The Bone Hunter, page 9
John turned his attention back on Allison, and asked, “What are you and Brood going to do while we are headed back to the village?”
Allison looked at Brood and back at her team. “We are going after it. There has to be a way to stop it, and it needs to happen now.”
“We’ll follow once we drop them off,” Mposi said.
“No,” Allison said. “Stay at the village. Keep them safe. Keep the villagers from setting fires in the ground. Be ready for the monster to come back.”
“Do you have enough ammo?” Mark asked.
“We can get some more, I think,” Brood said. “There is an armory, if we travel far enough.”
“We don’t know if the Tanzanian National Forces still hold it or if it has fallen to the Masai,” Mposi said.
Allison shrugged. “We’ll show them kindness and perform a miracle.”
Mark took a magazine out of his belt. “Here. Take half the ammo we have left. If you are going after that thing, you’ll need it more than we do.”
The other men followed suit. Mposi handed his entire gun off to Brood, along with his ammo. Brood tilted his head, but Mposi held the gun out farther and nodded. Brood took it along with the extra ammo. He shouldered the additional rifle.
“Be safe,” John said.
“God bless you,” Molly said, and her husband nodded.
Allison gave a tight smile and made a conscious effort not to roll her eyes.
She turned away, and Brood followed. Someone grabbed her arm and she turned expecting to see Brood, but it was Mark. John, Mposi, and the missionaries stood farther down the hill still waiting.
“I want to say I’m sorry,” Mark said.
Brood took a few steps farther away and waited.
“Okay, all is forgiven,” Allison said.
“I didn’t want you to think that I doubted you as a person or a leader,” he said. “I’m sorry I ever said it.”
She patted his hand, and he took it away from her arm.
She shrugged. “I’m not good with this emotional stuff, Sergeant. You’ll just have to accept that I accept your apology, and we are still a team.”
He nodded. “Good enough. Proud to be a part of Team Tread, Allison. Damn proud.”
She punched his shoulder hard enough to turn his big body. “Proud to have you, Mark. Keep everyone alive for me until I get back.”
He nodded again and turned away. Allison walked past Brood, and he fell in step beside her.
“Everything okay there? Brood said.”
“As okay as we need it to be,” she said. “Mind on the mission, please.”
“Yes, boss,” Brood said. “Are you ready for this?”
“No, but that has never stopped me before.” She wiped the heel of her hand past her eyes and looked away from Brood.
8
Killer of Killers
The trail was easy to follow between fallen trees. Allison couldn’t quite decipher what motivated the Bone Hunter to travel above the ground or below it. It had taken an above ground course when it tracked and slaughtered the poachers’ camp. This time it didn’t seem to be following any particular path, as its trail weaved north and south. Sometimes it went up and over hills or stone outcroppings. Other times it cut through stone like it was blasting out a highway.
Brood and Allison weaved around chunks of stone as big as a truck. They found a rough tunnel burrowed through a mountain to a circle of light on the far side.
Brood leaned inside the mouth of the new tunnel and looked along the pitted cuts in the ceiling above his head. “What do you think?”
“We should go around,” Allison said.
Brood stepped back out. “It looks fairly rounded out and stable. We would probably be okay following through.”
Allison stared at the distant light for a moment. “How many times can we afford to be wrong about that?”
He nodded. “Good point. So, around the mountain or over it?”
“We don’t have climbing gear.” She pointed to their right. “Let’s swing north. The mountainside slopes down that way. It will be the shortest detour.”
Brood followed her around the uneven edge of the rock.
Allison thought back to being twelve and running around with her team of boys. They played army and superheroes. Allison thought they were too old for that sort of thing, but the boys were a bit nerdy, so they still had their make-believe games in the woods. Other kids were playing video games inside or making out, so she figured pretend in the woods was a small sacrifice. They got mad at her because she refused to play any of the girl parts in their stories.
They came to the train tunnel and looked through to the pinprick of light on the far end.
“I dare you to go through,” one of them had said.
“Who me?” Allison had asked. “No problem. There is plenty of room even if a train comes. See?”
“Then, do it already.”
“One of you needs to come with me,” she had said.
“Because you are scared?”
“Because I want to make sure I don’t get left for some sort of prank.”
“I’ll go,” Rich had said.
“You just want to make out with her in the dark.”
The other boys had laughed, and Allison punched the one that said it hard on the shoulder.
“Ow. Fine. Go already.”
Allison and Rich started through along the tracks, stepping from one wood tie to the next. It was darker and longer than they thought. Then, the deafening whistle and rushing wind came from behind them.
Rich pushed past her and started running.
“No,” she had yelled. “Get to the wall.”
He was going to die trying to out run it on the track. She ran after him, not thinking she could catch him in his panicked run, but she tried.
He couldn’t hear her over the whistle that was swallowing all sound in the tunnel.
