Russell rested his forearms on his knees as he crouched. “I would have said simian morphology for sure, but it seems to have a type of scaling, like a reptile.” He tapped it with the knife. “Weird, maybe not scales, more like a hard shell like the chitin you see on crustaceans. What do you think, Anne?”
The woman just stared down at the thing.
Russell leaned closer. “Anne?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up, and her face was bleached white behind her visor. “I don’t know.”
Alex stared at the women, confused. He felt she was hiding something. “Anything you can tell us will help, Anne.”
“He’s right. Come on, this is more your field,” Russell said. “Up close, it does look more like crustacean segments.” He angled his head. “But I can see there are bones inside as well as the endoskeletal protection.” He sat back. “This must be one tough sonofabitch.” He turned to raise his eyebrows at her. “Anne, c’mon, tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I, I just don’t know anymore,” she stuttered and looked distracted.
“Then just guess,” Russell pressed.
She grimaced behind her visor. “Uh, obviously some sort of resident mutated organism of unknown definition.”
Casey’s lips pulled back in disgust. “Mutated organisms, yeah, Morgs for short. Perfect.”
“Works for me,” Dunsen added.
“But resident?” Scott McIntyre scoffed. “There’s nothing like these creatures, resident or otherwise, anywhere that I know of.”
“He’s right.” Russell looked skeptically at Anne.
“We don’t know that.” The female NASA agent stood quickly and walked away a few paces.
“Jesus,” Scott said, watching her.
“Hidden all the way up here in the mountains, it could be like a Yeti thing,” Dunsen said.
“A Yeti?” Monroe snorted.
“I’m just thinking out loud here, okay?” Dunsen snarled back.
“Yep, I’ve seen one — about six-four and speaks with an Aussie accent.” Casey reached out to punch Dunsen’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Just messin’ with ya, big guy.”
Alex stared at it. “I also don’t buy that these things are resident. This creature looked like it had evolved to adapt to this type of environment — it could see in the mist, breathed the gases, moved fast in this damn slippery mud, and was strong as hell.”
“This thing, this Morg, looks more hatched than born.” Sam looked down at the talon. “If they can be hurt, they can be killed. We take ’em down.”
“Always my plan,” Casey said.
“No, we don’t know they meant to kill us.” Anne spun back at them. “For all we know, they think we’re attacking them.”
Alex saw the woman’s eyes go wide, showing real fear, but for what and who?
“Whatever,” Casey said. “They’re fucking dead.”
“They coordinated their attack on us, even though we outnumbered them,” Alex said. “Out there, they tried to encircle me. They’re not dumb animals — we can’t afford to underestimate them again.”
“Jesus, Alex,” Morag said. She turned back to the claw, disgust and fear twisting her features. “I’ve reported on some strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
“No one has. That thing isn’t indigenous… and I mean earthly indigenous.” Sam straightened, gripping his gun even tighter.
“Wait, what?” Calvin Renner scoffed. “You mean that thing might have come down in the fucking space shuttle?” He gave Morag a hard look. “Jesus Mags, we’re out of our depth here. We need to call this off, and just get the fuck out of here.”
“Settle down. It didn’t come down in the shuttle. It’s probably like Monroe said, some sort of deformed…” Morag shrugged. “I don’t know what.”
Casey nudged it with her boot. The claws clacked together. “This high up, and so remote; maybe Dundee is right… for once.”
Dunsen snorted. She glared at him for a moment before turning at Alex. “Remember those things up at Black Mountain?”
“I remember.” Alex shook his head. “But I don’t think that’s what it was.”
“There’s something else that’s weird.” Russell used his probe to turn it over. The huge clawed fingers curled, and he pressed one out flat. “I think this thing has fingerprints.”
“What?” Anne immediately pulled a small smart phone from her pocket and photographed the claw tips.
“Seriously?” Renner pointed. “What are you going to do, see if it’s got any outstanding warrants when you get home?” He looked on the verge of panic.
Morag shrugged. “Take your pussy hat off and put your news one back on, Calvin. This thing is the find of a century.” She looked at Alex. “Can we take it with us?”
Alex looked back down at it for the moment. “No. No excess weight. Also, these things are meat eaters.”
“How do you know that?” Anne demanded.
“I just… know it,” Alex responded, still staring at the claw. He had seen the jaws and teeth; they were used for ripping and tearing flesh. And he had felt the hunger coming off the things in waves — they wanted him for the meat on his bones, he could sense it.
He straightened. “I don’t want anything catching the scent of that piece of bleeding meat and come looking for it.” He turned again out at the mist. “Speed is the key… now we know there’s more than just Russians out there.”
Anita Erikson nudged Max Dunsen. “Bleeding meat, that’d be you.”
“Yeah, and I’m all beef.” He winked at her.
“Knight?” Sam asked.
Alex turned back to the ominous fog. “Yeah, we need to track and find him.”
“How?” Russell Burrows asked. “You said yourself, there’s no trail.”
Alex kept his back turned.
Anne walked closer. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Captain, but we should leave these things alone. You know our priority is the downed Orlando shuttle. It’s vitally important now.”
“She’s right.” Scott McIntyre shrugged. “You and your men knew the risks, and we can’t afford diversions. Leave him; time is critical.”
Faster than Morag could even comprehend, Alex Hunter was in front of the man, his hand around his throat and lifting. McIntyre was not a small man, but his feet left the ground, and amazingly the HAWC leader didn’t even seem to be straining.
The things were meat eaters, and they had taken his HAWC. And then this guy wanted to cut him loose in a blink. Alex pulled McIntyre real close, visor-to-visor, so close McIntyre would be able to see every spot, line and scar on the HAWC leader’s face.
Alex teeth were grit. “And if it was you snatched by one of those creatures?” Alex pointed the man’s face toward the huge claw. “Would you want us to leave you alone with that?”
“No.” McIntyre’s voice was little more than a squeak.
Alex let him go, dropping him to the slime, and turned away. “Form up.”
The HAWCs fell in around him, and Morag noticed that the civilians crowded in closer; even Scott McIntyre.
Alex’s head turned, looking along his team. “We find our HAWC.”
“HUA!”
He raised a clenched fist. “And we show them who the real killers are.”
“HUA!”
CHAPTER 20
Chief science officer Jim Teacher read the plaque on the wall as he waited for his delivery.