Siberius (39 page)

             
It was the leg of a black bear. In the dirty light, Talia could make out the paw, the claws and dark fur. She followed the leg to the rest of the animal and found that although it was in one piece, its body had been broken and twisted into a contortionist’s nightmare. The bear’s tongue protruded from the tip of its muzzle, while the eyes were half-open in a dunce-like stupor. It’s neck was compressed and bloody, indicating where the fatal bite had been delivered.

             
Talia searched beyond the bear and saw other dark silhouettes. They were of various shapes and sizes, nondescript amorphous shadows of death. The longer she looked at them, though, the more the shapes took on familiar form: a forest of elk and caribou antlers reached up like leafless trees. Spindly legs and hooves splayed and jutted in frozen spasms. Talia found it somehow beautiful.

“
Predatory art,” she whispered to herself.

“
Hello?” came a reply.

Talia spun around with wide eyes to the opposites side of the cave. The voice was strained, almost inaudible. It was a man. “Hello?” she said, not expecting an answer. Her head still wasn’t all-together. Her mind had to be playing tricks.

“Help,” the man said again. It was coming from the shadows at the den’s far end.

Talia allowed herself a faint bit of illogical, irrational hope. “Nick?” she said as she crawled through the darkness. “Is that you?” Her hands touched something wet and Talia jerked to a stop. She couldn’t see what it was and felt better not knowing. She circumnavigated around the wetness, but found it again. The ground was soaked and Talia knew, from the slickness and viscosity, that it wasn’t water. She crawled through it anyway, toward a ragged shadow against the wall.

              When she reached it, Talia thought it was some kind of trick. A Soviet greatcoat, the kind worn by soldiers, lay ripped to shreds. There was also a pair of pants and what looked like boots, although it was hard to tell in the limited light. Where was the man?

             
“Help,” came the voice again and it startled Talia, for she was now aware that these weren’t just the clothes of the man,
but the man himself
. And as she again moved so her shadow fell away from him, Talia saw that he had been chewed to a meaty pulp. She could make out few details, but his face looked like a mass of bloody bites and claw marks.

Little
bites and claw marks.

What else was in the cave?

In the darkness, she couldn’t tell who he was. “Who are you?” she said, too afraid that the man would say
Nick
. She braced for the answer.

             
“Parnichev,” came the voice and Talia felt guilty for the sense of relief that came over her. “Help me.” His voice grew weaker with each word. Judging from the size of the puddle she had crawled through, he had lost a lot of blood. He was a soldier from the Red Army, but how he got there and why he was in such mangled condition was peculiar. He had not been bitten by a Smilodon. There was no sign, as far as she could tell, of the telltale massive trauma caused by a Smilodon bite.

             
Talia couldn’t leave him there to die. She searched around for his hand and squeezed it, hoping to reassure him. But it wasn’t attached to his body. She yelped, dropped the hand and scooted back across the wet floor.

             
“I can’t move,” said Parnichev, and Talia struggled to hold on to her own sanity. She looked to the pale blue glow of the opposite tunnel and crawled toward it. Survival was on her mind now.

             
The tunnel entrance dropped into shadow as something entered it and blocked the light. Talia froze in her tracks and swallowed hard. The guttural growl of a Smilodon greeted her ears and she backed up. It’s raspy breath and quiet but firm footfalls on the packed floor echoed into the den as it came closer. Shadows grew long from the tunnel mouth and across her face as she watched and waited for the shaggy white head to appear.

             
Then it stopped. Somewhere, around a bend in the tunnel, the big cat stood and breathed and growled but didn’t come any further. Talia backed up to the opposite side of the cave and plastered herself against the root-lined wall.

             
“Please,” said Parnichev and Talia found herself shrinking back from his voice. She wanted to tell him to shut up, that there was a
monster
just a few yards away. But she wondered, in that moment, whether it mattered. Of course the Smilodon’s knew she was there. They had brought her to the cave. It was their lair, their home away from Arctic home. And, Talia knew, she was right in the middle of the pride’s larder
.
I’m food
, she thought, but had a hard time believing it. Like the bear, the elk, the caribou and the soldier, Talia was just another winter meal, a midnight snack during those times when hunger overwhelmed sleep. Or so she thought. But why did they allow her to live?

Another sound entered the cave. It came from the opposite tunnel, the dark tunnel without light. The tunnel that lead deeper underground.

She listened and waited, her eyes frozen on the black hole in the earthen walls. This sound was different, high pitched and screechy. It was nothing like the Smilodons. Now Talia moved away from that tunnel entrance, too, back toward the black bear carcass and forest of antlers.

             
“Keep them away,” said Parnichev in the most desperate voice his condition would allow. Talia watched the tunnel entrance and saw a pair of eyes appear, then another, then another. Soon, the darkness was spotted with glowing eyes. And along with the eyes came the high-pitched screeching.

             
From the pitch tunnel mouth came a horde of little Smilodons. Talia watched as they scampered over each other, screeching and whining with voices as grating as fingernails on a chalkboard. They were white but like young lion or puma cubs, had a mosaic of black spots over their thick coats. Unlike their parents, though, these cubs had no elongated canines. It would be a full year before the characteristic saber-teeth would grow to full size.

Talia watched in detached amazement, for this was the first time she had ever seen
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cubs. They were the size of full-grown housecats, but she deduced that they couldn’t have been more than a two months old. It was unusual but not unheard of for a mammal species to give birth in the winter. Regarding
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, nothing surprised Talia anymore.  The cubs played with each other, clawing and biting in mock battle. She remained still. They didn’t seen her and it was likely that they didn’t hear her either, and thus, they had no notion that they were being observed. Talia counted seven cubs. It was difficult to tell in the dark because they were in constant motion. She wished she had a pad and pencil. She didn’t want to forget what she was seeing.