He tripped and she caught up, but his foot was caught under the wood tie like some cheesy black and white movie. He screamed in her ear in the deaf dark and cried like boys were not supposed to do. She pulled his foot out of the shoe leaving it on the track and slammed his back to the wall off the tracks.
The whole world shook around them, and he tried to pull away to keep running. She locked her hands over his shoulders and kept him pinned. “Stay.”
The train rushed by, and Allison felt the suction. She thought she was going to be lifted off her feet and pulled under the train, but she held onto Rich anyway. She smelled the piss and felt the warmth as his urine spread over the leg of her jeans, where she was pressed next to him. Before the train was done passing, the piss stain was cold in the wind.
After the train roared by, Rich shouted over the ringing in their ears, “Don’t tell the guys I peed myself.”
“We better get out the other side and get home before they get around to the other end,” she had said.
They pulled his shoe free and ran the rest of the way through the tunnel.
Back out in the light, Rich had cried again. He composed himself, and said, “Don’t tell.”
“I won’t.”
By the time Allison got home, she was the only one that hadn’t told. All the guys had reported the couple in the tunnel with the train, and Rich had told his parents. Police showed up at Allison’s house to question and scold her.
Her mother had said, “Your father is picking you up from school every day, and you are spending every afternoon with him helping him with his work. You can do your homework after dinner.”
“For how long?” Allison had asked.
“Until I say otherwise.”
“That’s not fair. I won’t see my friends.”
“Hanging out with boys in the dark is how you will end up pregnant.”
“Gross, mom.”
Allison would work with her father until his heart attack.
She had said to her father, “I wasn’t doing anything like that with them. We were just walking the tunnel.”
“You could have died, Allison. It was stupid.”
“I knew there was space to stand by the wall, and I was right,” she had said.
“You could have been wrong.”
“But I wasn’t. That was the point. I saved Rich’s life because I was right.”
Her father had shook his head and leaned close to her face, holding up one finger. “But how many times could you afford to have been wrong?”
Allison had thought and swallowed before she answered. “None. I couldn’t have afforded to be wrong even once.”
As her mind drifted with her thoughts, Allison kept looking up at the trees trying to wrap her brain around what she was expecting to see.
“Smoke,” she said.
“What? Where?” Brood looked up.
“No, I mean, keep an eye out for it. That’s what was left behind when it took the camp. If it finds another target, we might see it again.”
“That’s a pretty good bet.” Brood pointed back behind them at the dark smoke rising from the where the plane had crashed.
They made their way around and rejoined the trail left by the monster. The trees thinned out and fewer of them were shaved of bark or cut down. Finally, Brood pointed at the sandy circle on the ground in front of them.
“That’s like the spot where it burrowed under at the poachers’ camp,” Allison said.
Brood crunched the sand down with his boot. “Why do you suppose it came all these miles before it went back under?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out all day.”
Brood turned in a circle looking at the forest opening back to grasslands around them. “Maybe there is a biological reason.”
“It is a carbon-based life form,” Allison said. “There are probably biological reasons for everything it does.”
Brood rolled his eyes. “I do have a degree in science, Allison. I’m saying maybe there is a specific reason it had to travel above ground before burrowing here.”
“It went through the mountain instead of over it,” she said. “That does not seem to indicate that it had to wait before going under.”
Brood look back toward the east. The mountain was too far to see. “That’s true. I don’t see any droppings either. Maybe it has to do that below ground too.”
Allison shrugged and narrowed her eyes. “You have a science degree?”
“Yes.” He turned his eyes back on Allison. “I taught it for a couple of years, to year seven students.”
“You decided being a mercenary was easier than seventh graders?”
“Maybe if I taught in America,” Brood said. “My school was burned down by the Egyptian army during an uprising. I was actually fired before that happened, or I probably would have died there along with my former students that day.”
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. “Why were you fired, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Brood shrugged. “I was the wrong race to be taking jobs from ethnic Egyptians. I guess prejudice against dark skin is something Egypt and America share in common. No?”
“I like to think we are making progress on that,” Allison said, “but maybe not.”
Brood nodded. “Maybe, but after the firing and the burning, it got to be safer to fight other men’s wars in other men’s lands. You certainly know what I mean, Specialist Allison Tread. Also, the pay was more reliable.”
“Uncle Sam told me where to fight. Probably paid worse than being a mercenary,” Allison said.
“Uncle Sam didn’t send you to these African lands to fight these African battles, now did he?” Brood asked.
“No, he did not, but you could get paid better other places too, Brood, so I guess we are both doing this for other reasons now.”
Brood tilted his head and pointed south. “If we head south from here, we can see if there is anything in the armory for us.”
Allison sighed. “We’ll just explain to the Tanzanian NF that we need to borrow weapons and ammo to fight an ancient god with no face and knives for skin.”
“If the Masai have it,” Brood said, “they may actually be easier to convince. And I would suggest explosives over more bullets.”
