They were down to twenty feet. The leaves were whipping madly, which actually gave Lyon a clearer view of the ground and his target He could see the cat's hindquarters through the branches.
"Go west a few feet," Lyon said. Hopefully, that would stir the leaves where he needed a clearer view. Lyon 's left foot was on the step at the bottom of the door and his right in the corner of the door itself. It was a secure perch even though it didn't give him a wide target area; the helicopter's landing skid was too far below the cabin for him to lean on. That was why they had to keep the cat in a fairly narrow range.
The chopper shifted slightly and continued to descend. They were roughly ten feet above the trees and thirty-five feet above the target The leaves parted and blew off ahead of the cat and it moved toward them. Lyon took a moment to drink the creature in.
Grand hadn't been kidding. The thing was a giant, like nothing Lyon had ever seen except maybe in some of the monster movies he'd done. He'd have its head in his sight in just a few seconds-
Something flashed past his sight and the helicopter shuddered violently. The Special Ops officer looked up from his rifle just in time to see the impossible. Lit by the green glow of the control panel, he saw one of the cats land on the skid, stretch itself up, and fill the open doorway.
The damn thing had jumped from the treetops.
Lyon 's last thoughts were of something Grand had said before he went to the blockhouse. Decoys and feints, he had warned. They use military-style tactics.
The cat lunged at Lyon. The gun fell overboard. Blood sprayed from an upswipe of the cat's claw, ripped from somewhere on the left side of Lyon 's chest. It spotted the windshield, controls, and Deputy Russo. While the pilot tried desperately to focus on the controls, the special Ops Officer was screaming beside her, flailing at the monstrous weight on top of him.
The creature's powerful motion, weight, and the repeated lashings of claw and fang made it impossible to steady the helicopter. The skids crunched on the upper branches and then the cabin thumped with an ugly, loud bump on the tree-tops. The helicopter settled unsteadily on its perch.
Russo sought to abandon the craft. She released the controls and turned toward the door. Before she could reach it, the cat surged over the mangled Special Ops officer and put its two long teeth into Russo's left shoulder. The pilot shrieked as the cat bit down and away.
The helicopter tilted toward port, Lyon 's side. The slanted rotor was still turning at top speed as it cut into the trees, filling the air with wood, leaves, and the clacking of the rotor as it struck the branches.
The narrow blades bent and folded, one of them slamming through the windshield and filling the cabin with glass. A moment later the rotor hub stopped turning when it hit one of the heavy lower branches. The helicopter settled noisily into the trees, on its side. The trail rotor continued slicing downward, kicking up dirt and sparks as it struck the ground. The rear rotor cap cracked, causing the unit to fly off. It cartwheeled across the ground, stopping only when it embedded itself in a tree trunk.
Except for falling particles of leaf and the occasional groan of a branch, the night was nearly still. Nearly, but not quite.
While one cat waited and watched, the other leaped from the cabin of the fallen helicopter. It landed heavily on the ground then shook itself off from head to tail. The fur of its face and shoulders was splashed with blood. Some of the blood was from the occupants of the cabin while some of it belonged to the cat itself. One of the rotor blades and several pieces of glass had cut it on the right shoulder when the blade struck the windshield.
But it would survive.
It was not time to feed and, leaving the bodies behind, the cats walked toward the sinkhole, slipped inside, and thought nothing more of this strange new creature that had tried to take the night from them.
Chapter Fifty-Four
"There's something I need to understand," Hannah said. Grand was behind the wheel of his SUV. The helicopter had placed Hannah and Grand back near the campsite. Wet and exhausted, they'd climbed into Grand's car and headed down from the mountains toward Hannah's apartment. The heat was on full and the windows were open, keeping them warm and awake for the half-hour ride.
"Cryogenesis," she went on. "How has that kept these animals alive until today?"
"I honestly don't know," Grand said.
"But that has to be how it happened. They couldn't have been living underground."
"I don't see how," Grand said.
Hannah was amazed that after all she'd been through she had the energy to get revved up about this.
"But there are a lot of problems with cryogenesis," Grand went on. "As you said, glaciation didn't reach this far south," Grand said. "Even if it had, simple freezing wouldn't have done the job."
"Why not? Remember those three Incan children who were found a couple of years ago, twenty-two thousand feet up an Argentine volcano?"
" Mount Llullaillaco."
"That's the one," she said. "Those kids were sacrificed five hundred years ago and freeze-dried by the climate. When they were discovered there was still blood in their hearts and lungs."
"They were also dead," Grand said.
"The children were dead before they were frozen," Hannah said. "What if they'd been alive when that happened?"
"Then all of their biological systems would have stopped immediately," Grand acknowledged.
"And preserved?"
"Theoretically."
"Which is what happens in cryogenics."
"True," Grand said, "but there's a big difference between preservation and successful reconstitution."
"I know," Hannah replied. "But first things first. Biological entities have a very high chance of surviving cryogenics and being revived if their systems contain glycerol-related oils and fats. Those compounds can be added to a specimen or they can be inherent, part of a diet. Typically, a diet that includes fish."
Grand glanced at her. "Another article?"
Hannah nodded. "About a local company that freezes donor embryos," she said. "As we know, the saber-toothed tigers like fish. But they could have gotten the substances from any number of animals. Back to my point about the Incan kids. At some time in the past, after they were frozen, one of those kids was hit by lightning. Despite having been dead and freeze-dried, there were signs of biological activity where the lightning had struck."
"I read about that, but it was extremely limited activity," Grand pointed out. "There was some cellular growth but not the full-scale metabolism we're seeing here."
"Yes, but maybe conditions were different in some way," Hannah said. "Some significant way that we're missing. Let's go through them."
Grand was tired but Hannah wanted to push him. Not just because she was curious and not just because she'd have an article to file in the morning. They were obviously missing something that would explain the reemergence of the cats and she wanted to know what that something was.
"We've had an incredible amount of rain and lightning over the past few weeks which could be a factor in some way," Hannah said. "What else? Give me words. Ideas. Anything."
"All right," Grand said. "I found the fur in what was apparently a volcanic vent."
"Volcanoes," Hannah said. "Intense heat. Could that have played a part in this?"
"Possibly."
"Things in Pompey were preserved by ash and pumice."
"Again, not alive," Grand said. "But you mentioned something a minute ago that wasn't entirely accurate yet may have something to do with this."
"What?"
"You said the kids in Argentina were freeze-dried. They weren't," Grand said. "They were frozen."
"What's the difference?"
"Freezing is intense cold," Grand said. "Freeze-drying is intense cold followed immediately by a exposure to a complete vacuum. That one-two hit preserves the object in its frozen state, but without ice. Then the object, whether it's coffee or fruit, can be restored by adding water."