James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

Kendall had been about to return to the notes when movement caught his eye on the screen. Jenna had returned, her back against those cages — but she wasn’t alone any longer.

A young boy had her by the hand, holding a cattle prod.

Cutter leaned closer. “Jori…”

Ashuu hurried forward, saw the screen, and let out a small gasp of fear, clutching her throat.

Cutter turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gently but firmly shifted her toward Mateo. “Stay here, mon amour . I’ll get our boy.”

Kendall kept staring at the screen. He saw a dark, hulking shadow move into the clearing. Whatever it was, it remained at the periphery, but he imagined it was what he had briefly spotted earlier. He pictured those claws, that shaggy dark coat.

Megatherium .

A creature out of the last Ice Age.

“Look!” Kendall called out, drawing the other’s attention back to the screen.

Cutter stepped over, glanced at the monitor, and swore.

By now more shadows shifted at the edges.

“You’ll never make it down there in time,” Kendall said. “But look at Jenna. Look at what she’s doing.”

C’mon…

Jenna faced the camera. It was strapped high up a tree, pointed down into this glade. Earlier, she knew she must have been under surveillance. Luckily the boy had known where the camera was located.

She craned up to the lens and pointed an arm toward the cages, while making a cutting motion across her own throat.

Turn the damned electricity off .

The boy called to her. “Light is green!”

Finally .

She swung back to the cage. They had two options: hide inside and hope someone reelectrified the bars again… or travel the boy’s path up into the canopy.

It was not a hard choice.

She glanced over to the Megatherium . The beast stood half in the clearing, half in the forest, balancing at that edge. She remembered it rising up to its full twelve-foot-height, each claw eighteen inches long. She didn’t feel like trusting her life — or the boy’s — to those thin steel bars, electrified or not.

And it wasn’t just this one sloth they needed to fear.

She had caught glimpses of at least another four.

Pointing to the top of the cage, she said, “Up you go.”

Jori passed her his cattle prod and clambered like a monkey up the bars. Once he reached the top, she passed the prod up to him. He crouched above, covering her, snapping sparks of electricity toward the Megatherium in the clearing.

She grabbed the cage, set a foot in the first crossbar — and watched as a sloth crashed out of the forest on the far side of the pens and came charging toward her.

She realized her mistake.

It hadn’t been fear that held off the pack.

The beasts had waited until they knew the electricity was off, and not likely to be turned on again, using the boy like a test balloon. As long as he was up there, they knew they could attack without fear of getting shocked.

“Jori! Jump!”

She got the door open a second before the sloth struck the far side. She rolled inside the pen and slammed the door. Overhead, Jori leaped from the top, caught hold of a branch, and flipped expertly over it.

Under his heels, the sloth hit the triple pen, rocking the entire unit up on one edge. As the beast reared, claws grabbed the top edge, ready to topple the cages the rest of the way over. She would be trapped inside if it landed door side down.

“Jenna!”

Jori hung upside down and dropped the cattle prod toward her. Rather than falling cleanly through the bars, it struck askew, and began to roll down the slanted side of the pen, right between the paws of the giant. She scrabbled for it, grabbed the handle, and flipped its business end toward the towering sloth. She stabbed at the tender armpit, where it was less furred, and the contact points exploded against its skin, looking hot enough to sear.

The Megatherium bellowed and fell away, letting the cage settle back into place. Twisting to the side, the creature dropped down, licking at the sting under its arm, and retreated.

Jenna popped back out of the cage, waving the prod broadly, trying to encompass the entire clearing.

The Megatherium who was still in the clearing eyeballed her, one lip curling. But after a moment it also slipped backward into the shadows. In those eyes was a fury, a promise that this was not over.

She took advantage of the momentary lull to climb the cage door, roll onto the top of the pen, then leap to join Jori in the trees.

“Follow me,” the boy said. “Very careful.”

He led the way higher into the canopy, moving from stout branches to limbs that swayed under her weight. Once seemingly satisfied with their height, Jori set off on a trek that led toward the distant gates of this level. She imagined he must have some way of getting past that barrier.

Then what? she wondered. I’ll still be trapped on this island in the sky… while a virus ravages a path through my higher consciousness .

She pushed those worries aside for now. One problem at a time. That’s all her mind could handle.

Jori followed a path with which he seemed familiar, knowing where branches between trees were close enough to leap or a bridge of vines could be crossed by hanging from hands and feet. Together they worked their way across the canopy.

“No!” Jori warned, moving her away from what appeared to be a simple jump to the next mahogany tree. He pointed to a hive growing on the far side of that trunk. “Hornets.”

She nodded, not in the mood to get stung.

He led her to another, more difficult path, but she kept watch on that hive. A small sparrow darted among the branches and came too close to that buzzing mud-and-daub nest. A flurry of hornets burst forth, swarming the little bird. With each sting, its flight grew more erratic. Then it tumbled away toward the forest floor, still coated in hornets.

“Are they poisonous?” she asked Jori, who had noted her attention.

“No.” He continued across a dense net of vines, balancing with his arms out. He reached the far side. “Sting with…” He plainly struggled with the word and rubbed his belly. “Juices that melt food.”

She glanced more warily at that hive.

Digestive juices .

So their stingers must produce chemicals similar to spider venom.

“Eat you from inside out,” Jori warned, as if this were the most normal thing in the world to state.

They continued for another twenty yards in silence, accompanied by nothing but birdsong and the squawk of parrots from a higher level of this garden. Then a softer mewling reached her, rising from the left. The plaintive cry drew her closer.

“No,” Jori warned again. “Too dangerous.”

She wanted to obey, but the noise sounded close, just in the next tree. She shifted around the bole of the mahogany and pushed leafy branches out of her face.

It took her a long moment to identify the source of the soft crying. A nest of vines hung from the branches across a short gap. A small movement caught her eye, a furred limb, about the size of a small child’s, seemed to beckon, to plead. A set of hooked claws opened and closed, more in pain than any conscious will. She followed the arm down to a body the size of a bear cub, encased in loops of vines. Even from here she could see the barbed hooks, the dribbles of crimson blood. The body shifted, and the vines tightened, squeezing another cry out of the small creature.

Her heart ached at the sight.

Jori pushed her arm down and the branches she had been holding down snapped back up. “Law of the Jungle,” he said.