Siberius (42 page)

Nick almost lost his foothold as the animal’s body collided with the cliff face. Snow and ice exploded outward upon impact, sending a mini avalanched to the ground below. Twenty-inch tusks jabbed rock and earth on either side of Nick’s left foot, while razor talons swiped at and missed everything but a patch of ice. The alpha male screeched as its bulk began to slip down again, its tusks and claws gouging softened limestone. Nick glanced down as the alpha tried and failed to fight gravity. It slid to the snowy floor, then with Herculean strength launched itself upward again.

Nick was already out of reach.

The beast watched its escaping quarry make it to the top of the cliff and scramble over, vanishing from view. Incensed, it swung its mighty head back and forth and bellowed, then paced the edges of the box canyon in search of a way up.

Reaching the highest point of the rocky grade, Nick stopped and caught his breath. Beyond was a mosaic of pine trees and snowy glades stretching to the horizon. He turned around, expecting to see Talia high up in a tree. Instead, he saw nothing but conifers blanketed in snow. There was no sign of Talia, no sign of birch trees and no sign of the cats. In his rush to escape, he had somehow lost his sense of direction. The forest around him looked as alien as anything he had ever seen. He’d have to backtrack to find her now.

Before he could move, though, a sound touched his ears, a sound that for the life of him was better than singing angels or the Andrews Sisters or even Bing Crosby himself. In the distance, the faint but unmistakable sound of civilization echoed across the wilderness.

It was the sound of a train.

“Son of a bitch,” he said out loud, but now it was a happy expression. For the first time since the ordeal began, he had real, genuine hope.
I need to go back for Talia,
he thought
. We’ll jump the train. We’ll escape. We’ll be safe.

Somewhere down below, the alpha male screeched its frustration and Nick realized that returning unarmed for her was suicidal. No one knew the cats better than she, and no one could survive them better than she. But he needed help if he was to rescue her.

Nick took off toward the sounds of the train, forgetting Talia’s wish that the Smilodons be kept secret.

The great steam engine emerged from the tunnel entrance shooting broccoli- shaped plumes of black smoke. Trailing the steel leviathan, a parade of wood slat boxcars swayed and clattered along the single line of track. The eastbound freight line of the trans Siberian railway chugged toward Vladivostok and the Pacific Ocean, indifferent to the hope its mere presence had instilled in an American spy.

From the crest of an exposed limestone outcropping, Nick watched as the train entered a channel cut through solid rock. He even saw the engineer and the fireman talking and laughing in the engine cab.

With the image of Talia trapped up a tree fresh in his mind, Nick ran down the hill and made it to the tracks in no time. There, however, he faced another obstacle. Standing at the edge of the cut channel, he looked down at the train tracks 30 feet below. Nick could hear the engine, it was coming fast, the puffy clouds of smoke firing up just over the horizon of a nearby hill. Should he climb down? Would it be safer to follow the tracks for a little while? Did he have the time?

              Blasting around a bend in the channel, the freight train emerged in glorious sound and fury. Its speed forced the air up and out with a great whoosh that blew Nick’s hair back, and it sped below him at an astonishing rate of speed. He’d never be able to catch it if he let it pass. The train’s highest point, its roofline, was 20 feet down from his position. Jumping from that height to the roof would be foolish. It could cripple him, or worse. The decision was made for him as Nick, from the corner of his eye, caught a flash of familiar white.

Turning his head, Nick saw the alpha male approaching in a classic stalking gait, its muzzle and
vibrissa
curled back in threatening form. Though it was hunched low, the beast retained a presence of great mass, and for a second Nick allowed himself to marvel at its grace and slick, deliberate movements. He knew why Talia held the animals in such high regard, had known since he first set eyes on them. They were magnificent in form and presence. He wished he could experience them through the safety of steel bars.

Or a hot air balloon.

His stomach tightened as Nick returned his attention to the speeding train passing below. The alpha charged, and without a second thought, Nick flung himself bodily into the air.

He hit the roof and wasn’t killed, crippled, or even injured. The landing was surprisingly soft, and Nick found himself sprawled out on the roof of the caboose, no worse for wear. Gathering his wits, he took refuge from the wind against the raised lookout cabin.
Piece of cake
, he thought.

On the precipice above the tracks and growing smaller as the train retreated was the alpha male. Nick watched it as it watched him; it didn’t hem or haw or kick up a fuss about losing its prey. Rather, it seemed resigned this time to accept the one that got away. It stood there, it’s wind-blown mane curling about its body, looking surprisingly calm and even, Nick thought, philosophical.

“Sorry, pal,” he said under his breath. “Not today.” He felt no relief, however.

He still had to stop the train.

Looking forward toward the engine, he saw the line of boxcars rocking back and forth. Nick had to cross them to get to the engine. He wasn’t sure how he was going to stop it. He only knew he had to. He hoped the engineer would sympathize. He hated to think of what he’d have to do if they refused to stop.

Nick breathed into his hands to warm them and gathered up the strength to run across the car roofs. For whatever reason, perhaps to get his bearings or to just confirm that he was indeed moving forward, he turned and looked at the tracks diminishing in the distance.

He wasn’t surprised by what he saw.

On the tracks below and chasing after the train was the alpha male.

43

With bulging muscles propelling it at top speed, the Smilodon charged the caboose. Nick watched as its giant paws crashed against the icy railroad cross ties, the cat’s footing was true and solid. Resembling a primeval locomotive itself, the beast shot white steam from its mouth with every guttural breath as it slowly caught up to the eastbound.

The train cut through the icy Siberian winter at 50 miles an hour, but to Nick, there was no comfort in the locomotive’s speed. As the cat drew closer, he wondered what could possess an animal to ignore it’s own safety in order to get to it’s prey.
It’s chasing a goddamn train, for Christ’s sake! Aren’t they supposed to be afraid of things that big?
Nick found the idea that the animal wasn’t scared to be wholly unnatural.

