Jeff Rovin - Fatalis

Grand stopped several yards from the sinkhole and the eyes stopped with him. It was then that he realized what they reminded him of:

Security cameras.

They were just there in the dark corners of life, taking things in, processing images and data, doing nothing as long as nothing was done. Is that what this creature had done for tens of thousands of years?

From where he stood the trees were pale, tapered columns, like the entrance to an ancient temple. In his imagination the angled, upper branches formed sloping cornices while the twigs and leaves described a chaotic frieze. The ground mist was the smoke of sacrificial braziers, with wisps from censers hanging in the higher branches.

Having gone about ten feet from the sinkhole, Grand began moving forward just to see what the animal would do. The wind picked up as Grand walked toward the oaks. Its lively howl and the shuddering leaves smothered the noise of the helicopter entirely. The sounds and motion made Grand feel isolated even from his two companions. Yet never once, in all his years of exploring mountains and caves, had the scientist felt so much a part of a place. He was connected to the ground, the air, the heavens. Grand wondered if this was what Joseph Tumamait's vision had been like. Not a mystical coagulation of smoke and light but something very real and surprisingly personal.

The eyes continued to watch him. The moonlight filtering through the leaves picked out hints of a massive shape in the blackness. There were the lines of huge shoulders and hindquarters. But the animal was still mostly in shadow, impossible to define.

Grand stopped again, approximately fifty feet from the woods. The wind was whistling here, split by the trees. But beneath that sound he heard a rumble, like a low, steady drumroll. It took him a moment to identify it as the creature's deep breathing.

Then Grand stopped. He listened and turned very slowly toward the left.

And made a disturbing discovery.

Hannah had watched anxiously as Grand approached the thicket, his pale yellow jacket a dim ghost in the darkness. He was the only place of calm in a world that seemed to be made of nitroglycerin. Hannah didn't know what moment, what action, what impulse might cause an explosion.

A part of Hannah-a very large part-wanted to go to Grand. Not to help him, because she didn't see how she could, but to experience what he was experiencing. She once interviewed an astronaut after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and it shocked her when he said he envied them in a way: that they had died with their boots on.

Now she understood.

It seemed worth the danger, even the risk of dying, to be out there getting this story and phoning it in to Karen as it happened. The only reason she didn't was because it might hurt Grand. The scientist obviously had a feel for these things; if anyone could find out what was in the thicket and live to tell about it. Grand was that person.

So Hannah watched. Scared for Grand, frustrated at being on the sidelines, and also proud about having found the thing before Gearhart but now questioning the wisdom of not summoning him. She wished Grand would let them know what was out there, whether it was a stag or an owl or possibly their killer. But he was just standing there.

She crawled up slightly and stuck her head a little higher. Maybe Grand would see her and make some kind of sign.

He didn't. She inched up a little more. Stones fell from underfoot and clattered down the mountainside.

"Hannah-" the Wall quietly warned her.

"I know," Hannah whispered back.

She did. She was supposed to keep still and quiet. But the eyes weren't on her, they were on Grand. She turned back and looked down at her photographer. The Wall was lying against the mountain, cheek to rock, as though he were hugging the side of a trench.

"Wall, give me the camera with the telephoto lens," she said, softly but insistently.

"Why?"

"Please?"

"The professor said no pictures-"

"I know," she said. "I only want to try and get a better look."

"No," he said. "Just sit still."

"I can't! I promise I won't take any pictures," Hannah said. "I have to see."

The Wall hesitated. Then, with a sigh, he rose up slightly on his left hand. As he did stones fell away from under his feet.

"Shit!" he snarled.

The Wall froze as more stones fell. They clattered into rocks below and caused a small cascade. But the cliff-side didn't give out beneath him. Slowly, he lowered himself down.

"That's it," he said.

"What's it?"

He hunkered back down without removing the camera. "We're going to do what the man said. Wait."

"Wall-"

"You'll know what's out there soon enough," he said.

Hannah didn't bother arguing. She continued to look out at the milky, cloud-hazed forest.

This was maddening. Hannah was extremely disappointed at herself for not having gone with Grand. A reporter shouldn't be hiding behind a bunch of rocks. She should be in the middle of the investigation. Two could move as quietly as one, and the animal was as much her find-her responsibility, her risk -as it was Jim Grand's.

Just then, Grand moved. Instead of the back of his head she saw his face. But he was too far away for her to make out his expression or hear if he was saying anything.

She shrugged with her palms up and widened her eyes even though she knew he couldn't see them. If he wanted her to come over, he would have gestured in some way. So what did this mean? Was he getting ready to walk back or run back or go farther into the woods?

What ? she screamed inside, her fingers curling slightly as she shook her upturned hands.

As the young woman watched, something moved. Not in the woods, but to her immediate left. Hannah turned and looked in that direction. A moment later she slowly raised her right hand, reached into her shirt for her dog tags, and held them tightly.

She swore silently.

She should have phoned in the damn story.

Only once in his life had Malcolm Gearhart gotten to a point of frustration and rage that was so absolute that he lost it. That was when Company A, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, was in action against the Vietcong near Danang. Gearhart, his best buddy Emanuel "the Man" Slatkin-"of the Brooklyn, NY, Slatkins," as he was proud of saying, always pronouncing his home state En-Why -and three other men were part of Lieutenant Leonard Ax's advance party that had deeply penetrated heavily controlled enemy territory. The Vietcong suddenly opened fire from six different concealed positions, cutting off the five men from the main party. When Lieutenant Ax was cut down at the start, Slatkin took over the deployment of the remaining troops, organizing a base of fire while managing to kill four Vietcong and silence an automatic weapons position on his own. While Gearhart concentrated on the killing, that short little pecker Slatkin kept everyone's spirits up, kept them fighting, and helped keep them alive until the main body could cut through, drive the Vietcong back-the bastards usually didn't like to hang around for a fair fight-and get them the hell out.

That was when Slatkin stepped into a Hanoi Two-Fuck. They called it that because first you got screwed in a figurative sense; and second you literally got fucked when a thin, sharp eighteen-or-so-inch stake, usually bamboo but sometimes steel, attached to a horizontal arm, came slashing at you from camouflage hiding and penetrated your belly. Penetrated with such incredible force that it came out your back and dragged you with it, pinning you to whatever was behind you. Often, it was another soldier.