Animal

If I ever wrote a book, I was going to title it ‘Respect Nature’.

Turns out, mother nature as I knew it had some cousins with roughly the same MO.

Humans could outrun anything back on earth. Not in the short term, but over time the number of species that could outpace us on foot, even over just a few hours, were in the single digits.

Our bodies were just optimized to keep going and going. It came at the cost of overall top speed.

Virtually any animal with four legs could chase us down. It’s why primitive hunters moved in packs.

None of these things helped me.

I was on my own though, and the panther-hound was definitely faster than me.

Whatever planet gave rise to the panther-hounds had created something terrifying. From the moment Courser barked its order and sent the hound after me, there wasn’t time to think.

Panic welled up in my brain as I saw the creature break into a full tilt run straight for me. I clamped down on my mind before Daniel vanished and bolted away from the truck.

That was a mistake in retrospect. I would have been safest having something to maneuver around—a nice heavy thing to put between me and the panther-hound, something it wouldn’t be able to just claw through.

Like it did this stupid tarp.

I almost stopped running to try and head back toward the truck. But another look at the quadruped bolting toward me nipped that idea.

No choice. I had to leave the truck and try my luck in the woods.

I broke into a sprint toward the edge of the road. If it was too late to put the truck between me and it, maybe I could settle for a tree.

Diving downward was tempting, there were a few trees between the stretches of road, but there were simply more to either end of the switchback.

The distance was daunting and as I ran toward it, the image of the panther-hound invisibly closing ground on me twisted my own instincts against me and I looked behind me. The glance told me absolutely nothing I didn’t already know, save how much closer the creature was.

No way could I outrun it. But it felt like I could make it into the woods before it got to me. If it had less room to run, maybe I could avoid it.

I had to remind myself that being chased was actually a good thing. Courser hadn’t checked the truck, so when Nai woke up, they should start throwing fireballs at the panther-hounds.

Hopefully Nai and Tasser could win a shootout with Courser with just their three remaining bullets.

Ordinarily, I’d say no chance. But in this case quality might trump quantity. Nemuleki had been somewhere close to one of Trapper’s high explosives when it went off, and they’d been driving a car later the same day with no incidents that I’d noticed. Tasser wasn’t exactly fresh either, but he’d been ready to duke it out with Trapper. Casti were made of pretty tough stuff in my meager experience.

That left me with the third hound.

I had survived hours on end with Stalker lurking in the pitch-black woods, and that thing was more dangerous by far . I could handle this. So what if Tasser and his colossal bolt-rifle had been there to help?

As much as I was trying to reassure myself, imagining the panther-hound raking its claws across my back left a pit in my stomach. Two heads were better than one.

But hey, I had two heads right now, didn’t I?

I checked the timer; it still wasn’t ticking. Had Daniel managed to hold himself together, or had something gone wrong with the clock?

Dumb question, actually. It was a clock in my head. I knew exactly how it worked. I decided exactly how it worked. I could even tell the button was still being held down.

< I’m here. > Daniel said, strained.

I didn’t bother asking if he felt any better for the same reason he didn’t ask me the same. He wasn’t talking because the thing in my mind was trying to choke him out. I was running for my life from an alien jaguar.

We both had pressing concerns. I ducked into the trees and picked a random route leading away from the truck.

On the steep wooded slope to the side of the switchback, footing was precarious at best, and I found myself slowed to a dangerous pace given I was being chased.

I shouldn’t have looked behind me at panther-hound no.3 coming for me because it only made me freeze up on the spot. Without open ground to move on, any rapid shift I might make felt like it would make a little mini avalanche sweep me down to the bottom of the mountain.

There was a lot of hard terrain to be thrown into on the way down.

The question wouldn’t exit my mind, which was actually worse?

There was a very real possibility I’d be subjected to both being caught by the beast, and falling down a mountain.

I cursed myself again for not grabbing something sturdy back at the mining facility. A good metal pipe was exactly the kind of thing you wanted to swing at something like this.

< Swing what you’ve got .>

I retorted, pathetically grasping at humor.

< Olé .> Daniel clarified; his voice still strained. He wasn’t trying to be obfuscating on purpose, one-word answers kept things concise. It only took me a second to grasp what he meant.

Matador. That could work. I had nothing better to try.

I unwrapped the tarp from my arms. It offered too meager protection as armor. But as a distraction, an intimidation tactic? We’ll see.

Camping wisdom on Earth said to make yourself look large to scare off predators. Hopefully the alien animals had the same evolutionary instincts. Why wouldn’t they?

Panther-hound no.3 slowed only slightly as it plunged into the snow undisturbed off the road.

