Micro - Michael Crichton [145]
He did not have a flashlight; that was a problem. But he got out of the truck, leaving the headlights shining toward the Great Boulder, and stood there, listening. There was a reddish glow through the trees, and he began crashing through the undergrowth toward it. When he reached the Great Boulder he saw what had happened. Embers were dying down, the soil smoking, and the ground reeked of gasoline.
Drake had done the deed. He had killed everybody.
Regretting that he hadn’t brought a flashlight, Eric got down on his knees and found the entrance to the rat warren: Rourke’s hideout. “Anybody there?” he called.
It was useless. He waited for a while, though, poking his finger into the soil, wondering if there were survivors. It was too dark to see much, and they would be very small; he worried he might crush somebody by accident.
But there weren’t any survivors, anybody could see that.
He stumbled through the woods back to the truck.
Rick and Karen, parked on the branch, saw the headlights of another vehicle bumping slowly around the rim of the crater. It was a truck.
Rick watched for a while, then said to Karen, “I’m going to investigate.”
“Don’t.”
He ignored her. He untied his plane and started it, and taxied off. She heard it whining upward, toward the crater rim, toward the Great Boulder.
“Damn you, Rick!” Karen yelled. She wasn’t going to be left alone, so she started her plane and followed him.
Rick saw a man get out of the truck. He circled through the branches, listening for bats, but he didn’t hear any sonar, and he flew closer to the man. The man walked to the Great Boulder and got down on his knees in the darkness. His face wasn’t visible. The man stood up from the boulder and walked away, crashing through the underbrush, a black silhouette. Rick followed him, dodging among branches and trunks.
The man arrived at the parked vehicle. It was a strange-looking truck with fat tires and a weird paint job. The man got in, and the dome light came on, revealing his face.
Rick had seen the man before. Where? He circled past the window as the truck started with a roar.
“Karen!” he called on the radio. “Who is this guy?”
She swooped past Rick and made a steep turn by the truck. She was getting the hang of flying; it was pretty easy. “It’s Peter’s brother!”
“I thought he was supposed to be dead. Is he in with Drake?”
“How would I know?” Karen answered testily.
The truck started and began rumbling off, moving along the dirt track.
Karen ran her engine up to EMERGENCY MAXIMUM. Running at full power, their planes could barely keep up with the truck, even though it bounced slowly along the dirt road. The moment the truck arrived at a paved road it would speed up and they would never catch it, and it would be gone. They had to get Eric’s attention soon.
He was driving with the windows rolled up. Karen flew alongside the window, close to the man’s face, and waggled her wings. No reaction. Then the truck sped up, leaving them behind in swirling dust.
“Get in the slipstream,” Rick said. There would be a zone of dead air behind the truck’s cab, he thought, so he dove for it, watching the back of the man’s head in the glass. His plane flipped over and tumbled: the air behind the cab had gone turbulent and chaotic, and he nearly crashed on the truck’s bed.
The truck came to a bad spot in the road, where rain had washed a gully. The man slowed, and rolled down his window and leaned out to get a better look.
Karen flew through the window into the cab. She circled once, and the man drew his head back in. She made a slow pass in front of his eyes, and rolled the plane, its lights winking.
He saw that. He jammed on the brakes. “Hey—!” His eyes followed her as she banked and turned and flew low over the dashboard. He held out his hand, palm upward, and she landed on his hand. She climbed out and stood on his hand, while he looked at her.
Rick flew in and landed on the dashboard.