The Ultimate Prey
Chapter 5
by
DreamWeaver and Hunter
DISCLAIMER: Everything belongs to Marvel except Kiefer, Jan, and the Disco.
FEEDBACK: Yes please. . . . katduza@yahoo.com or mainsmel@yahoo.com
HUNTER'S NOTES: Many thanks to Dream Weaver for all her amazing hard work to get this done before I left for Canada. It was a pleasure to work with you.
DREAMWEAVER'S NOTES: Kudos to KAT for setting out the whole idea! An amazing mindmeld as we sliced, diced, and spliced the story together over many a chat. Great fun!
AUTHORS' NOTES: The dialect of the two main baddies is of Southern African origin: South Africa (Kiefer) and next door Namibia (Jan). (boet--Afrikaans for 'brother', in slang-comrade or close friend)
Looking back on it, Logan realized he expected to come upon Beast at every turn. Sure, Hank had been on the run a whole day, and though not clumsy by any means, he was big, too big to travel quickly through the rain forest's thick growth. Evidence of his struggle was everywhere--plants beaten down, trampled, crushed, branches bent or broken, torn-off leaves carpeting the flattened moss, wisps of blue fur decorating the foliage. Hank's route was as clear as if it had signposts.
Stupid, maybe, to follow that path of destruction. Logan weighed the pros and cons even as he sprinted down the trail. Abandoning this bulldozed highway to beat through the brush on his own might be safer, but it would be a hell of a lot slower. And if he met up with Hank like he hoped, all the better. Together they could clear out that cesspool of scumbags in no time flat. Besides, the traces of his own passage over the moss were all but lost in Beast's general mishmash. So he kept on as he had started and soon saw Hank's methodical logic at work.
Beast was squaring a circle. Ignoring all the minor contours of the island's coast which would rack up miles of travel if followed, he instead was moving in a straight line from promontory to promontory. Keeping the water to his right he had gone inland some little distance, his guide the light filtering through the trees at the shore. For every time that light dimmed the path turned seaward and came out on a headland allowing a clear, sweeping view of cliff, or cove, or bay. Then the trail went inland once more and straight on to the next distant cape.
Dogging Hank's track, Logan had in this manner looked down on a bay and a pretty, isolated little cove, both empty of life and, more importantly, empty of boats. A third time he gained close to an hour by not taking the turnout, merely casting ahead until he came to Hank's return trail. Now the trammeled path again veered right but Logan continued to forge through the shrubbery, scanning the terrain for mutilated vegetation, the mark of the Beast. He found nothing.
Disturbances in the foliage, yes, and made by something fairly large. He'd say deer, for he'd come across their droppings several times, except the moss bore no imprints of sharp hooves, only scuffed, blurred depressions. On either side of the markings were parallel gouges like ski tracks set wide apart. He puzzled over those, uneasy that he could not put name to what had made them. But, in any case, Hank had not come this way. Had Beast finally discovered the boat? Logan doubled back, sprinted up the turnoff. What he spotted first was the blood.
A spray of dried blood like rusty red berries dotted a broad leaf, glaringly brilliant amid all the green. He stared at the droplets a moment, motionless, the turmoil in his head settling into a single thought. Not Hank's. Couldn't be Hank's. The fur ball was too big, too strong. This must have happened after he had already passed by this point. One of the island's carnivores had a lucky catch, that was all. He'd seen traces of fox and badger, raccoon. But for the blood to spurt out that way . . . The prey had to have been almost above the leaf--and the leaf was thigh-high. A bird, maybe?
Against his will, his eyes traveled from leaf to ground and there lay the answer. Earth torn up, plants crushed and wilting, no clear prints but much flattened ground. A little puddle of blood gone sticky and black with flies. A snarl of blue fur hung limp from a twig.
He took a deep breath, another, his heart pounding so hard he could hear it drumming in his ears. Beast was shedding all over the whole damn forest but this was not Hank's blood. NOT! But Logan was already plunging ahead, reading sign. Whoever-- Whatever had been attacked here, had not been killed. The swath of leveled vegetation attested to that. The chase, torturous, twisted . . . The pursuit, direct and effective. Then--another patch of churned-up dirt, more blood, more shreds of fur. The impression of a heavy mass visible in the revealing moss.
Logan swallowed. Okay. Hank had been wounded. Caught. The blurred markings he'd seen earlier by the turnoff were those of the hunters. There was no body here. Beast had been carried away. The gouges he'd puzzled over were those of a travois, an Indian litter dragged on the ground. Two nearby birch trees, their hacked-off stumps still bleeding clear sap, had provided the transportation. Logan didn't remember sinking to his knees, but now he ran unsteady fingers down that depression in the moss, pulled a wisp of blue fur off a prickly bush and sniffed it. Burnt roses.
The rumble of breaking waves at some point impinged on his ears, brought him to his feet. With Hank incapacitated it was up to him to find the fucking boat and get them all the hell off this island! His lips pulled back in a snarl, he ran, following the direction Hank would have taken had he been able.
The promontory looked out on an expanse of cracked and fissured cliff that stretched off in the distance to a dim, blue headland. No boats. He stared at the churning water, at the regular explosions of spray as waves struck the cliff's sheer rock wall. But what he saw was Hank in his lab, Hank with the kids, Hank lighting up like the Fourth of July whenever there was something new to analyze, investigate. It was the continual roar of crashing surf that covered the hunters' approach.
