Read Online Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) by Whitley Strieber - Free Book Online
Authors: Whitley Strieber
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about to intensify. Could that help him? Would a really powerful flurry give him a chance to return to the road, perhaps to make his escape?
Then he heard a noise even more inexplicable than the earlier one, which had obviously been Louie’s death whistle. This was a whispering sound overhead, a big, rhythmic whisper of wind, too regular to be part of the storm. As he listened, it slowed and then settled, dropping down behind the house.
The rhythm was that of a helicopter blade, but it was too quiet. Way too quiet.
A moment later, the light in the front yard changed, and he saw why. The curtained room had just gone dark. The piano had fallen silent.
The lion, also, was gone, slipping away in absolute silence.
He stood still, listening, watching. Could it have jumped up on the roof? Carefully, moving slowly and as little as possible, he raised his head. There was no telltale shadow along the roofline. So it had retreated, backing down the porch until it was out of sight.
Was it trying to escape him or was it still hunting him? Since he couldn’t know, he had no intention of going around the corner of that porch. He needed some spot where he could still see the house, but which would give him protection for his back.
Fifty feet to his left was a tree, its trunk thick enough to enable him to lean against it, making attack from behind much more difficult. The lion would have to charge him from some point that he could see, and it would need to start far enough away to make the pistol useful.
The snow in the yard looked deep, and the slower he had to move, the greater the risk. But if he stayed here, the lion could get behind him.
He raised his gun up beside his shoulder where it could be aimed and fired in just over a second, then plunged off the snow-covered sidewalk and into the deeper drifts of the yard itself. He was at his most vulnerable now.
An enormous splash of snow hit him in the face, temporarily blinding him. He pulled a gloved hand across his face to clear his eyes.
The lion was beside the tree and it was already crouched, ready to leap at him.
Once again, it had outmaneuvered him. Yet again, he was too far away to risk a pistol shot. It, however, was close enough to take him.
Years ago, Menard had recorded a case of a mountain lion stealing a three-year-old out of the bed of a pickup, but he’d never heard of anything like this.
He’d probably been damn lucky to have seen it when he had, or he would have suffered the same fate as Louie.
He took deep, careful breaths, centering his attention on his body, letting his emotions race off down their own frightened path. “You’re here, you’ve survived so far,” he told himself. “You can win this.”
How had the lion ever gotten over to the tree? How had it concealed itself in the snow? He was having a hard time believing that an ordinary puma could function like this.
Once again, he had to fight the impulse to turn and run.
The lion moved off past the tree, carefully keeping the trunk between itself and Flynn, and once again he had the uncanny sense that it understood guns.
He asked himself, “Do I have any chance at all of getting to the house?”
From where he now stood, the tree was thirty feet away, the porch and front door twenty.
The door had a glass window in it backed by a curtain. Breaking in would take ten seconds.
When a path looked easy, that was usually because it wasn’t.
The moment he started back up onto the front walk, he had to assume that the lion would know his intentions.
He made a quick survey of the scene. The house was now completely quiet and completely dark.
Could it be that the lion was trained? Because another way of looking at this situation was that it was not only trying to kill him, it was also trying to keep him from getting to the house.
No, don’t even go down that road. The perp didn’t have a damn pet lion with a genius level IQ. The creature was bad luck, nothing more. Had to be.
Nevertheless,
Then he heard a noise even more inexplicable than the earlier one, which had obviously been Louie’s death whistle. This was a whispering sound overhead, a big, rhythmic whisper of wind, too regular to be part of the storm. As he listened, it slowed and then settled, dropping down behind the house.
The rhythm was that of a helicopter blade, but it was too quiet. Way too quiet.
A moment later, the light in the front yard changed, and he saw why. The curtained room had just gone dark. The piano had fallen silent.
The lion, also, was gone, slipping away in absolute silence.
He stood still, listening, watching. Could it have jumped up on the roof? Carefully, moving slowly and as little as possible, he raised his head. There was no telltale shadow along the roofline. So it had retreated, backing down the porch until it was out of sight.
Was it trying to escape him or was it still hunting him? Since he couldn’t know, he had no intention of going around the corner of that porch. He needed some spot where he could still see the house, but which would give him protection for his back.
Fifty feet to his left was a tree, its trunk thick enough to enable him to lean against it, making attack from behind much more difficult. The lion would have to charge him from some point that he could see, and it would need to start far enough away to make the pistol useful.
The snow in the yard looked deep, and the slower he had to move, the greater the risk. But if he stayed here, the lion could get behind him.
He raised his gun up beside his shoulder where it could be aimed and fired in just over a second, then plunged off the snow-covered sidewalk and into the deeper drifts of the yard itself. He was at his most vulnerable now.
An enormous splash of snow hit him in the face, temporarily blinding him. He pulled a gloved hand across his face to clear his eyes.
The lion was beside the tree and it was already crouched, ready to leap at him.
Once again, it had outmaneuvered him. Yet again, he was too far away to risk a pistol shot. It, however, was close enough to take him.
Years ago, Menard had recorded a case of a mountain lion stealing a three-year-old out of the bed of a pickup, but he’d never heard of anything like this.
He’d probably been damn lucky to have seen it when he had, or he would have suffered the same fate as Louie.
He took deep, careful breaths, centering his attention on his body, letting his emotions race off down their own frightened path. “You’re here, you’ve survived so far,” he told himself. “You can win this.”
How had the lion ever gotten over to the tree? How had it concealed itself in the snow? He was having a hard time believing that an ordinary puma could function like this.
Once again, he had to fight the impulse to turn and run.
The lion moved off past the tree, carefully keeping the trunk between itself and Flynn, and once again he had the uncanny sense that it understood guns.
He asked himself, “Do I have any chance at all of getting to the house?”
From where he now stood, the tree was thirty feet away, the porch and front door twenty.
The door had a glass window in it backed by a curtain. Breaking in would take ten seconds.
When a path looked easy, that was usually because it wasn’t.
The moment he started back up onto the front walk, he had to assume that the lion would know his intentions.
He made a quick survey of the scene. The house was now completely quiet and completely dark.
Could it be that the lion was trained? Because another way of looking at this situation was that it was not only trying to kill him, it was also trying to keep him from getting to the house.
No, don’t even go down that road. The perp didn’t have a damn pet lion with a genius level IQ. The creature was bad luck, nothing more. Had to be.
Nevertheless,
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