There were a few more muttered words, then the voices faded. The shadows dissolved before the sweep of the searchlight, melded into the darkness, and once again the night was still.
Sylvia rolled over and hit the light. Terry reached for the trapeze bar above his head and pulled himself upright. "You're awake."
"Only when I heard the racket." Her head buzzed hollowly. Somebody tranked me...
"Damn. Listen—you haven't had a full night's sleep for three days, and I want you to get one. You've been running on adrenaline."
His hand slipped from her chest to her belly, the warm, gentle swell there, and she suddenly realized the truth in his words. Both of her needed rest. And food. Now that the adrenaline rush had slowed, she could hear the dull roar of hunger and fatigue. The tension had masked it. The tension of waiting, of helplessly watching the search for Carlos and Bobbi. Of watching Cadmann and the others descend into the earth to do battle with the unknown. Of standing at Marnie's shoulder, waging a losing battle for Bobbi's life. Of waiting to convey the terrible news to Carlos... if Carlos survived.
There had been, could have been no rest.
But now...
Terry was right.
"Carlos and Stu just needed to get it out. They'll probably cover each other's backs tomorrow. There's nothing anyone can do for it." He ran his hands lovingly through her hair, scratching her scalp with the tips of his nails. "And anyway, I'm here to make sure that you don't go running off. Junior needs you to be reasonable."
For an instant she thought of arguing, then fatigue completed what tranquilizers and low blood sugar began, and she slipped back into a light and fitful sleep.
When Sylvia finally emerged from the caverns of narcosis some ten hours later, the camp was on full alert. The minefields beyond the perimeter fence were activated. Current pulsed through the wire. Sylvia's skin hummed if she approached it too closely.
She wrapped her sweater around her more tightly and headed through the thin morning fog toward the communal dining hall.
In the midst of total alert she felt a curious security: the Colony was not pitted against human enemies. It's only an animal. Intelligent as a gorilla. Maybe as intelligent as a primitive human. Doesn't matter. It can't use tools! It's only an animal. We—Cadmann hunted it down, went into its den, and it wasn't a dragon at all. Only an animal, with a brain smaller than a man's, and no tools.
A tiger in the dark room is a monster. Turn on the light, and it is just an animal. Cadmann turned on the lights for us.
Zack held the door for her as she entered the dining hall. She asked him, "How's Carlos?"
"Sleeping it off. Stu has a busted lip. Well earned, if you ask me."
Virtually every adult male, and half the women, were clustered in the hall. The walls and ceiling of the hall were illuminated with views of the Colony and points south. Cadmann stood in the front of the room. Near him, but separated, were ten colonists, his kill team.
He stands there—does he know just how arrogantly he's standing there? But the rest of them, they're taking it seriously. They accept it. I never saw him like this before. In his element. The bad time is over for Colonel Cadmann Weyland.
One of the wall videos wavered, and Cadmann's face loomed into focus.
"We'll be using a portable holo system," he continued. "Rachel will carry it into the first assault—and I want her to stay back. The idea here is to perfect a system. If we make any mistakes, we want the camp to know it fast. If we do it right, we can be sure that the National Geographic people will be interested. This will head back to Earth along with the rest of the data on grendels. George, Jill, you'll bracket the pool here, and here—"
Sylvia looked at the maps. One was a digitized thermal breakdown representing fresh water, hot springs and vegetation.
On the other wall was a contour map, and on a third a wildlife vector. Greatest concentrations of samlon had been detailed. Four of the water holes had been identified as likely hidey-holes. These had large populations of samlon, and no hot springs nearby. Grendels would want cold water to dump heat into. Distance from the other holes was an important factor. Any creature as voracious as a grendel had to be extremely territorial, requiring substantial hunting ground.
Sylvia found her eyes drawn time and again to the center maps. The Colony.
A small area, really. Terribly small when examined in contrast to the entire island. Barely two square kilometers.
The view from the Geographic made hollow their assertions of mastery.
From that perspective, how very little change they had wrought.
So presumptuous had been the children of Earth. When all was said and done, might not this new world, this terribly old world, swallow them and their folly, leaving nothing behind but bones? Bones, and some films beamed back to an Earth that might or might not send others this way again. Earth was rich, and jaded.
She touched her belly, trying to sense the slumbering life within. It shifted, kicking, and suddenly she felt awesomely small and vulnerable. What was she doing here? What were any of them doing here? All she could think of was the image of that hideous beast twisting through the searchlights, sprinting forward like a windup toy with a broken spring. Bathed in flame, skin coated in jellied gasoline. By all sanity dead, but living still.
God in heaven.
Then there were the Knights of Avalon, men and women descending into the caves beneath the northern ravine. There, in the abysmal darkness, confronting a larger, more powerful version of the first beast. Armed with better weapons, more certain knowledge, and something else: the kind of foolhardy courage that had lured men beyond the edge of shadow since time immemorial.
Now forty grim determined men and women waited, armed and ready. Waited to follow the camp's only true warrior into hell if need be, to stand between Sylvia's unborn child and the hideous grasp of a grendel.
Suddenly her eyes blurred with tears, and an unbidden, heartfelt prayer echoed in her mind.
God be with you, Cadmann.
Because the Devil has already dealt himself in.
Chapter 21
KILLING GROUND
Chance favors the trained mind.
LOUIS PASTEUR
Carlos wiped his forehead with the back of a gritty hand and adjusted his throat mike. "Martinez here. In place."
The water hole was situated eighty miles north of the Colony, an hour's flight by Skeeter. Just a wet spot hidden by bushes, forty feet long by half that wide, one he would never have believed could be sixty feet deep. Some ancient seismic activity had torn the rocks apart and the Miskatonic had filled the hole. That was long ago. A monster lurked there now. Probably, Carlos reminded himself; but in his heart he knew.
You're there, and I have come to kill you.
The clearing was roughly horseshoe-shaped, narrowing into an eastern bottleneck where the stream trickled in from the main river. The overflow bubbled up over a western rise of crumbled stone and disappeared into a marsh.
Probability 78 percent. Those words had sounded encouraging back at the camp, but here at the killing ground, with twenty hunters surrounding the hole, that 22 percent uncertainty looked as big as Mucking Great Mountain.
In just a few minutes they would know. Carlos stared at the chill depths. Grendel, Grendel, are you there? Grendel, we have come to kill you, he thought; but all that Carlos had seen so far were samlon flashing like silver shadows. Be here.
Be here and die. Die slowly, die and taste death—
"You okay, amigo?" Hendrick Sills asked.
Carlos flashed a quick smile at his companion. "Si, compadre." He let
Bobbi's image fade, forgot the still, pale face and the memory of a last desperate kiss shared beneath a shelf of rock.
No mistakes this time. Twenty men and women surrounded this hole. We have enough weapons to kill a tyrannosaurus rex. More than enough to take down one of these bizcuernos.