The Flock (17 page)

Out in the shelter of the trees and the savanna, the Flock was bedding down for the day. Only the youngsters and the smallest chicks still stirred in the growing light. Soon, even those would have to cease their youthful fidgeting. It couldn't be allowed, especially on a day with a cloudless sky. The huge golden eye would be staring down at them for a long stretch, and they all knew what could happen if it spied upon you. The Flock had learned well over the generations. There were none in the forests as adept at hiding as they. There were things they could do that were unimaginable to the Man from whom they hid. They had quite a collection of tricks.

Soon, all movement ceased. Even respiration went into a lower gear. The Flock rested, a few remaining alert to taste the wind, eyes wide to watch for even the slightest sign of danger.

Walks Backward had chosen his mate. The female would be his, would bear
his
clutch after he had gained control of the unit. Indeed, he had already stolen a secret moment and begun a courting dance with her. She would not sing of it. Not until the battle between himself and Egg Father had been fought and he had emerged victorious. And even if he lost, she must sing a tune of lamentation, for which she would be killed, of course. But Walks Backward would not lose.

What had set him off was the latest appearance of the Scarlet. The rogue had come into the meal circle after the latest hunt and had stolen a great deal of flesh, taking it for himself. Nothing had been done to prevent it, and nothing had been done after the thievery. And then, some hours later, during the bedding in the early glow of dawn, once more the foolish one had rushed among them; he had tried to cull out one of the young females—one not yet even old enough to lay. It was obvious what he was doing, to all and to himself. Only the intervention of the Egg Mother had prevented the huge rebel from taking the female away with him.

She had rushed at him, and the Scarlet, confused at the belligerency of his own mother, had turned and run back into the forests. And his voice had been raised high enough for any creature to hear. Even men.

After that, the Flock had hunkered down for the day, letting sedges and branches and leaves cover them, their own silence and camouflaging doing the rest. It was after that moment that Walks Backward had come to the conclusion he had known he must reach. The Flock would soon become his complete responsibility. There would be a new Walks Backward to watch the rear and hide the sign. And he would take over as Egg Father. His name would change. He wanted to sing his new name, but realized that must wait. When night came, after they had rested hidden all the day, he would sing his song of challenge.

And, later, he would sing another song. One that would doom the Scarlet and save them all. He only hoped there was time.

Levin was furious. Not at being called suddenly back from what he had hoped was going to be a rewarding stay in the bush, but at the outside discovery of their carefully guarded secrets. He was dangerously close to losing control of his emotions.

“This is crazy, Kate. Why the
hell
did you let them know?” On a hunch, after he and his companion had parted company with Holcomb, he'd radioed back to the compound. Kate had told him to come back, to bring Vance, if possible. But Vance was long gone and maintaining radio silence, as he almost always did in the backcountry.

Ron and Mary were there, standing quietly while the biologist pointed at them from across the lab, where they had all gathered. Mary was not amused at Levin's anger and was not going to sit still and be docile for long. Ron, by contrast, remained stunned by what they had so far discovered, and was confused as to how he should act or where he should next proceed. In addition to finding that the wilderness that had formerly been a bombing range was the last redoubt for a species of predatory ground birds, he was also concerned over any laws he had broken concerning his contact with the dead reporter. In fact, he was only barely aware of the screaming tech.

“
I
didn't
let
them find out
anything
. They found it out independently of
me,
you sanctimonious
bastard
.” Kate was easily as angry as her fellow employee and her color was rising, her face flushed with anger and her eyes like frozen jots of ice. “What was I supposed to do?
Kill them?
”

That seemed to stun Levin for a second, and it looked to Riggs as if the man was actually considering it as a viable alternative. He did respond, though. “But you didn't have to
confirm
what they were seeing. Those photos could have been
faked,
for God's sake. That's all they had to know.” In fact, Levin was almost in tears. His chest hitched with every other breath, and Ron had figured it was only his anger that had so far kept the man from breaking down and crying like a heartbroken fool.

“It's too late for that kind of thing, Adam. We can't keep it a secret any more. Ron and Niccols know about the Flock, now. Dodd apparently knew about it, and I strongly, strongly suspect that Berg Brothers know about them, too.”

Mary, listening, spoke up. “Did you say
flock?
There are more than one of these things?”

Levin stared at him, his face blank with what remained of his rage, the panic and shock just beginning to rise. Kate rubbed a thin-fingered hand across her brow, wiping sweat and her auburn hair out of the way.

“Yes,” Kate admitted. “There's a flock of them out there. We're not sure just how many. But maybe twenty or so. That we know of. Could be more.”

