The Founder Effect, page 24
“How’s the water?” she asked suddenly, nodding toward the stream. “It looks warm.”
“It is,” I replied. “The hot spring is about a quarter mile from here, and it’s cooled off some by the time it gets here.”
“Let’s go for a swim,” she said playfully. “Then we can use the blanket to dry off.”
“Okay,” I said with a grin. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”
We dashed for the stream, but then I paused as I realized I really didn’t want to jump in with my clothes on. I turned toward Jessie and found she already had her shirt off. “Take your clothes off, stupid,” she said with another giggle. “Duh.”
I had my shirt off in a flash, but then her bra came off, and my eyes locked on her body, unable to break away. Life on a frontier colony, while hard, tends to work off any extra pounds that someone her age on Earth might have acquired, and she was perfect in every way. My jaw dropped, and I stopped what I was doing to stare.
“No peeking!” she exclaimed, covering herself. “Turn around!”
I shook my head, trying to gather my senses as I turned away from her, unable to get the vision of her out of my mind. It started working again after a few seconds, and I heard a splash as I began to fumble with the buckles on my holster.
“You’re the rotten—” Jessie called, but her voice cut off unnaturally, and I spun around in alarm to see what the problem was.
Jessie stood in water up to her hips, completely naked. I couldn’t completely appreciate the view, though; the look of fear and shock on her face as she pointed over my shoulder ruined the effect. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.
Then I heard the growl.
I turned around to find a nightmare pawing through the picnic basket on the blanket. Part wolf and part bear, it was completely terrifying from its saliva-dripping mouth to the end of its razor-sharp-looking back claws. Its fur—or hair, it was hard to tell—glistened softly across its almost two-meter-high body in the planet-light, and the creature blended in with the sheen of the low-lying plants. It took the picnic basket—nearly a third of a meter wide—in its mouth and crunched through it in a single bite, the wooden strips shattering under the onslaught.
“You said there was no monster,” Jessie said. She had come out of the water while I stared, and her naked flesh pressed into my back as she leaned forward to whisper into my ear.
I continued to gape at the creature, unable to shut my mouth for a few moments, while I also enjoyed the feel of Jessie rubbing up against my back. I had never been so overwhelmingly horrified, while simultaneously so aroused at the same time. It was oh so wrong, but it felt oh so right.
“I was wrong,” I finally gasped as the moment stretched far too long for the circumstances. What can I say? If I was going to die, I wanted to enjoy life—and the way Jessie felt up against me—for as long as I could.
And, the truth of the matter wasn’t that I was merely wrong—I was really, really wrong. There was a monster, and it was huge. I had no idea if it was the cause of the first two colony wipeouts—the smart sciency folks said that they had died from the New Flu—but I would easily have believed it if they’d pinned it on this beast.
While the beast looked huge as it pawed through our stuff on all fours, when it reared up on its hind legs, it blocked out at least half the stars in the sky. It was enormous; it was gargantuan. My mind ran out of superlatives. It was just that damn big.
I risked a glance over my shoulder at Jessie and could see she was vapor-locked; her brain had completely frozen in terror. Her mouth subconsciously opened and closed a couple of times, and it looked like she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. I was pretty happy about that—I didn’t want her to do anything that might make the creature charge and end our lives any sooner than it needed to.
The creature was closer to being a bear, I decided as it shredded the blanket; however, instead of bear hands, it had giant claws.
Then, unfortunately, Jessie finally found her voice. “Shoot it!” she whispered frantically. “Quick! Shoot it!”
“I don’t have a rocket launcher,” I whispered back, trying to keep my voice down as panic finally unleashed every adrenal gland in my body, and I started to shake uncontrollably. “All I have is this,” I added, drawing my pistol from its holster, “but it is not big enough for that.”
“I don’t care!” she exclaimed, her voice growing louder with every syllable. “Just shoot it!”
The last came out in a scream, and the creature’s head whipped around in our direction. It had dropped back to all fours, but it stood up again and roared. Or screamed, I’m not entirely sure what to call it. It was loud and unnatural, and it made my bowels and bladder want to release with an urgency I could barely resist.
I did what any normal person would have done: I vapor-locked, just like Jessie had done earlier, and stared at the monster as it roared at me again.
That, however, wasn’t enough action for Jessie, and she shoved me forward with a scream. “Do something!” At that point, Jessie went into full-flight mode and ran off across the lea naked, screaming in terror.
Which, obviously, was something the normal fauna of the planet didn’t do, because the creature dropped to all fours again to watch her performance with its head cocked to the side. Jessie made it about fifteen feet into the forest before running into a tree at full speed with a thwack! She fell to the ground, unmoving, and the creature started to shamble in her direction.
With Jessie no longer pressed up against my back, I realized I was able to use that part of my brain again—even though other portions remained locked in terror—and I realized I couldn’t let it do anything to that perfect, though unconscious, body.
“Hey! You!” I yelled as I pointed my pistol at the creature. It obligingly stopped and turned to look at me. I aimed right between its oversized, luminous eyes and fired.
