"Well, Rebecca, the DNA go ninety-nine percent Homo sapiens. The rest is as unknown as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. This particular strand doesn't collate with anything in the bank, but you can see that with all these restrictive enzymes and retroactive proteins this thing has a super powered immune system. I don't know what it is or how it's done, but it's there. I… well, I really don't know how else to classify it."
For a long time, Rebecca stared at a photon level image of the tendril recovered from the plaster. She had a hard time tearing her eyes from it. Then her mouth tightened, almost angrily, and she spoke. "All right. Record everything. Make three copies. You know where to put them. I'm taking one to the lab at Langley. They need to see this or they won't believe it." She waited. "Hell, I don't know if /believe it, and I'm staring right at it."
It started in the thickest darkness Hunter had ever known, but he knew it was more than just the night. With Ghost at his side, he moved in total silence, alert, sensing every empty shadow. They caught the first hint of it in twenty minutes.
It was about six hundred feet north, and Hunter was west. Calmly, Hunter crouched, studying all there was to see in the silver moon. The night gave just enough light to see the ground. Good enough.
"Come on, boy," he whispered.
It was accustomed to prey fleeing its wrath.
Hunter ran straight toward it, toward the north, closing the gap much, much quicker than it would anticipate. Then he saw the right terrain and leaped high, one foot hitting a boulder that launched him higher to a tree limb, where he leaped onto a slope.
Ghost made the tremendous leap without the advantage of the boulder, landing beside him.
Instantly Hunter angled uphill, running as quickly as the steepness allowed, slowing on moccasin-padded feet as he crested and crouched. Below him, he saw a ravine no more than ten feet wide, and then… a tremendous hulking shape of a humanoid creature. It was shuffling, confused, and even at that distance Hunter could read the anger in its face, its stance. It turned this way, that, searching with quick, jerky movements. The scent was strong here, it knew, but the prey…
Hunter smiled, knowing that the very first move he made would snatch its attention. He decided to make it a good one. Backing up a few steps, he rubbed Ghost's head. The wolf knew what he was going to do, was going to do it with him.
Hunter ran toward the gap in the ravine, and leaped, wasting one second to glance down and see the beast whirl as if shot. And he knew what it saw. A man and a great black wolf suspended in the air, soaring across a narrow moon.
Hunter landed lightly on the other side, and Ghost was beside him. Then Hunter was running, running, weaving a complicated path through roots and trees and over boulders, doubling back, avoiding inclines because they slowed him, and then he began laying traps, tricks, immersing himself in a freezing stream and floating downriver until he lifted himself out with a limb and climbed from tree to tree for a hundred yards before dropping to earth.
He stopped in place.
He had landed before a gigantic stone tablet, at least two hundred yards across. It was utterly level, as if ancient glaciers had shaved it. But now it was also littered with boulders, the remnants of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flood. Instantly he began a complicated trail, in and out, around good ambush sites, which the beast would approach slowly. He worked for ten minutes, running quickly, crisscrossing a dozen times. He left trails that led into the surrounding forest in a myriad of directions. When he was finished, he was sweating heavily and his legs were numb. But Ghost seemed to have enjoyed it.
Hunter looked at him, smiled. "You idgit-head. All you want to do is fight him, don't you?" He rubbed Ghost's head. "He ain't the alpha, old boy. You are. You always will be."
Afterwards, Hunter floated down a frigid stream, downwind, and finally saw an overhanging limb — too far to reach! In a split second Hunter had grabbed the snare from his belt and held the steel tube, and as the branch came closer he saw a broken limb, short enough for one good throw. As he passed under it the titanium lasso lashed through the air, silver and spiraling. The loop landed solidly on the projection, tightened, and suddenly cold water was splitting around Hunter.
Hands cutting to the cord, Hunter hauled himself back to the branch, and only by the most extreme strength of his forearms was he able to maintain a grip on the titanium as he hauled himself up. His hand lashed up, settled on the limb and he was clear.
He sat on the limb a minute, breathing heavily, freezing, but he knew his clothes would dry quickly. He could endure. He attempted unsuccessfully to undo the lasso from the four-foot-long limb for five minutes, but the lasso had been designed so that, once closed, it would not open. With his heavy Bowie he severed the limb at the trunk and carried it with him. After another ten seconds of hacking he had severed the limb, unwinding the lasso to replace it carefully in his belt. He smiled to himself; the makeshift device was coming in handy. He climbed the tree to another and then down to the ground at least a hundred yards distant.
Then he sat. Waiting.
Ghost, beside him, listening to the night, was uncannily alert. And Hunter was already exhausted, so he ate some pemmican for strength. Then he gave Ghost a large slab of beef jerky.
If the beast eventually unraveled the trail, Hunter would be able to confirm that it could hunt by scent as well as sight. Every discovery he accumulated about it was important because Hunter never knew what he might be able to use for an advantage.
It was five hours later before Hunter heard distant but determined splashing upstream. He rose, running at full speed, knowing that this thing, as inhumanly strong as it truly was, was not inexhaustible. Nothing was inexhaustible. So he would run it to ground. Would run it until the sun rose in a few hours.
And he knew he stood a chance.
Ducking a low limb with the sinuous grace of a panther, he hit the ground lightly and weaved between rocks, boulders. Some he vaulted, landing only to change direction again, and on and on it went with limbs lashing his face and arms in pitch-dark. His legs and lungs burned, but the land rolled past him. Then he broke the woodland and saw open country, and let out a long, steady, strong stride that had carried him in the past for forty, fifty miles at a time. Five, six, seven miles and he kept the fast punishing pace — noticing without appreciating entire valleys passing or the gigantic stands of timber that loomed up and faded hauntingly into the night behind him. Still he continued. He estimated he had gone ten, maybe twelve miles when fatigue began taking a toll, but he pushed himself harder.
Never before, though he had often run all day in order to cross a forest, had he held such a brutal pace for so long. Sweat poured from his face in a slicing cold and darkened his leather shirt, and his long black hair was laid back with sweat and rushing wind. His blue eyes squinted against both the mist that fogged his vision and the night air that burned his lungs. And eventually, when entire worlds of landscapes had been claimed by distance, even Hunter's arms became fatigued from holding the steady rhythm, and his thighs swelled with irresistible numbness. Beside him, Ghost effortlessly kept the pace, even when Hunter began to stumble slightly with fatigue. Now beginning to fear that he would commit the ultimate mistake and twist an ankle or knee, crippling himself and leaving him virtually helpless in the night, Hunter decided that he had gone as far as he could go. Breath burning, eyes misty and tearful, he stopped and dropped to the ground.
No time for rest!
Groaning, he rose, staggering a moment.
To hear a vengeful roar terrifyingly close.
"Now what," he muttered, glancing around.
And saw a ledge.