Fatalis (43 page)

Grand didn't have a weapon. The only nearby object he might be able to use was the grate.

"Get under the truck!" he yelled at Hannah.

As gunfire exploded around them, Hannah scrambled toward the truck while Grand crawled in the opposite direction. Standing on his knees, he hoisted the heavy grate chest-high, facing out. He thrust it forward as the cat bore down. The saber-tooth's fang struck the iron bars with a clang.

The cat backed away and Grand stayed with it, pushing hard, focusing his
moat
, crying with fury as the cat hissed its own desperate rage. Grand wanted to work the fangs between the bars and trap the creature, leave it helpless until the police got the situation under control and he could tranquilize the animal, save at least one of the saber-tooths. In the midst of everything he was careful to keep the grate head-on. He was afraid that twisting it to one side or the other might cause the fangs to snap off at the gum line.

Suddenly the cat lowered its head and pushed forward, knocking Grand back. The saber-toothed cat put its front paws on the grate, jerked its head back several times, and pulled free of the bars. With a roar, it charged Grand. The scientist rolled under the truck next to Hannah, sliding under just as the saber-tooth swiped at them from the side.

Hannah screamed and hugged Grand, half in fear, half in relief. Grand held her as he looked past her. There were cats and men on the other side, panic and deafening gunfire on all sides. Grand saw the bloodied bodies of several cats and the mangled bodies of at least seven police and National Guardsmen lying side by side under the glare of the emergency lights.

"Do you see the Wall?" Hannah asked anxiously.

"He was over by the Jeeps," Grand said. "I think he's okay-"

Just then, Grand felt hot pain rip against one of his legs. He looked back and saw a huge set of claws. The saber-tooth was working its way under the truck, its large paw on its side and scratching furiously. He squirreled in a little more; going any farther would put Hannah too close to the other side.

Grand needed to find a weapon, something to keep the cat at bay. He noticed the discarded fire extinguisher several yards out on the opposite side. It was lying on its side near the driver's-side door.

Releasing Hannah, Grand crawled toward it. As he emerged, the cat roared and came around the front of the truck, twisting nimbly between the hood and the wall of the garage. Grand reached the fire extinguisher, rolled onto his back, pointed the nozzle, and discharged a snowy burst at the cat. The animal recoiled and shook its head violently. Grand fired again. As he did, gunfire droned from somewhere behind him. The barrage knocked the cat against the wall, pinning it there for a moment. The cat howled with pain and surprise as its tail slapped roughly from side to side. Then it dropped.

Grand's ears rang with the quiet. The air was heavy with the smell of musk and gunpowder.

The scientist crept back to the truck, stretched a hand to Hannah, and helped her out. Hand-in-hand, Grand and Hannah walked to the back of the truck. There were five National Guardsmen still standing. Lieutenant Mindar was one of them. Everyone else, all the policemen, were dead. So were the cats. Blood was leaking from under the bodies of men and saber-tooths, collecting in larger streams and trickling slowly toward the drain.

Mindar walked over to Grand. The lieutenant looked pale. Perhaps he wasn't; perhaps be only seemed that way because of the bright blood splashed on his cheek and forehead. He called for medical assistance and men, told two of his men to stand by the holes and watch for more cats.

"Are you okay?" the officer asked Grand and Hannah.

"Sure," Hannah said.

Grand nodded.

Grand excused himself and took a quick walk around the truck where most of the fighting had been centered. Hannah looked toward the exit ramp and saw the Wall standing between two of the Jeeps. She raised her hand weakly. He waved back and started walking toward her. The rest of the surviving National Guardsmen were hurrying around the garage and checking bodies, looking for any sign of life. Not that there was much they could do. The wounds were savage. Some of them appeared to have been caused by friendly fire.

Grand returned suddenly and was about to say something when Captain Mclver's radio came on. Mindar retrieved it. The voice on the other end was hot and screaming.

"Captain, this is Lieutenant Carr! Are you receiving?"

Mindar picked up the radio. "Captain Mclver is down. This is Lieutenant Mindar of the National-"

"
Lieutenant
! We're at the public garage on Ogden. We need backup
now."

