Chapter 11

“Shit!” the corporal said, interrupting. “Birds! Jeez, they just came up from over there!”

Alexis turned and saw a flock of the big birds from yesterday, climbing up into the sky from the southwest, angling right towards them.

Alexis could see Griff glance around, then back to the birds. Alexis looked. They were maybe five or six minutes away.

“Corporal, three shots, two-second intervals!” Griff commanded, followed almost instantly by a series of three reports. “This way!” He started running, headed towards a cluster of rocks. He skidded downhill, half dragging his wife. Alexis was with the rest, stopping only at the last to look back. Next to her, the man with the staff grunted, pointed down. “Go, girl!”

“You first,” she told him.

“Don’t be an asshole!” he told her. “Get down there!”

She went down, the man a few feet behind her. Griff had stopped and was waving people towards a dark crevice in the rocks. “Go, go!” Alexis went.

The crevice wasn’t more than about fifteen feet long, about six feet high, trending smaller.

“Squeeze up against the back,” Griff ordered. “Bess, Harry, Alexis, you’re at the very back. You two next.” He waved at the two men not in uniform. “Corporal, your glasses, to Alexis.”

The woman handed them over.

“Corporal, you and Arthur, prone. Gonzales, Kennedy, kneeling. Dip shit and I will be standing. Action that way.” He waved towards the bright patch of sunlight.

“You will all be absolutely still, absolutely quiet.” Griff told them. “No matter what happens, don’t move, don’t cry out! No matter what!” He walked back towards the entrance, cautious.

Alexis contemplated if she could do that, even though he stopped at least six feet from the open air. She couldn’t hear anything but the hammering of her heart. It sounded enormously loud in her ears.

I will not, Alexis thought, give Tamara the satisfaction of saying “I told you so!” I will not be killed here, like this, like a bug in a crack, chased down by some bird! Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harry put her binoculars inside her jacket, then go into a martial arts stance, facing forward. A step in front of Alexis, to one side, the man with the staff was holding it up, quarterstaff-like, diagonally across his body.

And here she squatted, helpless, waiting for whatever it was in the cards to happen. What was I saying about making Tamara’s day? Already been there and done that! There isn’t ever going to be a t-shirt for this!

Griff was coming back, carefully, still facing the entrance, trying, Alexis thought, to make no sound at all. He reached them, and stepped behind the others lined up with their rifles on the entrance.

“SKKKKREEEEEEEE!”

The call was like some giant had raked its fingernails over the universe’s largest chalkboard.

“SKKKKKKREEEEEEEE!”

The ground seemed to tremble at the sound; it came again and again, in mind-numbing frequency.

“Steady!” Griff said quietly. “Steady! They’re trying to spook us into running into the open!”

The black Marine, one of those prone, laughed. “Spooked me good! Too much of a good thing, Corp! I got jelly legs!”

There were some nervous chuckles. The calls continued outside, unabated. Griff nodded towards the entrance. “I think it would be interesting to ask Becky about birds with visual and aural acuity. Wonder if there’s ever been a bird to have both?”

The older man with the staff shook his head. “I was a birder, back home. Since I was six. I don’t know of any living raptor with both. Eagles and the like have sharp eyes, but can’t hear worth squat, and owls have great ears and are practically blind. God seems content to give a species only one advantage.”

They stayed there like that for more than an hour, the calls unceasing. It was, Alexis thought, positively unnerving.

Eventually though, the calls stopped. Griff held up his watch. “Ten minutes before we take a peek.”

The time seemed to crawl. It was slowly getting warmer in the crack; small discomforts grew as time marched on.

“I’m going out. Five minutes. If I don’t come back, wait until dark, then try for the cave,” Griff told them.

He moved forward, pausing for a bit near the entrance, still in the shadows. Then he moved forward, standing just past the entrance. Alexis could see him look everywhere, before slowly moving to one side. Eventually, he vanished. A minute passed, and she relaxed, savoring the moment.

There was a sudden rattle of rocks; Griff was back, lunging into the crevice. “Shit!” he said, looking over his shoulder.

There was a rush of sound. Alexis looked up. An eye was there, an eye the size of a dinner plate. A cat’s eye, her mind told her. She regarded that apparition, as the apparition regarded them. Then the head stabbed forward, darting towards Griff, still scrambling backwards in the dirt.

Three shots, quicker than thought, then a half dozen others. That awful eye was blotted out, blood and tissue visible in a spray. The bird arched its back, tried one last feeble peck at Griff, drawing two more shots. Then it died.

For a moment, there was silence, then another skreeing cry from outside. Hate, anger, rage, and more. And much more.

Alexis shivered; she thought for a moment she’d be sick, or worse, soil herself. That cry came again, and there was another of the birds just outside, frantically trying to get past the dead one.

“Don’t shoot!” Griff called, now half erect, his back against one of the walls. “Don’t shoot!”

The bird lunged again, but the way was blocked by the first.

“Christ, Griff!” the woman corporal called, “It’s an easy shot!”

“Yeah, dumbshit!” Griff said, his voice sarcastic. “And with two of them blocking the door, just how long do you think it will take them to dig us out? Particularly with all their bird friends outside?”

And from the sound of it, Alexis thought, really pissed-off bird friends.

Griff turned to them. “There were two left behind, sitting still as statues. Damn, all nearly didn’t see them!”

You’re alive, Alexis told herself. You’re lying, simply lying. If you hadn’t seen them first, you’d be dead.

The older man let out his breath, obviously as scared as the rest of them. “I’m Owen Kingsbridge. I’m a social anthropologist, specializing in Polynesian and Micronesian cultures. Jeez, the worst sin in my business is being ethnocentric, but jeez! That bird ... it wasn’t an animal!”

Alexis remembered the look in the eye as it had regarded them. I think he’s right.

The other bird lunged again, but was unable to get past the body of the first and got no more than four feet inside the crevice. Griff fired a single shot, aiming high. The bullet spalled bits and pieces of rock towards the bird, some of them hitting it in the eye. It jerked back, and then moved so that it was no longer visible.

The next cry was a keening wail. Something had lost someone dearly loved and treasured. Alexis found a lump in her throat, unbidden and unwanted.

The man with the staff said softly. “Yeah, but I tell you the truth, critter. Even if it was my Uncle Marvin who wanted me for breakfast, I’d give him a fight. And I wouldn’t cry if I won and he lost.”