Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

“Let’s get outta here.”

Then, without warning, he spun and fired—five times.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The arrows ripped into the fog and plunged into something unseen.

Then nothing. Silence.

No one moved. They just watched and waited.

THE EYES shifted. To an arrow an inch away.

Then they swiveled back to Darryl.

HE STARED right back at the animal, albeit unknowingly. “Let’s go back to the cabin.”

AS THEY turned to go, the creature didn’t move. It just watched them. Then it focused on the bear trap.

“ WAIT A second.” In the middle of a clearing, Craig paused. “Let’s reposition the equipment. Cool, Hoss?”

Darryl Hollis hesitated. He actually felt like using the equipment here might be to their detriment, but—

“What do you say Darryl?” Jason didn’t see any reason not to reposition it.

“Sure, whatever.”

Craig crinkled open a map. “OK, we need to go… this way….” As he and the others walked off, Darryl didn’t budge. He looked up and was amazed. In just minutes, the fog had thinned considerably, so much so that he could see. He could make out the upper tree trunks and branches now. But nothing else was up there. He turned and followed the others.

“ALL BETTER now. Thanks a lot, Jason.”

Jason smiled. “Looks like the patient’s doing fine.”

Snuggling on a towel, the mountain-lion cub rubbed its tiny head on Monique’s thigh. On the living-room floor, Jason had just assisted Monique in splinting the animal’s broken leg. While Jason had held the little creature down, Monique had done the real work, and she’d been impressive. The cub had been in excruciating pain, and when Monique reset the bone, the animal bit her hand, gashing the skin and drawing blood. She’d barely blinked. Monique had simply absorbed the pain and continued. Sometimes Jason forgot, but despite her looks, Monique Hollis was one tough hombre.

“OK, baby; all better.” She gently petted the cub, which was purring loudly now.

Watching from the couches, Lisa and Jason thought this was adorable, but Darryl couldn’t have cared less. “What are we gonna do to hunt this thing, Jason?”

Jason got up from the floor. “I don’t think we can sneak up on it. That might be impossible, literally impossible.”

Craig laughed darkly. “Well, that’s a problem.”

“You know what else is a problem?” Darryl turned. “It might not even hunt on instinct.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Most predators hunt on instinct, meaning they’re not really ‘thinking’ about what they’re doing; they’re just sort of going through preprogrammed motions. But what we’ve got out there is thinking. It analyzes what it sees, then adapts to it.”

“Maybe we can bait it.”

“With what?”

Craig shrugged. “How about Phil?”

Everyone laughed, even Phil Martino.

Darryl wasn’t amused. “It will detect steel traps, right, Jason?”

“I think so. Can we hang a net or something?”

“Any nets in that storage shed, Craig?”

“No.” Summers eyed the two monitors on the hearth. “I still think this equipment’s gonna help pick something up.”

Darryl doubted it. “We’ll keep hunting it the way we have been.”

Craig shook his head. Then he walked to the window and looked out at the moon-dappled landscape. “Anybody ever wonder why this thing came to the land in the first place?”

“We’ve been over that, Craig.” Monique wondered if he had Alzheimer’s. “Food.”

“No, I mean philosophically.”

“ Philosophically?” Darryl wondered if he was hearing things. “I didn’t realize you knew what philosophically meant.”

“What do you mean, Craig?” Monique asked seriously.

“I mean, did you ever think this thing might have evolved for a reason?”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe it’s nature’s way of protecting itself.”

“Protecting itself from what ?”

“From us. You know, Jason, your name choice for this thing is surprisingly apt.”

“How so?”

“ Demonray. Do you realize what the very first ‘demons’ actually were?”

A pause. “No… I don’t.”

“According to the book of Revelation, the original demons were—get this— expelled from heaven because they wanted to destroy humanity. ”

Everyone paused. This was eerie.

“That’s in the Bible?”

“Uh-huh. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Because I’d say if there’s anything that could destroy humanity, this species is it.”

“ Destroy humanity?” Darryl rolled his eyes. “When’d you start believing in fairy tales, Peter Pan?”

“It’s no fairy tale, Darryl, and the science side is even scarier.”

Jason turned. “How so?”

“Why do predators evolve in the first place? To stop existing species from becoming too abundant. So think about the existing species that is the human race. Just eleven thousand years ago there were less than five million people on this planet, but there are six billion today, and that’s supposed to go north of ten billion in just a couple of decades. Man’s been growing like a weed and nothing. Not a virus. Not another species. Nothing has kept that growth in check. Maybe the evolution of this thing is nature’s way of doing that.”

Darryl wasn’t amused anymore. “There’s one of those things out there, Craig.”

“Yeah, right now. But like Monique said, evolution takes place gradually.”

“Meaning what? That these things will take over the planet one day?”

“Maybe.”

“How long do ya figure, Socrates?”

“I don’t know. Maybe twenty million years. Maybe a thousand. Maybe ten.”

“Ten?” Monique turned. “Craig, there’s no historical precedent for anything like that.”

“So what? So you’re saying that because it took other species millions of years to make evolutionary leaps, it will take this species the same amount of time?”

“Well… yeah.”

“That logic doesn’t hold, Monique. Just look at man. Man evolved faster than any species in the history of the planet. What it took the others millions of years to do, we did in just ten thousand. So who says this species couldn’t evolve even faster than that? I mean, imagine what would happen if there were a million of those things flying around out there.”

“ A million ?” Jason thought that was insane. “Craig, that’s not possible. That’s not even close to possible. There’s one animal out there right now. How do you get to a million?”

“Jason, you know how big the damn oceans are. Two miles deep on average and almost triple the surface area of land. Triple. Do you realize how much space that is? We have no idea how many of those things there could be down there.”

“It’s nowhere near a million.”

“No? Do you know what the worldwide shark population is?”

A pause. “No, I don’t.”

“Fifty billion. ”

“No way.”

A firm nod. “Fifty billion. And if these rays have been around for as long as the sharks have… Who knows how many of them there could be.”

No one said anything. They just digested the possibilities.

Jason cleared his throat. “So what are you saying here, Craig? That this thing could be our apocalypse?”

“Is it so ridiculous? All the doomsayers always said it would be a virus. Maybe it’s this thing instead.”

“I think we better just kill the one that’s out there now,” Phil chipped in from the chair.

Darryl stood. “I’ll drink to that. In fact, why doesn’t everyone drink to that?” He grabbed a six-pack of Budweiser from the kitchen and returned. “Lord Socrates,” he said, tossing Craig his.