Prophecy (23 page)

“Your grandfather’s camp,” Rob said to Romona. “Let’s go.”

The decision was punctuated with a spine-jolting clap of thunder; the rain fell in a deluge as they headed for the crevice. Rob raced back to the helicopter to retrieve his doctor’s kit; the pilot grabbed his backpack. Then, bracing themselves against the rain and the wind, they re-entered the narrow opening between the cliffs and began an agonizing trek across slippery boulders, up the now-raging river. The pilot ran alongside Rob, straining to get a look at the grotesque parcel in Rob’s arms.

“What is that thing?”

Rob shook his head and moved forward. He knew it would be impossible to explain.

Deep into the crevice, they headed toward the trees,

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moving laterally away from the river along an upward slope that led to the interior of the forest.

Romona went first, followed by Hawks, who held the dead creature by a hind foot, its limp body dangling and swiveling before Maggie’s eyes as she walked directly behind him. The slime-dripping snout scraped the ground, accumulating dirt, which gave the mouth the appearance of a smile.

Maggie trudged doggedly, her arms wrapped around her stomach as though to protect what lay sleeping within from seeing what she saw. She could feel the weight within her womb, and tried to force away the mental images of what might lie incubating there. She began counting the steps that she took, but the grotesque body of the creature that dangled in front of her kept thrusting itself into her consciousness and taunting her fantasies. She pushed her face down into her jacket and stifled an urge to weep. Her mind was swept with confusion, for she could not hate what was inside her. She had given life to it, and she had wounded it. It had not asked to be created, it had not asked to be crippled.

Yet the eyes, the underslung jaw of the face that hung before her filled her with fear and revulsion. A scene flitted through her mind that made her gasp and begin again to count her steps-she had seen herself plunging a knife into her stomach.

As darkness fell, the pilot switched on a flashlight, holding Maggie’s arm as she stumbled forward. Rob had opened his jacket and stuffed his parcel inside. He felt a sudden, convulsive movement as the animal responded to the heat of his body. It was a good sign; Rob was determined to keep it alive.

Above their heads the canopy of trees hissed as the wind assaulted them; the rain was abating, but the wind continued to rise.

They had walked in silence all the way, Hawks’s eyes scanning the trees as he followed Romona. Rob glanced often at Maggie, hoping she would not realize what it was that Hawks was keeping watch for. But

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she seemed oblivious to everything; the shock of discovering the creatures seemed to have affected her more deeply than the others. Her face was like a death mask, devoid of expression.

After three hours, they came to a shallow riverbed. Moving closely behind one another, they sank into water up to their ankles as they crossed to the other side.

They walked downhill now, their pace accelerating as they neared their destination.

“SShhhh!” Romona hissed. “Look there!”

They halted abruptly and gazed through the trees to where a distant, flickering campfire illuminated the contour of the tents at M’rai’s camp.

“There are people there,” Romona whispered.

Hawks and Romona crept forward until they could make out the figures of two men sitting by the fire with their backs to them.

“What’s the problem?” the pilot called out.

Rob silenced him with a gesture. He knew that Hawks and Romona feared it might be the sheriff.

“What’s going on?” the pilot asked.

Romona sprang from the foliage and ran into the camp; the men by the fire turned and stood, revealing that they were Indians. After exchanging a few words with them, Romona called out:

“John! It’s all right! No one else is here!”

Rob grabbed Maggie’s arm and they ran to the camp. With the fire blazing and with shelter from the rain, they felt protected here, grateful and relieved that the agonizing trek was over.

“The old man is gone,” Romona said. “They don’t know where.”

“Can they help us?” Rob asked urgently.

“They can go to the village and send someone into town.”

“Send them.”

“Who for?”

“Anybody who can get us out of here.”

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Romona turned to the Indians and began speaking to them in their language.

“Wait a minute,” Rob said. “Not just anybody. Everybody. I want people to see this. I want people to know about this. The Indians. The townspeople. I want them to get everybody down here that they can.”

Romona again turned to the Indians. “N’yah’yo-entrdahsh …”

“Is there a newspaper in this town?” Rob interrupted.

