Fatalis

The trees were about thirty feet below. Lyon's palms were sweaty but he felt just like he used to before a big gag-pumped, ready, there.

They were down to twenty feet. The leaves were whipping madly, which actually gave Lyon a clearer view of the ground and his target He could see the cat's hindquarters through the branches.

"Go west a few feet," Lyon said. Hopefully, that would stir the leaves where he needed a clearer view. Lyon's left foot was on the step at the bottom of the door and his right in the corner of the door itself. It was a secure perch even though it didn't give him a wide target area; the helicopter's landing skid was too far below the cabin for him to lean on. That was why they had to keep the cat in a fairly narrow range.

The chopper shifted slightly and continued to descend. They were roughly ten feet above the trees and thirty-five feet above the target The leaves parted and blew off ahead of the cat and it moved toward them. Lyon took a moment to drink the creature in.

Grand hadn't been kidding. The thing was a giant, like nothing Lyon had ever seen except maybe in some of the monster movies he'd done. He'd have its head in his sight in just a few seconds-

Something flashed past his sight and the helicopter shuddered violently. The Special Ops officer looked up from his rifle just in time to see the impossible. Lit by the green glow of the control panel, he saw one of the cats land on the skid, stretch itself up, and fill the open doorway.

The damn thing had jumped from the treetops.

Lyon's last thoughts were of something Grand had said before he went to the blockhouse. Decoys and feints, he had warned. They use military-style tactics.

The cat lunged at Lyon. The gun fell overboard. Blood sprayed from an upswipe of the cat's claw, ripped from somewhere on the left side of Lyon's chest. It spotted the windshield, controls, and Deputy Russo. While the pilot tried desperately to focus on the controls, the special Ops Officer was screaming beside her, flailing at the monstrous weight on top of him.

The creature's powerful motion, weight, and the repeated lashings of claw and fang made it impossible to steady the helicopter. The skids crunched on the upper branches and then the cabin thumped with an ugly, loud bump on the tree-tops. The helicopter settled unsteadily on its perch.

Russo sought to abandon the craft. She released the controls and turned toward the door. Before she could reach it, the cat surged over the mangled Special Ops officer and put its two long teeth into Russo's left shoulder. The pilot shrieked as the cat bit down and away.

The helicopter tilted toward port, Lyon's side. The slanted rotor was still turning at top speed as it cut into the trees, filling the air with wood, leaves, and the clacking of the rotor as it struck the branches.

The narrow blades bent and folded, one of them slamming through the windshield and filling the cabin with glass. A moment later the rotor hub stopped turning when it hit one of the heavy lower branches. The helicopter settled noisily into the trees, on its side. The trail rotor continued slicing downward, kicking up dirt and sparks as it struck the ground. The rear rotor cap cracked, causing the unit to fly off. It cartwheeled across the ground, stopping only when it embedded itself in a tree trunk.

Except for falling particles of leaf and the occasional groan of a branch, the night was nearly still. Nearly, but not quite.

While one cat waited and watched, the other leaped from the cabin of the fallen helicopter. It landed heavily on the ground then shook itself off from head to tail. The fur of its face and shoulders was splashed with blood. Some of the blood was from the occupants of the cabin while some of it belonged to the cat itself. One of the rotor blades and several pieces of glass had cut it on the right shoulder when the blade struck the windshield.

But it would survive.

It was not time to feed and, leaving the bodies behind, the cats walked toward the sinkhole, slipped inside, and thought nothing more of this strange new creature that had tried to take the night from them.

Chapter Fifty-Four

"There's something I need to understand," Ha

"Cryogenesis," she went on. "How has that kept these animals alive until today?"

"I honestly don't know," Grand said.

"But that has to be how it happened. They couldn't have been living underground."

"I don't see how," Grand said.

Ha

"But there are a lot of problems with cryogenesis," Grand went on. "As you said, glaciation didn't reach this far south," Grand said. "Even if it had, simple freezing wouldn't have done the job."

"Why not? Remember those three Incan children who were found a couple of years ago, twenty-two thousand feet up an Argentine volcano?"

"Mount Llullaillaco."

"That's the one," she said. "Those kids were sacrificed five hundred years ago and freeze-dried by the climate. When they were discovered there was still blood in their hearts and lungs."

"They were also dead," Grand said.

"The children were dead before they were frozen," Ha

"Then all of their biological systems would have stopped immediately," Grand acknowledged.

"And preserved?"

"Theoretically."

"Which is what happens in cryogenics."

"True," Grand said, "but there's a big difference between preservation and successful reconstitution."

"I know," Ha

Grand glanced at her. "Another article?"

Ha

"I read about that, but it was extremely limited activity," Grand pointed out. "There was some cellular growth but not the full-scale metabolism we're seeing here."

"Yes, but maybe conditions were different in some way," Ha

Grand was tired but Ha

"We've had an incredible amount of rain and lightning over the past few weeks which could be a factor in some way," Ha

"All right," Grand said. "I found the fur in what was apparently a volcanic vent."

"Volcanoes," Ha

"Possibly."

"Things in Pompey were preserved by ash and pumice."

"Again, not alive," Grand said. "But you mentioned something a minute ago that wasn't entirely accurate yet may have something to do with this."