And obviously missed, as it cocked its head as if trying to determine what made the loud noise. I fired again; another clean miss. I fired again and hit it somewhere; it stood up on its hind legs and roared again.
This gave me a much better target, and I fired off as many shots as I could. It was a long way off for a pistol, but the creature was enormous, and I had to have hit it at least a couple of times.
It dropped to all fours and started shambling toward me. I backed up, firing as quickly as I could get a good sight picture. The pistol’s slide locked back at the same time my boot hit the water of the stream behind me. I knew I didn’t want to go in the water—I would be at an even bigger disadvantage—and I began working my way along the bank as I fumbled with the next magazine.
The creature looped a little farther to the left, and I realized my error; it was herding me toward the cliff. Once it had me cornered, it slowed, as if no longer concerned I would get away. Whether it was actually intelligent or just had an animal-level wisdom, I had no idea, and I really didn’t care. The magazine locked in place, and I let the barrel slide forward; it was time to kill the beast.
I fired off the entire magazine as it drove me closer and closer to the precipice. I know I hit it at least a few times, but it was monstrous, shaggy, and appeared to have layers of fat; if I did anything more than piss it off, it wasn’t readily apparent. The slide on my pistol locked back again. I didn’t have a third magazine; I was out, and the monster kept coming.
My foot hit a rock behind me, and I stumbled—I was almost at the cliff’s edge. I was able to right myself before going over, and I turned to look at the creature. It looked back at me as if waiting to see if I was going to jump off the cliff.
The answer to that was, of course, a resounding “no.” It was at least twenty meters down to the floor below, and I had no idea how deep the water was, or if I’d even be able to land in it. The rocks at the edge of the stream, I had seen, were large and pointy; I had no desire to land on them.
I was out of options, and then one more came to my semi-nonfunctional brain—I would get the monster to charge, and then I would leap out of the way like a matador, and let the creature fall to the rocks below. It was a perfect plan except for one thing—I had fired two entire magazines at the creature and not enraged it; how was I going to get it to charge? I had no idea. All I had was the pistol. As it closed to five meters, I did what I could; I yelled and threw the pistol at the creature. It batted the pistol out of the air and made a chuffing noise. It took me a second, but then I realize what it was doing—it was laughing at me.
“Screw you!” I yelled. “If that’s the way you’re going to be, I’ll jump!”
I turned and looked down in the planet-light. I could easily see the rocks, covered in mist, shining below me. If I did it right, I might be able to clear the rocks. Maybe. The way the monster had looked at me, I could tell it was intelligent. If it was sadistic, too, I would be a long time dying. I’d watched a cat play with a mouse once; I’d rather take the rocks. At least it would be quick.
My muscles bunched, and it roared from behind me. Perhaps it didn’t want me to take the easy way out. Who knows? It sprinted forward, and I dropped to the edge of the stream, hoping it would go over me.
It didn’t; it stopped and grabbed me, lifting me up from the ground in its oversized claws. My arms were free, though, and I did the only thing I could—I jabbed it in the eyes with my first and second fingers held together like a knife blade. It stood all the way up—lifting me three meters into the air—and roared in my face.
And then the ground fell away underneath it, and we both began falling.
The monster flailed, throwing me to the side. I felt a momentary splash of water, then I went face-first into the side of the cliff as it rocketed past. My next recollection was of water again—not the impact, although the pain of the sudden stop may be what woke me up—but the water, just as I went under. I didn’t get a breath, but at least I didn’t breathe in any of the water, either.
I struggled to the surface, my lungs threatening to explode. It would have been easy if both my legs worked. They didn’t. My right knee burned with all the fires of hell when I tried to use it; apparently the impact with the water had damaged something inside it. I made it to the surface before my lungs gave out, though, and I stroked weakly to the closest side of the pool under the waterfall, using my last ounce of strength to pull myself up onto a flat rock.
Motion caught my eye as I lay there recovering; the monster climbed slowly from the water on the other side. It moved slowly and looked a lot worse for the wear. The water had matted its fur—or hair, or whatever it was—and it didn’t seem quite so big. It was merely enormous instead of gargantuan. That thought amused me, possibly due to the head injury I surely had, and a giggle escaped my lips.
Somehow, even over the roar of the waterfall, the monster’s ears picked up on the unnatural sound, and it spun around—all traces of weakness gone—to glare at me. Without a moment’s hesitation, it turned and began wading into the water toward me. I didn’t move, perhaps because something in my mind told me there was no way something that big could swim.
I was right; it sank. But just before its head went underwater, though, it took a deep breath and kept walking. As its head submerged, I could see it was still coming. I fought my way to my feet for a better look, and I could see the underwater shadow that was the monster continuing toward me, walking along the bottom of the pool like he was walking across a street back on Earth. I turned and ran.
Well, it wasn’t any more than a fast hobble, which, after about ten meters, turned into just a plain hobble, and then what might charitably only be called a shamble. I hadn’t made it very far into the forest when it announced its presence on my side of the water with its bellowing roar. I turned to look back, and its luminescent eyes locked on mine. It started forward.
As it did, however, I could see there was a hitch in its gait; it had hurt one of its back legs, too. It dropped to all fours and shuffled after me.
