Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Raven froze. Deep primal terror surged through her veins. Her hands were on the rifle. Fingers numb. Her muscles no longer remembered how to move, how to pull the trigger. Her heart refused to beat.
The tiger leaped toward her. Thirty yards away. Twenty. Ten.
One thought seared her panicked mind—she was going to die. She was going to die a hideously painful death. Not a damn thing she could do about it—
Five yards from her trembling form, the tiger halted. Instead of pouncing, Vlad crouched and stared at her.
Raven stood, stricken. Rooted to the earth, unable to move.
The snarling wolves sounded dim and far away. Everything disappeared but the tiger. Her brain registered only the lethal predator crouched before her.
His massive head was larger than a basketball. His paws were the size of pot lids. Fangs the length of a finger. Claws like meat hooks.
Every inch of him radiated spectacular brute strength. Power. Virility. Cunning.
He was the apex predator. The undisputed king of his domain.
His ears flattened. His tail lashed. Vlad glared at her with his piercing yellow eyes. Eyes hypersensitive to movement, designed to track prey.
If the prey response was triggered, even a fully sated big cat would pounce.
To move now meant certain death, gun or no gun.
Raven remained utterly motionless.
Vlad unhinged his jaws and roared.
A tiger’s full-throated roar was an impressive display she’d rarely experienced, and never this close. It was a savage, ferocious, terrifying noise. An explosion of aggression, dominance.
Loud as a jet engine and directionless, everywhere at once, expanding inside her skull, scrambling her brain, rendering her immobile with fear.
It was a roar that shook the earth, trembled the bones encased in her flesh. It rumbled over and through her like an avalanche.
Think! Her mind screamed.
The wolves snarled and growled, circling Raven and the tiger, darting in and skittering away. Not even the wolves could stop a tiger intent on ripping apart its prey.
Vlad hadn’t killed her yet. She clung to that thought. She had a chance, slim as spider’s silk perhaps, but still a chance. She wouldn’t waste it.
She couldn’t move, but she could speak. Remind Vlad who she was.
Tigers were incredibly smart. They boasted the second-largest brain of all carnivores and had a phenomenal memory. She knew he remembered her.
It took a supreme act of will to open her mouth, to form words on her tongue, and force them out.
“You know me, Vlad.” Her voice sounded shaky and high-pitched. She cleared her throat. “You don’t want to kill me.”
The tiger snarled and bared his fangs. His tail snapped. He remained crouched, with his right paw lifted. His right foreleg was streaked with blood. He was wounded.
Gomez must have gotten off a single shot before the tiger tore his limbs from his body. A wounded tiger was an extremely dangerous creature.
She attempted his favorite whistle to remind him of who she was. It didn’t work.
Vlad slunk closer to Raven. He growled at her, deep and guttural. He was angry, acting aggressive and threatening. It was terrifying.
Though he hadn’t attacked yet, he was upset and getting more agitated by the second. Something she was doing was riling the tiger further.
She’d remained completely still and non-threatening, so then what—?
The gun. Her father once explained how tigers were intelligent enough to connect gunshots—the thunderous noise, a flash of pain—with the black stick in the hands of a human fifty yards away.
Vlad despised tranq guns from every vet visit he’d ever known. Then Gomez used a gun to shoot him in the leg. Vlad recognized the rifle—and its intended purpose.
As long as she held it, he viewed her as a threat.
Contrary to every primal instinct screaming inside her brain, she needed to disarm herself to stay alive.
This close, the rifle was unlikely to stop the tiger before he slaughtered her, anyway.
“Here goes nothing.” Slowly, very slowly, her hands shaking, she lifted the rifle strap over her head.
Mere feet away, the enormous tiger snarled his displeasure.
Fear thumped in her chest. One wrong move, one inadvertent motion. That was all it would take. Crouching cautiously, Raven lowered the rifle to the ground and set it down in the ferns.
She risked an additional movement. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a strip of venison. She’d kept some jerky, just in case she and the tiger met again.
Raven tossed the treat at his paws.