“Yes.”

“I want them down here. With a camera. And I want people from the lumber company. And I want the sheriff. And I want-”

“Not the sheriff,” Hawks interjected.

“I want people to see this!” Rob raged. “While we’ve got it! While it’s alive! Your stake in this is greater than mine!”

The two Indians suddenly caught sight of what Rob held in his arms. Their faces went rigid.

“Please help us,” Rob begged them. “Please hurry.” Then he rushed toward one of the tents, barking orders as he went. “You said you could make these tents warm?”

“We’ll bring coals in,” Romona replied.

“Do it now. Steam some rags. Maggie, take my kit. I need some light in there. And I need a table. Something to work on.”

Maggie and Romona swung into action; Hawks watched the activity for a long moment, then, with a nod of resignation, turned to the two Indians. He asked them to do everything that the man from the government wanted. He told them that the creatures they had with them had been poisoned with the same chemical that caused the katahnas; that they needed manv neonle in their forest right now so their people could be cured.

The Indians answered that there was only one working automobile in the village; if it was not there, they would have to send people into town on foot. If that

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was necessary, they could not return here until after midnight.

Hawks nodded. They disappeared silently into the forest, their silhouetted forms seen for a brief moment against the horizon as it flickered with lightning.

Hawks walked to the body of the dead creature that he had left in the bushes on the outskirts af M’rai’s camp. It lay on its back, stiffened now. The front legs were stretched upward, beckoning with talons as sharp as razors.

Hawks picked it up and tossed it close to the fire. Then he gazed into the forest, fearing what might be out there.

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The storm had passed from overhead and now hung above the distant mountains, striking their peaks with daggers of finger-lightning and rumbling with thunder that sounded like cannon shot as it boomed across the lake. The forest surrounding M’rai’s camp was becalmed, save for an occasional surge of wind that sent raindrops splattering down from the trees; the crickets were meekly attempting to start their belated night concert but were silenced each time the thunder rolled.

In the two hours that had passed since the Indians left the encampment, Hawks had foraged for firewood, stripping off the wet bark, and built up the fire in the center of M’rai’s compound to a blazing inferno. He knew that nothing short of that would dissuade a beast the size of what he now came to think of as Katahdin.

He had also found M’rai’s archer’s bow and a quiver containing four arrows. He tested his marksmanship and found that the lessons of his youth were serving him well. Of the four arrows he fired, one stuck in the knothole of a tree. Its tip broke off as Hawks attempted to remove it. There were only three arrows now. There would be no more target practice.

Hawks knew that the bow and arrows were pathetically little to defend themselves with, but if they needed them, each arrow would count.

Behind Hawks, one of the three tents in M’rai’s camp was brightly illuminated from within, casting

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shadows onto the thin tent walls and enabling him to see everything that was going on inside. The figures of Rob and Maggie stood motionless over a table; Romona knelt on the floor, fanning a bed of coals. The pilot was nowhere in sight; Hawks concluded that he was exploring the underground tunnels.

There was silence in the tent. The air was thick with smoke from the coals that Romona toiled over as she steamed wet rags; Rob’s eyes burned from it as he gazed down at the weakened infant creature. It was sprawled out on a chopping block, limp and deathlike, its eyes closed, its chest heaving in labored gasps. Beneath the harsh white light of suspended kerosene lanterns, the details of its malformed body were clear. When die body had been wet, the skin appeared smooth, mottled pink and black. Now that it was dry, Rob could see that the black part was fur, soft and downy, like the skin covering of a newborn chick. The batlike skin folds that extended from the hips to the tiny clawed hands were extremely fragile, thin as an egg membrane, easily torn. The eyelids were transparent, so that the pupils seemed to stare out from them even when they were closed; the nose was no more than two holes at the end of a ligamentlike protrusion. The teeth were needle-sharp and even though the creature was unconscious, they occasionally snapped at Rob when his hands came too near the face.

But for all its grotesquery, the creature was somehow captivating. Perhaps because it was sick and vulnerable. Perhaps because it was small.

