Ancestor

  If Rhumkorrf survived, chances were Sara had as well. But if she had, why hadn’t she contacted him?

  Because she didn’t trust him.

  That was the only thing that made sense. Andy or Magnus had sabotaged the C-5 somehow, and Sara had crashed it on Black Manitou. Not landed, but crashed, as the landing strip was the only place to safely bring down a plane that big. Colding had sent her up. If Sara had survived, she’d think he had betrayed her right alongside Magnus and Andy.

  He had to find her. Explain things. But more important, he had to save her from Magnus, which dictated only one sickening course of action—killing Andy Crosthwaite. First Andy, then Magnus.

  Colding wondered if he’d be able to pull the trigger. No, that was the type of comment someone might mumble in a badly written movie. He could do it. He would do it.

  He wanted to get as far away as possible from the mansion and Magnus before making his move. Maybe Rhumkorrf could provide enough of a distraction to let Colding slip behind Andy unseen. Andy was a trained killer—Colding knew he’d only get one shot.

  He had to make it count.

  DECEMBER 3, 9:45 P.M.

  MAGNUS GUNNED HIS Arctic Cat down the main road. The snowpacked road’s perfect condition was a bit ironic, considering Clayton had groomed it, yet Magnus was heading to Clayton’s house because the man had seemingly slacked in his duties.

  Clayton Detweiler had always been the poster boy of the blue-collar work ethic. Maybe he looked like he’d slept in mustard and didn’t know that razors even existed, but the mansion was always clean and all the phone lines worked—everything seemed to just be taken care of as if by some invisible hand.

  But for the last two days, Magnus had barely seen Clayton. Not around the mansion, not around the hangar. The roads and trails were groomed, but how much time could that require? Phone line repairs had also taken far longer than normal. Most significantly, the mansion looked dirty. Nothing big, a few papers here and there, but that wasn’t normal.

  All of it meant that the old man’s attention was focused elsewhere. After Rhumkorrf’s call, Magnus had a good idea why.

  Magnus drove into Clayton’s driveway. He walked up to the front door and tried the handle. Locked. He drew his Beretta, then raised a foot and push-kicked. The door flew open, banging against an inside wall.

  No one home. He looked in the kitchen, then moved through the living room. Nothing. He moved to Clayton’s bedroom. Bed unmade. Clothes covering the floor. Magnus was about to leave when something white in a pile of clothes caught his eye. He bent down and picked it up.

  A bra.

  “Andy, you were right about one thing,” Magnus said to the room. “Sara Purinam is a fucking cunt.”

  Somehow, Purinam had brought that goddamn plane back. That meant as many as four military-trained people on the island. All armed with Berettas.

  He walked to Clayton’s wall-mounted phone. Next to the phone hung a picture of a young Clayton and a young Clint Eastwood, each holding up a huge steelhead trout, both grinning like mad.

  Magnus dialed the mansion’s general number. No answer. Goddamned Clayton was out on the trails again, or—more likely—hanging out wherever he’d stashed Sara and the others.

  Was Sara and her crew with Rhumkorrf? Was Andy heading into a trap? Magnus dialed another number.

  “Watchtower, Gunther here.”

  “Gun, Magnus. Any sign of Danté?”

  “Nope. And no other aircraft, either.”

  A slice of good news. Magnus needed to clear up all these loose ends before his brother arrived. Danté might turn a blind eye to murder that had already happened, but he wouldn’t stand by while Magnus executed people.

  “Turn the radar on and leave it on,” Magnus said. “I’m out on the sled. You see anything, you hit the air-raid siren.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Have you seen Colding and Andy?”

  “Two sleds just went by,” Gunther said. “Could be them.”

  “What about Clayton’s Bv206?”

  “Saw the zebra-striped thing about five minutes ago, heading southwest, toward the mansion. It’s frickin’ freezing up here, Mags. How about I come down and work the security room for a while?”

  Magnus hung up without answering. Clayton was heading back to the mansion. Was he going for the armory? Did he have Sara and her crew with him?

