Hunters Run Page 0,63

muddy bank, but Ramon didn't doubt that the other one had been at this place, seeing this same landscape. But how long before? And where would he have gone from here to construct his escape raft? Ramon considered the sunlight glittering on the water's surface and let his mind turn the problem over. If he had been here, and free, fleeing the alien and dodging the chupacabra, what would he have done?

Scratching his wispy beard, he turned south and began plodding along the riverbank. Maneck followed without a word, the sahael bobbing between them like a length of rope. The water murmured softly. On another day, with some other errand, Ramon would have stopped, perhaps dipped his bare feet into the river water, and enjoyed the beauty of the place. As it was, his mind buzzed with a hundred different questions; had his twin already finished some small raft and floated away to the south, and what would Maneck do if they found the other Ramon, and how large was a chupacabra's territory anyway? He spoke about none of it, only judging where best to place his feet and what angle to take around the trees in order to keep the sahael from catching on a branch and tugging at his throat.

There were fewer signs of his twin now - no footprints, few small branches broken at the correct height for a man to have done the damage. It wasn't that the other Ramon had become more careful, but the river drew forest animals to its banks to obscure any more human traces. There would be more kyi-kyi here. More salt rats and alces negros. The mud banks they passed showed the marks of thin hooves, wide-slung soft toes, the tiny birdlike cuneiform of tapanos and stone kites. The river at their side was teeming with life. The planet was alive around them. They were two aliens marching through a world they didn't belong to. Three aliens, if he counted the other Ramon.

The river bent lazily to the east, offering Ramon a majestic view of the water and the distant forest on the far bank but restricting what he could see of the path up ahead. He paused, squatted beside a fallen iceroot, and spat. Maneck came looming up beside him and stopped.

"The man is not here," Maneck said. Its voice likely carried across the water like a distant landslide.

"He's here. Somewhere."

"He may have gone against the flow of the river," Maneck said. "If we are searching in the wrong direction, then we will be unable to find him."

"Then he'll be floating on by, won't he? That's why I'm holding close to the bank. So we can see him if he passes."

The alien was silent.

"You hadn't thought of that," Ramon said.

"I am not an apt tool for this purpose," Maneck said. The quills on his head shifted in something akin to despair.

"You're doing fine," Ramon said. "But if we don't find this pendejo before sundown, we're going to have a problem. He'll have the chance to - "

The sound was like something falling; the rattle of leaves, the faintest hush of moving air. The beast burst from the trees in near silence. It wasn't until Maneck turned toward it that the chupacabra bared its teeth and shrieked.

Ramon had seen pictures of chupacabras before - even once held the scaled pelt of what must have been a young member of the species. Nothing he had seen had prepared him for the reality of the creature that faced him now. As tall as a man, and perhaps twelve feet long, its limbs were engines of power and speed. Black claws tipped its almost handlike paws, and the wide mouth - lips drawn back to reveal the deep-red gums - seemed too small for the doubled rows of teeth. Its eyes were not the red glow of the parade float, but pure black. The predator stink of it - rotten meat, animal musk, and old blood - rushed on ahead of it like a wave.

Maneck's arm shifted, and energy exploded on the chupacabra's breast. The screaming cry rose to a higher register, and the air suddenly filled with the stink of burning hair and flesh, but the shot wasn't enough to stop the beast, and its attack didn't falter. The chupacabra crashed into the alien, and, for the first time, Maneck seemed small. Ramon backed instinctively into the water until the sahael tugged at his neck, unable to take his eyes from the