With its back claws impaling a wood tie, the big cat launched itself into the air. Nick stared transfixed as the great white beast hovered over him, its eyes locked on to his, its front legs outstretched in an all-encompassing embrace. At the last possible moment, Nick jumped forward, toward the joining boxcar’s roof.

The alpha crashed down onto the last third of the caboose. Wood and metal collapsed beneath the force and weight of the saber-tooth, sending the beast through the roof and into the main cab of the caboose. Inside, 72 year old crewman Volker Gerof, a veteran of the Russian revolution and two world wars, never knew what hit him. His body was smashed into oblivion by the the great weight of the monster cat.

             
Nick found himself sprawled atop the boxcar roof, its rusted pipe railing preventing his fall to the rushing ground below. Somewhere behind him, the alpha’s roar came loud and angry. Nick thought it sounded like it came from inside the caboose, and when he looked, he was surprised to see a large chunk of the trailing car missing. With the simple desire to survive at the forefront of his mind, he jumped to his feet and, battling the wind, ran along the traincar’s roof toward the engine.

Toward safety, he hoped.

Approaching the gap, he hurdled it to the next car, landing with several feet to spare. With little hesitation, he was up and running again, sprinting at a full clip into the rushing headwind.

Run run run
.

Another leap took him to the roof of the next boxcar. He hit harder this time, and fell and rolled onto his back. His lungs burned as he tried to catch his breath, but the freezing air made the simple act a difficult one. He was exhausted, freezing and nauseous. How much could the human body take? What was the absolute limit? He didn’t know, and he was tired of being a guinea pig.

Nick looked back toward the caboose and saw the alpha male’s head rise above the hole its body made. The cat’s brow wrinkled as it saw him, and Nick once again prepared to run to the next boxcar toward the engine.

And then, all at once, the ever-present chugga-chugga of the engine cut out, replaced by a muffled version of itself. Noticing the change, Nick glanced around toward the front of the train. Slipping into featureless black, the eastbound rumbled into the mouth of another tunnel.

“Shit!” Nick cried, then dove to the roof. The keystone of the tunnel’s framing arch whooshed past his ducking head at 50 miles an hour. Plastered flat against the boxcar, he heard the inevitable smack of saber-toothed cat against rock. Even within the cacophony of noise in the tunnel, it sounded as if every bone in the Smilodon’s body had shattered simultaneously.

              From the tree’s highest point, Talia watched as the Smilodons pawed the ground and roared in frustration. From the edge of the cliff, several of the males lifted their tails and urinated on the trunk, a desperate act Talia saw as their way of claiming victory over her. But she was safe; she knew it and so did they.

             
Her thoughts turned to Nick. The alpha male had chased him through the gully, and even though she was up high, she had lost sight of him through the trees. It frightened her to think the cat had caught him. The more time that passed, though, the better she felt about his chances. The corpses in the cave proved that the Smilodon’s didn’t leave their victims at the sight of a kill. The longer it took for the big male to return, the more likely it was that Nick had found safety somewhere.

             
Though she was cold, hungry, and very tired, Talia couldn’t help but be fascinated as she looked down at the big cats. She had never seen more than two at a time. Now, she was looking at the entire pride of 20 or so animals. The discovery of the alpha male was astonishing, too, for nowhere in the fossil record had such a species of
felidae
been represented. In fact, the largest known carnivorous land mammal was the dog-like giant
Andrewsarchus.
She felt a sense of pride that her Smilodon
siberius
topped even it.

             
Most spectacular was the alpha’s size. She was sure that not all of the males achieved such hefty proportions, for the number of prey animals- the reindeer, musk ox, and elk, couldn’t support more than a few of these super-predators. The purpose for its great size, or so Talia believed, was simple. Many arctic animals needed to be big in order to survive the climate. Polar bears, musk ox, whales and seals were all big because larger animals lose heat much slower than smaller ones, and heat retention in the subzero Arctic was a matter of survival. It explained why all the members of this polar species of Smilodon were so much bigger than species from more temperate regions. One thing was not open to debate, however: the alpha male was old. To get that big, it had to be.

A few of the Smilodons descended into the gully, hoping to find another way to get to Talia. She watched them, and her heart jumped when one of the smaller cats began climbing the tree. It made it up a full 10 feet before falling back to the gully floor. Relieved, Talia again searched the forest for any sign of Nick. Clutching the branches, she pivoted her body around the trunk and looked in the opposite direction. What she saw was even more amazing than the cavern of mummies, the cave drawings, and the alpha male itself.

              Talia was suffering from a lack of food and sleep, not to mention a probable concussion from being dropped on her head, yet she forgot all that as she peered down to the other side of the gully and the remains of a structure. It was large and round, a circular edifice that looked very old and very primitive. Her heart beat faster the longer she looked at it, and details became clearer, more intriguing.

Like, for instance, what the structure was built from. To her, it looked like bones.
Huge
bones. But bones from what? As she shifted her body for a better look, her movements excited the pride, prompting a unanimous song of growls and whines. She disregarded them and studying the ruin, decided that they
were
bones.

Elephant
bones.

Her stomach fluttered. Embedded into a limestone floor, the bones were arranged to form a continuous circular wall some 12 feet high. Though some bones were broken and crumbling, they were in remarkable condition, no doubt a testament to a climate that was cold nine months out of the year. A smattering of trees grew up through gaps in the limestone floor, but overall, the aged structure looked as if it had maintained its basic shape. And she had no doubt that the bones, if not the edifice itself, were from a whole other era, for elephants hadn’t roamed Siberia for over 10,000 years.