“What do you think the odds are, that amid the chaos, a Tsuchi survived and found itself afloat on a piece of debris that later washed up on shore? Certainly higher than .75, yes?” Brice turned the monitor back around and looked at the grainy image. No one outside GOD could identify the creature in the image. Most people would believe it to be yet another cryptid hoax. They would give it a name. Something catchy. And make documentaries about it.
The trouble was, if they actually went out looking for it, and found it, it wouldn’t be long before the whole world knew about the Tsuchi. And that could lead to trouble worse than exposure. If a Tsuchi reached the general population before controls had been implemented, life on Earth would be fundamentally changed forever. North and Central America would fall first. South America, too, if they didn’t think to destroy the Panama Canal’s three bridges. Then, when winter arrived and the arctic ice reached out across the top of the world, Greenland would fall. Then Russia, Asia, Africa and most of Europe. Only the island nations would survive. All because Silhouette had allowed the .75 percent margin of error to exist. It didn’t matter how it had happened, it only mattered that he corrected the error before it was too late.
The stoic BlackGuard leader knew this as well as Brice did, so he simply turned around and headed for the door at the end of the lab. “We’ll find it.”
“Be sure that you do. And if you encounter anyone who has seen or come into contact with the Tsuchi...”
“Scorched earth,” Silhouette said. “We’ll leave nothing behind, living or dead.”
5
“Are you serious?” I ask Hawkins.
He’s bent over a dirt trail leading into the Tillamook State Forest, which is 364,000 acres of temperate rainforest sitting atop the Pacific Coast mountain range, defined by the Jon Hudson dictionary as: a crap-ton of trees on top of really tall peaks that are separated by lots of streams and rivers. But that’s the good news. If Collins were here, that would sound like a good time. Instead, I’m with Hawkins, in search of a single creature the size of a basset hound...with eight legs, a shell back and an egg-laying stinger.
Hawkins shuffles back without standing, pointing to the sand around the trail head. “Look closely. Two lines of staggered impressions.”
We left the FC-P preserve in Maine just twelve hours ago. Woodstock, our surly helicopter pilot had picked us up so we could get a head start, while Collins and Joliet got Maigo and Lilly settled. All four women had protested for different reasons: Joliet because she had more experience than me, Collins because she was more badass than me, Lilly, because she was more badass than me and had more experience, and Maigo...because she was secretly more badass than me and she doesn’t like to be geographically distant from me. At least one of them isn’t as badass, though Joliet can certainly handle herself.
But this was Hawkins’s show. The BFSs were his personal nemeses. He knew what they could do and how to kill them. And he wanted me, and only me, on the advance search. He claimed it was because a smaller team would move faster and quieter, but I’m not sure anyone believed him. At first I thought I detected a little bit of sexism. He is kind of a macho, rugged wilderness guy. But then, during the six-hour flight from Boston to Portland, I realized the truth. Mine is the only life he felt comfortable risking. It’s a horrible kind of compliment.
I bend down, my legs protesting after being crammed in an airplane seat for six hours and then a compact rental for another hour and a half. The only time not spent sitting in the past eight hours was the walk from the plane to the rental agency, who had mistakenly given away our much roomier rental. Despite my tired legs and bleary eyes, I see what he’s pointing at. Two sets of tracks, which look too small to be anything large, head up the path toward the forest. I look back. The coastline is a sliver of blue, just two miles away. Hawkins says we’re lucky it hadn’t attacked anyone on its way to the woods, which was most likely because it wasn’t comfortable, being so far out of its habitat without its brood. Apparently, the BFSs are social creatures. But now it’s in the woods, where lots of living things will make for convenient, rapid fire incubators.
“I see them,” I say, following the tracks to the edge of the woods, where they disappear. “But they stop here. Did it turn around?”