Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

IT SMELLED him. His sweat. Speeding hundreds of feet above the forest floor, the predator continued, the tiny nostrils on its underbelly pulsing. Suddenly a narrow tract of straight, treeless land appeared. A trail. The same trail Wayne Abbott was jogging on. The great body sped into it.

WAYNE STARTED picking up the pace.

SUDDENLY A massive shadow sped past the green metal sign…. Then the footbridge…

ARMS PUMPING, legs kicking, Wayne didn’t notice the moon. It was directly behind him now, casting a halo on his bobbing head. He also didn’t notice the squirrel. In front of a huge fallen redwood on the side of the trail, the furry rodent stood on its haunches. If Wayne had seen it, he would have thought it looked scared. He also would have thought it was looking right at him.

It wasn’t. It was looking above him. At the gargantuan gliding form near the treetops.

WAYNE’S SENSES were poor. The predator saw that immediately. He didn’t seem to hear, smell, or otherwise detect anything. His eyesight was weak as well. He’d run right past a host of birds, squirrels, and raccoons without so much as a head turn.

THE FOREST became quiet. The birds stopped chirping, the squirrels disappeared, even the wind seemed to die. Nothing stirred. Except Wayne Abbott. In his light blue shorts and soaked T-shirt, he bounded down the trail.

SUDDENLY AND silently, the shadow rushed toward his back….

WAYNE SUDDENLY stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t know why, but he thought something was behind him. He spun around.

Nothing was there, just an empty path, towering redwoods, and the moon.

He chuckled, a deep manly laugh. Wayne was a tough guy and had never been afraid of the dark. That was why he ran at night—because he was tough. Calm the hell down, he ordered himself. He started jogging again.

The shadow returned immediately, speeding toward him….

Wayne ran forward, growing nervous, though he didn’t know why.

THE SHADOW rushed closer, a hundred feet away, then fifty, ten… then it froze a yard from Wayne’s back.

A CURIOUS look formed on Wayne’s face. He heard something. A flapping sound. It was coming from behind him, and he knew he wasn’t imagining it.

He turned around.

THE CREATURE was just hovering there, flapping like an enormous seagull, ten feet above the trail and staring right at him.

Strangely, Wayne Abbott’s sweating, chiseled face was a perfect blank. He literally didn’t believe what was in front of him. The animal was the coolest thing he’d ever seen, the size and shape of a hang glider, only alive, flapping very rapidly. His first thought, which lasted for three confused seconds, was that he was the victim of a practical joke. That somehow his football buddies from L.A. were playing a gag on him.

But what he was seeing couldn’t possibly be a gag. He calmly surveyed the massive form. The milky-white underside. The nearly five-foot-thick torso. The fast-pumping wings. The enormous head. The partially open mouth—he’d never seen a mouth that large in his life. The enormous puffs of breath coming from it and condensing in the cold air. The horns, bigger than his biceps and jutting from the head. And the eyes—the coldest, blackest, most deadly calm eyes Wayne Abbott had ever seen.

“Jesus Christ,” he said in a surprisingly clear, unpanicked voice.

He still didn’t know if the animal was real.

Then, real or not, it moved. Like an enormous bat, it pumped its wings and passed directly over Wayne’s head. He didn’t flinch. He simply stared up at it, scanning its rippling milky-white underside as it blotted out the moon, its backdraft blowing back his hair. Then it dipped lower and faced him, now hovering on the other side of the trail.

Why’d it do that? Wayne wondered. Why did it move?

It still hadn’t occurred to him that his life was in danger. But then he noticed the eyes again. Black. Enormous. And staring at him with chilling intention. Suddenly something clicked. “Oh my God,” Wayne said quietly.

The predator made a sound then, a rumble, deep and chilling. Then a series of rumbles, rolling on top of one another.

Wayne stepped backward. He’d never heard such sounds coming from an animal before. They reminded him of something from a church organ.

Suddenly the rumbles erupted into a shattering roar.

Wayne fell on his back, shocked by the power of it. And the mouth producing it… It was wide open now, big enough to swallow two of him and filled with rows and rows of curvy teeth as fat as his forearms.

He just watched the ferocious gaping form… the mouth, the teeth, the breath condensing in the air.

He got up.

It was like a switch. The mouth closed and the roaring ceased.

Suddenly it was silent, the only sound from the steadily flapping wings.

Nothing else moved.

Then the eyes shifted and looked directly into Wayne’s. They almost seemed to be asking him a question. Don’t you know what’s happening here?

And suddenly Wayne did. Then he did what he’d been doing all night. He ran.

AS HE sprinted into the forest, Wayne’s once-even breathing and smooth strides deserted him, replaced by wild, desperate motions. He had no idea where he was going, he simply had to get away. He stomped over everything, soil, fern patches, fallen redwoods, a field of tiny white flowers, a trickling stream. After ten minutes, he realized he was alone. Gasping for air, he leaned against an enormous, moss-covered tree.

“My God, what the hell was th—” He held his breath. Was it up there? With shafts of moonlight shining into his eyes, he scanned the forest canopy above, his head quickly turning.

No, nothing was there, just trees and broken moonlight. He breathed again. He had to find his way back to the trail. He knew the way, he was sure of it….

Ten minutes later, he was lost.

Trying to get his bearings, he entered a small clearing. His head turning in every direction, he didn’t notice the moonlight directly above him disappear.

But then he sensed it. He looked up and saw the animal in silhouette, a massive gliding form near the treetops. He could actually feel its eyes watching him. He didn’t think. He just ran.

The silhouette suddenly changed shape. The wings pulled tight, and the creature dropped like a stone.

Speeding toward the moon-speckled soil, the great body banked and hurtled toward Wayne’s back.

He didn’t turn around. He just ran as hard as he could, chest heaving, legs pumping. He picked up speed rapidly, sneakers rising and falling, rising and falling, when suddenly… the sneakers didn’t come back down. Like a feather in the breeze, they were swept up and away.

“Jesus Christ,” Wayne said, as if startled.

He realized he was inside the creature’s mouth, wedged in its teeth.

“ Jesus Christ!” His scream was suddenly guttural and desperate.

He tried moving his arms, his legs, but everything was pinned.

“ Come on.” He strained his powerful upper body, trying to twist free but not moving a millimeter. “ Come on!”

The animal rose quickly, the cries growing louder and more desperate. Then there was a sickly crunching sound and Wayne Abbott went silent.

The creature burst through the canopy and emerged into the moonlit sky. Without the screaming, it was much quieter now, the only sounds from the wind and distant ocean.

Physically exhausted, the predator found a place to store its dangling kill, then ascended back into the night air. It would return here very soon; but for the moment, it was finished. It focused on the mountains in the distance and flew toward them. It gradually grew smaller… until it blended into the black rock and disappeared. All that remained were the moon and the gently blowing wind.