Linda was beyond pain. She felt her eyes eaten away, the flesh etched from her bones.
With the very last strength in her body, her blood-slicked fingers closed on Joe's misshapen, lifeless hand. And her last thought was Cadzie...
She heard her baby crying, crying, crying...
And then there was nothing at all.
Chapter 12
PARADISE LOST
Nature is usually wrong.
JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER, Ten O'clock
Jessica snuggled next to Aaron in their sleeping bag. She was only half awake until the whitter of skeeter blades roused her from her reverie.
She had barely wedged her eyes open in time to see it thump to ground, landing too damn fast. Justin leapt out, and ran toward them. "Emergency, dammit!" he screamed. He was bare-chested, wearing only briefs. A surge of adrenaline whiplashed her into wakefulness. Aaron was already scrambling to his feet.
All right, so Camelot had gotten nervous. This wasn't the first time the Star Born had taken themselves off line. She knew that they'd catch hell for that one day, and just maybe that day had come...
She struggled her clothes on, and hopped out toward the skeeter. Sprawled around the dead fire, the other Pranksters were hauling themselves toward consciousness.
"What's the problem?"
Justin looked pale. "Edgar rang through. He was on-line with Linda and Joe. They got cut off. Move it!"
The piled into the skeeter. Aaron had time to yell "Trouble at Deadwood!" to Toshiro, who was up and pulling on a knit shirt. "We're going up. Get back to camp and watch the Scouts. Set a defensive perimeter. Keep them back in the cave. Interlocking fields of fire and no mistakes."
"Got it."
Jessica buckled in. "Any sounds, messages, images at all?" she asked.
"Screams," Justin said tightly. "Just screams."
"Anything on the motion sensors? The thermals?"
Unbidden, Edgar's voice came over the radio. "Nothing. We've got Sat Twelve locked on, and I don't see anything. I think they're dead."
They rose up out of the glade, in toward Heorot. There they dropped down for a moment. Jessica and Aaron took the other skeeter, and she had them airborne in fifteen seconds. Their ascending spiral twisted the glade, the valley, and the surrounding mountains into a dizzying whirl.
No one spoke as the skeeters leveled out and dove, crossing the two kilometers to the camp in about ninety seconds. Robor's Chinese-dragon shape leered up at them, its red fringes rippling slowly in the wind.
There was nothing. Nothing...
And then Jessica whispered, "Oh dear God." Bones. Human bones. Animal bones. Aaron said, "I see three skeletons. Two human. One canine." His voice still held a machine precision. He was speaking for Cassandra, for Edgar back at Camelot. For whoever might have tapped into the line, and was now sick with concern.
Her mind reeled. Grief and fear and raw hatred boiled within her like lava. Her vision clouded. She gripped the handbar in front of her as if a moment's loss of concentration would tumble her off the edge of the world.
Justin's voice was arctic. "What do you see on the movement sensors?
Any thermal flares?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing," Aaron agreed.
Justin's voice was labored. He sounded like some kind of animal straining in a trap. "I don't see any sign of the baby. Of Cadzie."
A trapdoor opened in the back of her mind. She felt herself slide a little ways down, then clawed her way back up. What waited at the bottom of that pit bore fangs and claws, and was ravenously hungry.
"No sign. Not yet." And what she didn't say, what she couldn't say, was Cadzie is barely a mouthful for a grendel.
They hovered almost directly over the glade. Skeletons. The mining dome. A dozen yards distant, the refinery shack. The dirigible. And that was all.
Aaron snapped out the trance first. "Cassandra, replay Sat Twelve, during or just prior to the incident."
Jessica slipped on a pair of goggles, and watched while the images played. Running, struggling. A dusty windstorm. Death.
Bones.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Jessica muttered. "That was no grendel."
"It wasn't anything." Aaron was shaken. "It was invisible."
Camelot was awake, and gathering in the main hall.
Carlos tore at a scrap of ragged flesh at the corner of his thumb. The satellite feed kept playing it over and over again, enhanced with thermals, to full magnification, giving the illusion that the couple was no more than a hundred meters away.
Impossibly far away. A world away.
Justin's voice came over the speaker. "This is Skeeter Two. We are holding at seventy feet. We see skeletons. There's nothing alive down there that we can see. Nothing we can do to help them. Need instructions."
Zack touched his collar. "Moskowitz. Did you say skeletons?"
"Yes, sir. Two human skeletons. One canine," Aaron said.
Zack was unnaturally calm. "We copy that. Skeletons. Satellite inspection detects nothing."
"Motion sensors detect nothing," Aaron said. "And we see nothing—wait one. There is a small skeleton in the rocks about twenty meters above the camp."
"Human?"
"No, sir, too small. Now I see another. There are two small skeletons.
I would say Joeys from the size."
"You say there's nothing to be done for Joe and Linda?"
"That's my best judgment," Aaron said. "And there's no sign of the baby. "
Zack looked around. "Where's Colonel Weyland?"
"On the way."
"Hold off on landing for a minute, please."
There was no answer. "Please continue reports," Zack said. More colonists streamed into the hall, their voices a roiling cacophony.
"Wha—"
"The hell—"
"Will somebody tell me—"
"Who's up there—"
Still no answer. Zack lowered his voice. "I know that you can hear me. Hold off on landing until we have an assessment—" Carlos tried to imagine what Justin was feeling now. In one sense, he couldn't possibly know. In another, he understood precisely. The entire colony was family, their lives linked as closely as the fingers of a hand. But Linda was Justin's kid sister.
All of their lives, the Second had heard horrific stories. But a thousand stories pale in comparison to a single scream of agony.
The crowd behind them parted as Cadmann Weyland stormed in. He was red-faced, unshaven, and flinty-eyed. His beige coveralls were wrinkled and stained, as if he had thrown on yesterday's clothes.
He glared at the screen, his face as solid and square as stone. "What happened?"
"Something attacked the minehead," Zack said. "No one knows what."
The second image was a skeeter-eye view of the same scene. Skeeter ID number and pilot registration were etched at the bottom of the screen.
"Justin," Cadmann barked. "Who's up there with you?"
A long pause.
"Justin! Answer me, dammit." They didn't hear a sound at first, and then Justin's voice rang down to them.
"Jessica. And Aaron." Thank God, Cadmann thought. Jessica and Justin could handle their own, but Aaron Tragon was one of the best shots he had ever seen.
"We're going down. Dad."
"Hold off on that. We're still sweeping the area."
"We don't see anything. The motion sensors don't pick anything up—"
"They didn't pick anything up twenty minutes ago, either!"
Mary Ann had made her way to Cadmann's side. Her face looked as if emotion had been pressed from it like oil from an olive. "Linda? Is Linda all right—"