The Bone Hunter, page 1
The Bone Hunter
Mark C. Scioneaux
Copyright 2015 by Mark C. Scioneaux
1
Digging Deep
It could not stay away from the men that hunted it, so it dug deep. It sliced deeper into the Earth than the others. Deep ground meant longer hibernation, so it missed cycles and grew in the pressure and heat under the dirt and rock. Heat fed it while it was under.
When the men tore the ground with their drills to draw out the oil, it thought at first it was in the presence of its kindred. The spiral, metal teeth of the drill reminded it of its own bony spines that tore through rock and soil like water. It gripped the Earth to pull itself along in a spin and closed the space behind it as it went. It had no use for the oil and no hatred for the man’s drill, so it dug deeper to stay below the oil. Digging deeper meant sleeping and growing. Forming and waiting.
It emerged to the surface finally to mate and to feed. Its prolonged slumber had allowed it to survive and to grow, but it was much larger than the others. There were not many left, and those that remained were afraid and fled it. Since it could not mate, it fed. Fed on anything it could chase down, and fed on those that fled. Soon the men found it. They were afraid and attacked it with their spears, their fire, and their muskets.
It dug deep and slumbered for another century.
Rumbles and heat stirred it, but when it broke the surface, there were no others. It was alone and very large. It was much larger than the men now. It was the largest and maybe the last of its kind.
It could not mate, so it needed to feed.
The men had larger guns than they possessed during its last visit to the surface, but they had not grown. Its bony spines were long, sharp, and powerful. It could feed on anything it liked.
It had only pieces of memory unlike how other creatures stored things. But it did remember being hunted by men and it remembered hating them for making it dig so deep to survive. Now it could hunt whatever it liked.
It churned the dirt as it spun and extended it bony spines to hook the earth and pull it forward with increasing speed. It sensed the heat in the ground and felt the vibration. It was hungry and it was angry.
As it broke the surface and sensed the man running from it in fear, it felt a mix of rage and dark joy. It used the hooks of its spines to tear into the man’s flesh and through his bones hidden inside his skin. The man’s skin did not fold back over the cuts. The cuts on the soft flesh of the man stayed open and the man’s fluids drained out warm and delicious. It heard the man scream the way its kindred had when they were small and the men hunted them. Now it was the only one left, and it liked the man’s scream and his taste. Fear added to their flavor.
It would hunt the men across the surface and cut down their numbers until they had to flee and hide. It would rule the surface and the men would have to dig deep, and slumber, and grow. It did not bother to finish the pieces of the fragile, frightened man, but left the pieces to add to their fear and their flavor.
It dug down shallow and tunneled through the loose soil of the surface searching for the heat and searching for the screams. It was still hungry, but it wanted to feed upon the screams of the tiny men with their bones hidden on the inside.
Something pulsed through it. The creature did not sense the way people did so it wasn’t exactly sight or smell the way other animals smelled, but it sensed something. It was some lingering flavor off the man. The creature screeched out a cry that gave it a map of the surrounding land for miles and deep through the things buried in the ground as well.
There was something. It could not see it on the map, but it sensed something and the creature felt something.
The closest formulation of a thought that it could put to this sense was, Others. It cut through the ground in search of more.
2
Hunted All
The Toyota truck kicked up dirt as it turned too sharply and ripped through the thick grass. Yellow blades tangled in the axils in the exposed wheel wells and guts of the vehicle.
The men on the back bed crouched and gripped the open window frame behind the driver’s and passenger’s heads. They rested their rifles against their chests and shoulders, pointing the weapons skyward as they held on trying not to be bucked off the truck bounding over broken soil.
As the truck settled back into a level tear across the plain, one of the shooters hazarded a look back at the long furrow of raised dirt that had kicked up as they drove. The endless trail of raised, turned soil snaked down from the hills and across the plain away from them.
He whipped his head around the other way and saw the ground ripping up at the head of the furrow actively opening in the distance. He squinted his eyes as he watched the ground scar itself and whatever the cause, it was circling back toward the truck. It was moving faster than they were and toward them as he watched.
The man in the passenger seat turned around and punched through the glassless opening in the back of the cab, connecting with the shooter in the gut with a closed fist. The passenger cursed at the shooter in at least three languages, but he only understood the foul words in English and Bantu Swahili.
He brought his eyes back forward and aimed out across the roof of the cab.
The black rhino charged ahead of them. Powerful muscle pumped under the folds of its dark flesh. It whipped its head from side to side as it fled bobbing its snout up with each hard turn like it wanted to spear something with its precious horn.
The shooter thought it might turn on them and charge the truck. Sometimes they did. He would need to shoot it below or beside the head then. The buyer wanted the horn, its head, and its hide. This beast was getting butchered. Bullets in the hide were fine, but not in its head—not this time.