Allison thought about the grenade that had exploded directly on the thing’s back. “I don’t know. How far is the armory from here?”
The ground shook, and Allison staggered as the sound of it rumbled past them. Black smoke mushroomed up from the southern horizon.
Brood pointed at the sky. “Two things: it is about that far away, and I see smoke.”
“Let’s go.” She led the way, and they took to a jog across the grassland.
The smoke spread out in a line in front of them and blotted out the sky, as it boiled up from the ground like lines of reverse rain. As they drew closer, the fire line came into view crawling toward them from the direction of the armory.
“Do we try to outrun it?” Allison asked.
Brood shook his head. “The wind is in our faces at a good clip. I can already smell the smoke. We won’t get back to the trees before it over takes us, and even if we did, that might not be a good thing.”
“Do we try to dig out a fire line or a safe pit?” She looked around the thick grass under their feet without much hope.
“There is a ravine in front of us,” Brood said. “I searched it once with Ranger Diallo. It might be faster than trying to dig our own, but I’m not sure we have time to make it ahead of the fire line.”
“It’s a better option than burning to death.”
They ran toward the fire as the air became thicker and harder to breathe with every step. Soon, Allison could feel the heat from the fire and see the texture of the crackling flames, but they still hadn’t reached the ravine.
She thought about Rich trying to outrun a train and felt like she was doing the same, foolish thing with the fire. She wondered what happened to Rich after graduation.
Spots of flame ate away at the grass all around them where sparks had landed ahead of the deadly heat.
“We are getting close,” Brood said.
“One way or the other,” Allison said, “we are getting close.”
The flame seemed to flank them on both sides as they ran toward the center. The smoke blocked out the sun and swallowed them in shadowed darkness.
Finally, the ravine opened up in front of them. The fire had reached the opposite edge and was stopped, but the line was wrapping around them on both sides as the fire continued on along the grasslands beyond the edges of the obstacle. They were surrounded by it, and Allison’s lungs told her brain that there was no air left to breathe. The fire on the opposite side seemed to lean over reaching for the untouched grass almost closing a burning lid over the opening in the earth.
They reached the edge, and without discussion, they laid out flat and slid over the edge feet first together. Allison clawed for purchase as she scraped down into the small canyon which seemed thirty degrees cooler. It was such a contrast that she actually shivered as she banged between smooth extension of rock on the painful way down.
She lost hold of her weapon as it clattered out away and ahead of her. Her boots skid on the rough rock, and she felt herself slow but not stop.
Brood Kultha dropped past her and bent his knees as he dropped off the side of the rock that Allison leaned back upon. He vanished.
She looked up at the fire swirling in waves of hot darkness above her. The fingers of fire finally caressed the opposite side and claimed all the grass for itself.
Allison went off the rounded edge of the rock face and bent her knees as she plunged into deeper darkness. She heard the splash as her boots broke the water, but felt the jar through her joints as her fall stopped inches later on the slippery stone under the shallow water. Her ankle bent under her, and she felt her weight coming down on it as she collapsed sideways. She put her hands out to catch herself, but expected her ankle to break with her final fall.
Brood caught her in a hug around her chest and back, arresting her fall. She clawed at his arms above the elbows of his shirt to hold on as he lifted her back to her feet. Allison lifted her boot as cold water poured in around her socks. She applied weight slowly, feeling a twinge of pain, but nothing that would last.
She regained her feet, and Brood released her. “Are you okay, Allison Tread?”
She looked up at the fire which occasionally broke above them to show smoky, blue sky before vanishing again. “Better than we could have been.”
“Always true,” Brood said. “I would know. I am a year seven scientist, remember?”
Allison let out one harsh exhale of laughter before turning away. “I need to find my gun. I dropped it on the way down.”
“I have two,” Brood said, “if we don’t come up with it.”
She looked up along the walls and down into the ravine. “I’ll find it.”
“We are like the Bone Hunter now, Allison.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How is that, exactly?”
Dark soot snowed into the canyon bursting into powdery gray along the walls and coating the slow moving water with a grimy film. The cool air of the canyon took on an acidic burn in her nostrils.
“We found safety below the ground,” Brood said.
“We are not attracted to heat though,” she said. “We ran from it.”
She slogged forward stirring the oily lines of carbon ash dissolved on the water.
“I just wish I knew what repelled it,” Brood said.
“It has something to do with water, but I’m not sure why it seems to work sometimes, but not other times.”
“We could try pouring salt on it like a slug.”
Allison stopped and reached up into a wedge between two rock outcroppings above her head. She wretched the object back and forth with a grinding noise until the rifle came free. She worked the action and removed the magazine. It locked back in place with no hitches.
“Are we good?” Brood asked.
Allison shouldered the weapon. “Seems perfect. It will be just as ineffective as it was before.”
Brood pointed beyond Allison’s shoulder. “We can climb out on that far end and hopefully be behind the fire line.”
