Fragment

9:05 P.M.

Thatcher slid into the shotgun seat of the waiting Hummer, breathing hard from his run. “They have no way to contact the base,” he said, slamming the door.

“You sure they don’t have one of these?”

“What’s that?” Thatcher wheezed.

“A satphone.”

“No, no. They would have used it.”

“The scientists think the island is sinking,” Cane whispered. “They’re going to nuke it ahead of schedule, twelve hours from now, they say, if there’s anything left to nuke. They’re evacuating the lab and deep-freezing the last specimens for transport. We could just leave now, no problem, sir.”

“We’ve got a problem. Those scientists are trying to escape with four more of those wretched creatures, Sergeant. They’re planning to use that elevator they built. They’re getting the ship from that TV show to pick them up.”

Cane solemnly reached under the seat and pulled out his rifle and some ammo clips. “You know my orders, sir. My orders are clear.”

“You’re not…” The scientist’s eyes widened, “going to shoot them?”

Sergeant Cane released the safety on his weapon. “With extreme prejudice, sir.”

“I mean-you’re not going to shoot the humans?”

“The humans were warned of the consequences. They’re no better than terrorists smuggling WMDs.”

“But-” The gears were jamming in Thatcher’s mind. He noticed specimen cases in the back of the Humvee. “What are those, Sergeant?”

“When I was driving around down there I ran into a bunch of panicky eggheads, no offense, sir, who asked me to take some specimens back to the base. They fumigated the canopy and knocked out a bunch of rats.”

Thatcher saw the taped labels on the cases that said HENDERS RATS. “So those are live specimens…”

“Not for long,” the soldier replied darkly. “They’ll whack ’em back at base camp. Deep freeze.”

“How will we explain that? I mean, if the others don’t come with us, how will we explain how we got those specimens?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, sir. We’ll just say we caught the others trying to smuggle specimens off the island: in other words, we tell the truth. My orders are clear, regardless of what you may want to do. This mission is now official, and not hypothetical, sir.”

“Right…” Thatcher said softly. He looked at the cases of live specimens, thinking fast as he reeled forward different scenarios in his mind and, seeing three bars come up down one path, decided to gamble. “Give me a gun, Sergeant. I don’t intend to sit out here unarmed.”

Cane paused, studying the scientist for a moment. Then he reached down to his holster, unsnapped it, and handed Thatcher his Beretta.

Cane reached for the door. Thatcher’s fingers tightened on the weapon as soon as the soldier turned away, but his arm froze when Cane turned back to him. Then, in the window behind Cane, Thatcher saw a giant shape rising like the neon marquee of the Flamingo Hotel.

Thatcher forced himself to remain calm and lowered the gun to his lap. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? It could be dangerous,” he said.

“I’ll be fine,” replied Cane. “I’ll be right back.”

When the young soldier opened the door to step out, a black spike ripped the door from its hinges. A second spike pierced Cane from his neck to his pelvis, and lifted him out of the vehicle like a gruesome marionette, dead.

Thatcher reached over from the passenger seat and switched on the ignition. When the Hummer started, he shifted it into gear. It rolled forward as the spiger, joined by another, and then a third, ripped into the soldier’s body.

Thatcher scrambled into the driver’s seat of the rolling Hummer and gripped the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror he was certain he saw two of the spigers follow him.

He pointed the vehicle down the slope, grabbed the satphone from the seat and one of the specimen cases from the back, then he shifted the Hummer into neutral and jumped out, getting lucky as he hit a relatively bare patch of ground and sprawled flat.

Thatcher raised his head inches from a bloom of fetid purple clover to watch the empty Hummer pick up speed on the darkened slope, chased by the two smaller spigers. The big one, having finished with Cane, lunged down the field to join the hunt.

Thatcher stood up and ran. The creature’s bizarre tree house was fifty yards away, and he could barely hug the bulky specimen case under one arm. He had dropped Cane’s pistol somewhere, but he wasn’t about to stop and look for it.

The alpha spiger’s rear eyes and hindbrain spotted the zoologist running behind them up the field. It abandoned the chase of the Hummer, spun instantly on a spike, and launched after Thatcher. The other spigers followed.

Thatcher shifted the case from arm to arm, gasping for air as putrid gases wafted over the purple field.

The spigers ran at full speed, pushing off their powerful middle legs and digging in their cleated tails and hind legs to propel them forward. In mid-leap they curled their spiked tails back under them to take the blow of their landing and drove their spiked front arms into the ground to pull them forward as their middle legs pushed off and their tail and hind legs launched them again.

Thatcher huffed and puffed as he jumped over glistening clovores blooming on the starlit slope. He stuffed Cane’s sat-phone in the inner pocket of his vest and didn’t look back. He barely registered the distant concussion of the Hummer plunging over a cliff into the jungle below. As it exploded, distracting the spigers for a precious beat, he put his head down, and ran for his life.