Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

They ran hard for ten more minutes, the Demonray darting in and out among the trunks. Finally, Darryl had a shot. He dropped to one knee and… Jason ran up just as he released. The arrow rocketed away, on a rope, ripping toward the creature. It was the most amazing display of marksmanship Jason had ever seen. He actually felt the arrow tearing through the air. A hit, a hit, a palpable hit.

The creature suddenly banked, and the arrow plunged into a tree, splintering to pieces.

They ran after it. Darryl fired twice more but missed both times. Craig fired three times, all misses.

Suddenly the animal was gone. Disappeared. Darryl froze, looking all around the forest.

Craig ran up, gasping. “Where the hell is it?”

But the forest was silent. Nothing moved.

Jason, Phil, and Lisa ran up.

“How’d we keep up with it for so long?”

Darryl turned to Jason. “ What?”

“How’d we keep up with it?” Jason tried to catch his breath. “I think it let us stay close.”

Phil looked around. “Why would it have done that?”

Darryl Hollis suddenly felt ill. “How far did we just run?”

Jason checked his watch; they’d largely sprinted hard for a total of fifteen minutes, so… “A mile at least.”

Darryl tried to stay calm. “A mile at least. So we’re too far to run back now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Monique’s not here.” Darryl swallowed nervously. “I think that thing isolated us from Monique.”

JASON STARED at Darryl. Everyone stared at Darryl.

He methodically exhaled a few times. This was no time to panic. “Can I borrow your walkie-talkie, Lisa?”

She shoved it to him, and he pressed the button. “Monique, you there?”

He waited a moment.

One second ticked past. Then another.

The walkie-talkie was silent, just a light hissing.

“Am I pressing this damn button right?”

Lisa eyed his finger. “Yes.”

He pressed it again. “Monique, you there? Monique?”

He waited again.

Again, there was nothing.

He turned to Craig nervously.

Then the walkie-talkie crackled. “Hey, Darryl.” She sounded as casual as ever.

Darryl breathed easier. “Are you OK?”

“Fine. You guys ran off, and I couldn’t keep up holding this little guy.”

Her tone was all wrong. She didn’t understand what was happening. “Do you see that thing around there anywhere?”

“No, it’s just me and this cute little fawn.”

“Forget the goddamn fawn, Monique!” Darryl exhaled, calming down. “I think that thing set you up somehow.”

“ Set me up? It’s not even here, Darryl.”

Darryl eyed Jason. “Any way this is just a coincidence? That maybe it went somewhere else?”

Jason didn’t answer right away. He replayed what had happened. “This is no coincidence. No way. Somehow, it lured us to that area, to that specific area. I just don’t know h—Craig, those readings we got… It did detect that equipment. It detected it and used it against us. It called us to that exact spot. ”

Summers replayed it, too. “Son of a bitch; you might be right…. But why? Why there ?”

Jason went over it again. “The fawn. There was something strange with that fawn being there.”

“Like what?”

Jason began pacing. “What if the ray knew how Monique would react when she saw it?”

“How could it possibly know th—”

“The mountain-lion cub in the bear trap. Darryl, it was up in the fog watching us yesterday. It saw Monique’s reaction to that lion cub. So it called us to that exact spot with the equipment, it found the fawn, broke its leg, then waited for Monique to find it. When she did, it swooped down to draw us away, then kept going until we were so far removed that we couldn’t get back to her.”

Darryl swallowed sickly. It made horrifying sense. “Monique, did you hear all that?”

She hesitated over the hissing. “How could it possibly have broken the fawn’s leg?”

Darryl felt like vomiting. He had no clue; he just knew it had happened. “Jason?”

Jason took the walkie-talkie, thinking it out. “It must have carried it in its mouth, Monique, then dropped it from the air. Is the fawn’s fur sticky, like from saliva?”

MONIQUE HOLLIS swallowed nervously.

She didn’t need to look. The tiny animal was covered with dried splotches of something. She’d been wondering what they were all along.

“Is its damn fur sticky?”

This was Darryl’s voice again.

“Yeah, Darryl. It is.” She calmly put the fawn down, grabbing her rifle off the soil.

She looked up. The forest was silent. No sign of the creature anywhere, just branches, tree trunks, and evergreen for as far as the eye could see. And still not a trace of fog.

“It’s not here.” Not yet anyway.

“You sure?”

She scanned everywhere. “Positive.”

Although she had to admit… it was very, very quiet.

“STAY COOL,” Darryl said, his face as tight as a guitar string. He reconsidered running back to her, but there wasn’t enough time. He turned. “You buy that it’s not there yet, Jason?”

Jason quickly ran some numbers in his head, quadruple-checking calculations he’d made earlier. Maybe the Demonray had flown slower than he’d anticipated, but he thought he’d estimated its speed conservatively. “If it’s not, it should be very soon. ”

“Keep your eyes peeled, Monique.”

But even as Darryl said the words, Jason feared she just wasn’t seeing something.

MONIQUE TURNED, scanning everything, trunks, branches, patches of blue sky. There was nothing up there, nothing at all.

“It’s not here.”

“ Are you sure?”

“Goddamn it; I’m positive!” She clutched her rifle tightly, still searching. “It must have gone somewhere else.”

DARRYL TURNED to Jason. “Could it have gone somewhere else?”

Jason swallowed nervously. “I don’t think so.”

Darryl nodded. “Monique, it’s gotta be there.”

MONIQUE WALKED back in the direction they’d come from.

“Wait a second….” Was it wrapped around a tree?

“What is it?”

She walked closer…. It was something a hundred feet up… something big and dark.

“Monique, what is it?”

She walked closer still.

No, just a discoloration in the bark.

“Nothing. There’s nothing here, I really think you might have jumped the gun.”

DARRYL looked to Jason for support but he shook his head firmly, eyes glaring. “It’s up to something. It’s there, I’m telling you; it’s got to be there. Craig, do you remember anything special about that area when we set up the equipment? Anywhere it could be hiding?”

Craig frantically searched his brain. “Jesus, Jason… no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember a goddamn thing!”

“Something’s up, Darryl.” Jason shook his head. “It’s hiding somehow. Get her out of there; get her out of there right now.”

MONIQUE CONTINUED walking, still looking up.

“Monique, just get out of there. ”

She walked faster, heading to the fallen tree they’d passed earlier. “Where is it?”

“Just get out of there! Run!”

She walked faster still. “Where is it, Darryl? I wanna know where it is.”

“We don’t know!”

She jogged, frantically scanning the skyline, spinning in circles. “Where is it? I just want to see it.”

“Goddamn it, get out of there!”

She jogged faster, still looking up.

THE EYES were looking up at her.