The Spirit

Jason shouted while beating off the animal, “Nicolson, it’s headed for you!”

Hill smashed his light against the dog’s head. It dropped to the ground, a small mutt with a Doberman’s fury. The agile little body tore off toward the woods as Jason fired tranquilizer bursts that splashed on the ground around it.

To Curtis it sounded as if a tank battle had erupted into the field and spilled full-­tilt into the timbers. It was the snarling of the dog that got him to his feet, pipe dropping from his mouth. It was headed for the upriver bend, to the thicket of broken branches where his friend Nicolson waited. Jason and Hill were shouting, in full pursuit.

Curtis cocked his rifle and switched on his flashlight. “George?” he cried.

A gunshot sounded from the bed. It was followed by a short, choked-­off scream, then the wild, turbulent thrashing of water fading upriver.

Curtis called out, “George?” again, and again got silence for an answer. He swept the woods with his light. Probably George had turned his ankle and cried out.

Curtis walked toward the river bend. He heard Jason and Hill’s voices and he was relieved. Nicolson was all right; they wouldn’t be talking so loudly if he were not. Tragedy always silences people.

By chance he flashed his light into the river. It crossed a whitish object bobbing like a melon around the bend. Dead eyes looked at Curtis from under strands of wet plastered hair. His friend Nicolson’s head looked at him upside down.

Shattered into complete psychic numbness, Curtis sat heavily on the rocks, keeping his light on the grisly object until it disappeared downstream.

“Curtis!”

Jason slapped him hard a second time. Curtis weakly waved away the next blow.

“Easy on him, Jason,” murmured Hill.

Jason and Hill wrestled Curtis to his feet, where he adjusted his glasses and lurched forward as if about to walk into the water.

“He’s coming round,” said Jason. “Let’s get him up to the camp.”

They drag-­walked him to the dead fire and seated him on a bedroll. Jason gathered the rifles and levered out the tranquilizer darts, replacing them with bullets. He shoved one into Hill’s hands. “Go start up the helicopter,” he said.

Confused by the headless form of Nicolson, which refused to leave his mind, Hill said, “What for?”

“The copter has spotlights! We’ve got to catch that thing before he gets too far away. I’ll stay on the ground. We can back each other up.” Jason tore apart the packs, searching for walkie-­talkies. He tossed one to Hill and kept the other for himself. “Understand? We’re going to kill that thing! Understand?” he shouted into the pilot’s face, as though he took Nicolson’s death personally.

Curtis looked numbly from the rifle Jason had dropped into his lap to the trees. “George . . .” he began in an incoherent mutter.

“That’s right, Curtis!” cried Jason. “For George. That thing’s a man-­killer, and we’re going to get him. On your feet!”

The dog’s distant mournful howl threaded through the sentinel trees, freezing them into a marbled tableau of watchfulness.

“Where’d that dog come from?” whispered Hill.

“Scavenger. He eats what the ape doesn’t. They’re moving south. If the copter scares the dog, I can follow the barking.”

“No!” said Curtis, galvanized by the howl to full furious possession of himself. “Not south. He went up the river. I heard him! Follow the river!”

Jason did not look at Nicolson’s body as he splashed up the river. He forced himself to forget that it had been his decision not to arm themselves with bullets.

His light picked up a print under three inches of water, pressed deep into the silt of the river bottom. The current was eroding it. The ape was running through water to cover his tracks.

Just ahead of him the copter’s light frosted the trees. Hill flew so close to treetop level that his rotor downwash bowed the tips and showered pine needles, twigs, and chunks of bark to the ground, some of which lodged in Jason’s collar. The splintered shadows cast by the spotlights moved with the copter’s passage. Branches became clutching hands that reached for Jason’s clothes.

He distanced himself from the river so the racketing roar of the machine did not fill his ears. He heard the dog barking in the trees. They had left the water for dry land. Jason shouted into the walkie-­talkie, “Hill? Go on ahead about half a mile and swing back this way. Try herding them toward me.”

“Will do.”

The copter gained altitude; then the motor changed to a hum a mile or so ahead as it began swinging in wide arcs from left to right. Jason leaned against a fir and listened hard. The dog’s howling had stopped. Without it Jason was not sure which direction they moved.

They quartered the woods for a careful half-­hour, Jason moving slowly through the brush. We’ve lost them. He despaired and pounded his fist against bark. They had changed direction all right. They were headed for deeper woods.