The shooter did not know Arabic, but the passenger shouted back over the growl of the engine and the rattle of the truck’s stripped-down chassis with the one phrase he knew from repetition that day: “Don’t shoot its head.”
“I know not to shoot its head,” the shooter yelled back in English.
His partner fired, and the shot went wide. The shooter’s ear rang, and he felt the harsh vibration under him where his arm rested on the hot metal of the bouncing roof.
He breathed through his own aim and fired. The blast thundered across the plain and down into the cab of the truck through the metal like a single, angry drumbeat from God. Blood belched out of the rhino’s side in a single eruption from its hip.
The animal splayed and slid through the grass kicking up a cloud of dust which caked dirt into it newest wound. The beast regained its feet making a hard right turn toward the cover of the foothills.
The chase was about to get really rough. The shooter held on as the truck made a wide turn to pursue.
The partner fired another shot striking the rhino in the skull below its ear. The bullet tore sideways along the bone as it entered in a small hole bleeding down its neck, but exited it a wide furrow which exposed raw, pink flesh on the open side of its face. The black rhino tumbled sideways and came to rest on its belly where it remained.
The shooter cursed and looked over his shoulder for the furrow through the dirt of the plain that had appeared to be in motion itself. He took another closed fist punch to the gut and a string of words he did not understand.
“It wasn’t me! He shot it.”
The Arabic proclamation came again, “Don’t shoot its head!”
“I did not,” the shooter said, “but if you touch me again, I’ll shoot you in the fucking head.”
The truck lifted wild off the ground like it was launching into space. He clawed at the roof finding nothing to hold onto. Something sharp tore through the guts of the truck from underneath and the shooter felt the vibration pass under his feet in the bed. The Toyota pitched back forward spearing its grill nose first into the dirt.
The men inside grunted with the impact. The shooter took the roof of the truck in his chest, seeing black stars. His partner toppled head first over the side and vanished.
The shooter lifted himself back up with one shaky hand in the tilted truck. He bailed out over the driver’s side and looked under the truck. A piece of rock that was the same drab color as the grass speared up into the under carriage of the truck. Both back wheels hung raised and spinning dead in the air. The rhino’s face looked to be in better shape than the underside of the truck.
The driver’s door screamed on its hinges as the driver kicked it open. He planted his feet on the grass and bent forward to spit out blood. Before he had wiped the frothy blood off his lower lip, the driver had the radio to his ear calling for one of the others to come out with another truck.
The shooter heard screaming on the other side of the truck. He braced the butt of his rifle into his shoulder with the muzzle aimed toward the ground and circled the raised rear of the truck.
He came around to see the passenger hulking over the shooter’s partner on the ground. The passenger had disarmed the man and held his rifle by the stock out at his side while he slapped the man on the ground across his face with an open palm over and over. The passenger wore a sweat stained white tank top that showed his broad, dark musculature. The shooter thought the man on the ground was just lucky the passenger wasn’t still using his closed fist to deliver his disapproval. Through the entire episode, the passenger did not lose the camo hat perched on top of his head.
The shooter did not understand all the words, but he did hear, “Cut off its horn.”
The passenger took a handsaw from out of the floorb
The shooter shouldered his rifle and walked toward the pair. “I’ll do it. I’m not hurt.”
The passenger whipped around and extended his arm pointing with the end of the saw shimmering in the unforgiving, Tanzanian sun. His voice was hard-edged and chopped out the English syllables like his mouth was only designed for Arabic. “No, you will not. He ruined its head. He cuts the horn. You will all learn to do what I tell.”
The shooter fought the urge to reach up and feel his own neck as he stared at the saw in the extended arm. He lifted one hand away from his gun and held it palm up in beta surrender as he backed away from the self-declared alpha of their team.
The limping man took the saw from the passenger and hobbled toward the felled rhino. The passenger brought one boot up and side kicked him in the butt to add yet another insult for the damage to the rhino’s face.
The man knelt at the rhino’s head and took hold of the tip of the horn with his free hand. The beast’s heavy head tilted up in his grip with sad ease. He rested the teeth of the saw at the base and prepared to draw back to begin the cut, but then he turned his head slowly around to look over his shoulder into the foothills.
The passenger cursed and slammed the butt of the rifle he held into the quarter panel of the truck with a report as loud as if he had fired the weapon. “What ails you now, dog?”
The shooter had heard it too though. He dropped to one knee facing the hills and brought up his rifle. It was turning into a strange day, he thought.
Movement low in the grass drew his attention sideways, and he stared down the sights. The shooter aimed at the spot and waited. The man with the saw turned his attention back to his work.
The shot came from several feet farther away than where the shooter aimed. The man with the saw took it through the shoulder and fell forward over the rhino’s snout. The next shot punched through the side of the truck between the shooter and the passenger. The passenger dropped the rifle from his grasp and scrambled around the front of the truck. “It’s her.”