Something made him turn, but it was neither scent nor sound, for the sea wind's constant beat at face and ears brought him only salt, thunder. No, some spark buried in mankind's primitive ape brain, a nameless vestige for intuitive self-preservation, caused him to spin about. Too late. He didn't even have time to pop his claws before a hammer blow struck him in the chest. He staggered back, one step, two, air all but driven from his lungs, and gaped first at a smiling Kiefer lowering a crossbow, then focused on the steel shaft protruding from his flesh.
At the sight of that short, thick spear all the fear-born rage in Logan's being blasted forth in a roar. He yanked out the bolt in a spurt of blood, scarcely feeling the pain in an adrenaline surge, and clenched the shaft ready to stab down. Claws sprang from the other hand, glittering, thirsty. His lips curled back in a carnivore's contemptuous smile at the shocked horror on the hunter's face and he leaped in attack. But the loose rubble beneath Logan's feet shifted at his sudden movement. He skidded, fell to his knees, sliding backwards even as a second quarrel whirred above his head and his legs slipped over the edge of the cliff. Scrabbling for a hold, claws and steel shaft struck sparks from the stone. The next instant the blades clove empty air.
The fall was endless and far too quick. Arms and legs flailing in what on land would have been a run, he plunged into frigid green water which bruited him about like a child's toy, pulling him under only to toss him up again. The deafening crash of waves on the surface muted to an ominous grumble beneath. The current whirled him about, played with him, finally with a powerful surge drove him towards the cliff. Even under water Logan felt the speed of that thrust hurtling him into the wall of rock. Instinctively, he curled into a ball, made himself as small an object as possible. His hip struck something solid, numbing that whole side. The shock caused him to open his mouth and swallow sea. Stone scraped skin off his back, a blow to his shoulder spun him around. His lungs burned for lack of air and he struggled futilely for the surface but didn't know which way to go for the green water had suddenly turned black. At last, tired of its plaything, the ocean spit him out on a little shelf of sand and withdrew. He hacked out water and lightening immediately lanced his chest. A scream, his scream, still echoing in his ears, the dark swooped down to claim him.
*****
Cold, so cold. Shivering, Logan drew into a knot, and that action caused the encroaching tide to splash into his mouth. He choked, coughed, automatically struggled in a worm's progress over gritty sand to escape both the freezing water and the throbbing ache in his chest that the coughing awoke. The exertion at last roused him from his stupor.
Logan rolled onto his back and looked out on a blackness so intense it seemed to have substance. Blind! His sharp gasp of panic was answered by an equally sharp pain. No, not blind, but hurt, somehow . . . Squeezing his lids tightly shut against that nothingness, he took air in shallow gulps as he sorted through a jumble of impressions and events, trying to understand where he was and why. The image of the hunter flashed in his mind. Bastard hit him with something. Eyes still closed, a hand groped its way across his chest, woke a thrumming at its touch.
Yeah, it was all coming back in pathetic detail. Certain death by crossbow, then certain death by falling off the damn cliff, then death by drowning . . . It was as if some sadistic, little god had a bet going on how many ways he could die. With great care Logan levered himself to sit upright against a wall of rock and peered out at his surroundings.
At first he could distinguish nothing in the smothering dark, but little by little his eyesight adjusted and he made out a dim finger of light which in fits and starts illuminated his confines. The reflected light came from the water that licked at the ribbon of dark sand on which he found himself. He was in some little cleft in the rocks, swept there by the current through the undersea opening to this little crack in the cliff. The split slanted upwards and the only reason he lived was thanks to a tiny pocket of air caught by the stone.
The sight of the water made his throat convulse in a swallow. Now the malevolent little god was putting his money on death by thirst, and if that didn't pan out, there was always death by starvation. Logan could see no escape from either of those options or from the cave itself. The adamantium made his body so heavy that swimming was not something he did by choice, and only when circumstances demanded it did he grudgingly take to calm and shallow waters. Hardly the case here. Besides, say he did make it though the sea tunnel, he still must swim up to the surface and the turbulence there was likely to smash him on the rocks. No way he could escape such a fate twice. But even if the dice were thrown in his favor, there remained the climb up the cliff. Sure, he'd clawed his way up part of the Statue of Liberty, but the rock wall here was five, six times that height.
Morose, he watched the lapping wavelets washing the strip of sand, belatedly realized that they were methodically erasing the gouges he'd made dragging himself out of the water. Yup. His lucky day. He wouldn't die of thirst after all. High tide was coming in. The sea would get him first.
Logan stood, backed away from the icy water when something sharp struck his foot. Swearing, he bent to snatch it up and fling it at the ocean. A hard, cold, heavy object met his groping fingers. The bolt from the crossbow. He'd clutched it all through the fall from the cliff and even when the sea swept him here. He gripped the shaft to him now. Damn! One chance. Give him just one chance to drive this steel stake into that bastard's heart and the miserable little god could deal Logan whatever horrible death its twisted mind could conjure.
It looked like the god wasn't going to take him up on the offer. The tide rose higher and higher, forcing Logan to finally wedge himself up against the cave's pitched ceiling. It wasn't high enough. Logan turned his face into the rock to escape the icy spray and from a fissure in the stone there came to him an odor. Burnt roses.
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