  The Arctic Cat was much faster than the Bv206. Magnus ran out of Clayton’s house—whatever it took, he had to get to the mansion first.

  DECEMBER 3, 9:50 P.M.

  COLDING HELD THE throttle open wide, pushing the Arctic Cat to its limits. The Cat’s headlights illuminated a narrow cone of the wooded trail’s thick darkness. The trail popped out of the trees at Big Todd Harbor, then continued along the coastline. A cloud-covered moon cast down feeble light.

  The name “harbor” was a misnomer for this northwest-side beach strewn with huge, jagged chunks of weathered limestone, but it was an inlet, so long ago someone had named it thus all the same. He cast a quick glance out at the water … and did a double take. The small inlet looked completely frozen over. At least a half mile of ice stretched out from the coast, as if Black Manitou was growing. The bitter cold wasn’t satisfied with claiming just the land—it wanted everything, including the churning waters of Lake Superior.

  He looked back up the trail and his hands reactively locked on the brakes: a fallen tree blocked the path. Colding fought to keep the snowmobile under control. The rear end fishtailed to the left, but he brought it to a stop just parallel to the tree. The sled now pointed straight toward the trail’s three-foot-high right snowbank.

  Dead and free of bark, the tree blocking the road really wasn’t much of a tree at all. Maybe a foot in diameter. If he’d hit it full speed, however, it would have demolished his snowmobile and probably killed him. The tree had fallen from the left side of the trail, and only extended about four feet onto the right bank. They could easily go around it.

  But there was something odd about the tree.

  Behind him, Andy slowed his Polaris to a stop, his headlights illuminating the dead wood. Colding dismounted his Arctic Cat and knelt next to the log. He flipped up his face shield for a better look. Long, deep, parallel white marks covered the old wood.

  Claw marks. From … a bear, maybe?

  Not a bear. You know what it is.

  No. No way.

  He sensed Andy walking up behind him. Andy had been on Black Manitou many times over the years. Maybe he’d say it was normal, not what Colding already knew it had to be. Colding patted the claw marks with his left hand.

  “Andy, look at this. You ever seen anything like this on the island?”

  Andy leaned down for a closer look. “Can’t say that I have. What is it?”

  “Looks like claw marks. Please tell me there are bears on this island.”

  Andy stood up, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen any. And I’ve been in these woods dozens of times.”

  Colding ran his gloved fingers over the deep marks. The four parallel grooves were almost two inches apart. The claw would be huge. He wondered if the thing that had made these marks was moving southwest, toward the mansion, or north, toward Rhumkorrf.

  Then his eyes registered the footprints. Everywhere. Hundreds of them, pressed into the packed trail. Big prints, eight inches wide and a foot long, clean indentations of claw tips in front of each of the four toes. The snowmobile’s lights cast black shadows within the prints, making them look deeper, larger, even more ominous.

  If Rhumkorrf made it back … then the cows could have made it back too.

  The memory of the camera-biting fetus stabbed at him. A few pounds then. Now? Probably over two hundred.

  Colding stood and walked back to his snowmobile. “Andy, we’ve gotta move, fast. I think I know what made those marks.” He swung his leg over the Arctic Cat and sat. He paused before hitting the start button and looked back. Andy was just standing there.

  A
ndy took off his gloves. “Well, I guess this is as good a place as any.”

  “For what?”

  With a smooth motion, Andy unzipped his snowsuit, reached inside, and came out with his Beretta pointed right at Colding.

  “To pay you back for drawing down on me.”

  Colding stared at the gun. How could he have been so stupid? He should have tried to take Andy out the second he realized the C-5 was on the island. There was no way he could unzip his snowsuit and draw his own Beretta before Andy gunned him down.

  “Andy, the … the cows, did Magnus tell you what’s inside the cows? Just listen to me for a second … look at the weird footprints all over the ground. It’s those things.”

  Andy nodded. “Yeah, that’s a problem for sure. But you know what? It’s really not a problem for you. Not anymore.”

  This was it. He was going to die, shot to death on this frozen island.