The shooter dropped and rolled under the truck crawling behind the rock for cover. “What are you saying?”
He watched the passenger and driver with the radio flee out into the open away from the cover of the foothills. “Where are you going? What is it?”
“It’s her.” The passenger called back in a full run without turning around. He looked like an entirely different person than the one the shooter had feared would cut off heads with a handsaw moments before.
“Her?” the shooter shook his head and turned to lean out from the side of the rock. A bullet grazed off the rock kicking sharp shards off cutting his cheek. He rolled away from the rock out from under the truck on the driver’s side. Even though he knew it was a mistake, he took to his feet and ran across the edge of the plain after the others. He breathed out her name with fear he could taste on his breath, “Allison.”
The word felt dark, evil, and unnatural on his tongue like it was not meant to be spoken in the Tanzanian air and sunshine.
The shooter looked back to see his partner rise slowly off the rhino, clutching his bloody shoulder. The shooter turned away and continued running. He thought about the lame creatures on the edge of a herd being dragged down first by the predators. The healthy members could then escape those that hunted them. He supposed this was no different.
The man on the ground knocked the saw aside as he heard more gunshots. His eyes widened as he saw the others had abandoned him. He was not surprised, but he was afraid. He spotted the barrel poking through the yellow grass. His gun had been cast aside beside the truck.
The Rover peeled out into the open where he could see it. Hanging out armed from the side he saw the swirl of the tattoos over her bared arms. They were as muscled as a man’s, but her eyes burned with cold beauty and fire. Auburn hair spilled out around her head bound in a loose wrap of camouflaged fabric. She looked even more imposing than the pictures of her in front of the American flag that he and the others had mocked on the Internet. They had printed them out and had desecrated the pictures in every manner they could imagine. As she rushed toward him on the side of the truck with his shoulder bleeding from the bite of her righteous vengeance, he felt the warmth spread across the front of his pants from the release of his bladder in sheer terror.
“Her.”
He lunged for the truck and bobbled through the bloody grass. His wounded arm hung useless and racked pain back through his body. He shuffled his knees and hopped on his one good arm.
She shouted out at him as she jumped off the Rover before it fully stopped. “Don’t do it. Stop right there. You’ve got no play here.”
Her voice was like cold water through his veins. It reminded him of the old black-and-white movie stars he had heard in films he had watched as a kid. That was a long way back from hobbling through the grass like a wounded animal.
The only dark-skinned man in their group of four jumped down from the other side. He was bigger than even the passenger that ran their squad of poachers. The dark man with an accent the poacher did not recognize said, “You better listen to her.”
The lone poacher believed the big man, but sprung the last couple feet for the rifle anyway. She put the bullet through the back of his head behind his ear. It exited taking most of his forehead and brain with it. He fell on his face without even registering the sound of the last shot. His final thought had been about her ice water voice speaking out at him from in front of an American flag. That thought took him into the darkness.
The driver leaned out the Rover’s window. “I think we were too late, Allison.”
Allison Tread knelt and looked at the torn side of the rhino’s head.
“At least they left empty-handed,” the dark man said.
“That’s not good enough, Brood,” Allison said.
Brood Kultha nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him.
Another man leaned out his passenger’s side window. “What do you want to do, Allison?”
She stood and looked out across the plain. The three surviving members of the party had almost reached the tree line. “I want to do what we came here to do, men. John, Mark, Brood, let’s catch some poachers.”
She turned and ran back toward the Rover.
John Lance restarted the vehicle. He threw one, wiry arm out on the window jamb like he was preparing for a quiet, afternoon drive. “Let’s go, kids.”
Brood Kultha pulled himself into the back bench where the back doors had been removed to facilitate their work. “They have a head start.”
John turned his head back to Brood. “Maybe we can chase them all the way back to Egypt and you can introduce me to one of your sisters.”
Brood snorted. “Even my sister has better taste and she is a bigger, more manly soldier than you, Corporal Lance.”
John Lance laughed and shifted into drive.
As Allison jumped into the back from the other open side, Mark Friday turned in his seat to face her. His barrel of a chest did not allow for much ease of movement, but he did so anyway to say, “They are almost to the rough terrain and the cover of the trees. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Go,” she ordered.
John slammed the gas and they raced between the wreckage of the truck and the body of the black rhino across the plain.
Mark turned back forward. “We have two bodies to deal with back there. One of them is human.”
Allison thought about the path of her bullet. Through the back of the head behind the ear and out through the forehead. She shot to kill—through the back of the head and the body falls flat on its face. It was so much like the first one that she wondered if she was killing from muscle memory.
She had arrived in Cairo and gathered her team when she first came to Africa. Her first conversation with the whole team and Ranger Diallo had been on Skype. Allison still had a dark bruise under her eye from the night in the bar. Diallo had asked her if she was okay and had welcomed them, but had emphasized assist and advise. The goal was to bring the poachers to justice.