I bit my tongue, forcing down my instincts to run when something charged at me. Timing would be everything. I held the tarp in front of me, like a curtain, and tried to stand aside from where I thought no.3 would connect with me.

When it got within eight feet of me, it leapt the remaining distance. I yanked, far more upward than I’d expected to, trying to blind the predator midair.

No.3 crashed into and through the tarp, pulling it forcefully out from one hand. I clung to the shield with my other hand and tried to yank it back.

I heard a piece of it rip on the dog’s claws, but it came free.

The panther-hound itself had too much momentum though. It flew into the loose snow next to me on the slope, disturbing it where it landed. The impact disturbed enough of the snow around it, that the panther-hound had to plant all four of its feet for a moment or else be risked being caught up in the powder beginning to slide down the mountain.

I flashed back to Stalker. It had used the same momentum to its own advantage. In the dark, it had been able to attack and retreat by moving with the pull of gravity. Maybe I could reverse the idea.

If no.3 came at me from above or below, maybe I could discombobulate it with the tarp enough to send it careening all the way down the hill.

I got my chance only a few seconds afterward.

The panther-hound’s tumble had put it just a step or two downhill of me, so when it charged at me a second time, I positioned myself uphill, offset from my makeshift cape.

It leapt, much more vertically this time to compensate for the difference in elevation.

Once again, I swept the tarp upward, almost to catch it under the chin and flip it midair. Once again, the panther-hound flailed as its claws caught in the tarp.

But of course it couldn’t have gone my way completely.

Even as my plan succeeded, hot anger and frustration flared up in me. The animal lost its balance more this time, catching more of the tarp in the process. As it fell backward downhill, it tore the tarp clean from my hands, taking it with.

I swiped one hand at the tarp as it fell away from me, catching nothing but air. I didn’t dare pursue further down. The whole point of this was to get some distance between me and it.

Instead, I shook myself from the failure, and evaluated where I was. Did I risk going back to the truck immediately? I might just wind up back at square one if I returned only to have no.3 follow me with no difficulty.

It would depend on how successful knocking the hound down the snowy slope would be.

Which was none at all.

The writhing bundle of angry alien wrapped in tarp came to a halt only a couple dozen feet down the slope. It tore itself free of the tarp with a snarl, and whirled back uphill, scanning for me.

My blood was running hot with adrenaline, but I needed to stay calm. Remember strategies!

I picked the largest tree within a few steps and put myself behind it. I could lean out the tiniest fraction and spy the animal on its approach.

Up close, no.3 was a lot harder to think of as a ‘panther-hound’. I’d stick to the name for the sake of not confusing myself, but it really didn’t look like either of those things.

Especially through its head.

Its snout was definitely mammal-like, it had fur and some thin flaps you could argue were jowls. But the predominant shape to the head was crocodilian . Someone might have stuffed a cheetah’s skin with a lizard skull.

It was close enough I could see the flakes of snow stuck to its fur. There was a decent chance it might not be seeing me very easily because of the snow clinging to its eyelashes. Even its nostrils looked like they might frost over completely in a few minutes.

There was no way the panther-hounds were local. Maybe they were from this planet, but not this environment. They were built for open spaces that just didn’t exist in these mountain valleys.

Not sure how that helped me right now, but I hadn’t come this far by ignoring seemingly unhelpful information.

I sent Daniel. Even if it hadn’t quite panned out for long, the advice had achieved a good result.

No.3 stalked toward the tree so intently that I had little doubt it knew I was here. But if the snow was giving it even a slightly hard time seeing my precise position…

I sent Daniel.

I’d wanted to exhaust other options first, like the tarp. Things that wouldn’t increase the already substantial burden on Daniel. But I’d lost my one tool, and my backpack was still in the back of the truck, though I doubted any of its contents would help me.

I was a one-trick pony when it came to Enumius powers. But the flashbang was a pretty great trick to catch people off guard with.

Animals too.

I leaned behind the tree and covered my ears in the moment I created the blast. It was harder to aim against a target I couldn’t track with my radar, but no.3 was only a few feet away.

‘Close enough’ was just fine.

A blinding flash thundered on the other side of the tree. The explosive noise overwhelmed the snowy environment’s capacity to absorb sound. Shielding myself behind the tree protected me from my own flashbang.

A heartbeat after the detonation, I emerged from around the tree, ready on the offensive.

No.3 was frozen where it stood, suddenly unable to see.

I didn’t waste any time trying to throw it down the mountain again, hoping for better results. Like the Vorak, it was heavier than it looked. When I grabbed the thick mane of fur, I was trying to put myself in the position of building the momentum I would need to properly hurl the animal down the mountain.

