Tipler was in ICU on an IV and a number of medications. He was still unconscious but Hunter knew the old man stood a much better chance here than in the mountains. He wasn't as worried as he had been, even feeling some sense of relief that they had been given a brief respite from the ordeal.
He would finish this hunt, but he would be better armed on the next expedition. What weapons he would carry had dominated most of his thinking since they had landed, but he hadn't decided. There was time for that later.
A doctor removed the blood-pressure cuff and listened to Hunter's heart. Very military looking with short-cut black hair and a smooth-shaven face, the physician was in his early thirties. He spoke precisely and confidently: "You have the innate constitution of an ox, Mr. Hunter. Your heartbeat is strong, your blood pressure is perfect, and your pulse is close to normal. You are extremely fit. Perhaps the strongest man I've ever examined. But you're also badly traumatized and dehydrated. Even for someone as strong as you, your body is on the verge of collapse."
He took some time examining the sharp incisions on Hunter's chest. "Hmm, that one's deep," he said. "What did this? A bear? I've never seen a bone scar like this."
"Something like that," Hunter mumbled, rubbing his head. "A bit more hostile."
The physician raised his eyes at the enigmatic remark, turned to the table. "Well, there's no infection. Your medic did a good job cleaning out the wound. So I've given you a tetanus shot and something to stave off any alternate infections. And it wouldn't hurt to have a couple of stitches. It's swollen, but not yet healing."
"Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere."
He performed the antibiotic injections easily and quickly, then prepped a needle with Lidocaine.
"Forget the painkiller," Hunter remarked absently. "Just stitch it up. I can find what I need later, if it hurts that much."
The physician stared at him. "Are you sure you don't want something for the sewing? This will not be pleasant."
"Most things aren't. Just sew it up."
A slight moment of hesitation, and the physician made an expression of "whatever you say" and began. Hunter felt the prick, the needle drawn through flesh, and the stinging of the thread as it was quickly tied off and cut. After five minutes it was over and the doctor dropped the needle and unused silk into a trashcan.
"Took twelve in your chest," he said. "You were lucky it wasn't an inch higher. It could have severed an artery." He wrinkled his brow. "I'd say you were lucky on that one. Lucky or good. Doesn't make much difference. You'll be fine in a few days but I'll need to see you in the morning. Same as all your friends."
Hunter nodded and looked around, wondering how long it'd been since he was in an emergency room; figured it was three years ago when he broke three ribs in a fall. It was a quick trip, in and out, and he had gone back to the search.
Hampered by the pain and lack of mobility, he had nevertheless eventually found the lost party, a hunter who had become lost in a January cold. When Hunter finally found his dead body, he saw that the man still had a backpack of food, a fully loaded rifle, and enough ammunition for a week. A tragedy.
The man had possessed everything he needed to weather out a week in the cold. But he had panicked and, eventually, after burning up precious energy stumbling blindly through the woods, had simply sat down and fallen asleep in the sub-zero temperature.
Hunter had seen it on many occasions — strong men who could have survived for weeks if they had used their tools and remained calm. Yet upon fearing that they were lost, they committed themselves to a senseless stampede that left them too exhausted and shocked to do the very few simple things that would have preserved their lives in even the harshest conditions.
Thoughts like that often gave Hunter pause because he sometimes forgot — so native were his skills to him — that some people simply had no concept of wilderness survival.
Hunter rarely measured his skills against anyone; it was not in his nature to compare himself at all. But in rare moments he appreciated the skills that allowed him, with nothing but his knife, to survive anywhere for weeks or months or years.
Part of it was skill and knowledge, and part of it was years of conditioning, but there was more — a certain hardiness of spirit or soul that reinforced his will in times of physical suffering or fear. It was that part of himself that didn't rely upon intelligence or mind for strength or direction — an ability to allow his lower mind to compensate for whatever his higher mind could not provide, carrying him past the point where most would surrender to pain or cold or hunger and, quite simply, die.
He had seen the phenomenon at work within himself before, and knew that he had the ability to live almost as an animal — hunting, tracking, and killing with that ferocious mind-set of surviving no matter the amount of physical and mental suffering he must endure. It was a certain purity of being — a surrendering to the most basic animal instinct and force of will — and he could turn it on or off, almost like a light switch.
The drawback was, quite simply, that when he gave himself to it he also gave himself to an utterly cold ruthlessness that could be somewhat unsettling.
It made him remember what the creature… what Luther… had spoken of. And he knew that, despite the lies surrounding what the beast had said, there was a grain of truth to it.
Deep inside the heart of man, there did lay a great darkness. Something to be feared even by man himself. It was the place where darkness reigned. Where killing was no more emotional than eating. Where a man could submerge his soul in the blackest sin and feel no guilt at all. Where life was nothing more than the satisfaction of what he desired, and the fulfillment of that desire. It was a place where ruthless strength fed dark desires — the heart of the beast.
Now the dark heart of man had been given indestructible, superhuman form, and was loose in mankind. And Hunter knew he would have to kill it.
And to kill it, he feared he'd have to become it, to release that darkness inside himself.
Hunter didn't want to think about it. When the time came, he knew what he would become. He just hoped it wouldn't be so difficult for him to shut it down when, and if, he destroyed it.
He did know that if he gave himself to the animal within, he would have to be alone. Because no one could keep up with him if he went into it. He would move with astonishing speed, easily covering fifty miles in a day and killing as he moved, eating the meat raw and still moving, killing again, hunting, always hunting — the animal within him selecting the most perilous and difficult of paths as his gray eyes read the faintest faded track.
Athletically, he would be a human tiger — jumping, running for hours, or descending from boulder to boulder in sinuous leaps that never seemed to pause as he hit one granite slab only to descend terrifically to another before he struck the ground to continue running.
Until now, he had been holding back because they couldn't have remained at his side if he had traveled with even half of his true ability. But the time had come to unleash a little of his true strength, and they would have to remain behind unless they were ready to follow in a helicopter.
He glanced up to see Ghost lying atop a heavy stack of blankets. Violating regulations, the medical personnel had wisely decided it was more prudent to allow the wolf a quiet corner in the ICU than a space in the hallway.
From Ghost's quick notice of the faintest sound or movement, it was clear that he remained alert. His ears stood straight, quick to catch the faintest rustle of cloth, and his obsidian eyes carefully followed the actions of everyone in the room.