Phil’s eyes darted nervously, scanning the empty forest. “It must have moved, huh?”
Craig raised the radar gun to the sky, and the sweeping green line in back was empty. “I guess so.”
“There’s not a trace of fog here,” Jason observed.
Darryl eyed the camera suspiciously, just sitting there on its tripod. He couldn’t make sense of it. “Let’s go. Everybody pay attention.” He walked forward.
They passed redwoods, ferns, a giant fallen tree, and then they saw it. Darryl first. A fawn in the middle of a clearing. It was just lying on the dirt, a tiny animal, maybe two feet tall and covered in white spots. Darryl couldn’t say why exactly, but something didn’t smell right about it being there. Plus, it was clearly in pain. He removed an arrow, aimed, and—
“Darryl, please don’t.”
He hesitated. It was his wife.
“Ahh… Jesus Christ, Monique…”
“Please, Darryl. Please.”
He lowered the weapon, and she trotted toward the fawn.
Jason looked up at the sky, wondering what was going on.
Darryl studied the sky too, eyes darting. “I don’t think the damn thing’s around here.”
Monique crouched next to the fawn and saw it was shivering slightly. “Oh, your leg’s broken.” She petted its head, trying to calm it down.
Darryl looked around suspiciously. “Think it would try something without the fog, Jason?”
“I don’t know.” But Jason felt like Darryl did. Something didn’t smell right.
Darryl eyed his wife. She’d put her rifle down and was holding the tiny deer in her arms now. “I don’t like this. Let’s head back. Let’s head back right now.”
“Wait a second.” Craig raised his radar gun. “I got something here.”
Phil scanned the sky in every direction. “Where?”
Darryl suddenly pointed. “There.”
Instantaneously, an enormous swooping mass fell out of the sky, arching away from them.
Darryl aimed, but the creature was moving much too rapidly, darting behind a grove of trees. But pieces of it were visible. It was within reach. Darryl sprinted after it, Craig, Jason, Phil, and Lisa rapidly following. Flying at head height, the speeding form came into view. Darryl halted and fired twice, but missed. The predator surged away, still within sight.
They ran hard and saw it again. Just above the forest floor, rushing over ferns and rhododendrons…
Darryl slowed to shoot, but the animal hurtled past the foliage and the shot was gone.
They ran hard for ten more minutes, the Demonray darting in and out among the trunks. Finally, Darryl had a shot. He dropped to one knee and… Jason ran up just as he released. The arrow rocketed away, on a rope, ripping toward the creature. It was the most amazing display of marksmanship Jason had ever seen. He actually felt the arrow tearing through the air. A hit, a hit, a palpable hit.
The creature suddenly banked, and the arrow plunged into a tree, splintering to pieces.
They ran after it. Darryl fired twice more but missed both times. Craig fired three times, all misses.
Suddenly the animal was gone. Disappeared. Darryl froze, looking all around the forest.
Craig ran up, gasping. “Where the hell is it?”
But the forest was silent. Nothing moved.
Jason, Phil, and Lisa ran up.
“How’d we keep up with it for so long?”
Darryl turned to Jason. “What?”
“How’d we keep up with it?” Jason tried to catch his breath. “I think it let us stay close.”
Phil looked around. “Why would it have done that?”
Darryl Hollis suddenly felt ill. “How far did we just run?”
Jason checked his watch; they’d largely sprinted hard for a total of fifteen minutes, so… “A mile at least.”
Darryl tried to stay calm. “A mile at least. So we’re too far to run back now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Monique’s not here.” Darryl swallowed nervously. “I think that thing isolated us from Monique.”
CHAPTER 80
JASON STARED at Darryl. Everyone stared at Darryl.
He methodically exhaled a few times. This was no time to panic. “Can I borrow your walkie-talkie, Lisa?”
She shoved it to him, and he pressed the button. “Monique, you there?”
He waited a moment.
One second ticked past. Then another.
The walkie-talkie was silent, just a light hissing.
“Am I pressing this damn button right?”
Lisa eyed his finger. “Yes.”
He pressed it again. “Monique, you there? Monique?”
He waited again.
Again, there was nothing.
He turned to Craig nervously.
Then the walkie-talkie crackled. “Hey, Darryl.” She sounded as casual as ever.
Darryl breathed easier. “Are you OK?”
“Fine. You guys ran off, and I couldn’t keep up holding this little guy.”
Her tone was all wrong. She didn’t understand what was happening. “Do you see that thing around there anywhere?”
“No, it’s just me and this cute little fawn.”
“Forget the goddamn fawn, Monique!” Darryl exhaled, calming down. “I think that thing set you up somehow.”
“Set me up? It’s not even here, Darryl.”
Darryl eyed Jason. “Any way this is just a coincidence? That maybe it went somewhere else?”
Jason didn’t answer right away. He replayed what had happened. “This is no coincidence. No way. Somehow, it lured us to that area, to that specific area. I just don’t know h—Craig, those readings we got… It did detect that equipment. It detected it and used it against us. It called us to that exact spot.”
Summers replayed it, too. “Son of a bitch; you might be right…. But why? Why there?”
Jason went over it again. “The fawn. There was something strange with that fawn being there.”
“Like what?”
Jason began pacing. “What if the ray knew how Monique would react when she saw it?”
“How could it possibly know th—”
“The mountain-lion cub in the bear trap. Darryl, it was up in the fog watching us yesterday. It saw Monique’s reaction to that lion cub. So it called us to that exact spot with the equipment, it found the fawn, broke its leg, then waited for Monique to find it. When she did, it swooped down to draw us away, then kept going until we were so far removed that we couldn’t get back to her.”
Darryl swallowed sickly. It made horrifying sense. “Monique, did you hear all that?”
She hesitated over the hissing. “How could it possibly have broken the fawn’s leg?”
Darryl felt like vomiting. He had no clue; he just knew it had happened. “Jason?”
Jason took the walkie-talkie, thinking it out. “It must have carried it in its mouth, Monique, then dropped it from the air. Is the fawn’s fur sticky, like from saliva?”
MONIQUE HOLLIS swallowed nervously.
She didn’t need to look. The tiny animal was covered with dried splotches of something. She’d been wondering what they were all along.
“Is its damn fur sticky?”
This was Darryl’s voice again.
“Yeah, Darryl. It is.” She calmly put the fawn down, grabbing her rifle off the soil.
She looked up. The forest was silent. No sign of the creature anywhere, just branches, tree trunks, and evergreen for as far as the eye could see. And still not a trace of fog.