“We’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know we’ll be fine at all. If we actually find one of these things…” She just shook her head.
“Can we stay rational about this and see what we find, not decide it beforehand.”
She said nothing.
“Lisa, we will be fine. You and I will be fine.”
“You and I?”
He leaned into her, looked her right in the eye. “I’m not gonna let a goddam thing happen to you, all right? I swear it on a stack of Bibles.”
She saw the fire in his eyes, the fire normally reserved for his work alone. Now it was focused on her. She kissed him on the cheek.
“You feel better?”
“Did you just promise to be my guardian angel, Jason?”
“I guess I did.”
“Then I feel better. For a few minutes anyway.”
He smiled, and they joined the others. “What do you want to do now, Jason?” Craig said immediately.
Jason studied the landscape. “Look around. The water, the riverbank, everything.”
They searched as much as they could right up until it got dark. They found nothing. Rather than navigate the creek at night, they tied the Expedition to the inlet’s only dock and slept on flat water for a change.
The next morning they returned to the ocean. A few hundred yards north of the inlet, everyone studied the rocky shore’s sloshing white water with binoculars.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Me neither.” Craig pivoted. “How ‘bout you, Phil?”
“No, nothing.”
Jason gave Phil a dirty look. Phil had become increasingly short with him as of late, and Jason knew why. Clearly, Phil felt he deserved to be an official researcher after all. Jason no longer had the time or patience to deal with this issue. He’d treated Phil fairly, honestly, and as a responsible adult. Phil was still his friend, but if he wanted to act like a petulant child, so be it. No one else even noticed the subtle change in behavior. The bottom line was that Phil continued to work hard documenting the group’s findings and that was what mattered most.
Jason turned. “You see anything, Lisa?”
“I’m not sure, but”—she paused, readjusting the focus knob—“I think I do….”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t make it out exactly.” She paused. This was a classic moment for Jason’s second-guessing. “You want to take a look?”
“No, that’s all right.”
She paused. “You don’t want to see for yourself?”
“I doubt I’d make it out any better than you. Where is it exactly?”
“On those rocks jutting out of the water. Over there.” Maybe I really got through to him, she thought.
“Want to check it out, take a closer look?”
“Yeah.”
They paddled to shore in a twelve-person rubber raft, tied it up, and stomped through white water. Shin-deep, Lisa led the way, her head slowly turning. “It was right around here….” She pointed. “There.”
Jason saw it right away. Caught on a big black rock, a skeleton of some kind.
They waded toward it, and Lisa wondered if it was another dead dolphin. But as they got closer, she saw it was something else entirely.
Craig’s eyes narrowed. “What is that?”
Lisa struggled to lift it out of the sea, a heavy bone-white skeleton. Clearly not a fish but a land-based animal of some kind. Bigger than a dog, with four legs, a large triangular head, and thick bones.
“It’s a bear cub,” Darryl said quietly.
Craig eyed it closely. “God, I think you’re right. So…” He looked around. “Where’d it come from?”
Jason glanced up the coast. “With the currents, who knows.” Currents were deceptively powerful and could carry inanimate objects for miles in just half a day.
“What the hell are those?” Lisa said suddenly.
Jason sloshed up next to her. “What?”
She pointed to the top of the skull. “Those.”
She was shaking slightly, so he took the skeleton from her. There were two huge holes in the top of the skull. “My God. I think they’re… teeth marks.”
Craig leaned in. “Holy cow, they are. So… one of those rays killed a bear?”
“A bear cub,” Darryl said precisely.
“But a bear.”
Phil looked around. “So where’d it come from?” He scanned the landscape, the towering redwoods, the black rocks, the coast farther north. “I mean did this thing fall into the ocean and get attacked?”
No one answered. They all told themselves that must have been what happened.
Lisa continued to shake. Jason didn’t know whether it was from the cold water or something else. He put an arm around her, but she just continued, and he noticed her face was tight. He wished he could say something to calm her down, but he wasn’t sure that was possible.
Darryl just eyed the holes in the top of the skull. “Jason, I think we better teach you…” He glanced at Lisa and Phil. “I think we better teach all of you… how to fire a rifle.”
Jason scanned the wild, desolate terrain. “I think you’re right.”
CHAPTER 47
THE PREDATOR hadn’t moved. Flat on the plateau in front of the cave, its colossal frame gently rose and fell. It was breathing evenly now, its large lung fully adapted to the air.
Its eyes shifted, calmly studying the giant dark space before it. The animal was ready.
It started flapping, smacking its wings loudly and ferociously against the rock. It didn’t lift off. It barely budged.
It ceased all movement.
Then the muscles on the left side of its back began rippling very fast. They continued for several seconds, then froze, and those on the right began. Then they stopped and the left started. Then the right. Then both sides froze, and very quickly, the front half of the great body coiled off the rock. When the massive head was completely vertical, the hulking form went still. The animal didn’t move. It effectively stood there, more than six feet tall, its back half flat on the rock, its front steady in the air.
From the new vantage point, it studied its surroundings anew, little puddles on the plateau, two dozen wriggling crabs, the spray of seawater from the breaking waves behind it, the mountains, and the sky.
The wind started gusting and the head turned slightly, sensing it.
Then, in a fluid series of motions, the creature bodily threw itself into the air, simultaneously flapped its wings and, like a seagull, rose on the diagonal. Pumping hard, it surged straight for the vast cave opening, then banked and veered over the ocean. It rose to one hundred feet then began testing itself: flapping, gliding, speeding up, slowing down, rising, diving, and hovering. Every movement was smooth and graceful. Like breathing air, they were all effortless now.
The creature veered into a wide, sweeping circle and focused on the cave. Then it dove toward it.
The air whipped past and the space rapidly grew larger. Surging closer, the animal felt a tinge of cold air. Then it arched lower and rocketed right in.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, an abysmal shaft of dank black rock, small stagnant puddles on the floor. The great body hurtled through, the sounds of the ocean quickly fading. Then the creature began pumping, its wings blowing away one puddle after another. The puddles were growing smaller. The light was disappearing….
The predator didn’t know the significance of what it was doing. It didn’t know it was about to become the first animal to permanently leave the sea since the amphibians 300 million years before. It only knew there was food on the land.