The Time of The Cat 47

OLD FALL RIVER ROAD

We passed through the park gates with no trouble and then began the long climb up to the point where the old road intersected the new one. Old Fall River Road was gravel and was much steeper than the modern asphalt highway. I, for one, wasn’t looking forward to it. Even though it was nearly summer, there was a lot of snow lying around in drifts and banks, especially where the trees or cliffs sheltered it.

Twice we saw what might have been Pug-bears crossing the road ahead of us, but nothing ever attacked. The shapes could have been anything, but I thought that the aliens were roaming the whole area. Searching for what? I didn’t know. Food, perhaps? That seemed most likely, but if they liked people sandwiches, their best bet was to be in a city.

After what seemed like an amazingly long time that was filled with tense driving around steep mountain curves, we passed Sheep Lakes. The turn-off to Old Fall River road was just before we reached the point where Fall River crosses the highway.

The gate was shut, and a sign warning us that the road was closed due to snow put a damper on our hopes of driving right up to the transporter head. The part of the road that I could see in the headlights looked clear of snow. Making the decision to go ahead was easy since we didn’t have any choice about the matter.

I stuck my head out of the window and asked the sergeant to use the eraser-gun on the gate. He stood up in the truck bed, complaining that he was nearly frozen. “This is a miserable location! I’m freezing and the two of us back here won’t have to worry about Pug-bears much longer! We’re going to freeze solid before we go too much farther.”

Liz, rather unsympathetically told him to, “Man-up! Just shoot the gate!”

Once he got to his feet, he leaned on the top of the cab to slow down his shivering and the Seal handed him the gun. He used it to effectively clear the gate from in front of us. We proceeded slowly after that, moving along the rough gravel road that clearly hadn’t been maintained since last year. We drove past an area of alluvial debris and then crossed Fall River.

Our pick-up had a much easier time of it than Rudy’s sedan. I could see his lights bouncing wildly as he tried to find a path between the water-washed stones and potholes. Even with the higher suspension, we still had a rough ride and I worried about the guys in the bed. They were getting tossed around a lot. I stopped and asked them to hand the eraser-gun back inside. I was worried about it getting banged on the bed walls and breaking. We needed it too much to risk any damage.

After a while, we came to a turn-off going left, but Liz waved me on. Several minutes later we came to our first real switchback. It was quite steep and we zigzagged across the face of the mountain as we ascended. Directly after that, we went by a waterfall. She said it was called Chasm Falls on the map. I couldn’t see much because it was dark and I was concentrating on the road, but it seemed like it might offer a nice view if the circumstances hadn’t been so dire.

We went more or less straight for a time and then came to a series of three steep switchbacks. After we’d crested the third, Liz motioned for me to slow down. She had been looking out of the window in the dark, trying to make out the skyline to the north. She finally gave up.

“We’ll have to stop here and turn off the lights for me to see anything. It should be around here to the north of the road, up the slope, but I couldn’t find any distinctive markings on the map other than a kind of ridge.”

I stopped and shut the truck off. The guys in back dismounted and were shortly joined by Rudy’s group. Liz and I got out. It took me a moment to get my hands unclenched from the steering wheel. Taking that road in the dark with the potential for alien attacks gave a new meaning to ‘white-knuckle’ driving.

After about a minute in the dark, our eyes had adapted. It was clear with no moon, the stars shining brightly in the sky jumped out at us. We could see what seemed to be millions of stars. It was dark, but we finally made out a jagged ridge-back silhouetted against the night sky high above us.

Liz pointed at it and said, “I think that’s where the transporter head must be.”

“I hope so,” Rudy grumbled. “It would be a shame to climb all that way and find nothing.”

“Look, we don’t have any choice. We’ve got to find this thing,” I interjected.

Stormbreaker had been searching for the best way to start. He now motioned us to follow him over some rocks and up a steep climb. After the group cleared the tough terrain, the climb was smoother and less steep as we approached some stunted trees.

Stormbreaker led us along an open area where an avalanche had cleared a path through the small evergreens. We were moving uphill by a clump of trees when he suddenly paused and held up his hand. It was visible against the sky above us and we all halted.

“I heard something,” he whispered.

Just then we all heard it. It was the sound of a heavy body crunching through the dried branches on the other side of the small clump. I swiveled, tracking the sound with the eraser-gun. The creature came around the edge of the trees on the downhill side. As soon as it sensed us, it let out one of the Pug-bears’ distinctive moans.

I made sure that no one was in the way and then triggered the gun and swept it back and forth. The trees crackled and toppled, and a lot of rocks gave way, rolling downhill as the thing shrieked. Its sound was cut off suddenly as the beam struck it.

I lifted the gun, pointing the muzzle upwards. Suddenly Stormbreaker grabbed my arm and wrenched me around to face the other side of the avalanche path. He didn’t need to tell me to shoot. I’d already felt the mental sensation of fear that the things created. There was another Pug-bear rapidly approaching and it was keeping quiet. I got that one too.

Uphill from us was a third Pug-bear. It had remained still and looked like a medium-sized boulder as it crouched there in the starlight. I caught it with my peripheral vision as it started to rise and come at us. Snapping a shot off in the poor light, I dissolved the legs on one side of the beast.

Whipping its other legs and shrieking, it rolled down upon us. I tried another shot, but it was too close. I jumped out of the way and yelled, “Watch out!”

It rolled out of control down the slope, clattering past the others without getting close to anyone. I didn’t think that it would be able to climb back up the slope after us with only the legs on one side, so we left it alone. We turned back towards our goal and continued upwards for several yards until we were stopped by a most unwelcome accident.

When I had hit the creature’s legs, the beam had severed them, but not dissolved the entire length of the legs. One of the claw tips had been cut off and it landed on a large rock that the ex-seal happened to lean on as he passed. The claw barely nicked his palm, nothing more, but his arm immediately went limp. He staggered and let out a groan, then dropped to a sitting position.

We clustered around to see what had happened. Rudy had a small light that he shielded with his coat and we looked at the wound. The man was breathing hard and starting to shiver. We tried putting a belt around his arm and tightening it, but it was no use. In a few minutes, he gasped loudly, convulsed, and then died.

“Damn! Those things are simply too deadly!” the sergeant exclaimed.

“We can’t let them penetrate our skin with anything. That was one of the rear claws and I would have sworn the poison was only in the front ones,” I added.

“More importantly, we can’t lose anyone else. We’re too few as it is and we don’t know what we face up ahead,” Liz said.

“That’s right. We’ve got to get through. There isn’t any choice,” Rudy concluded.

We regrouped and started off again. We were nearing the ridgeback and the trees had thinned out. What few were left were small and stunted and hardly tall enough to provide cover for a Pug-bear. The moon had barely peeked over the ridge during the last few minutes of our climb and the breeze was blowing down the hill directly into our faces. It brought a stench of decay with it, reminiscent of the odor from the slaughterhouse hanger.

Stormbreaker sniffed and said, “We’re getting close. That odor ain’t comin’ from nothing we want to see. It has got to be a human corpse. I’ve smelled enough of them to know.”

We reached the bottom of the ridgeback formation and I could see a transporter door inset into the stone. Sure enough, lying beside the door was a dead human, or what remained of him. He’d been dismembered and partially eaten. The blood and gore were all around and the smell wasn’t good.

Stormbreaker thought that we’d interrupted the supper of the Pug-bears we’d killed. “They must have been guards for this door,” he speculated.

We faced the door and pushed the call button. I was ready with the eraser-gun just in case.