Rob knew that the internal organs might be as deviant as the external features, but he treated the creature in the only way he knew how: as though it were a human infant. He had given it five cc’s of Adrenalin, and the heartbeat had responded. It was beating fast now. Almost too fast. Rob removed the warm rag from the body and fanned it with his hand. The skin crinkled where the breeze came across it, a sign that the creature was reviving.

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“Will it die?” Maggie whispered from beside him.

“I don’t think so.”

Maggie could not help feeling relieved. In the hours of keeping watch, her perception of the creature had altered. The misshapen body was no longer ugly but awesome, delicate and somehow beautiful in its own unique way. The fact that it looked unlike anything she had ever seen before became easier to accept as the hours wore on; regardless of its appearance, it was a living, breathing, suffering thing. She felt protective of it. She imagined that it needed her to defend it.

But deep within the recesses of her mind, she was walking an emotional tightrope. The fall to one side was the plunge into intolerable reality; to the other, the abyss of insanity. To accept that this creature was possibly a replica of what lay incubating inside of her would have caused her to crumble. To deny it meant to release her hold on reality. The hormones at work within her body were in conflict with the logic of her mind. She was trapped between the two, unable either to accept or deny what was happening to her.

Rob had been aware of her torment but did not recognize the depth of it. He knew of her compassion for living things and that in recent weeks she had been emotionally shaky. It was predictable that the shock of finding the creature might cause her greater personal stress than the rest.

But as time passed, Rob was becoming more and more concerned. She seemed to be withdrawing into an isolated shell, focusing on the infant creature as though nothing else existed.

“Do you want another rag?” asked Romona as she approached Rob with a steaming cloth.

“No. It’s getting too hot. Can we get some of the smoke out of here?”

“I can widen the flaps.”

The pilot emerged, covered with dust, from a narrow entranceway into the ground. “Nothin’ down there but dirt.”

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“No supplies?” Rob asked.

“Not that I could see. It’s just crawl space.”

“I need a sterile jar.”

“I’ll check the other tents,” Romona answered.

“Just any jar. Anything that seals.”

“I’ve got a jar of vitamins,” the pilot said.

“Get it.”

“It’s in my pack-”

“Look!” Maggie gasped. Her voice was punctuated with a sharp squeal of pain. The creature was convulsing. Its eyelids had flown open and the pupils had flipped upward; its body was rigid and shaking in every fiber as froth poured from between its clattering teeth.

“Hurry with that jar!” Rob barked.

Maggie reached out to touch the creature, but Rob stopped her. “Don’t touch it!”

“Can’t you stop it?”

“I don’t dare sedate it.”

“Can’t you do something?”

Maggie clapped her hands to her mouth to stifle a whimper as she watched with anguished eyes. The body of the small creature was back-bending, froth and vomit shooting from its nose and mouth.

“Oh, God … God …” Maggie moaned as she buried her face in her hands.

“Here’s your jar,” the pilot said.

Rob grabbed it, shook out the contents, and thrust it into Romona’s hands. “Boil it! Steam it! I need something to puncture the cap!”

“My knife,” the pilot said.

“In my bag, Maggie. Surgical tubing.”

But Maggie did not respond. Her eyes were wide and staring, fixed on the infant creature that had suddenly gone limp and comatose on the table.

“Maggie?”

“Yes?”

“Surgical tubing. In my bag.”

“Yes.”

She fumbled in the kit and found the tubing, which

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Rob grabbed from her and inserted into the small hole he’d punched in the bottle cap.

“It’s steamed as best I could,” Romona said, quickly handing the jar to Rob.

Maggie watched with glazed eyes as Rob quickly removed a hanging lantern and replaced it with the jar, then grabbed for a hypodermic syringe. He glanced at the comatose creature with uncertainty. He had sensed earlier that its body temperature was rising, which could have accounted for the convulsion. Were this a human infant, he would hydrate it intravenously to bring the temperature down. But it was not a human infant. He didn’t know what the normal body temperature should be, or how it would respond. He touched the skin. It was dry as sandpaper and almost hot to the touch.