Hawkins ran like an Olympic sprinter after the gun is fired. He could hear the dracos behind him. Trees shook. Shrieks grew louder. Shadows danced on the jungle floor around him. But he didn’t stop and fight. He couldn’t.
The jungle ahead looked thick with brush. He’d have to plow right through and hope the draco-snakes got tangled long enough for him to elude them. His arms took the brunt of the impact as he raised them to protect his face. He felt stinging pricks all over, some sharp enough to be bites.
He shouted as the brush gave way. He spilled past the foliage barrier and fell to the ground, bathed in hot sunlight.
The cacophony of the sudden draco-snake attack fell away abruptly as Hawkins was once again expelled from their territory. He checked his body quickly, finding a multitude of scrapes, but no wounds that looked like snakebites. He also knew that if he’d been bitten, he’d already feel the effects as his blood raced through his adrenaline-charged body.
Confident he wasn’t going to die yet, Hawkins looked up at his surroundings and once again found himself baffled. He stood on the edge of an expansive clearing—a pasture, really—complete with a herd of cows. Thirty head. And each one of them was looking at him.
The herd stood on the muddy bank of a small lake. He realized he’d seen both the lake and green pastureland from the top of the pillbox.
A wave of agitation worked its way through the herd. The cows mooed and stomped their feet. And then, one by one, they backed away from the water. When the source of their distress was revealed, Hawkins shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The bull stood as tall as Hawkins’s six feet and rippled with muscles upon muscles. He recognized the breed as a Belgian Blue, famous for its double muscling that made them look like bovine bodybuilders. The brown-coated monstrous bull easily weighed more than a ton. But none of that was as frightening as the look in its eyes. As the herd’s protector, the bull clearly saw him as a threat. Hawkins took a step away from the bull, but stopped when his back struck the jungle’s foliage and set the draco-snakes to shrieking.
To his left was open field in which he could never outrun the bull. To his right was the lake and whatever dangers lurked within its waters. But both choices were better than the certain death waiting in front and behind him. Field or lake?
The bull didn’t give him time to decide. With a snort and a stomp of its hoof, the bull lowered its sharp, curved horns and charged.
35.
A moment of indecision paralyzed Hawkins. He saw death waiting in every direction. Not just waiting, reaching out for him. The island seemed perfectly designed to snuff out human life.
The bull let out an angry bellow that refocused Hawkins’s attention. The giant protector of the herd had halved the distance between them and was closing the gap fast. Hawkins raised the rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The report echoed over the lake. A pinprick of red appeared on the bull’s flank, but the giant showed no sign of slowing. He fired again, striking the bull’s back. But still, it charged. The bull’s dense musculature protected it from the bullets. A killing body shot would be impossible, even if the bull stood still. Hawkins aimed for the head, but it bounced with each step. Hawkins let out a breath and pulled the trigger a third time.
The shot missed.
Or, at least, buried itself in the depths of the giant’s body.
Hawkins lowered the rifle. He was wasting ammo.
Head to the ground, the bull moved like a missile on a straight trajectory. And it wouldn’t stop until it reached him.
Seeing a flaw in the bull’s attack, Hawkins remained rooted in place, but tensed himself for a sudden dash. He’d seen more than a few matadors sidestep a bull on TV. Granted, he usually rooted for the bull, but this fight for survival wasn’t sport. If Hawkins didn’t time his leap right, he’d be gored, or worse. Of course, even if he did manage to escape the charging bull, he’d still have to sprint across the field. His only real hope was that the bull would get tangled up in the thick brush separating field from jungle, or that the draco-snakes would take exception to the bovine intrusion and use their poisonous bites to stop the giant.
The ground shook.
Mud flew from the bull’s pounding hooves.
The monstrous animal’s muscles rippled with energy.
And the water, calm and serene, parted for a pair of yellow eyes.
A snout appeared next, framed by a V of rippling water.
Hawkins registered the motion, but the bull either didn’t concern itself with the approaching crocodile or simply didn’t see it. But in the second that Hawkins should have jumped to the side, he saw that the croc was also headed straight toward him. Once the bull was done with him, the croc would finish him off.
Hawkins drew a sharp breath when he realized that he couldn’t avoid the bull. He leapt anyway, throwing himself back and away. At the very same moment the bull’s head connected with his airborne legs, the water at the edge of the lake exploded and two barbed tentacles shot out.
But the squid limbs weren’t aimed for Hawkins. The croc had a much bigger meal in mind. With a slap, the tentacles snagged the bull’s back and pulled. The bull’s one-ton assault was immediately arrested by the equally heavy crocodile.
Hawkins saw it all as he spun through the air and landed in the grass. He pushed himself up and watched the beginning of a monumental struggle. The bull bucked and kicked, reacting to the pain of having two lines of hooked tentacles embedded in its meaty back. The croc simply held on, no doubt waiting for the heavy bull to wear itself out.
When a second croc rose from the lake, the bull seemed to realize the amount of trouble it was in. It planted all four feet in the mud, gave a snort, and began walking backward. The croc let out a deep vibrato of a roar as it slid through the water toward shore. When it reached the lake’s edge, the chimera croc dug in its claws and let the dead weight of its massive body battle the rolls of bovine muscle.
Hawkins climbed to his feet and stepped away from the scene. This croc was even larger than the one they’d encountered in the river. The second didn’t look nearly as big, but if it got close enough to the bull, he didn’t think it would last long. When a third and fourth croc showed up, Hawkins realized he still might find himself on the menu and double-timed his retreat.
With the sound of the angry bull and hungry crocs behind him, Hawkins ran across the rolling field. He had no real destination in mind, he just wanted to get the hell away. After sprinting for five minutes, Hawkins climbed to the top of a grassy hill and saw the end of the field. And what he saw waiting for him stunned him into stopping. Not because it was horrible or frightening like any of the other horrors on this island, but because it was so damn
A red barn, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, sat at the edge of the field. Chickens danced around, pecking at the ground. A silo rose up behind the building, which looked fairly new, or at least impeccably maintained. Realizing that there might be people working here, Hawkins dropped to the ground and flattened himself out. He watched the barn for several minutes, looking for any sign of a human presence.
He saw nothing.
A loud moo drew a surprised shout from Hawkins and spun him around. A lone cow stood on the decline behind him, chewing its cud and staring at him. He saw no malice in the creature’s eyes or body language, just mild interest. It swallowed, lowered its head, and gnawed on the grass.