A thought ran through my mind—the monster could be hurt. I smiled. At some point, my brain had turned it into an invincible adversary, like a creature out of a science fiction novel or something. As it lumbered toward me, I realized that if I could beat it back to the settlement, there would be guards—with rifles—who might just be able to kill it.
Then I realized I was on the wrong side of the water from the colony and getting even farther from it as I fled.
I tried to swing up to the right, but quickly came up against the cliff again. I didn’t know if there’d be a way to scale it farther on—I’d never come this way before—but I didn’t want to pin my hopes on it. I tried to bear left to get around it on that side, but the creature moved to cut me off. I looked back over my shoulder to see it was gaining on me. I guess you could travel faster on three of four legs than you could on one of two. I started to look forward again, and I had a split second to see the tree before I ran into it.
When I woke up again, my whole body hurt, and it only took one more bounce before I realized that was because the monster had ahold of my leg and was pulling me along the ground. I’m sure my back—shirtless—was a mass of abrasions, and my knee now hurt worse, as that was the leg the monster was pulling me along with.
Dragging me didn’t seem to be helping the creature, either; its limp was far more pronounced now, too.
I leaned forward a little, so my back wasn’t taking quite as much abuse, but my stomach muscles weren’t strong enough to hold me up very long. It didn’t matter, I saw, as the ground smoothed out beneath me; the creature was pulling me into a cave. My first reaction was to try to break free—to run!—but I realized that the creature had caught me once, so I decided to wait and see if another opportunity came up. And I hurt too badly at the moment to do anything else.
The creature dragged me down an incline as we entered the cave, and then back up the other side, before letting go of my leg. I allowed it to flop down lifelessly as the monster turned to look at me. I was as still as I could be as I looked at it through the slit of one eye. I didn’t know if it thought I was dead, but even I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. After a moment, the creature shuffled off to the side, made some snuffling noises, then shuffled off the way we came in. I gave it a few seconds, then opened my eyes and sat up.
And wished that the creature had killed me while I was unconscious.
I was in the creature’s lair, left there to be its child’s breakfast—I figured—when it woke up. The mini monster was no more than two meters from me, sleeping in a nest of leaves and fur. The moss on some of the cave walls provided enough illumination to see the creature in all its horror—it was an exact miniature of the larger one, but in a half-meter-long package. And the enormous stack of bones in the back of the cave showed that parent and child ate . . . a lot.
In a panic, I stood up, slamming my head into the ceiling of the cave, knocking myself back to the ground again. Rubbing my head to make the stars go away, I stood up a little slower and found I could walk but had to do it hunched over. I looked around for anything I could use to defend myself from the larger creature—probably the little one’s mother—but didn’t see anything. As my eyes darted about frantically, I realized I did, however, still have my knife. Strapped to my upper leg, it had somehow survived the fall from the cliff and my trip to the cave.
I whipped it out and realized how totally inadequate it was for the situation. About the only thing I could kill with it would be myself. Or maybe the baby. Unfortunately, while dispatching the little thing would keep it from growing into another monster, it probably wouldn’t endear me to the baby’s mother. However . . .
Without thinking about it, I sheathed my knife and scooped up the little creature. It snuffled a bit at the new smells and the motion, but I rocked it in my arms, and it went back to sleep.
Careful not to hit my head, I proceeded to the cave’s exit. I could see the mother about twenty meters away in the forest, relieving herself. The perfect time to stage my getaway! The sun was just starting to rise, so, since I thought I’d been heading west last night, I snuck off to the east.
I might have made it, too, if the baby hadn’t picked that time to cry out in its sleep. I looked over my shoulder, and my eyes met the monster’s as her head snapped around toward the baby’s cry.
The chase was on. It occurred in slow motion, mostly, since we were both hurt, but that did nothing to lessen our intent. I wanted to get free, and the monster wanted to get her baby back. The baby woke up and began crying, and then turned into a Cuisinart. Claws slashed everywhere, and it was all I could do to avoid having my stomach sliced open as I ran. The mother roared from behind me, and I turned.
I held the baby up by the scruff of its neck, placing the point of my knife to its throat, and the monster stopped like it had hit a wall. It glared at me, expressing every bit of its hatred for me, and I did my best to glare back. She won the battle of the staring contest, but I won the war as I still had her child and a knife to its throat. I took a few tentative steps backward, then turned and ran off again.
After a few minutes of flight, I realized the mother wasn’t trying to catch me anymore—she was merely pacing me, waiting for an opportunity where she could safely separate me from her offspring and then kill me in some horrific way. The baby suffered through it all, crying intermittently. While I felt bad for it—it was probably hungry—I didn’t feel badly enough to give up and die and become its next meal.
I kept working my way to the east, not sure where I was or where I was going, but knowing I couldn’t stop to rest. The baby got heavier and heavier the farther I ran, and I wanted to toss it aside; however, I was afraid to do so. Would the mom stop if I did, just happy to have her baby back? Or would she put forth a burst of speed to kill the creature—me—who’d had the temerity to steal her offspring? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out, so I continued to shuffle along.
