Hunter's Run(29)

"Turns out I've got morals," Ramón said. "I wouldn't have thought so."

"And this sound. It was an expression of surprise?"

"Yeah," Ramón said. "Something like that."

"And what is the reason for displaying the food in a tree branch? Would it not be better to consume it?"

Ramón frowned his confusion, and Maneck gestured toward the crotch of the tree under which they sat. There, wrapped in leaves that almost obscured the blood, was the skinned body of a flatfur. Ramón shifted the sahael over one shoulder and climbed up to look at the corpse. It was like the one he had found by the lake. Hidden, but hidden poorly. He was a little disconcerted that he hadn't noticed it himself. Scavengers would find it by its scent, the way they had found the jabali rojo that Maneck had killed. Ramón's twin was doing something. But  …

With a feeling of connection that was almost physical, he understood. He remembered Martín Casaus, back in the early days when they'd been friends. The drunken stories he'd told of trapping chupacabras, using fresh meat as bait to lure them into a pit  …

"That cocksucking son of a whore," Ramón said under his breath, and then dropped back down to the ground. "That pendejo's fucking insane!"

"What do these words mean?" Maneck demanded. "The display of the food is aubre?"

"No, it's got a function. That bastard is leading us into a chupacabra's range, and these things are meant to draw it toward us."

"This chupacabra. It is dangerous?"

"Fuck yes. It'll kill him if it finds him."

"This would undermine his function," Maneck said. "His actions lack meaning."

"No, they don't. He knows we lived through the blast. He's seen us, and he knows we're close enough that he won't have time to build a raft. He's tired, he's hurt, and he knows we're going to catch him. So he's trying to put us in the same place as the chupacabra, and hope that it kills us before it kills him. It's a crazy risk to take, but it's better than giving up," Ramón said, and shook his head in admiration. "That's one tough cabrón we're up against!"

For a moment, Maneck's shoulders rose in confusion, but then it seemed to understand what Ramón was saying and feeling. Perhaps the sahael had given the alien some insight into human perversity.

"We will find the man before this happens," Maneck said, rising to its full height.

"We'd fucking better," Ramón said.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 15

For two more days, Ramón and Maneck trekked through the forest, the man leading the way and the alien at his heels. They paused for Ramón to eat and drink, and to piss and shit, but rested only at night. The other Ramón had made perfunctory camps, sleeping in the hollow of a lightning-struck milkpine one night and in a poorly constructed lean-to the next. The fire pit and well-built shelter of the earlier campsites were gone, and Ramón understood why. His twin was truly on the run. They were down to the final sprint.

They found three more flatfurs along the path, and Ramón was fairly sure they had overlooked several others. The path they traveled would reek of blood to the creatures of S?o Paulo. And more and more often, Ramón saw signs of chupacabra: evil-smelling spoor on the path, trees gouged by sharpened claws, and, once, a distant call that was equal parts solitude and murder.

Maneck remained distant and reserved, but more comprehensible than it had been at first. With every night's rest, the alien seemed to gain strength and focus. None of the strange dreams had troubled Ramón again, and the issues of tatecreude and killing, Enye and genocide had come up in their conversation no more often than before. Memories still flooded Ramón from time to time-moments from his childhood, trivial events from his time in the Enye ship, and arriving on S?o Paulo. He found that he was better able to ignore them if he intentionally kept his mind on the path before him.

It was the middle morning of the third day when the game path they had been following reached the river. The great Río Embudo. The river was almost too wide to see across-what had been a thin ribbon seen from afar had stretched into a clear expanse of glaciercold water, fast and smooth. Trees pressed up to the banks, exposed roots trailing into the flow like thick fingers. No human footprints marred the muddy bank, but Ramón didn't doubt that the other one had been at this place, seeing this same landscape. But how long before? And where would he have gone from here to construct his escape raft? Ramón considered the sunlight glittering on the water's surface and let his mind turn the problem over. If he had been here, and free, fleeing the alien and dodging the chupacabra, what would he have done?

