Matthew Reilly - Temple

Kolb bolted down the wet stone slabs, the sound of his own breathing loud in his ears, the sound of something large crashing through the foliage behind him even louder.

More fern fronds smacked against his face, but he didn’t care. He was almost—

There!

He saw it.

The rope bridge!

He even saw a few of his men bouncing across its length, fleeing from the carnage on the tower top.

Kolb flew down the last few steps and ran out onto the ledge.

He’d made it!

It was then that a tremendous weight thudded into him from behind and the German general went sprawling forward.

He landed hard—face-first—on the cold wet surface of the ledge. He scratched about desperately with his hands, trying to get to his feet again when suddenly a giant black paw slammed down hard on his wrist, pinning it to the ground.

Kolb looked up in horror.

It was one of the cats.

It was standing on top of him!

The demonic black cat peered down at him intently, curiously examining this strange little creature that had foolishly attempted to outrun it.

Kolb stared fearfully up into its evil yellow eyes. And then with a loud blood-curdling roar, the big animal’s head came rushing down at him and Kolb shut his eyes and waited for the end.

Down in the village, there was silence.

The twelve German commandos gathered around the monitor just stared at each other in astonishment.

On their screen, they saw their comrades up on the tower top running about in every direction. Occasionally, they would see one of them dash across the screen and open fire with an MP-5 only to be violently smacked out of the frame a second later by a large feline shape.

‘Hasseldorf, Krieger,’ the sergeant named Dietrich said sharply.

‘Dismantle the western logbridge.’ Two of the Ger man soldiers immediately broke out of the circle.

Dietrich turned to face his young radio operator. ‘Have you been able to get through to anyone up there?’

‘I’m getting through, sir, but no-one’s answering,’ the radio man said.

“Keep trying.’

Through the rainspattered windows of the Humvee, Race was watching Dietrich and the German commandos assembled around their monitor when suddenly he heard a shout.

He snapped around instantly.

And saw one of the German commandos from the tower top come charging out from the riverside path.

The commando was waving his arms wildly, yelling, ‘Schnell, zum Flugzeug! Schnell, zum Flugzeug! She kommen!”

He was shouting: “Get to the plane! Get to the plane! They’re coming!” Just then a flare of lightning illuminated the path behind the running man and Race caught a glimpse of something bounding along the path behind him.

‘Oh, my God…“

It was one of the giant catlike creatures—just like the one he had seen stepping out of the temple only minutes earlier.

But the image he had seen on the Humvee’s tiny television screen hadn’t done the creature justice at all.

It was absolutely terrifying.

It ran with its head held low and its pointed ears pinned back, its powerful muscular shoulders driving it forward after its fleeing human prey.

It moved beautifully, with fluid feline grace—that striking combination of balance, power and speed common to cats the world oven The German commando was running hard but there was no way he was going to outrun the massive animal behind him. He tried to swerve as he ran, to dodge in behind some trees next to the path. But the cat was too agile. It looked like a cheetah in full flight—its powerful legs adjusting perfectly as it ran, copying the movements of its prey, ducking to the left, veering to the right, keeping its centre of gravity low, never once losing its footing.

It loomed above the hapless German, got closer and closer, and then, when it was near enough, the great cat leapt forward and—

Abruptly, the lightning flash vanished and the path was plunged into complete darkness.

Darkness.

Silence.

And Race heard a scream.

Then suddenly another flash of lightning lit up the riverbank, and as he registered the image before him, Race felt his blood run completely cold.

The immense black cat was standing astride the body of the commando, its massive head bent over the fallen man’s neck area.

Abruptly, the cat jerked its jaws upward and with a sickening ripping sound, wrenched the dead commando’s throat clear from his body.

And in another glaring flash of lightning, the giant black cat roared in triumph.

For a whole minute, no-one in the Humvee said anything.

Walter Chambers broke the silence. ‘We are in so much trouble.’

And he was right. For at that moment, at that terrible moment, all of the other black cats burst out from the foliage near the riverbank and attacked every living thing in sight.

The cats stormed the village from every side, catching Diet rich and his men—gathered foolishly around the monitor in the centre of the town-completely by surprise.

The cats bounded into the main street like bats out of hell—crash-tackling the German commandos where they stood, bowling them off their feet before they could grab their guns, slamming them to the ground, biting into their throats.

Race wasn’t sure how many of the cats there were. At first he counted ten, then twelve, then fifteen.

Jesus.

Then suddenly he heard gunfire and he snapped around to see the two German soldiers Dietrich had sent to raise the western logbridge Hasseldorf and Krieger—firing desperately at the onslaught of charging cats.

The two commandos managed to hit a couple of the fearsome animals they pitched wildly forward, crashed down into the mud—before the other cats simply leapt over their bodies and overwhelmed the two humans with their numbers.

One cat leapt onto Hasseldorf’s back and immediately ripped out his spine. Another just clamped its massive jaws around Krieger’s throat, breaking his neck with a nauseating crrrrunch!

The rest of the village looked like a riot zone, with Ger man soldiers running in every direction—toward the two Apache helicopters, toward the huts, toward the river—in a desperate bid to escape the rampaging cats.

‘Get to the choppers!’ someone yelled. ‘Get to the—’

Just then, Race heard an engine turn over and he spun in his seat to see the rotor blades of both of the Apache attack helicopters slowly begin to rotate.

German soldiers ran desperately for the two choppers, but they were small and skinny each only had room for a single pilot and a gunner.

The first Apache began to lift off just as a terrified trooper leapt up onto its landing strut and yanked open the cockpit door. But before he could even try to climb inside, one of the cats bounded up onto the strut after him, shoving him roughly out of the way before it slithered in through the cockpit door, its long slashing tail whipping over the side as it did so.

A second later, the interior of the cockpit windows was splattered with blood and the chopper—hovering ten feet off the ground—went wild.

It yawed sharply to the right, its rotor blades a speeding blur of movement, toward the other Apache, just as the six-barrelled rotary cannon under its nose blasted wildly to life, assaulting the entire village with supermachine-gun fire.

Tracer bullets sprayed everywhere.

The windshield of Race’s Humvee exploded into a spiderweb of cracks as the storm of bullets slammed into it.

Race ducked away from the impacts instinctively. As he did so, however, he saw a series of orange impact sparks flare out all over the tail section of one of the Hueys moored on the riverbank nearby.

Then suddenly, like fireworks shooting into the sky on the fourth of July, two Hellfire missiles shot out from the flailing Apache’s missile pods.