Burial Ground

VII

10:28 p.m.

Consciousness hit Tasker like a runaway train, bringing with it pain beyond anything he had ever experienced. His entire back side felt as though it had been fried on a griddle. He drew a sharp intake of breath and inhaled dirty water through his mouth and nose, which induced a coughing spasm that only filled his throat with blood and intensified the agony. Smoke and dust swirled around him. The rain slapped his left cheek. He tried to open his eyes, but only the left responded. The right was pressed into the ground and packed with mud. The clearing shifted in and out of focus through the small gap beneath his swollen eyelid.

He heard what sounded like an eagle's cry as it circled above him, only the sound had come from much lower to the ground, not far to his right. With the revelation of what had made the sound, the memories assaulted him.

If he didn't get the hell out of there right now, he was a dead man.

He tried to push himself up, but his arms and legs were unresponsive. Were it not for the pain, he might have suspected he'd been separated from them in the blast. He could see the back of his left hand and forearm. Both were soaked with blood. His jacket sleeve was in tatters, and wooden and metallic slivers alike stood from the exposed skin. Shrapnel. He'd been fortunate to have been wearing his backpack or his thorax would have become a pincushion. As it was, he must have broken at least one rib and punctured a lung for there to be so much blood in his mouth.

The shriek of another bird seared the night. But they weren't birds, were they? He had glimpsed them when they exploded from the bushes and attacked McMasters. Blurs of feathers and claws, the living embodiment of the desiccated remains in the bundle he had ripped open in the cliff-side tomb. They had attacked with the kind of pure savagery that he'd only witnessed in sharks during a feeding frenzy.

There would be no surviving another encounter. He needed to drag his broken body out of there right this very second.

How long had he been unconscious? Where were Gearhardt and his party? For all he knew, they could have led the creatures away from him. He drew comfort from that thought, but only for a moment.

He heard a soft splash and a slurp of mud. A shadow fell across him from out of his direct line of sight.

Tasker held his breath and listened.

Another squishing sound from behind him and to the left.

He released a stale exhalation and breathed shallowly, silently.

Something nudged his backpack, then the left side of his ribcage. And still he could only see the shadow.

More sloppy footsteps. One. Then another.

Every fiber of his being screamed for him to shove to his feet and sprint for his life, but he knew in his current weakened state that he didn't have a prayer of outrunning it.

Something nuzzled his shoulder, lifting him slightly from the muck, then dropping him back down.

He felt warm breath on his ear a split-second before a shrill cry nearly pierced his eardrum. A scream threatened to burst from his chest. He managed to contain it and remained as still as he could.

Why hadn't it attacked yet?

Pressure behind his left ear, forcing his face deeper into the mud. He could barely breathe through his left nostril and the corner of his mouth.

Two more stealthy footsteps. Closer.

A face lowered into view. Too close. Broad nostrils on an elongated snout. Scaled lips lined with interlocking rows of sharp teeth. It bumped him in the forehead with its chin.

Its breath reeked of death and decay, its scaled skin of rot and fecal matter.

It froze when another skree sounded from the jungle behind him.

In one swift motion, it was running. Scaled gray legs flashed past, then a long, feathered tail.

Tasker lay still, waiting for it to return.

More cries echoed through the forest, only farther away now.

He finally allowed himself to blink.

There was no sound.

No movement.

Why was he still alive?