The raspy pops of gunfire came over the radio and drifted down the ramp a moment later.

"What's wrong?" Mindar asked.

"They're like ghosts! Leaping-vanishing! I don't know if we can hold them-"

The radio went silent.

"Lieutenant Carr?" Mindar repeated.

Silence.

"I'm going over," Grand said.

"What the hell is happening there?"

Grand ran toward the exit ramp. "The pride elite have arrived."

The dead cats were all seven-footers and all males. Because there was nothing distinctive about them, Grand had suspected the leader was not among the dead. The police report from the museum seemed to confirm that. And the police lieutenant had said there were cats, plural. The Chumash painting showed twelve and only ten cats had been killed so far. That meant the leader had at least one lieutenant.

A quasi-military structure among animal predators. The leader, the general, remaining somewhere else and watching the fight. Participating only when he had to. Some pack dogs and insects like ants had that kind of organization. But for cats to be operating at this level was unprecedented.

Grand reached the ground level and ran across Wilshire. Lieutenant Mindar and three of his soldiers were close behind with Hannah and the Wall running after them. Squads of police were arriving now from Beverly Hills along with deputies from the West Hollywood District Sheriff's Station. They were sealing off the streets and setting up skirmish lines along several blocks on all sides of the tar pits and its surrounding buildings.

Several of them intercepted Hannah and the Wall and kept them from going through. Grand was happy about that, and ignored her shouts for him to get her through. He didn't want to have to worry about her. There was only one thing he wanted to focus on: saving the last of these creatures. He didn't know how, but there had to be a way.

The scientist ran past the Page Museum and then past the Los Angeles County Art Museum. The three-level, concrete parking garage was across the street from the art museum.

Grand saw police officers along the lighted sides on all levels, firing into them.

On all levels
, he thought. There were more than two cats.

The men were firing into the center of each level, shouting instructions to one another and moving here and there to pin what were obviously very fast-moving creatures. There were columns and parked cars, which were obviously making it difficult for them to hit the creatures.

Grand arrived at the bottom level. Halfway across the garage a chain-link fence had been torn from the concrete wall and crumpled.

"What the hell was there?" Mindar asked.

"A blowpit," Grand said. "I should have thought of that."

"I don't understand-"

"The tar ebbs and flows through underground channels," Grand said. "When the pressure builds, the tar has to vent in a controlled place or it'll come through the street or basements."

"And this is one of those places," Mindar said.

Grand moved closer. The iron lid had been pushed off and the heavy bolts that held the fence to the wall had been ripped out He was angry at himself not only because he hadn't thought of the blowpits but because the cats always moved in divided, flanking patterns.

As Grand and Mindar reached the northwestern side of the garage they saw a police officer tending to two fallen comrades by the ticket booth, which was forty yards to the west. To the north, in the garage, two other officers were stalking a golden cat that was behind a vintage Wildcat convertible. Grand could just see the animal's forequarters. The cat was larger than the ones they'd seen, with high, powerful shoulders and a low-slung head. The nearest of its fangs was broken off toward the point.

The two officers were moving forward slowly. They were apparently looking to approach the cat from either side of the car.

They never got the chance.

The cat withdrew behind the car. The men continued forward. They were about three yards from the car and three feet apart. A moment later the cat jumped onto the roof and then launched itself onto the officer to the left. Man and cat hit the asphalt and then the saber-tooth twisted and bounded toward the other officer. As the officer turned to fire, the cat tilted its head sideways, the top toward Grand. It bit the officer through the back and his gun fired wild, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and striking one of the cone-shaped support columns. Dragging the howling man forward, the cat swept back toward the first officer. The saber-tooth reared up and landed on the grounded man, crushing his chest. Then it dropped the other man on top of him. The officer writhed for a moment and then was still. The action lasted less than five seconds.

Mindar was still holding his MPS. He raised it to fire but the saber-tooth did not remain where he was. Grand wasn't surprised. If lone predators killed something, they usually left quickly. Scavengers and other predators tended to respond quickly to the scent of blood.