Scratching his wispy beard, he turned south and began plodding along the riverbank. Maneck followed without a word, the sahael bobbing between them like a length of rope. The water murmured softly. On another day, with some other errand, Ramón would have stopped, perhaps dipped his bare feet into the river water, and enjoyed the beauty of the place. As it was, his mind buzzed with a hundred different questions; had his twin already finished some small raft and floated away to the south, and what would Maneck do if they found the other Ramón, and how large was a chupacabra's territory anyway? He spoke about none of it, only judging where best to place his feet and what angle to take around the trees in order to keep the sahael from catching on a branch and tugging at his throat.

There were fewer signs of his twin now-no footprints, few small branches broken at the correct height for a man to have done the damage. It wasn't that the other Ramón had become more careful, but the river drew forest animals to its banks to obscure any more human traces. There would be more kyi-kyi here. More salt rats and alces negros. The mud banks they passed showed the marks of thin hooves, wide-slung soft toes, the tiny birdlike cuneiform of tapanos and stone kites. The river at their side was teeming with life. The planet was alive around them. They were two aliens marching through a world they didn't belong to. Three aliens, if he counted the other Ramón.

The river bent lazily to the east, offering Ramón a majestic view of the water and the distant forest on the far bank but restricting what he could see of the path up ahead. He paused, squatted beside a fallen iceroot, and spat. Maneck came looming up beside him and stopped.

"The man is not here," Maneck said. Its voice likely carried across the water like a distant landslide.

"He's here. Somewhere."

"He may have gone against the flow of the river," Maneck said. "If we are searching in the wrong direction, then we will be unable to find him."

"Then he'll be floating on by, won't he? That's why I'm holding close to the bank. So we can see him if he passes."

The alien was silent.

"You hadn't thought of that," Ramón said.

"I am not an apt tool for this purpose," Maneck said. The quills on his head shifted in something akin to despair.

"You're doing fine," Ramón said. "But if we don't find this pendejo before sundown, we're going to have a problem. He'll have the chance to-"

The sound was like something falling; the rattle of leaves, the faintest hush of moving air. The beast burst from the trees in near silence. It wasn't until Maneck turned toward it that the chupacabra bared its teeth and shrieked.

Ramón had seen pictures of chupacabras before-even once held the scaled pelt of what must have been a young member of the species. Nothing he had seen had prepared him for the reality of the creature that faced him now. As tall as a man, and perhaps twelve feet long, its limbs were engines of power and speed. Black claws tipped its almost handlike paws, and the wide mouth-lips drawn back to reveal the deep-red gums-seemed too small for the doubled rows of teeth. Its eyes were not the red glow of the parade float, but pure black. The predator stink of it-rotten meat, animal musk, and old blood-rushed on ahead of it like a wave.

Maneck's arm shifted, and energy exploded on the chupacabra's breast. The screaming cry rose to a higher register, and the air suddenly filled with the stink of burning hair and flesh, but the shot wasn't enough to stop the beast, and its attack didn't falter. The chupacabra crashed into the alien, and, for the first time, Maneck seemed small. Ramón backed instinctively into the water until the sahael tugged at his neck, unable to take his eyes from the whirling tangle that was alien clashing with alien. His mind was empty with fear, his own high voice squeaking out the Paternoster without realizing it.

Through the sahael, he could feel Maneck's body grappling with the chupacabra, exerting every last bit of strength it possessed. It was not as hopelessly uneven a struggle as it would have been had Maneck been human-the chupacabra was stronger and heavier, but not so much so that Maneck was completely without a chance. Both Maneck and Ramón screamed in agony when the thing raked its claws down Maneck's side. But then Maneck's long arms found some purchase. The chupacabra's battle calls shifted, becoming at first alarmed and then agonized as Maneck hugged it close, its cablelike arms squeezing the air from the predator's lungs. Ramón could hear the chupacabra's ribs crack, hear it gasp in pain, and, for a moment, he felt a surge of amazed hope that they would win.