Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,57

stop, retreat, and scamper back into the jungle, whimpering, their tiny tails literally between their legs.

“What the hell was that?” Freitas asks, picking himself up from the ground.

“Same thing that happened with the mustangs on the highway,” I say. “Except this time, they didn’t get a whiff of a feral human. Just a bunch of normal ones—who I guess should probably try to shower a little more regularly.”

With relieved chuckles, our group reassembles and continues on.

We know we’re getting close when we start to smell smoke from a campfire. Crouching low, we follow a tributary of the creek Tanaka mentioned. Before long, it leads us directly to the cave.

And inside, there they are.

Chapter 26

There are eight of them, all squatting in a circle around the glowing embers, feasting on what looks like barbecued squirrel. Their skin and tattered clothes are filthy, their posture apelike. Once again, they seem to eerily straddle the line between human and animal, modern and primitive.

We all spread out in a semicircle, take our positions…and quietly slip on gas masks. Then we each ready the miniature pellet guns we’ve brought, loaded with rounds of a custom-designed nerve gas containing a mild paralysis agent. To put it simply, our plan is to defeat the feral humans by not fighting them at all.

Freitas gives the signal and we each shoot our little pellets toward our unaware fellow Homo sapiens. The odorless gas should take just under thirty seconds to dissipate enough throughout the air, undetected, to begin making them woozy.

Instead, the humans’ nostrils flare before the pellets even hit the ground.

Oh, shit, I think, as it suddenly dawns on me: the gas was designed to be odorless to normal people. These half-human/half-Neanderthals very likely have a superior olfactory sense. Or at least their brains do, subconsciously.

In which case, we’re screwed.

Alerted to a disturbance, the feral humans look around, spot us, and let out a piercing battle cry. They leap to their feet, snatch up some of the prehistoric-looking weapons lying around the fire—spears, slingshots, tomahawks—and charge at us.

Freitas tries barking orders, but no one can hear him. And none of us cares. We’re all scrambling to aim our weapons and stay alive.

One of them lunges at me with a “dagger” made of sharpened flint. She manages to slash my arm, but then I twist, parry, and shoot her in the chest point-blank.

More and more gunfire echoes across the mountain as our team fights back.

I can’t see much of the “battlefield” through the fogged visor of my gas mask, but it seems like we’ve overwhelmed the feral humans with our modern firepower. Realizing they’re outgunned, they actually start fleeing back into the jungle.

“You’re not getting away that easy!” I shout, my voice muffled by my aspirator.

I pick the closest one to me—a middle-aged male—and charge after him. But he’s fast and nimble as a cheetah and scrabbles up the rocky terrain with ease.

Realizing he’s getting away, I make a risky decision. I stop running and kneel. I raise my rifle scope to my visor and try to line up the perfect, one-in-a-thousand shot, hoping to hit him in his leg and cripple him.

I squeeze the trigger—and yelp with joy as the man topples over into the brush.

I race over. Bleeding badly from his right thigh, he’s now trying to crawl away.

But as soon as he sees me, the man stops and starts screeching and thrashing wildly, desperately struggling to punch and claw at me.

Even though he’s wounded, watching his frenetic energy is still unnerving.

Which gives me an idea.

I take a few steps back, pull out my pellet gun again, and fire a little canister right at him. It bounces off him harmlessly and then begins releasing its paralyzing nerve gas. The man coughs and wheezes, kicks and writhes, but can’t get away fast enough. Within seconds, he starts slowing down, finally collapsing on the jungle floor.

Satisfied that he’s no longer a threat, I reapproach—this time readying the pair of handcuffs and leg shackles I’ve also brought.

I flip the unconscious man over, tug his arms behind his back, and slap on the cuffs, just like they do in the movies.

“You’re under arrest,” I can’t help but say. “You have the right to remain human.”

Chapter 27

“What the hell do you mean, her brain is shrinking?”

Freitas says it, but all of us are thinking it.

We’re on our transport plane heading home to Idaho, in the midst of a heated video conference with Sarah, Dr. Carvalho, and the rest of our team back