But trying to lift the animal, even with two hands, was more than the footing allowed for. I managed to get its front legs off the ground, and started to drag its back legs in a circle, only for my grip to falter under the hound’s inertia.

Instead of swinging it around me like a hammer toss, it was more like trying and failing to lift a hay bale.

No.3 snapped at me with claws and fangs in the split second before gravity carried it out of reach.

I didn’t even see where it had got me, but I felt a stinging pain just above and below my knee. There wasn’t even time to check my new wounds because the unexpected weight of the panther-hound had thrown me off my feet. I tumbled down the hill a few feet, plowing through several feet of airy snow like it wasn’t even there.

I won the dice roll in arresting my descent, catching myself on an invisible piece of footing before I accelerated out of control.

No.3 was only slightly less fortunate, barreling end over end more than a hundred feet down the mountain to the section of road that led into the switchback. Surely that fall had broken one of its slender forelimbs. They looked like pipe cleaners.

I held my breath and peeked out from behind my tree. Please stay down. Or get up only to start limping. Some injury from being dumped down a mountain twice .

Except it did spring to its feet only a moment after coming to a halt.

It hadn’t even hit any trees on the way down, and it definitely wasn’t limping when it started back up the hill.

The only consolation was that no.3 was taking its time on the return.

Instead of sprinting in a straight line right up the slope, it started moving back toward me in spurts. It wasn’t moving directly at me either. It would move a dozen feet uphill, almost swimming through the snow when it had to go through a deep patch.

Trying to recover my breath, I waited in the same spot too long. It wasn’t until it was halfway back that I realized it couldn’t see me properly.

My flash had blinded it, plus whatever ice still clung to its face, maybe it wasn’t suited to seeing things in this environment. No matter the reason, it took me too long to see how it didn’t react to me poking my head out from behind the tree.

Once I made the connection, I kept low, trying to move without disturbing the heaps of snow that had piled up on the slope. Anything I could put between the panther-hound and me was something that might let me avoid detection.

I didn’t want to go down the hill. Changes in elevation would make it more complicated to retrace my steps back to the car. Doing that while evading no.3 was tough enough. Every foot I moved downhill was another I’d need to climb back up to rendezvous with my allies.

But going uphill was a good idea. There was more undisturbed snow to hide in, and it was extra distance for the hound to cover.

In an emergency, I could even slide downhill to get back toward the truck.

The cold began to seep further into my limbs as I slowed down. Making wild decisions had gotten my blood pumping, but that wasn’t how I could come out on top here.

I was prey.

Prey won by escaping or hiding.

Hiding went against my instincts right now. Back on the space station, it had been the obvious tactic. Aliens with guns quashed any feeling that I could run away successfully, and the Vorak had painfully educated me about the results of fighting back.

But against just one panther-hound, I had to force myself to move slowly.

My mind kept comparing it to an animal back on earth. No idiot would even think it were possible to hide from something like a tiger. Hundreds of thousands of years of mammalian evolution had engineered it into a predator that literally fed itself on some of the best hiders in the animal kingdom. No one hid from a tiger.

I tried to counter my stupid brain by reminding myself that no one fought or ran from tigers either.

You just died to them if you were alone.

But my ankles and feet kept twitching, ready to sprint if there was even a single moment where the hound wasn’t looking my way, or if a tree blocked its sight of me…

No… I rebuked myself. My options were to stay calm or lose .

And I refused to lose, not after making it this far.

I could feel Daniel was trying to keep me calm too. He was trying to balance himself. He was trying to keep himself off kilter enough that most of my mind’s rationality fell my way. But not too much that he tore himself apart.

Distracting myself with the inner cogs of my psyche stopped me from worrying about bolting. Running was slightly less tempting when I knew so many of my problems would still be there waiting for me, even if I succeeded.

Still, part of me kept going back to finding a moment to run. It was one of my strong suits. It literally came naturally to me.

Maybe my human advantages were the reason I was still even upright. Being able to chase for days on end meant you could also flee for the same length of time, provided you weren’t run down in the meantime.

And so far, we hadn’t been. This whole affair hadn’t exactly been a footrace, but if Courser and its hounds had tracked us down on foot, then maybe these dogs were even more exhausted than I was.

Maybe it didn’t even have enough in the tank to sprint up the hill, even. Could I get away with trying to flee, or throwing it down the mountain again?

When I peeked around my current hiding tree to get a glimpse of my enemy, a deafening blast like an electrified steel cable snapping erupted over the mountainside.

Tasser had fired the bolt-rifle again. Two shots remaining.

Much as the sound confirmed my Casti allies were still kicking, it also made no.3 curious.

