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

I pull myself deeper, caring more about escape than answers, but get my answer when the giant begins laughing. His voice is deep and rumbles through me. I can feel the pulsing laugh in my chest. It chases me into the darkness, stripping away my confidence and filling me with a fear that goes far beyond physical pain or death.

That thing...that man...was evil.

And I hope I’ll never see him again.





23



“You’re dead now,” I say to the small, arm-sized centipede. The thing had put up quite a fight, thrashing and trying to bite, but the rock in my hand proved too much for it in the end. I know now why the small dinosaur picked it for a meal—centipedes are stupid. It didn’t take too much effort to sneak up on the thing. If not for its hard shell, my first strike would have killed it. But its carapace was like a turtle shell and breaking through took four solid whacks.

Now the thing is leaking its white, cream cheese-like innards all over a boulder. The sight and smell of the thing makes me pause, but I haven’t eaten in days. I scoop some of the fleshy sludge up with my fingers. For a moment I wonder if it is poisonous.

No, I think, the dinosaur ate it.

Holding my breath, I put my hand in my mouth and scrape the stuff off with my teeth. I swallow quickly and repeat the process. The centipede tastes as bad as I thought it would, but it’s settling nicely in my stomach. When I’m done I rinse the taste out of my mouth at a small spring I found. The caves are covered in small springs and finding water is rarely a problem anymore. Food is a different problem, because food here either runs away or tries to eat me.

But I won’t need to eat again for at least another day, so I take some time to explore. Keeping track of where I’ve been is simple. My perfect memory, at least back to when I first came here, has assembled a three dimensional map of every place I’ve been. Today I’m determined to fill in a gap. Then I’ll have a three cubic mile territory memorized.

What bothers me about this gap is that I’m not sure what’s there. I haven’t seen the dinosaurs again, so maybe they nest there. The giant, too. Anything could be there. I tell myself I’m likely to find nothing. There are many large and small tunnels leading out of my territory and creatures as big as those would need territories vastly larger. But still, I’m nervous about what I’ll find.

I squeeze through a tight space and for a moment think I’ve got myself stuck again, but then I’m through and sporting a new scrape on my chest. I ignore the sting and dripping blood as I arrive in a wider, inclined tunnel. It’s tall enough to stand in, maybe eight feet tall and four wide. My mind fills in the holes in my mental map. If the tunnel carries on in either direction as straight as it appears to, then one side would reach the large river tunnel and the other would reach the surface.

But I can’t just assume this. I need to make sure. So I take the tunnel left, looking for branches along the way. I find none, but thirty minutes later I reach the river. After a quick drink, I backtrack up the tunnel. An hour later, I reach the surface. The entrance to the tunnel is blocked from view by a stone jutting out from the mountain. I step out of the tunnel and find the outside as dark as the inside. It’s night. And it’s snowing. I crouch in the snow half way up the mountain. It’s peaceful out here. I sense that nothing will try to eat me here, and the snow—I eat some—tickles my tongue as it melts. I listen to the tick, tick of snowflakes landing and wonder where I’ve heard the sound before. I have no memory of it, but ticking doesn’t strike me as something new, just something I enjoy.

My stomach isn’t rumbling yet, but I know it will be soon. So I head back into the tunnel, destination: river. I hope to find something more significant to eat than a centipede, but I also have no weapon, so something that couldn’t make a meal of me would also be spectacular.

As I walk down the tunnel, taking note of the tiny fragments of glimmering stone that help me see, I try to create stone weapons in my mind. How would cave men do it? I’ll need a stick. Some rope. And a sharp stone. A stick on its own might do the job, I think. Well, not against a—

A white square—its whiteness and perfect edges completely foreign in the underground—catches my attention. It’s in the middle of the tunnel floor.

How did I not see this before? I wonder.

I don’t know, but here it is.

I crouch down to the flat thing. What is it?

Before picking it up, I smell it. There are traces of something I can’t place, but have smelled before. I taste it. The same. I place my finger against it and yank it away.