Scott Sigler - Ancestor

The other animals, the bigger ones, those had been easy to take down. But the tall, thin ones… they could be dangerous. They had a stick. A stick that could kill.

She and her siblings had learned not to rush in when they smelled the stick. They had a new way to hunt, a patient way.

Baby McButter softly flicked her dorsal flap three times, signaling to the others. Saliva welled up in her mouth and dripped onto the snow. Small whines escaped her closed mouth.

Whines of hunger.

MAGNUS KEPT THE gas pedal flat on the floor. The Bv could not go fast enough. Down the hill at the end of the narrow, snowbank-and tree-lined road, he saw the Sikorski’s rotor blades spinning down. And walking away from the hangar, Bobby Valentine and Danté.

His brother.

His only family.

“Come on, come on!” All the yelling in the world wouldn’t make the Bv206 move any faster.

DANTÉ STRODE UP the trail toward the mansion, Bobby Valentine at his side. Up ahead, Danté saw Clayton’s snow-plow machine plodding down the road.

“Not exactly a hero’s welcome,” Bobby said. “Clayton’s shit-mobile. I would have thought Magnus would be here with the Hummer.”

Danté said nothing. In all his life, he had never been this angry. The hangar was empty . The C-5, gone. Magnus had defied him, moved the lab. The wonderful project was over. Raw fury blurred Danté’s concentration.

He felt a hand on his chest. Bobby had reached back in warning, his eyes focused up the trail. Danté followed Bobby’s gaze. About ten meters ahead, something was lying half buried in the roadside snowbank. Something black and white. One of the cows? It moved slightly, with the small motions of an injured animal. The snow all around the animal was churned up and lumpy, beaten down to the ground in some places, in others still a meter deep. It looked like the animal had been on the losing end of a fight.

Bobby took one cautious step forward, looked hard, then backed up. “Get to the chopper, and move slow, ’cause that sure as fuck ain’t no cow.” He reached into his leather flight jacket and drew a pistol.

Then Danté made the connection. Cow skin, sure, but the head was too big, too wide. And the body, all muscular, narrow hips…

… narrow, like a Synapsid.

“It’s an ancestor,” Danté said. “Rhumkorrf… he did it.”

Years of work, billions of dollars, and they had finally pulled it off.

They had won .

Spellbound, Danté walked toward his creation.

Bobby’s hand on his chest again, stopping him. “Boss, no way , back to the Sikorski, right now.”

Danté blinked, looked at Bobby, then at the creature. The huge, powerful creature. Yes, maybe the helicopter was the best place to be.

“Okay,” Danté said. He turned to walk back.

The snowbanks exploded in a cloud of white. Seven huge creatures erupted out of them like demons spawned forth from a frozen hell.

Bobby reacted quickly. He brought his gun up to fire at the closest creature, but it lashed out with long claws that slid through Bobby’s neck like knives through a balloon filled with red water. His severed head flipped through the air and landed at Danté’s feet. Before the decapitated body could fall, two of the creatures opened their huge mouths and lunged. One creature bit into the midsection. The other clamped its jaws high on the chest. Both yanked savagely, tearing Bobby in half just below the sternum. The first creature violently shook its bloody mouthful, making Bobby’s dangling legs flop like those of a cloth puppet. Danté saw internal organs fly through the air. Some landed on the ground, some were caught in mid-arc by the other creatures.

Danté turned and sprinted back down the road.

“NO, FUCK NO, fucknofuckno!”

Just a few hundred yards from the landing strip, Magnus watched the creatures bound after his brother.

COLDING WATCHED THE infrared monitor. The white glow of several huge creatures broke out of the dark-colored woods on either side of the narrow road.

They chased another white blur… a human-shaped one. Danté Paglione.

Rhumkorrf’s small fist, the one that wasn’t frostbitten, lightly punched the desktop over and over. “What have I done? What have I created?”

The first white blur picked Danté off in midstride. For just a moment, the blurs of predator and prey merged, becoming one on the screen. Danté’s blur, minus a leg, cartwheeled through the air, a trail of heat-white arcing from the new stump. Like a receiver and a defensive back going for a wounded-duck pass, two of the creatures leaped and caught him before he hit the ground. They jerked their heads, tearing the man apart. Three more animals smashed into the glowing white pile and joined the feeding frenzy.

Just like that, Danté was gone. The pack of monsters sprinted to the Sikorski, surrounding it, noses to the ground.

Rhumkorrf kept pounding the desk. “What have I done?”

Colding switched back to normal vision. The Bv206 had stopped. It stayed still for just a couple of seconds, then turned left, slowly driving down the road that led to the rest of the island, to the old town.

The road that led to the church.

“Clayton, tell me you reached Gary.”

“He’s not answering, eh? I don’t think he made it back to da mainland. I gotta find him.”

Colding turned to Rhumkorrf. “Bobby’s helicopter, you can fly that thing, right?”

Rhumkorrf nodded.

On the monitors, more ancestors trotted out of the woods to join Danté and Bobby’s killers. They surrounded the Sikorski. Colding counted at least thirty of them. The stocky animals sniffed around, dorsal fins twitching up and down. Then, as a group, all their heads turned to look down the length of the landing strip.

Colding switched to a wider view. At the edge of the long, curving strip stood a black dog, left leg held up as if it were hurt, its body shaking with the intensity of its repeated barking.

Like a perfectly trained army, the creatures took off as one unit, sprinting toward Sven Ballantine’s dog.

Mookie’s body convulsed with one more round of barks, then she turned and ran into the woods at the strip’s northeast end. The creatures lumbered down the same curving strip that had once handled the C-5’s landing and takeoff. They followed Mookie into the dense trees.

Colding knew they might not get another chance at the helicopter. “Clayton, we’ve got to move, you good?”

“Good enough. Let’s get to da church. Maybe Gary is there with Sara, and if not we go from da church to da harbor.”

Colding shook his head. “No, you’re going on the helicopter with Rhumkorrf. I can’t trust him not to take off on us. Sorry, Doc, but I can’t.”

Clayton reached up and grabbed Colding’s arm. “That motherfucker Magnus cut off my fuckin’ finger and he could be going after my son . I’m taking one of those guns, and I’m going to kill that big bastard. You got that, Colding?”

Colding looked into the older man’s eyes, saw fury, hatred, stubborn determination.

“I won’t run,” Rhumkorrf said. “I… I swear it. This is my fault, everyone is dead because of me. I swear, P. J., I won’t leave you.”

Colding looked at Rhumkorrf. The scientist had a pleading expression on his face. He seemed desperate for at least some shred of redemption. Could he be trusted? Colding looked back at Clayton and knew that he didn’t have a choice.

“All right, Clayton. But you fall behind and you’re on your own. This isn’t some story you made up about bow hunting with Charles Bronson or whatever, and I won’t die because you can’t keep up.”

“Fair enough. But I don’t know why you’re babbling on about Charles Bronson, never met da guy.”