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

One bite, I think. That’s all it will take. One bite and I’m lunch.

I back away, but don’t watch my step. A bone trips me and sends me to the floor. As I scramble away on my hands and feet, the thing rises taller. Seeing me on my back triggers something in the creature. It knows I’m defenseless.

Flinging its short, straight legs into motion, the thing charges. Now it’s acting like its sibling. But it’s faster. More ferocious. It occurs to me, as the thing bears down on me, that the first egg-monster I faced had already been in the pit for who knows how long. It was already weakened. I think this one could fight all day without stopping.

Not that it will have to. The fight will be over in ten seconds—the time it will take it to reach me.

I reach out with my hands, searching for something with which to defend myself. My right hand grasps a long bone. I pull it out. It’s a human femur. I nearly drop it in disgust, but manage to hold onto it and thrust it out, hoping to channel Luke Skywalker’s Rancor-stopping technique.

In a flash I see the bone I’m holding enter the creature’s open maw. Then the jaws close. My eyes close, too, so I don’t see what happens next. But I hear it. And then feel it. A crunch and slurp of splitting flesh strikes my ears a moment before an intense pain jolts up my arm.

I scream as I’m struck and lifted. A moment later the back of my body and head strikes the solid wall of the pit. Spots of light dance in my vision for a moment and then fade. I wait for a second strike, for teeth to surround and sever my head.

But the attack has stopped. The pressure holding me against the wall is steady. The egg-monster has stopped moving. And then I see why.

The broken bone I jabbed into the creature’s mouth ended with a jagged, sharp tip. The creature’s own powerful jaws had shoved the bone up through its head and out its forehead. I can only assume it pierced whatever passed for a brain in the process.

But before it died, the beast’s jaws did their work, closing just enough to grip my arm in a death-vise. It could be worse. The bite could have easily severed the limb. The four quarter-inch-deep puncture wounds are insignificant by comparison. Of course, there is still the issue of freeing my arm from the jaws without filleting my skin.

The creature is heavy and hard to push, but it’s still on its feet, and once propped up, begins to fall backward, which is extremely painful for me since my arm is still clutched in its jaws. I move with it, hopping up onto its body, straddling it just below the lower jaw. The movement deepens the wounds and sends a fresh wash of pain through my body. I grunt, which sounds more like a primitive growl, and steady myself above the creature.

Its black eyes have fogged over. The black tongue dangles from the side of its partially opened mouth. My blood seeps over the gleaming white teeth and drips into the thing’s throat. For a moment I fear it will awaken and finish the job, but then I look again at the large bone sticking out of its head.

“You’re dead,” I tell it.

But it doesn’t reply.

“I’m going crazy,” I say. “But you? You’re dead.”

I plant my right foot against its upper jaw and push down. For a moment it doesn’t budge, but then slowly, the jaws separate. I was hoping the mouth would simply snap open and get the painful part over with, but no such luck. I can feel the teeth sliding slowly out of my flesh. A warm pulse of blood pours out. A snag and pull of serrated tooth on sinew follows, along with a stab of pain. The thirty seconds it takes to free my arm feels like thirty minutes.

But then I’m free and standing over the monster like Hercules himself. Wounded, but alive.

I stand still for a moment, my chest heaving with each breath. I’m changing, I think, and realize I have thought this before. It began when I arrived at Antarctica and I couldn’t feel the cold. My agility increased. Then my confidence. And now some hidden killer instinct has emerged. I’m not sure what this is, but it’s helping me adapt, physically and emotionally, to this harsh new life. So I’m thankful for it.

I look at my wounds. There are four of them. Assessments run through my mind: stitches, antibiotics, apply pressure. But I ignore them. Something else has my attention. The hamster in my gut had hidden while I was fighting for my life, but now that the deed is done and I’m still breathing, it’s back with a vengeance.

For a moment I consider finding the shirt I discarded and tying some clean strips around the wound, but now something else distracts me from the injury: a fragment of jaw-saw still holding three teeth. I move back to the carcass and kneel by one of the muscle-filled stubby legs.

My first cut is tentative.

The second goes deep.

By the third I’m lost in my hunger and sawing away.

Moments later, I’m eating.

I’m surviving.

For now. I have no idea what comes next.





16