Vlad roared in her face. Tiger spittle struck her cheeks. The ground shook. Her bones rattled.
Her stomach churned with sour-sick panic. Her plan hadn’t worked. He was angrier now. Any second, he’d pounce. His four-inch claws would sink into her belly and eviscerate her bowels.
“You don’t have to do this, Vlad,” she said. “I know you don’t really want to. Please. We know each other, remember? You know me. Who fed you treats all those years? Me. It was me.”
Vlad tilted his great head, as if listening to the cadence of her voice. His long tail twitched behind him. He lowered his head, sniffed at the jerky, and swallowed the venison whole.
Out of nowhere, Shadow plunged in close. Snarling, he bit Vlad on his flank.
The tiger whirled and swiped at him. Vlad’s razor claws missed the wolf’s muzzle by a hair’s breadth.
Shadow galloped out of harm’s way. Vlad didn’t chase him. He hissed in the wolf’s direction, then crawled a few steps backward, limping as he went.
The tiger swung his massive head back toward Raven. His piercing eyes fixed on her. His posturing was still angry, though slightly less threatening now that she no longer held the gun.
Shadow and Luna snarled as they continuously circled the tiger. Shadow on Vlad’s left, Luna on his right. The wolves darted in, snapping their jaws at the tiger, then springing away.
His ears laid back against his skull. His yellow eyes blazed with irritation.
Vlad spun toward them, slashing with his claws. They danced out of reach.
While the tiger was momentarily distracted, Raven straightened, steeled herself. Forced the panic down. She focused on lifting her foot and taking a slow step backward. Then another, and another.
The tiger whirled toward Luna and swiped at her flank. The wolf yelped and scrambled backward.
He might’ve pounced then, taking her down with a single leap, but he didn’t. He spun in the opposite direction, hissing at Shadow, who prowled at the tiger’s exposed backside.
Raven’s gaze darted past the tiger, where the corpse of Gomez lay in the bloodied grass. Since he’d appeared, Vlad had remained between her and the wolves and his next meal. The tiger was defending his kill.
If they left him alone, hopefully, he would do the same.
Raven moved silently, carefully backward. Ten yards, fifteen, twenty. Her pulse roared in her ears. Finally, she reached the perimeter of the clearing.
Thirty yards away, Vlad faced down the wolves. If he wished, the tiger could still reach her in two seconds.
At the moment, he seemed more surly than enraged. His roars had become growls. He batted at the wolves like irksome flies, snarling at them to let him be.
She slipped between a sugar maple and a dogwood tree, thorns snagging her pants as she stumbled backward, unwilling to take her eyes off Vlad for a second.
The wolves seemed to have come to a similar conclusion as Raven, because a moment later, Shadow and Luna retreated from the clearing, backs arched, their hackles bristling.
Vlad snarled at them half-heartedly. Rather than chase after them, he hunkered down in front of his kill, protecting it. The tiger gave a deep-throated moan as he licked his wounded paw in peace.
For whatever reason, he’d spared them. She wanted to believe it was because Vlad knew her, recognized her smell, associated her with affection and kindness, all those years of jerky treats and back-scratches against the chain-link fence.
More likely, he simply wasn’t hungry. Or he’d been more interested in protecting his kill and wanted them out of his domain. Maybe it was a mixture of multiple things. She’d never know for sure.
Whatever the reason, she was still alive.
Once out of Vlad’s sight, Raven whistled to Shadow and Luna. Then she turned and ran north, ducking branches, weaving between trees, leaping over roots and fallen logs. Branches and thorns snagging at her clothes and skin. Feet pounding, breath panting, heart whooshing against her ribs.
The wolves trotted with her for a while and then disappeared deeper into the forest. She ran until her stomach cramped. The pain seared her side and bent her double. Her throat burned. Gasping, sucking in precious oxygen, she kept going until it felt like her legs would collapse beneath her.
Finally, she took a moment to rest. Pausing beneath a spreading oak, she retrieved her last water bottle from her pack and drank several mouthfuls until the bottle was empty, then she shoved it back into its pouch.