I wanted to try and slink away from the panther-hound back toward the truck. The bolt-rifle had been fired relatively close to the truck, close enough that the tack no.3 took in response to the sound inadvertently led it almost directly toward me.

I had to move swiftly and stealthily to avoid being seen, and it wasn’t something I could do forever. The panther-hound kept getting closer and closer. It didn’t have to hide. It was just covering more ground.

I knew why I hadn’t felt brave enough to take the pistol from Nai’s unconscious hand, but right now I couldn’t get over how costly of an idea it was about to turn out to be.

A flicker of light caught my eye in almost the same direction as the electric blast of the bolt-rifle.

A cone of orange washed over the snow in front of the truck, a tarp half sticking out of snow next to the vehicle.

Nai was hanging out the door, jamming something into place under the vehicle’s sticks.

They were awake! They had the truck back on!

They didn’t know where I was .

My brain went through a few questions all at once. ‘Would Nai leave me behind on purpose?’

Maybe.

‘Would Nai wait for me if I wasn’t in sight?’

Definitely not.

I needed to get back to the truck now . Forget the panther-hound, if I got close enough, Nai should kill it.

Escape.

The instinct kicked in full tilt, and I made my move.

< Caleb wait! >

Daniel’s warning came a beat too slow. I’d already broken into a run for the truck.

Just one moment of carelessness, and I’d gotten the better of myself.

I’d given myself away, after all the hard work I’d put into hiding. No.3’s eyes locked onto me as soon as I showed myself. It charged straight for me, on an uphill diagonal, vanishing under the clouds of powder snow it tore through.

I didn’t have the tarp anymore. I couldn’t deflect it.

Maybe I could change my route, move erratically and throw off its destination. I ducked uphill a few feet, only to drop to my knees and slide ten feet downhill through the snow. I caught myself on a tree before I built up too much speed to stop.

No.3 had to slow to find me again. It couldn’t see through the huge clouds of snow its speed threw up. But I didn’t have a chance.

I’d delayed it catching me by only a second or two. Maybe I could reach the road in that second or two, and be visible to Nai.

No chance.

There was a soft whump behind me as it leapt through the snow. I whirled at the last second, bringing up my arms to try and shield myself from its natural weapons.

Both of us tumbled clear of the tree line, down the slope, and onto a section of hill just feet away from the switchback road.

Panther-hound no.3 fell on me, snarling and angry. It opened its jaws to tear my throat out and I ran out of snap responses.

I wasn’t alone though. I had a teammate.

A last resort went off in my head and I felt Daniel change inside my mind. No… ‘change’ was the wrong word. Move . He moved himself through my thoughts and caught the panic that was welling up in me, smothering it where it began, taking it instead of letting run rampart through my mind.

I stared up at the panther-hound’s jaw, utterly, impossibly calm. Daniel was taking all the panic and fear onto himself, leaving me with just…

Focus .

It wasn’t slow motion. But everything looked crisp and fluid. I was simply thinking quickly in the last moment before the animal mauled me bloody.

I jammed my fist right into the creature’s jaw, and twisted my hand near the back of its throat. It wanted a bite out of me? Fine. Then I would give it more than it bargained for.

It tried to snap its teeth down on my arm, but I levered my wrist against the side of its jaw. The dog’s head was forced to twist at an odd angle, and between the position and just how much it was trying to snap off, it couldn’t close its jaws.

It tried anyway.

It was like a vice on my wrist. It’s teeth were sharp, but only like that of a normal mammals, almost a rounded sharpness. I wasn’t dealing with crocodile or shark teeth.

With its jaws occupied, No.3 tried to claw at my face. But the movement was clumsy and poorly aimed. I lurched my head away and lashed out with my other hand, catching the front leg in a tight grip.

I wanted to break its leg.

It had a strong body, but its legs were thin and athletic. Optimized for speed. I knew I could do it. Just one wrenching motion, and the thinnest part of its foreleg would crack.

But if I did, the animal might shift its balance and swipe at me with the other paw’s claws. I probably wouldn’t be able to reach my spare hand across my body in time to catch that attack. Not while I had my hand halfway down the panther-hound’s throat.

We were in a stalemate. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Had an alien animal been enough to stalemate me? Or was this more of an accomplishment than it seemed like?

Neither I decided.

It had forgotten, or maybe it didn’t quite have the brain to remember in the first place. Whichever the case, I remembered the half-baked new card I still had up my sleeve.

No.3’s angry growl ceased when it realized, too slowly, what I was up to.

My left hand held one of its legs off the ground, keeping its footing unsteady. But I uncurled my fingers on my right hand, stuffed halfway down the animal’s throat, letting the sensation of a million suns spring to life right in my palm.

This was going to hurt .