The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 98: Hunted

Dan immediately dragged Abby down into a crouch, hissing, "Body!" under his breath. His veil lanced out two-hundred feet in every direction, creating a lattice-work of thin threads that served as a spider's web. He tagged every living creature touching the ground in that radius. Another flex of will had threads winding their way up trees like vines seeking sunlight. They crossed over thick trunks and danced along thick branches to find birds and bugs alike, but nothing capable of killing an armed man.

Abby tensed beside Dan as he worked, her eyes flitting across the dense overgrowth. Her hand found his and squeezed tight as she asked, "Where?"

"Fork of the river," Dan said. His veil dipped below ground, checking for tunnels. He found what felt like a small rodent and more worms than he'd ever wanted to think about, but nothing that constituted a threat. "I can't feel anything dangerous, but he's wearing a Coldwater uniform."

"Are you sure he's dead?" Abby whispered, her voice tight.

Dan's veil brushed against cold flesh. "I'm sure."

Abby pulled him forward, staying low, "I need to see the body. And we need to call it in."

"Neither of us have a radio and I'm not leaving you here alone for a single second," Dan hissed.

"There's a spare radio in the sole of my shoe," Abby said tersely, "but first we need to see how he died."

They crept forward, keeping quiet. The sound of the forest had dimmed. The insects were quiet and the birds had fled. The only sound that remained was the quiet bubbling of flowing water, and the soft tapping of the body being jostled by the current. Dan's veil constantly swept his surroundings, ready to act at the slightest hint of danger. In the darkness of t-space, a chunk of steel began to fall.

At the fork of the river, they found the body. The Coldwater guard had been wedged unceremoniously between the floor of the river and a small outcrop that was just before the branching stream. The water around him was a murky brown that was slowly drifting downstream. The current was slow but steady, and a badly disfigured limb bobbed in and out of the water.

Abby sucked in a sharp breath, but her eyes did not flinch away. Dan fixed a scowl on his face as he ran his veil over the body. It was mangled, stripped to the bone in places, and twisted into a shape that humans were not meant to adopt. The Coldwater uniform had been shredded, and what was left of the vest exhibited a series of deep gouges through the reinforced chest plate. His weapon was missing, and his radio was not on his belt.

Dan turned his attention to his veil, this time searching for more than just living things. His threads quickly found what he was searching for: an assault rifle, twisted into a pretzel and discarded in the undergrowth. No animal could have done that.

"His radio is missing," Dan told Abby, as she leaned down to remove her shoe. He pointed towards the woods. "His gun is over there, bent into a knot. You need to raise the alarm."

"If whoever killed him took his radio," Abby said, "then there are protocols we need to follow." She turned her shoe over so that the sole was facing upwards and carefully extracted a narrow cylinder from below the heel. The device was smaller than a cigarette, with a button on one side and a speaker on the other.

Abby clicked it in a quick pattern, too fast for Dan to follow. She paused, then clicked another pattern into it and waited.

"That should signal the mansion guards that the radios have been compromised and to switch to our secondary frequency," she explained quietly, her eyes flitting from tree to tree. Dan could see her hand trembling, and he quietly placed his own over it.

The tiny radio crackled, and a voice demanded, "Status!"

"Alive and unharmed," Abby replied. "You have a man down. Savaged. He's missing his radio." She paused, took a deep breath and then voiced Dan's fears, "Prepare for Cannibal."

Tingling jolts of lightning raced up Dan's spine and fanned out across his back, followed by crawling waves of gooseflesh. He fought down a violent tremor, brought out by the memory alone of the monstrous thing he'd faced in that cheap motel room. His veil snapped out, lashing around the base of a nearby tree. He flexed, and hollowed out the plant's flesh, dropping an enormous log into t-space and letting it fall.

"Understood ma'am," the voice said. "Are you in a secure location?"

"I'm in the forest, north side, maybe a quarter mile out," her eyes glanced to Dan, "but I think Daniel can get us through lockdown. Please secure my family immediately."

"Copy that, ma'am. Beginning lockdown procedures."

An alarm rang out across the mansion grounds. In the distance, Dan heard the sound of great shutters falling, slamming down against the earth. The mansion was built like a fortress, and it came with its very own portcullis mounted over every entrance. The windows were blocked off at a command, and each room would be methodically sealed as the inhabitants moved towards a safe room at the center of the building.

"We need to move," Abby said, guiding Dan away from the body. "There's a quarter-mile of thicket between us and the mansion."

Gunfire erupted in the distance!

"Contact! There's someone in the trees!" the radio barked. Abby adjusted it, and the volume dropped to a whisper even as more shouts of alarm echoed across the frequency.

Dan and Abby dropped back down, reflexively stepping behind a thick tree for cover. The shots were relatively far away, probably on the opposite side of the property. The radio was no help on numbers. They were literally shooting at shadows; one of the soldiers had spotted a humanoid shape but lost track of it immediately. They were weapons free at the moment, given the circumstances. All of Abby's family were within the mansion and accounted for. Only Dan and Abby were at risk, roaming the woods.