The damp, earthy scent of the woods filled her nostrils. Sparrows, finches, and swallows chirped. A red-tailed hawk soared in the patches of sky through the leafy canopy.
The trees were bursting with vivid color, their crowns tinged in fiery shades of burnt orange, crimson red, and canary yellow. Squirrels chased each other from trunk to trunk, branch to branch. Chipmunks scurried across the leaf-littered ground ribbed with gnarled roots.
Raven wiped the back of her mouth with her jacket sleeve. Her legs trembled. Her sides heaved. None of that mattered. She was alive. Gloriously, miraculously alive.
Shadow appeared through the trees and stalked to her side. He rubbed against her side as if to make sure she was okay, to reconnect. Luna was nowhere in sight.
“We survived,” she said, her throat raw. “We faced the king of beasts and lived.”
She buried her hands in the thick ruff of his neck. The cool fall air chilled her skin. The wooden wing of the bird carving in her pocket dug into her thigh. The stitch in her side burned. Dead leaves and twigs crunched beneath her feet.
She felt everything, every beautiful, glorious thing.
Shadow gave a low yip. He bolted into the forest ahead of her. On her left, she glimpsed Luna slinking through the shadows. A moment later, she too vanished through the trees.
They were off to hunt or explore or do whatever it was that wolves did in the woods. They’d come back. She was certain of that. She trusted them. The wolves hadn’t abandoned her to Vlad.
Together, they’d escaped the jaws of death.
Raven knew how lucky she was.
She’d lost her gun, though. No way could she risk going back for it. Vlad would stay with his kill for another two or three days at least. She couldn’t afford to wait for it—not with the Headhunters stalking her through the woods. Not with Dekker bent on vengeance.
She withdrew her tattered paper map from the inner zippered pouch of her backpack, unfolded it, and dragged a finger along the faded line drawn from Haven Wildlife Refuge across the expanse of green through the Piedmont nature preserve, north through the Oconee National Forest to avoid people as much as possible, and to circumvent the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta and the city of Athens.
She’d keep north until she hit I-75 at the small town of Monticello, up through Mansfield, then 78 to Monroe, 11 to Winder and Braselton, 85 to 441 up to Baldwin and Clarksville to circumvent the larger city of Gainesville.
From Clarksville, she’d head northwest to the place called Scorpion Hollow. From there, the trail was marked to the cabin’s exact location. Detailed coordinates were scrawled above the spot on the map.
If her calculations were correct, she needed to travel approximately one hundred and forty-seven miles if she took the roads, or only a hundred miles as the crow flies if she could circumvent most of the main roads.
If she pushed herself, she could reach the cabin in a week or a few days more, if she could hike fifteen miles a day. Of course, that pace depended on how many towns and cities she’d have to skirt between her current location and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
A week or so. It felt like a lifetime. If she had the Hydra Virus, she’d be dead by then. If she wasn’t sick, she still had to figure out how to travel long distances within proximity to other humans and not die.
One thing she did know for certain: days of heavy exertion without water would be impossible. Her water bottle was bone dry. No clouds in the sky promised rain, either.
Frowning, she scanned the map again. The closest body of water by several miles was the Ocmulgee River, which was located approximately two miles to the west of her current location. Entirely the wrong direction.
Despite how far it felt like she’d fled, she was still within three miles of Haven. Not far enough to feel safe from the threat of the Headhunters. The dense underbrush had slowed her down considerably. Every instinct urged her to get as far from the Headhunters as she could, as fast as she could.
Thirst parched her throat. Her tongue felt gummy in her mouth.
She had no choice. She couldn’t survive without water.
She had to reach the river first and fill her water bottles before heading north toward the mountains. Raven checked her compass and reoriented her direction to the west.
She set out toward the river. Shadow and Luna were off somewhere, but they could track her scent—they’d find her when they wanted to. The first spark of hope flared to life somewhere deep inside her chest. Maybe she could actually make it.
Maybe she would survive the end of the world, after all.