Hunter's Run (aka Shadow Twin) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

For two more days, Ramón and Maneck trekked through the forest, the man leading the way and the alien at his heels. They paused for Ramón to eat and drink, and to piss and shit, but rested only at night. The other Ramón had made perfunctory camps, sleeping in the hollow of a lightning-struck milkpine one night and in a poorly constructed lean-to the next. The fire pit and well-built shelter of the earlier campsites were gone, and Ramón understood why. His twin was truly on the run. They were down to the final sprint.

They found three more flatfurs along the path, and Ramón was fairly sure they had overlooked several others. The path they traveled would reek of blood to the creatures of São Paulo. And more and more often, Ramón saw signs of chupacabra: evil-smelling spoor on the path, trees gouged by sharpened claws, and, once, a distant call that was equal parts solitude and murder.

Maneck remained distant and reserved, but more comprehensible than it had been at first. With every night’s rest, the alien seemed to gain strength and focus. None of the strange dreams had troubled Ramón again, and the issues of tatecreude and killing, Enye and genocide had come up in their conversation no more often than before. Memories still flooded Ramón from time to time—moments from his childhood, trivial events from his time in the Enye ship, and arriving on São Paulo. He found that he was better able to ignore them if he intentionally kept his mind on the path before him.

It was the middle morning of the third day when the game path they had been following reached the river. The great Río Embudo. The river was almost too wide to see across—what had been a thin ribbon seen from afar had stretched into a clear expanse of glacier-cold water, fast and smooth. Trees pressed up to the banks, exposed roots trailing into the flow like thick fingers. No human footprints marred the muddy bank, but Ramón 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? Ramón 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, Ramón 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 Ramón, and how

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.