Hell's Gate(37)

Then, without any warning or shyness, it stepped into a narrow clearing at the water’s edge.

The zoologist’s eyes widened. You are not there.

He resisted the urge to blink—half-fearing that if he did the tiny creature would dissolve like a mirage.

You are definitely not there, MacCready’s mind repeated, leaving him feeling uneasy this time. He was, until now, just getting used to the idea that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t following his mother into the perpetual, uncontrollable dreamscape of insanity. Time to reevaluate.

The animal standing at the edge of the watering hole looked something like a horse. And as the animal dipped its long snout to drink, MacCready could see that it behaved something like a horse as well—gold-colored eyes scanning the surface of the water, alert for any sign of movement.

Beyond appearance and mannerisms, though, calling this species a horse was a stretch. For starters (and just for starters) it stood no more than three feet tall at the shoulder and, incredibly, instead of a single hoof, it had toes—three of them by the look of it.

MacCready concentrated on keeping his jaw from dropping open, while another part of his brain slipped easily into paleontology mode—working through everything it could dredge up about the evolution of prehistoric equids.

He knew that the granddaddy of all horses had been a short-snouted forest browser, with four toes on the front legs and three on the hind legs. As North American climates changed around twenty million years ago, humid forests gave way to grasslands, and new horse lineages developed longer legs, fewer toes, and, on one surviving offshoot—single hooves.

MacCready watched the animal paw at something near the waterline.

Mesohippus?

No, this guy’s a little larger. Parahippus.

But that was a North American species—supposedly a long-extinct intermediate between woodland and grassland horses.

Well, this little fella is going to throw a real monkey wrench into what we thought we knew about the ancestry of horses.

As if overhearing MacCready’s thoughts, Parahippus raised his head, cocking an ear. MacCready held his breath.

Suddenly there was a horselike cry from the sea of grass bordering the far side of the watering hole.

Unknowingly, the scientist’s body reacted with the slightest twitch. There are more of them, he thought, maybe a whole—

The tiny creature turned its head and looked directly into MacCready’s eyes.

—herd.

MacCready never bothered to stifle the smile that had begun to spread across his face. But even before he could complete the grin, the crack of a gunshot sent him sprawling into the mud.

Mauser, MacCready thought, reaching for his sidearm and catching a glimpse of the tiny horse as it flew across the muddy pool in a single leap. A split second later, there came an explosion of green-streaked water. Even before MacCready’s gun arm could spin toward the new commotion, a toothy reptilian snout stabbed upward and closed only on open air. With a measure of relief, MacCready saw that the frightened Parahippus had already vanished into the grass.

Reptilian reflexes pitted against mammalian ones had become the horses’ good fortune, and MacCready’s misfortune. The caiman landed with all the grace of a fat kid belly-flopping into a pool, a noise that was certain to be heard by whoever had fired the gun. MacCready rolled into cover, alert for any hint of someone approaching through the grass.

About a minute later, there came another gunshot, farther away this time. Definitely Mauser. Definitely Krauts, but they’re not shooting at me, he thought, his relief tinged with annoyance. Leave it to the Master Race to take pot shots at a herd of animals that’ve been extinct for fifteen million years.

By the time his adrenaline rush wore off, MacCready began to realize just what exhaustion combined with a decision to press forward in broad daylight had nearly cost him. Now he would wait for dusk before leaving cover.

Three long hours later, the zoologist skirted the waterhole in a semi-crouch, taking a moment to appreciate a perfect set of Parahippus toe prints in the mud.

I’d give a million bucks to make casts of these, he thought. Then he shot a glance into the grass where the animal had disappeared. And another million to track that herd.

But he pushed his explorer impulses aside. He had a civilization to save. His own. MacCready turned resolutely toward the stark cliffs of the Mato Grosso Plateau. Rising out of their lake of mist, and far closer now, the stony guardians of Hell’s Gate looked impossibly steep and just as inhospitable.

Jesus, MacCready thought. Don’t make me have to climb those f*ckers.





CHAPTER 12





From the Mist


God is in the details.

—FREEMAN DYSON

The devil has a better press agent.

—LEWIS ABERNATHY

January 26, 1944

An hour before dawn

The vampire bats hung like ten giant black teardrops beneath the gnarled branches of the great tree. For uncounted millennia this had been an especially rich section of their hunting ground, until the strange sounds and a sudden swarm of bipeds had driven most of them away.

Now they had come back to investigate.

Just beyond their roost, it was as if a strong wind had blown through the forest in a straight line, sweeping away every tree and every sign of life. The lead male sent out a stream of ultrasonic clicks that beamed along the clearing in a clean, straight line, unimpeded.