Dan frowned as he contemplated their options. Abby could make it back to the mansion in only a minute or two if she pushed herself. Less, if Dan cleared the path for her through the rough undergrowth, but that would be in no way subtle. On the other hand, they could just leave, slink away into the woods and exit the property away from the fighting. That ran the risk of running into any enemies other than whoever was being engaged. The number of enemies was unclear, and Cannibal was still unaccounted for. Dan dreaded just thinking about Abby running into that monster in the woods.

Fuck it. Safety in numbers and thick walls.

Dan sliced out with his veil, carving out a hundred different wedge cuts in a hundred different plants. Trees and bushes toppled sideways. Threads wrapped around the remaining debris, tearing them out of existence. The thick forest rippled as Dan burned a narrow path through it, straight towards the mansion.

"Let's go," he said, standing up and making quickly for the path. "I'll scout for movement. You need to run."

Abby nodded her assent, fell into a runner's stance, and shot off like a bullet.

Dan blinked past her, to the end of the trail he'd created. He quickly scanned his surroundings, found nothing larger than a squirrel, and repeated his trick with the trees. Another chunk of foliage vanished into t-space as Abby blitzed by him at the speed of an Olympic sprinter.

The gunfire grew closer. It was circling the mansion, coming towards the north end where he and Abby were making their approach. The next time Abby ran past, he heard the radio blare, "Contact Cannibal! I repeat, contact—" The voice and the shooting cut off at the same time.

He blinked forward again, and was greeted with automatic fire ripping apart the forest not a hundred feet from him. Dan veil snapped out, brushed against something large and rapidly approaching. Dan triggered his veil, ripping apart the forest wherever it touched, and fell back to Abby. She'd taken cover the instant the gunfire had resumed, and Dan dropped down beside her.

"He's coming," he said quickly. "Move!"

Abby scowled, lifted her small radio, and twisted its upper half. It turned with a quiet click, and keening alarm rang out across the woods from somewhere nearby. Abby reoriented towards it, and dashed away, shouting, "Head towards the siren!"

The forest was shaking as a beast trampled its way through it. Dan ripped another tree into t-space, before blinking towards the retreating Abby. Automatic fire and the keening, constant siren almost drowned out his own rampaging heartbeat. His veil bounced off a shape blurring through the woods, but tagged something around the creature. Not clothes—those hung in tatters on its frame—but rather something Dan didn't recognize. He didn't have time to think about it.

Abby burst into a small clearing in the trees. Dan recognized it; they had passed it earlier on their walk. In the center, where there had once been flat earth and grass, a tall piece of metal was emerging from below ground. Abby sprinted towards the device, which was shaped like a thick pillar and mounted with flashing lights. She looped her arm around it, spinning to bleed off her speed, and dropped into a crouch beside it.

"Cannibal configuration!" she shouted, and the piece of metal—

Nope. That was a turret.

Twin barrels snapped up as the device rotated on a hinge. It snapped towards Dan, and he instinctively blinked beside Abby. The turret either didn't notice or didn't care. It kept itself oriented towards the approaching beast, while Abby pulled Dan down and whispered quick instructions into his ear.

"This won't stop him, but it should slow him down. The guards are trained for this, they'll be here soon. Our best bet is to keep him away from the turret."

There was no time for questions. The turret gave out a mechanical whine before unleashing a storm of projectiles into the forest. A blur erupted from the trees, diving towards Abby with a snarl, but was immediately peppered by black flashes. The body rocked sideways, something liquid exploding across its thin frame, and Dan finally got a glimpse of Cannibal.

He was less emaciated than the last time Dan had seen him. His frame was almost healthy, though still oddly proportioned. His face was twisted into an animalistic snarl, and his fingers were twisted into claws. What was left of a shirt clung to his side, but his body was coated in a thick layer of foul-smelling black oil. The turret barked, and dark liquid coated Cannibal's eyes. The violent Natural snarled, swiping away the obscuring fluid, but it clung to his hands and face like tar.

Those weren't bullets, Dan realized. None of Anastasia's men were trying to kill Cannibal—that would be an exercise in futility—rather they were trying to contain him. And it was working rather well. Cannibal retreated into the undergrowth, tearing at the goop coating his head, unable to see or hear or smell. Dan followed after him with his veil, shredding the beast's cover and the turret peppered the serial killer with black pellets.

Cannibal howled in fury. His clawed hand lashed blindly out until it seized around something solid. He spun, uprooting an entire tree in his iron grip, reeled back his arm to throw—

And Dan yanked the projectile into t-space. Cannibal stumbled, shifted, exploded forward! He dashed back into the clearing like a wrecking ball, blindly charging towards the turret, guided only by the impacts of each bullet. He ran on all fours, crossing the distance faster than an arrow in flight, but stumbled slightly as the clinging substance coating his body failed to gain traction against the ground. It bought them maybe a second, as Cannibal regained his footing.

It was enough for Dan's veil to catch up. He pooled it beneath the briefly staggered Cannibal and tried opening a gate into t-space. The Natural did not fall into a different dimension, much to Dan's displeasure. Cannibal's body repelled Dan's veil the same any other person, even as the violent killer briefly stood on a podium of empty space. Fair enough. This wasn't the time for experimentation. Dan should stick with old tricks.

The log he'd been accelerating erupted from the Gap, slammed into Cannibal's lower torso, and launched him into the sky.