Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

She paused. “You don’t want to see for yourself?”

“I doubt I’d make it out any better than you. Where is it exactly?”

“On those rocks jutting out of the water. Over there.” Maybe I really got through to him, she thought.

“Want to check it out, take a closer look?”

“Yeah.”

They paddled to shore in a twelve-person rubber raft, tied it up, and stomped through white water. Shin-deep, Lisa led the way, her head slowly turning. “It was right around here….” She pointed. “There.”

Jason saw it right away. Caught on a big black rock, a skeleton of some kind.

They waded toward it, and Lisa wondered if it was another dead dolphin. But as they got closer, she saw it was something else entirely.

Craig’s eyes narrowed. “What is that?”

Lisa struggled to lift it out of the sea, a heavy bone-white skeleton. Clearly not a fish but a land-based animal of some kind. Bigger than a dog, with four legs, a large triangular head, and thick bones.

“It’s a bear cub,” Darryl said quietly.

Craig eyed it closely. “God, I think you’re right. So…” He looked around. “Where’d it come from?”

Jason glanced up the coast. “With the currents, who knows.” Currents were deceptively powerful and could carry inanimate objects for miles in just half a day.

“What the hell are those?” Lisa said suddenly.

Jason sloshed up next to her. “What?”

She pointed to the top of the skull. “Those.”

She was shaking slightly, so he took the skeleton from her. There were two huge holes in the top of the skull. “My God. I think they’re… teeth marks.”

Craig leaned in. “Holy cow, they are. So… one of those rays killed a bear ?”

“A bear cub, ” Darryl said precisely.

“But a bear.”

Phil looked around. “So where’d it come from?” He scanned the landscape, the towering redwoods, the black rocks, the coast farther north. “I mean did this thing fall into the ocean and get attacked?”

No one answered. They all told themselves that must have been what happened.

Lisa continued to shake. Jason didn’t know whether it was from the cold water or something else. He put an arm around her, but she just continued, and he noticed her face was tight. He wished he could say something to calm her down, but he wasn’t sure that was possible.

Darryl just eyed the holes in the top of the skull. “Jason, I think we better teach you…” He glanced at Lisa and Phil. “I think we better teach all of you… how to fire a rifle.”

Jason scanned the wild, desolate terrain. “I think you’re right.”

THE PREDATOR hadn’t moved. Flat on the plateau in front of the cave, its colossal frame gently rose and fell. It was breathing evenly now, its large lung fully adapted to the air.

Its eyes shifted, calmly studying the giant dark space before it. The animal was ready.

It started flapping, smacking its wings loudly and ferociously against the rock. It didn’t lift off. It barely budged.

It ceased all movement.

Then the muscles on the left side of its back began rippling very fast. They continued for several seconds, then froze, and those on the right began. Then they stopped and the left started. Then the right. Then both sides froze, and very quickly, the front half of the great body coiled off the rock. When the massive head was completely vertical, the hulking form went still. The animal didn’t move. It effectively stood there, more than six feet tall, its back half flat on the rock, its front steady in the air.

From the new vantage point, it studied its surroundings anew, little puddles on the plateau, two dozen wriggling crabs, the spray of seawater from the breaking waves behind it, the mountains, and the sky.

The wind started gusting and the head turned slightly, sensing it.

Then, in a fluid series of motions, the creature bodily threw itself into the air, simultaneously flapped its wings and, like a seagull, rose on the diagonal. Pumping hard, it surged straight for the vast cave opening, then banked and veered over the ocean. It rose to one hundred feet then began testing itself: flapping, gliding, speeding up, slowing down, rising, diving, and hovering. Every movement was smooth and graceful. Like breathing air, they were all effortless now.

The creature veered into a wide, sweeping circle and focused on the cave. Then it dove toward it.

The air whipped past and the space rapidly grew larger. Surging closer, the animal felt a tinge of cold air. Then it arched lower and rocketed right in.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, an abysmal shaft of dank black rock, small stagnant puddles on the floor. The great body hurtled through, the sounds of the ocean quickly fading. Then the creature began pumping, its wings blowing away one puddle after another. The puddles were growing smaller. The light was disappearing….

The predator didn’t know the significance of what it was doing. It didn’t know it was about to become the first animal to permanently leave the sea since the amphibians 300 million years before. It only knew there was food on the land.

It rocketed forward and disappeared within the lightless cavern.

THIS CAVE was smaller than its oceanside counterpart, eight stories high and three car lanes wide. At the very top of the mountain range, it offered a towering view. A field of gently flowing cornstalks was below; miles beyond that, the looming redwood forest.

It was midmorning, and there was no sun. Near the cave’s entrance, the creature was sprawled out on the dank stone, still moist from the previous night, its thick hull rising and falling as it breathed. Submerged in shadows, the animal blended seamlessly into the black rock and was very hard to see. It had long since made its way to this side of the mountain, the land side.

It was an ugly, cloudy day, and its eyes were pointed at the sky. Though the predator wasn’t looking at the sky, nor at the clouds. It was studying the light. It had just brightened, if only slightly. Human eyes, which took in one-five-hundredth the amount of visual information, never would have detected it. It was another shade of gray, one of more than four hundred the creature had seen in just the past hour.

It didn’t move. As the day continued, the sun gradually peeked through the clouds, reached a maximum height, then began to dip. A sunset followed, then disappeared. The night came, the moon rose, and still, the animal remained still. The moon fell, the muted light of day arrived, the sun rose again, and the process repeated itself. When the sunrise returned once more, the study of light was complete. It was time to sleep. Though not here.

Seconds later, the predator zoomed through the maze of blackened tunnels behind it, cold air whisking past its large horned head. It saw nothing yet sensed everything. It continued for several seconds when it entered a towering, unseen central cavern. It pumped its wings hard, rising several hundred feet, then glided down in wide, sweeping circles. Ten feet from the dank rock floor, it simply stopped flapping and landed with a loud, echoing thwack. Then it closed its eyes and slept.

FOURTEEN HOURS later the creature awoke. It was pitch-black here, yet the animal knew it was light outside. Its study guaranteed it. Hungry, it flew to the nearby carcass of a bear it had killed, the mother of the cub. It feasted savagely, tearing off ragged bloody chunks of fur-covered meat, then chewing. When its stomach was full, it flew back to the cave mouth and landed with a thump that kicked up surprising amounts of black dust. As the dust settled around and on top of it, it didn’t move. It focused on the distant redwood forest, knowing prey was there. It wanted to hunt badly but knew it could not. The sun was in the sky. It just had to wait for it to disappear.