The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

With a sigh, I step out of the room and head for the ruined living area. Neither the man, nor the predatory birds hear me coming, so when I clear my throat and all eight of them shriek in surprise, I can’t help but smile. The turkuins react as they should, by squawking in fright, turning a quick one-eighty and bolting in a straight line. Five of them escape unharmed. One slams head first into a metal wall and snaps its neck. Another impales itself on the sharp end of a broken chair leg. It squawks in pain, trying to free itself.

Seeing the creature is dying and suffering, I walk toward it. Despite its perilous situation, the bird attempts to peck me with its sharp beak when I get close. As it strikes out at me, I catch its neck and give it a hard yank. Its life ends in a quick, painless crack. When I let go, the head flops to the side.

I turn to the man. His eyes are wide. He looks at the crude club in his hands, and then to Whipsnap. He backs away, no doubt remembering how I defeated him when he was armed with modern weapons.

I feel pity for the terrified man as he shuffles out of the ruined structure. I decide to give him a knife. Maybe he’ll have a fighting chance. It’s the least I can do for a man who tried to put a bullet in my head. “Wait,” I say. “Hold on.”

The man screams in response and takes off into the jungle. I’m about to pursue when a much more familiar call rips through the jungle. It’s a cresty. A big one by the sound of it. More sounds follow. Snapping branches. Heavy foot falls.

When the Arab screams again, it’s a pitch I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a man reach before.

The cresty roars again. The hunt is on.

And I know it will end quickly.

I also know that there’s nothing I can do to help the man. Without my abilities, I wouldn’t fare much better against a full-grown cresty than Kainda did. And cresties hunt in packs. The only thing I can do is wait for the feeding to begin and then head in the opposite direction.

But the hunt ends long before the cresties catch the man. An explosion tears through the jungle. The man must have triggered his own tripwire. I’m sorry the man died, but being blown to bits is a merciful death compared to being eaten alive. Unfortunately, it creates a problem for me. The man’s shredded body might dissuade the cresties from eating it. They prefer to kill their prey—not have it blown to bits. The explosion most likely turned them away as well.

The hunt will continue.

I duck out of Clark Station 1, turn right and sprint. There are turkuins, tripwires, armed men, cresties and who knows what else lurking in the jungle, but if I don’t put some distance between me and the cresties that I know for sure are behind me, they’ll catch my scent and hunt me down. My best bet is to get as far away as I can and hope the dinosaurs pick up on the strong turkuin scent trail. Because if they come for me, I’m in for a world of pain.

A shriek cries out behind me.

The hunt is resumed.

World of pain it is.





19



The pain begins long before any of the cresties have even seen me. The impact of every hurried step I take sends a jolt of pain from my chest wound. Chills begin to spread over my skin and my stomach clenches tight. The infection is still fighting for supremacy and the last thing I should be doing right now is sprinting through the jungle.

Actually, that’s not quite true. The last thing I should be doing is letting myself be eaten by a dinosaur. That pretty well trumps the infection. So I fight the growing weight in my legs and push forward, to who knows where.

If the cresties had actually seen me, I’d be done. I won’t be able to put up much of a fight in my condition. But they’re still tracking me by scent, no doubt following the subtle odor of my infected wound. Like any predator, their preference is always the sick, wounded, young or old. The less fight, the less chance of injury.

As they track my scent, they’ll stop every few steps to test the air. They know I’m sick, and that I’ll eventually tire and stop. So there’s no need for them to rush. They’ll expend less energy and still get a meal.

But the fact that they’re not hot on my heels doesn’t let me slow down. If I can reach a river, or find a crack in the ground or some other kind of shelter, I might be able to escape. So I keep running, and continue growing weaker.

My foot is just inches from the ground when I suck in a quick breath and freeze. There’s an odd, unnatural rise on the forest floor. I pull my foot back, carefully place it on the ground and crouch to inspect the aberration. I brush aside a few leaves and find a tripwire, but this one is made from frayed twine, not the hard line the Arab man carried.

Someone else laid this trap.

I follow the line to its end and find it tied off to a stake in the ground. I move to the other end and find the line attached to a thick vine holding back a large branch. It’s a crude trap, meant to knock someone silly, or perhaps dissuade a cresty from passing. I leave the trap be and continue past, hoping that it will be discovered by one of the dinosaurs pursuing me.