the space between him and Scar-lip as his panicked brain’s clawhold on consciousness began to falter. Life . . . he could feel his life slipping away, the universe fading to gray . . . and he was floating . . . gliding aloft toward—