  “Andy, please.” He heard his own voice crack a little. Was that what begging sounded like? Coming out of his own mouth? “Come on, man, this is bad, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Wrong. Magnus told me to do it. It’s either me or you. Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun, so I choose you.”

  Colding’s mind raced for something to say, but words escaped him. What would it feel like to be shot? Holy shit holyshit maybe he could dive for Andy’s feet, maybe—

  Andy cocked the hammer. “You ready, Bubbah?”

  Colding didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything.

  A crack echoed across the darkness. Colding’s body twitched violently, anticipating the lethal pain, but after a fraction of a second he realized the sound had come from the woods. A broken stick.

  Andy turned his head to look. His gun remained leveled at Colding.

  Colding moved to launch himself at Andy, but he wasn’t even halfway out of his seat before Andy turned back, eyes locked on Colding. “Don’t bother, duck-fucker.”

  Colding froze. He was screwed, so utterly screwed.

  Another cracking sound, smaller this time but still definitive. Colding thought he saw movement deep in the wood’s blackness.

  From the trees behind Andy came a low, slow, deep growl.

  Colding’s skin tingled all over. He felt a new fear, a primitive fear, even beyond that brought on by a gun pointed at his face.

  Andy took a few steps back, increasing his distance from Colding, then looked into the dark woods. Colding couldn’t breathe. Overwhelming. He had to get away from there, hadtohadto, but Andy wouldn’t let him move.

  “There’s a lot of them,” Colding said, his words coming fast. “Dozens, maybe forty, you need me or they’ll take you down. Two guns, man, two.”

  “You talk too much,” Andy said. He once again focused on Colding. “It’s been real, dick-weed.”

  Something erupted out of the woods.

  Andy flinched just as the gun fired, throwing off his aim. The bullet hit the seat behind Colding, ripping up the vinyl and tearing out a huge chunk of foam rubber.

  Massive.

  That was the only word for the thing. White with the black spots of a cow, a lion-sized cross between a gorilla and a hyena, thick shoulders, black beady eyes, a mouth big enough to bite a man clean in half and teeth that looked like they could pierce steel plate. Way over four hundred pounds, easy.

  “Fuck a duck,” Andy said.

  It bounded forward, roaring, huge muscles rippling under the black-and-white fur, heaving chest pushing up snow like the wake from a speedboat. A long fin rose up from the thing’s head, revealing a bright-yellow membrane running from the fin to the creature’s back.

  A single thought dominated Colding’s mind: I’d rather take a bullet.

  He thumbed the start button. The engine fired and Colding hit the throttle.

  Andy twisted to fire at Colding, then quickly changed his mind and turned to shoot at the oncoming creature, now only twenty yards away and closing fast.

  pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop

  Colding’s sled shot up and over the three-foot bank, plunging into the snow beyond. He turned hard left, parallel to the trail.

  pop-pop-pop-pop

  Each shot made Colding wince, made him wonder if the bullets were tearing into him and he just couldn’t feel it. His sled lurched through the deep snow. He couldn’t pick up speed. He glanced over at the bloody creature struggling to crawl toward Andy. It had taken at least ten shots at point-blank range, yet still it came on, big jaws snapping on empty air.

  Andy turned, his eyes locking on Colding’s. The empty magazine dropped free. Andy already had another in hand, and it slid into the Beretta with sickening, professional speed.

  Colding looked forward and leaned low as the sled finally accelerated. All he heard was the engine’s powerful scream. The fallen tree passed by on his left.

  Then he saw them.

  To the front and the right, two more of the creatures were coming out of the nighttime woods, barely illuminated by his headlights, ten yards away and closing fast.

  A bullet punched a hole in his plexiglass windshield.

  Colding angled left toward the trail. He had to jump the bank like Sara had shown him. He already had the throttle opened up, but he squeezed harder anyway.

  A sudden, blazing pain exploded in his right shoulder, but he didn’t let go.

