Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

DARRYL HOLLIS hesitated. Then stopped. Breaking his own rules, he studied the forest behind him, scanning in every direction.

Watching him closely, Jason thought he looked a little miffed.

Then Darryl turned forward and continued walking.

LESS THAN a minute later, Darryl stopped again.

“Something’s close… I think.”

Monique and Craig shared a look. Does Darryl know what he’s doing?

Darryl quickly walked forward, and immediately there was a rustling from the forest ahead of him. Like lightning, he removed an arrow, drew it back, then… put it back down.

“It’s the deer coming back.”

An entire family sprinted past and Darryl turned to where they’d come from. “Something scared ‘em.” It was on the ground, Darryl was sure of it. “Forget the circle. It’s over here….”

He trotted toward a huge mass of tightly packed rhododendrons.

Following, Jason glanced up at the fog. Weren’t they looking for something in the air? Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the rhododendrons shaking, just fifteen feet away from them. His gaze leveled. Could the creature have landed on the ground?

Darryl walked closer. As they approached, the plants slowly stopped. They circled around them and—

Darryl saw it first.

A massive black bear, nearly ten feet tall, standing on its hind legs and unaware they were watching it.

It was just standing there in the middle of a clearing. Then it fell to its front paws and began storming around in circles, striking out at the air for no apparent reason.

Craig held his rifle tightly. “Look at the size of that thing.”

Phil shook his head. “So all this time it was just a bear.”

Jason nodded. He couldn’t believe it. Nothing but a goddamn bear. “How do you like that?”

The bear jerked toward them. Jason had spoken much louder than he’d intended.

Darryl shook his head. “Not smart, Jason.”

The bear looked right at them. Then charged.

Darryl didn’t have a choice. In an instant, he removed an arrow and aimed it at the rapidly approaching fur-covered chest.

But he didn’t shoot.

Craig turned to him anxiously. The bear was really moving fast. “What are you doing?”

Strange thoughts surged through Darryl’s head. Something didn’t smell right. “What’s bothering you?” he whispered as the bear sprinted closer.

Craig’s voice rose. “Darryl, what are you doing? Shoot it. ”

“We’re not looking for you, are we?”

The bear stormed closer still.

“ Jesus Christ, Darryl, shoot it.”

The bear ran hard, just ten feet away, five…

Suddenly it stopped dead in its tracks. It glanced at the six of them, then awkwardly turned and lumbered away. Darryl just watched it go. Ornery bears often played their intimidation games, but there was no need to kill them unnecessarily. Only this bear, Darryl could tell, wasn’t trying to intimidate anyone. It was just… riled. He looked around.

“There’s something else here. Get back in the circle.”

The bear disappeared, and it was perfectly silent again.

They didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound.

Darryl studied the forest anew. His eyes passed over everything—redwoods, ferns, rhododendrons, some little white flowers… It was so quiet. But he could tell, something was here now, hiding. He gave no more commands. He simply stood where he was, watching and waiting.

Everyone’s head slowly turned, left, right, behind, straight ahead.

No one except Jason was looking up. He’d been looking up at the fog for some time and his mouth was now slightly open.

Craig suddenly jerked toward the soil. “ Look at that.”

Everyone turned to it. It was a marking, about an inch deep. Shaped like a massive bird.

Then Darryl noticed Jason. He was still looking up and he had an awfully strange look on his face.

Darryl looked up too. “Jesus bloody Christ.”

Then Lisa looked up. Then Craig. Then Monique. Then Phil. No one spoke another word.

Spellbound, they simply stared at something so incredible it had to be a dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was a new reality.

THERE IT is, Jason thought; my God, there it is. Not a dream. Not a simulated computer image. A living, breathing, flying animal. A new order of predator. He had known what to expect, of course, roughly what it would look like. But now that he was actually seeing it, it was even more incredible than what he’d imagined.

Lisa and Craig both had small smiles on their faces. The goddamn thing was more fantastic than anything they’d ever seen.

Phil was dumbfounded. He knew as well as anyone that the animal existed, but only theoretically. To actually see it, living, breathing, flying… It was just so real. Better than a video game, better than a movie.

Darryl Hollis, strangely, felt light-headed, even numb—like he sometimes did after a particularly severe drinking binge with Craig Summers. He had also known what to expect, but now… his carefully constructed concept of what it was to hunt had just been walloped by a sledgehammer.

Monique was the only one who was nervous. The goddamn thing was a living nightmare. She had the eerie feeling that it was watching them, studying them, even. She held on to her rifle tightly.

Six pairs of human eyes continued to watch it.

The predator glided silently below the ceiling of fog. Twenty stories high, it dodged in and out of the massive staffs of branchless wood.

As they looked up at it their most prominent view was of its undulating white underbelly. But then the animal veered around a tree and gave an unobstructed view of its pitch-black topside. It was beautiful, even elegant, its torso, wings, and horned head all melding into a single, seamless form. But beauty and elegance aside, there was no hiding that it was a phenomenally dangerous predator.

My God, look at that thing, Darryl thought.

Suddenly and silently, it veered up and disappeared into the thick white fog.

Rapt, the six didn’t move. They simply stared at the place where it had just been, waiting for it to return.

And then it did return, flying straight down, its mouth wide open.

Monique braced herself, but the animal didn’t attack. Before they could even become alarmed, it veered up and away, gliding just below the ceiling of mist.

“Did you see that mouth?” Craig asked quietly.

It had been wider than two of him. And its teeth… He’d only seen them for a moment, but he could have sworn they were as wide as his forearms and numbered in the hundreds, in more rows than he could count.

Darryl Hollis had noticed the teeth too. Darryl Hollis had noticed everything about the animal. But of all its features, one had made the greatest impression by far.

The eyes.

They were goddamn frightening eyes. Not just because they were bigger than baseballs, pupil-less, and in the strangely unnerving color of jet black. But because of what was behind them. They were cold, calculating, and, above all, intelligent. An awfully smart animal lurked behind those eyes. Darryl knew its brain weighed six pounds, but now, actually seeing the creature, he would have believed its brain weighed twenty-five pounds. Look at those goddamn eyes.

Then Darry slowly positioned an arrow on his bow and began to point it up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason watched him, neither doing nor saying anything, just watching with a combination of horror and fascination—horror at the fact that Darryl’s nearly instantaneous reaction upon seeing the phenomenally evolved new order of predator was to kill it—and fascination as to whether or not he’d succeed.