“More?” Ron squeaked.

“Holcomb even thinks there are more than one flock. At least two, he thinks. Again…maybe more. There's almost half a million untouched acres of woods, swamps, and savanna out there.” She waved a long arm in the general direction of the wilderness.

“Jesus,” Ron swore. “How…how can things like this exist with no one knowing about them?
How?
”

Levin backed up a few steps and collapsed into a wheeled office chair that he seemed to have detected behind him with some sort of radar. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt, jeans, boots. He'd been out in the field when Kate had contacted him via radio. Each of the ATVs was equipped with the communications systems, for emergencies. This, Kate had deemed a dire emergency. Levin and his fellow crewmember, a very quiet Japanese ornithologist introduced to them merely as Kamaguchi had returned quickly. So far, there was still no sign of Holcomb. Apparently, Holcomb and the four employees now at the compound were the only people who were in on the discovery.

Kate walked over to a desk and grabbed a chair for herself and sat back, relaxing. Briefly, she buried her face in her hands, then looked toward Ron. He saw, for the first time, that she was already in tears. Moisture streaked her cheeks. “This place has been, for all intents and purposes, a wilderness area for the last seventy years, Ron. You know that. These birds apparently have been living here all along,
hiding
.”

“Hiding,” Mary yelled. Her strong arms went up. “You can't
hide
something that big. How big
is
that thing, anyway?” She stood there, shoulders squared, facing the seated figures of Kate and Adam.

“That one was Big Red,” Adam muttered. “We've estimated he stands about ten feet. Weighs around nine hundred, maybe a thousand pounds. But he's the biggest. Most of the other adults are no more than eight feet tall, maybe six hundred pounds. Chicks and young are much smaller, but we don't know since we've only gotten a glimpse or two at the young.”

“You can't
hide
anything that big. I know what I'm talking about,” Mary insisted. “Nothing that big can live in these woods and not be discovered by men.
Nothing
.”

“You're wrong,” Kate told her. “In the past twenty years, man has revealed the existence of a number of large mammals. A while back, an unidentified species of peccary was found in South America. Just five years ago we discovered a new type of deer living in the rain forests of Vietnam. It's rare, but it happens.”

“But we're not talking about
South America,
and this isn't some rain forest in Vietnam,” Mary yelled. “This is Florida, one of the most populous states in the east. Drive an hour and a half north of here and you're in Orlando with about ten jillion people. This ain't the same thing!”

“You weren't listening to us,” Kate said. There was a barely perceptible expression of arrogance tilting her lips. “I said they were
hiding
. You get me?”

Slowly, Ron stirred and retrieved a chair for himself. He rolled it across the tiled floor until he was sitting a few feet in front of Levin and Kate. “What are you saying, Kate? That these things can think?”

“Yes.”

Ron turned to look into Mary's face, and then he was talking to Kate again. “So. They've always lived here, since even before this place became a military base, and they
hide
from us. You're saying they think. Plan.” He paused. “Right?”

“Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.”

Ron looked Adam directly in the eye. “Are these things something Holcomb bio-engineered? Because if they are, I want to know right this
minute
. At least one person has been
killed
over this, and someone was going to put me six feet under because of it, and I want a straight answer. Right now, goddammit.”

Levin drew in a breath and sat up. “No. They aren't
bio-engineered
. You've been reading too many science fiction books. That's just in the movies and the ess eff mags, pal.”

Mary stepped up, finally grabbed a chair of her own and straddled it; pushing off and rolling up until she was level with Ron, facing the other two. She didn't know where the quiet Mr. Kamaguchi was, but she was beginning to be worried about it. “I've heard about this kind of thing. I once saw a show where that paleontologist…whatsisname…the one who wears a cowboy hat…”

“Bakker,” Kate said. “Robert Bakker.” She followed that with a definite sneer.

“Yeah. That's him. I saw him talk about how you could take the DNA of a hornbill and mess with it. Tell it to turn off the feathers, turn on teeth, make a tail. Then you'd have one of those raptor dinosaurs. Maybe you guys did something like that. Huh?” She was looking at Ron, for support.

“That kind of stuff is
fairy tales,
” Adam screamed. He went rod straight in his seat. “These creatures have survived here on the last remaining expanse of savanna on the Gulf Coast. The last expanse of any importance, anyway. They
know
what they're doing. They hide from us. They've been doing it probably since the first Indians came down from the north fifteen thousand years ago.”

“How can you know that?” Ron asked.

Kate rubbed her hands across her face, through her hair, as if taking all of the tension from herself and pushing it away. “We've been studying them,” she said. “We've seen them
do
things. Things that only a sentient, thinking creature could do.”