  Closing in from the front right, the first creature leaped for him. Colding hit the bank and pushed down hard on the runners. The sled shot out over the trail, a jet plume of snow streaking behind it. The thing’s impossibly long claws reached out and out and out, swinging down in an arc that hit the seat just behind Colding’s ass. In midair, the snowmobile’s back end lurched to the left. Colding threw his body to the right to counteract the sudden shift just as the Arctic Cat slammed hard on the trail, jarring Colding’s body and snapping his head forward. The sled skidded sideways and started to tip, started to roll, but to stop was to die and he savagely brought the machine under control.

  On the groomed trail, the snowmobile hit fifty miles per hour within seconds—it shot down the dark trail like a screaming rocket. The creatures gave chase, but only for a few moments before they realized their prey could not be caught.

  They turned their attention back to the other prey, the one standing behind the fallen tree.

  DECEMBER 3, 9:53 P.M.

  ANDY FIRED FIVE rounds at Colding before he felt the claw on his leg. He reflexively jumped straight into the air, jerking and kicking, regaining his balance just before tripping over the fallen tree. He stared down at the monster, brain awash in disbelief.

  I shot that fucking thing TWELVE times.

  And yet still it dragged itself along the ground toward him, leaving a trail of spreading bright-red lit up by his snowmobile’s headlight. Andy pointed the gun at the thing’s head. It opened its mouth, nice and wide, still reaching for Andy’s life.

  He pulled the trigger, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop

  The bullets ripped into the open mouth, breaking a pointed tooth, punching holes in the black tongue before blasting out the back of the skull in a spray of blood.

  The head—mouth still open—finally fell still. A last cloud of breath hissed out, crystallizing in the cold before drifting away.

  The roar of Colding’s snowmobile faded.

  Andy heard sounds from the woods. A coppery, acidic feeling blossomed in his stomach as he realized that the dead thing on the ground wasn’t alone. He put his third and final clip into the Beretta.

  Two long strides brought him to the Polaris. He hopped on and jammed the gun into his open snowsuit. Only a split second to decide between following Colding or turning the machine around and heading back up the trail.

  Back up the trail, toward the mansion, toward the big guns.

  He gunned the throttle and pulled hard to the right, body leaning far out to aid the sudden, sharp turn. On his back left, past the fallen log, he saw two of the creatures, their white fur a nightmarish red in his taillight’s glo
w. They pounded toward him—heads down, legs pumping hard, black eyes angry with pure hunger.

  Andy finished the turn and shot down the trail, toward the mansion. Speed felt like life, like pure safety.

  Two more creatures came out of the woods on his right, but they wouldn’t be fast enough to stop him. God, but they were so big, like shark-finned bears.

  “Fuck you and your duck,” Andy muttered as he leaned forward. Iraqis couldn’t kill him, nor could the Afghans, Haitians, Colombians, Nepalese or the wherever-the-fuck-they-came-from Taliban, and these test-tube rejects sure as hell weren’t going to take him out.

  Then he saw the tree, leaning, falling, picking up speed as it descended, plumes of snow pouring off branches marking its downward arc. It slammed into the ground with a billowing cloud of powder, completely blocking the trail fifty meters ahead.

  Andy’s left hand pumped the brake as his right fished in his jacket for the gun. His sled’s headlight lit up the trail, the blocking tree and yet another openmouthed creature.

  Just like the pair only a few seconds behind him.

  The sled still slowing, momentum pulling his body forward, Andy turned in his seat to fire on his pursuers.

  They were faster than he thought.

  As he came around, he saw an onrushing mass of black and white surrounding a giant, gaping mouth. The teeth closed on his gun hand, punching through skin and bone as if they were tissue-paper-covered twigs. The clawed feet dug in, skidding as the big head ripped to the right, yanking Andy off the seat. He hit the ground, rolled with the momentum, and came up on his feet.

  Only then did he realize his arm was gone from the elbow down.

  He had just a moment to look, to be amazed at the surreal sight of his not-there arm, the splintered bones and shredded flesh, then the second trailing creature smashed into him at full speed. Teeth sank into his chest and shoulder. Andy screamed just once before the two creatures from his right joined the fray.

  Less than thirty seconds after the first bite, only bloodstains and an overturned snowmobile marked Andy Crosthwaite’s passing.