But he could hear more than that. Beyond, and almost hidden beneath the surrounding sounds, he could hear a migration. Smaller animals, birds—these were the vanguard. They were moving toward the area where the raccoon fight had taken place; but they weren’t motivated by the need to feed. It was more than that. They weren’t carnivorous creatures, and would, in truth, be at risk from the scavengers around the carcasses.
So what was scaring them so much that they were blindly running into trouble? It had to be something big, which was why he felt the need to stay awake, to listen and to try to read the sounds of the night. The sounds were too far off to be an immediate threat, but the group was moving fast enough—if the flight of the creatures he could detect was an indication—to trouble them the following day.
By the time dawn had broken, the companions were all awake. At first light, they struck camp. By this time, the flight of the smaller creatures was obvious to all, so close had it become. Yet what lay behind it…
“It’s trouble, no doubt about that,” Krysty said softly, her tone betraying the worry that she felt. Her hair was nestled close to her scalp, her doomie sense working overtime now that she had rested.
“Yeah, but what?” J.B. queried. “Is it the kind of trouble where we try and move out of the way, or is it the kind where that’ll just get us blasted in the back?”
“A dilemma, my dear John Barrymore, a dichotomy that we must solve if we are to save our skins,” Doc whispered.
“Any idea what it is, Jak?” Ryan asked. “It doesn’t sound like a sec party of any kind…” The one-eyed man had been speculating to himself that, if they were near a ville, the noise of the previous night’s firefight with the mutie raccoons may have carried. And it would be understandable if the ville baron’s response to unexpected blasterfire was to send out a party to hunt down the possible threat. But the disturbance seemed to be natural. He couldn’t hear men, horses, wags. And there had been no other blasterfire.
Jak didn’t answer him at first. His attention was still so focused on the source of the flight that it took a while for him to snap into the space occupied by his companions.
“Not men,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Not just animal.”
“What does that mean?” Mildred asked, voicing the confusion they all felt.
“Means not know, not get it,” Jak replied. “Ryan, let me recce. Stay here, give half hour,” he said, tapping his wrist chron.
Around them, the birds chattered and swooped in and out of the foliage and the grasses rustled as small mammals and reptiles moved past them, taking care only to avoid the companions.
Ryan assented after some thought. “Triple-red, okay?”
Jak flashed Ryan a grin—as if he was ever anything else—and moved off into the jungle, running against the flow of the wildlife.
“Okay, people, get hard,” Ryan said to the others, indicating the cover of nearby trees. “Safe to assume we can’t outrun it. We need to know what it is. Let’s hope Jak finds out.”
JAK MOVED THROUGH the woodland like quicksilver, using the clumps of trees as cover, swift and surefooted. This was his natural environment, giving himself over to his finely honed hunting instincts and not thinking consciously, letting his senses tell him what to do. Even through the heavy combat boots his feet seemed as tactile as his hands, searching out the uneven sections of the woodland floor, groping for and avoiding treacherous roots and divots.
He was soon past the mass migration of wildlife, and skirted the clearing where they had defended themselves against the mutie raccoon pack, pausing briefly to note that the scavengers who had followed in their wake had made short work of clearing the carcasses. Few scraps of flesh remained, and there weren’t even that many bones left to mark the battle. Only fresh stains where the blood-soaked earth hadn’t yet been fully absorbed into the woodland floor.
In the eerily empty zone past the migrating creatures, there was a cone of silence, one that was soon broken by a noise that he recognized immediately. One that had been hidden enough by the other sounds to disguise it sufficiently until now. And the scent, sickly sweet, that was also too familiar.
Stickies…
Jak slowed and moved with more caution. The stench of them filled his nostrils and he could hear their movements—fast, slithering, almost reptilian—as well as the hissing breathing and the wordless mewling of the pack.
Stickies tended to move in packs, like herds of cattle, but not normally this fast. And he had never known a pack to cause such a panic among the wildlife of an area. Something out of the ordinary was occurring here and he needed to find out just exactly what it may be.
His senses told him that the pack was at least thirty strong—he couldn’t keep track after counting that many different noises—and moving with speed. They would be on him in a few minutes. He knew he could outrun them once he’d completed the recce, but he needed to get closer, undetected. He jumped for a handhold on a tree limb that was just a foot above his head. He tested its strength, knowing it should hold him easily enough.
Jak pulled himself up into the tree, using the leaf cover to hide himself. He took a good look around. There were enough trees to provide cover for him to circle the pack, always assuming the branches were strong enough to take his weight. Or else he could stay here and wait for the pack to come into view. Unfortunately, from his present position, the trees that provided him with cover also prevented him from getting a good look at the pack.
Jak was patient. He could wait all day and all night for his prey, immobile and focused. But that was when time wasn’t such a pressing issue. Right now, he couldn’t afford to wait.
Testing each limb as he moved, Jak clambered from tree to tree. He was high enough for any noise to be put down to birds fluttering in the branches. Besides, stickies weren’t climbers. As long as he could stay high, he could evade them if he was spotted.
It took only a few trees before he was upon them. He stopped and looked down. The noise they were making had covered any of his own and he felt certain that his presence had not been detected.
They were a heaving mass of mutie flesh, moving almost as one. The black, shining eyes, bereft of intelligence; the fleshless lips over jagged, razor-sharp and yet rotten teeth; the papery, pale skins and the hands with the suckerlike pads on the ends of the fingers. Their very presence seemed to emit an aura of decay. And they were agitated in a way that he had never before seen. As the stickies moved, they tore up anything in their path. The foliage, vegetation and shrubbery that littered the woodlands, even the grasses, were torn from the ground, leaving a churned-up trail in their wake.
Most stickies were mindlessly destructive at the best of times, but this was more than that. It was no wonder that the animals, reptiles and birds had wanted to flee. Anything in their way would be ripped to shreds. Not even for food, but just because it was there.
And the companions were right in their path. Waiting.
Jak turned and moved swiftly through the trees until he was sure he was beyond sight and sound of the pack. He dropped onto the woodland floor and began to run, picking his way nimbly over the roots and the uneven earth. All the while, his mind was racing. By the time he reached the companions, there would be only the slightest of distances between himself and the stickies. Although he was moving fast, the extra distance in circling them would tell. It would be enough time for the group to adopt a defensive position and to try to blast their way out of trouble, but not enough time for them to move out of range and to safety. They couldn’t rely on keeping one jump ahead when they didn’t know what the terrain in front of them was like.
But