“
Please help,” said Parnichev, and all at once, the cubs stopped playing. They turned toward him, watched and waited.

In the excitement of observing the cubs, Talia had forgotten about the adult guarding the tunnel. It bellowed a full-throated roar that shook the walls of the cave. Her heart leaped in her chest and the fear she had come to know these past few days resurfaced. The cubs disregarded the adult. They were more interested in the human voice in the darkness. Wary, they waddled over toward Parnichev. Talia watched as they sniffed the soaked floor around the soldier, and she thought she heard the little cats lapping at the blood.

Parnichev lay there, paralyzed and now quiet. Talia was curious and apprehensive all at once. The little cats sniffed all around him, growling the high-pitched growl that would, in time, grow more baritone with age. Despite everything, she still thought they were cute. Looking nothing like the adults, she found it hard to fathom these little creatures would one day elicit the kind of fear other animals had in their presence.

The tone of the soldier’s voice changed her mind.

“No more,” Parnichev whispered, and then the little Smilodons betrayed their innocent appearance. With curled lips and demon eyes, they swarmed over him.

Talia watched horrified as they tore into him. The soldier managed one more scream, and Talia, despite the darkness, covered her eyes. Now she thought she knew why they had kept her alive: to teach the cubs how to kill.

How to kill
humans
.

She no longer believed they were cute.

The giant T-34 crushed through a wall of pine saplings before rumbling down a shallow valley. Eight-foot snowdrifts were no match for the 25 ton tank, and in the driver’s seat Nick felt unstoppable. Peering through the periscope, he searched for the Smilodon’s trail among the sparse trees. A few miles back, the forest had grown too thick to navigate and Nick had to steer into more agreeable terrain. He had hoped he was paralleling the cat’s trail, but so far he hadn’t come across it. If worse came to worse, he could always backtrack. It meant losing time, however, and that was one luxury he didn’t have. He tried not to think that it might already be too late.

As the tank rolled into an open area, Nick hit the brakes and stopped. Another glance into the periscope revealed an expanse of featureless white. Was it a field? A frozen lake? The idea of breaking through the ice and sinking to the bottom was more horrific than dying in the maw of a monster. At the same time, he was even less interested in getting out to check. The cats were masters of camouflage; they might be right outside and he would never know it. He looked through the periscope again, letting his eyes adjust to the brightness. Squinting, he saw features where there were none before: a few snow-covered stumps and branches poked out from the winter blanket. Tall brown and yellow grass.
It’s not a frozen marsh
, he thought.
It’s a field. Nice and solid. Easy to drive over.
Then, he made out the Smilodon’s tracks cutting across the open expanse. His instincts were correct: he
had
been paralleling their trail. Nick rotated the periscope and scanned the rest of the clearing. The tracks went back into the forest on the other side of the field. Birch trees were sparse there, and he thought he could maneuver the tank through them.

Engaging the clutch, he shifted into drive and released the brake, and the tank rolled on.

             
The adult’s head emerged from the tunnel and straight away turned toward Talia. She yelped and held her breath. The beast was backlit, an ominous silhouette against the diffused daylight of the tunnel. It snarled but didn’t approach her. She was reserved for the cubs, or so Talia believed, and they were still practicing their techniques on now-dead Parnichev. That gave her some time, but it was small comfort. She would have to get past the adult to escape, and that wasn’t a likely scenario. Since it was still daytime, she figured most of the cat’s were asleep deeper in the den. Things would get worse when night fell.

If she was still alive then.

              The cubs grew bored with the dead man and began fighting amongst themselves. Their screeches grated and Talia again covered her ears. They rolled around the den, leaping and clawing at each other. Talia watched them, less amused than before. Maybe they had their fill of blood and killing and were content to play among themselves. Maybe they would abandon this slaughter chamber and descend deeper into the den for a nap. Perhaps they would spare her the pain of a thousand bites, at least for a few more hours.

One of them stopped playing and looked right at Talia, its face and front paws stained with the dead soldier’s blood. It’s head cocked to one side as it approached her. Talia remained still, but it didn’t matter. In the dark, its eyesight was five times better than her own. Where she saw dark shapes and silhouettes, they could see the smoothness of her face and the tangle of her hair.

And the fear in her eyes.

She watched it, hoped its feisty brothers and sisters would distract it. But they, too, stopped in mid-play as they became aware of their sibling’s changed behavior. Soon, they caught sight of Talia as well and joined the curious cub. They stared at her, the room pulsing with their collective purring. The adult growled, and it seemed to Talia that it was
pleased
that the cubs had found her. Nothing got past
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, no matter what their age.

Gathered in a semi-circle, the cubs studied Talia from a distance but went no closer. They were afraid of her, she realized. That was a switch. They weren’t afraid of the soldier; in fact, they tore him up pretty well. It occurred to her that he may have been already injured from an attack and brought back incapacitated. It made him easy pickings for the cubs.

The little Smilodons growled and their demeanor changed from frightened to aggressive. As if on cue, the adult crept toward her and Talia knew that she, too, was about to be rendered harmless. The mere thought of being in its jaws was enough, and she did what came natural under such circumstances:

She screamed.

The adult halted in mid step and the cubs scurried away. They huddled around the body of Parnichev, shaken and frightened. In the close quarters of this subterranean room, Talia had stunned them, even the adult, with the volume of her voice. She would not have a second chance, though, and she skirted along the wall to where the other, smaller tunnel entrances were. Keeping her eye on the adult, she kneeled and backed up into one of the narrow openings.