The cat turned to its left and raced toward the low wall that stood between the garage and Ogden. Grand ran with it. The creature leaped the wall easily. With another bound it cleared the chain-link fence outside the garage by vaulting into an overhanging branch of an adjoining tree and then jumping to the street. As the cat landed. Grand looked up. Two other cats were jumping off the second level of the garage, which was fifteen feet from the ground. They landed cleanly on the other side of the fence. For the moment that they were under a streetlight, Grand saw that one of the saber-tooths was the same size as the cat from the ground level. The third was behind the other two and not all of it was visible. But what Grand could see was surprising. The cat towered over the others.

A moment later all three cats ran toward the ten-foot-high fence outside the art museum. The fence was made of thick, green metal bars with nothing to link them on top. If the saber-tooths didn't clear the bars they'd be impaled. Without breaking stride they gracefully leaped the fence and landed on the other side, in the Cantor Sculpture Garden West.

Mindar came up behind Grand. "It's like they've got goddamn wings!" he shouted as he raised his weapon. The metal slats were too close together to allow him to fire. Grand was already running back down Wilshire, alongside the fence, and Mindar ran after him.

The scientist looked to his left as he ran. The saber-tooths had become one with the darkness, maneuvering carefully through the life-size bronzes. They reached the Director's Roundtable Garden, slipped under and around the abstract by Calder, then pressed on to the outer rim of the tar pits. The surrounding fence was six feet high with metal mesh between dark iron bars.

Police were moving in on the east side of the fence. Suddenly, two of the cats leaped the fence in the rear. They raced across the dark lawn toward the museum itself. The third cat seemed to have disappeared. Mindar was looking ahead; Grand didn't think he noticed.

Grand suddenly stopped.

"What are you doing?" Mindar asked.

"There's something I want to check," Grand said. "You go ahead."

Mindar ran to join the police. Grand turned to the fence. He put both hands on top of one of the iron supports and swung his legs over the mesh. He landed on the other side, crouched, and looked around. He heard crashing glass in the distance.

That was probably the atrium
, he thought. The saber-tooths may have been heading for the other pits and perhaps saw the familiar foliage. They'd have no idea what glass is.
Or maybe the cats are being decoys again
.

There were roars, gunfire, and shouts. They were followed by screams and more crashing glass. The police moved in en masse. Realizing that the wind was moving toward the east, he moved in that direction so his spoor would blow away from the pit There were life-size recreations of a family of mastodons on that side of the pit. One of them was "stuck" in the pit and moving slowly from side to side. Its huge tusks were upturned and its trunk was upraised and curled as though it was trumpeting in despair. Two other mastodons were standing on the shore, an adult and a baby.

Two years before-the last time Grand had been to the museum-this pit had been surrounded by small, thick palms. Now it was mostly sun-dried grass and open space, probably someone's idea of making the pit viewer-friendly. There were only two palms near the elephants, roughly twenty and forty feet tall. They had rough bark, like a pineapple.

Grand was still crouching. He got up slowly and walked behind the elephants. There was a rowboat on the shore tied to one of the trees. When the water levels were high enough at the pit, workers used it to fish soda cans and plastic water bottles from the tar. Grand stopped and untied the rope. It was a half-inch thick and about fifteen feet long. There were two oars in the rowboat. He tied the rope to the ends of the oars and draped it over his shoulder. Then he peeled off a large section of bark. All the while he peered into the darkness on the other side of the tar, watching for any sign of the saber-tooth that had stayed behind.

The smell of tar was strong as Grand moved around the edge of the pit. Puddles of water had collected in the center and around the edges of the tar, reflecting the streetlights. Small bubbles of tar popped just offshore while a larger bubble held its dome before bursting in what seemed like slow motion. As Grand rounded the mastodon, spotlights along the perimeter of the park itself began winking out briefly as something passed in front of them. It was large and moving toward him. He stopped beside the taller of the two trees and bent his knees so he'd be ready to move if it attacked. He began breaking the bark into smaller pieces and also used the action to focus his
moat
.