“Such as?” Ron asked.

“Such as detecting our video monitors and cutting the power supplies to them. Such as locating hidden cameras and
stealing
them. Things such as altering their hunting patterns and movements to avoid us. We've only logged maybe six hours of actual sightings in the last four years of intensive observations. They leave absolutely no sign of their passing. Apparently, the flock has at least one member whose
job
it is to hide all sign of their presence.”

“Hide sign?” Mary looked at her, the question painting her face with a frown.

“We think he picks up feathers, bones, that kind of thing. We think he scratches out their tracks, covers fecal matter, and consumes leftover prey. Things like that.”

“Give me a break,” Ron said.

“It's true,” Levin told him. “We've got tape of the flock moving through the edge of a savanna about four miles north of here. They move almost as a single unit. Adults in the front, along the periphery, with young in the center. And behind them is this large individual,
walking backwards
and scratching in the grass, running from one side to the next. We got about ten minutes that time, with a night vision camera. But the one who walks backward found it, found the camera. Tore right into it. Cut through the cables like they were made of butter.”

Ron and Mary stared at one another.

“What? What?” Adam repeated. “You guys know something we should know?”

“Yeah,” Ron told him. “One of the dogs missing from Salutations. We found some remains. A paw and a chain, just like I told Kate. The chain looked like it had been cut right through. Same with the dog's paw. We figured some kind of saw.”

“Their beaks are adapted for slicing,” Adam said. “They're very narrow. In place of slicing teeth, they've gone with large beaks that are slimmed down like a pair of razor knives, one sliding inside the other. We estimate a pressure of eight, maybe nine thousand pounds per square inch, all along a pair of edges maybe one hundredth of a millimeter wide on the surface area. You can imagine the cutting power.”

“Why haven't they done this kind of thing before?” Mary asked. “If they've always been here in Florida, and they like to eat dogs, then why haven't we known about them?”

“We think one of them is a rogue,” Kate told him. “We think the big one, the one in Dodd's photos, is a rogue. Disrupting the flock. It's the only explanation. In fact, it's been our latest project to trap it.”

“
Trap
it,” Ron repeated. “How were you going to do that?”

“I could think of a number of ways,” Mary said.

“I'm sure,” Kate said. “That's what I was doing out in the field when I first met you, Ron. We caught you on a video monitor and Vance radioed to me to ‘stumble' upon you. Bring you back to the compound and figure out what the hell someone from Fish and Wildlife was doing out in the bush. He thought maybe you guys had suspected something. And, as you know, Vance doesn't trust your kind.”

“I know,” Ron said. “Why didn't I see your radio? Or hear it?”

“I turned it off,” she said. “Stuck it back in my pack.”

“Oh.” He sighed. And he had thought it was his boyish charm that had attracted her.

“Don't look so offended,” she told him. “We had to find out what you were doing there. Vance knows you guys are working hand in hand with the studio to enable them to buy up all of the acreage from the old military base, turn it into subdivisions and shopping centers like the rest of Florida. He's trying to stop that. He's trying to save these animals.”

“Then why didn't he just go to the public about them?” Mary asked. “It doesn't make sense to keep it all a secret.”

“He doesn't trust the public,” Adam said. “He knows what happens when the destiny of wilderness is in the hands of our esteemed public. I do, too. It all gets gobbled up and destroyed. Nobody cares about it. Nobody's willing to pay to protect it. Vance was trying to buy it all up and give it to the Department of the Interior, and tell them what's living here. That's been his plan all along. The last thing he wants, and the rest of us included, is to let the public know about the flock, to have them try to come in here and disrupt their habitat.”

“Well, it's a moot point, now,” Ron said. “I can't stay quiet about it. I've got to go to the police and tell them what I know about Dodd's murder. And I'll have to show them the disk.”

Levin sobbed, and Ron and Mary looked at him, shocked at the sudden burst of sadness. “Oh, hell,” he muttered from between his fingers.

“I wish I could figure out something else,” Ron told him. “But I don't have any other option. Someone killed Tim Dodd, and I have to tell the authorities what I know. I've
got
to.”

“We understand, Ron.” It was Kate. Her face was solemn, but there was no accusation there.

Mary stood up, arched her back. Everyone could hear her spine crackle as she bent backwards. Finished stretching, she looked at Kate. “What
are
these things, anyway? I've never seen anything like them. I mean, who ever heard of a bird with
arms
instead of wings?”

“They're Phorusrachids,” she said.

“For-us-
what?
” Mary tried to pronounce it.

“For-us-RAY-kidz,” Adam said, forming the phonetics for the word.