(Backstory: In the near future, a
group of
animal rights biologists, claiming to be saving the wild tiger from
extinction,
genetically engineer a strain of tigers with humanlike intelligence.
Their
intent is to allow the tigers the means to kill the poachers who are
killing
them. Predictably, the tigers soon eat up their natural prey. A tigress
with two near-adult cubs escape their containment at India's
Ranthambhore
National Park and begin preying on the most abundant and easily caught
food source -- people. A professional hunter from Africa (an ex-patriot
American) is brought in to kill the maneaters. In the immediately
preceding scene, the hunter has managed to kill one of the cubs, which
was skinned by his loyal African trackers. The hunter has fallen into
his
usual evening state of inebriation. Meanwhile, the trackers have gone
to
sleep in their tent. . . with the scent of the cub still on their
hands.
. . .)
* * *
Late in the night he found himself stumbling
around
the camp, from one corner to the next, swaying, drinking straight from
the bottle now because somewhere he had left his glass. A full
moon
had risen over the hills, bathing the open areas of the camp in
silvered
light, silvered light also seeping around the shadow edges of the tents
and forest. The cicadas were singing a mating song, and the
branches
of trees swayed with the approach of the night's rainstorm. The
air
felt stifling and hot as a furnace. Too tired to look for his
tent,
Barry felt his legs sagging, leaned against one of the privy poles, and
slid to the ground. The bottle tilted vertical and his throat accepted
the last of the whiskey.
When he lowered his head she had come out of
the wall of forest shadows as if materialized in a dream. She
slowly
swung her head and it looked enormous and for an instant moonlight
blazed
in her eyes. Then she moved toward him, flowing across the ground
in one continuous unhurried motion, her coat showing burnished gold
between
the dark longitudinal stripes and her torso as wide and solid as an oak
barrel. She held her head low and tail high and straight back
like
a staff as she came, and all Barry could do was set the empty bottle on
the ground.
She stopped flowing and crouched beside
him.
He felt her sniff at his leg and exhale across his ankle. Then
she
stood erect and her truly enormous head swung up close enough for Barry
to see twin moons reflected in her eyes. The faintest brush of
her
leg against his trousers as she stepped across him, turned, raised her
tail high.
A warm spray of urine hit the pole beside his
face, splashing blindingly in his eyes, the pungent smell making him
choke.
He wiped his face, blinking away the urine and tears, and when he could
see again he found her flowing along the ground toward Emily's
tent.
Barry could not move. He knew he should be trying to get to the
rifle
in his tent. But he still felt, despite the cooling wetness and
sting
and stink of the urine, as if he were in a dream.
Something made him turn his head and there at
the edge of the forest, from whence Shaitan had come, a second,
slightly
smaller cat sat on its haunches just inside the shadows. The
second
cub, the female. Watching, waiting for her mother. A huge moth
flitted
in front of the cub, distracting her attention briefly. From
every
tree around the camp and throughout the forest came the high fiddling
song
of cicadas even above the rush of the approaching storm. The
light
seemed to drop, and looking up, Barry saw the moon being swallowed by a
thick bank of cloudscoming over the hills.
The tigress had reached Emily's tent, but didn't
pause long at the entrance before moving on to the next tent, Barry's
own.
Here she paused a bit longer, and went in half her own length before
withdrawing.
Then on to the tent the Edward shared with two of the camp hands;
again,
a cursory pause. Then the trackers' tent. She went in, all
the way.
The tent sides bulged, whooshed out by the plunge
of her swift movement, and a loud choking groan silenced the nearby
cicadas
and other insects. It was a sound a man might make in a
nightmare,
in mingled terror and embarrassment. The near side of the tent
bulged
even further, thrashed, and then came a scream in a different voice, a
voice that didn't sound human but animal-like, as if made by an
antelope
or monkey perhaps, dying in agony.
The tigress's hindquarters appeared at the
entrance,
feet digging in, pulling, something inside still thrashing and shaking
the whole tent. A pole snapped, fabric tore, and the tigress was
free of the tent, turning back toward the forest, holding something
dark
that thrashed and screamed again in that keening antelope cry.
She loped toward him, head held high, neck
arched,
holding gently but with implacable firmness between her jaws, like a
retriever
fetching a duck, the torso of a man. The man was being carried
face
up by the small of his back, his legs kicking, arms beating the tigress
about the head and whose only response was to lay back her ears and
close
her eyes. The cat moved in awful silence except for its victim's
continued keening, and as the apparition swung by him, Barry, still in
dreamlike immobility, saw the inverted face of Joshua, his mouth open,
eyes wide and unseeing, pupils reflecting the last of the fading
moonlight.
The shadows along the trees had deepened and
Barry wasn't sure exactly when both cats had disappeared, nor when the
dream had ended and he'd reached his feet. The entire camp had
risen
in a furor of voices and lights showing inside the tentwalls.
Emily
was the first to reach him with a light, which she shined in his
face.
It was only the third or fourth inquiry, perhaps aided by the onslaught
of huge raindrops, that brought him back fully to the world of the
quick.
Without a word of response, he ran for the rifle and flashlight in his
tent.
In the forest furnace of night, Barry fell over
fallen trees and walked into live ones and tore himself with thorns and
thistles, while the storm raged and deluged drops as hot as
blood.
He kept calling "Joshua" over and over, as if his friend might have
pried
himself free of those gigantic jaws and was now simply lost among the
trees.
Stumbling on, branches tearing at his face and arms... until near dawn
he fell panting against a tree, his rifle in the mud, closing his
eyes...
and the nightmare returned.