Heat blossomed across his lips as the cherry of his third cigarette threatened to burn filter. He pressed it into the ashtray and immediately lit another.
Sorry for what? Leaving? The sex?
He'd written out several replies:
You didn't have to leave.
Was it something I did?
Are you okay?
In the end, he deleted them all and stared down at the single word.
The world woke around him. A young couple that lived downstairs left their apartment for work. An elderly woman took a tiny poodle out on a leash to relieve itself. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the phone.
As if a prayer answered by the god of misfortune itself, caller ID lit up the top of the screen. Curtis Fielding was the lead keeper on the reserve's night shift. Going on six o'clock, he'd be just about to head out for the day. Marcus answered the call, the message disappearing from his screen.
"Fielding?" Marcus answered, voice gravely from smoke and sleep.
"Tenneson, you're gonna wanna get in here ASAP. It's Norah."
Fielding had been a keeper for over two decades. Marcus had worked closely with him on numerous occasions, and never once saw the man crack. The waver in his voice shook him to his core.
"Norah? Did she get out again?" Marcus put out the cigarette, hurrying into his house to pull on a shirt and find his keys.
"No." He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "I went in to feed her last night. Let loose four deer, like I always do. She didn't touch 'em."
Marcus tilted his head, stopping in his doorway. "Okay," the extended pause from his counterpart made his stomach turn. "So you went to check on her?"
"She let me and a trainee walk right up to her." Curtis said after a brief pause. "Barely snarled at him. Her internal temp was forty-five degrees."
Face twisting with confusion, Marcus shook his head. "She's sick?" That simply wasn't possible. Rimeclaw don't get sick. He wasn't the science guy, but something about antimicrobial peptides. Yet, she was almost fifteen degrees hotter than she should have been.
"It's not looking good, Marcus."
"Give me twenty minutes." He hung up instantly, slamming the door behind him and taking the stairs down two at a time. His body yearned for a shower. Maybe the hot water would wash away some of the uncertainty of the previous night, but there was no time now. He was in his truck within seconds and pushed the grumbling old motor to get to the reserve in a quarter hour.
He didn't bother to stop and change into his jumpsuit, opting to sprint directly from his truck to the containment field room. Curtis hunched over the dais, staring up at the monitor through bleary eyes. The enormous, elegant blue and yellow feline lay slumped against a log, panting, but otherwise completely still.
"How long has she been like that?" Marcus panted out, snatching up the tablet where Curtis had been leaving his notes.
"About an hour." He sniffed, trying to keep his running nose in check. "Came on quick. Day shift didn't report anything, so it must have been in the last six to ten hours. Any ideas?"
Lethargy.
Fever.
Loss of appetite.
There were no regular illnesses that should have been able to get through her immune system. This isn't how Rimeclaw go out.
"No idea." Marcus grabbed the baton from Curtis' hip and a small leather case from the dais and took off again.
"Hey! What are you…" Curtis' voice cut off abruptly as Marcus lept through the rippling portal.
The smell of fresh pine hit him before the blistering cold. It wasn't quite the freezing Rockies, but he was also in basketball shorts and a t-shirt. No time to regret not changing, though. Wind howled between the dense trees. A light but constant snowfall powdered the pine needles, but never stuck to the forest floor.
Marcus ran.
Above him, the drone arrived and turned in a tight circle to lead him toward her. His feet bounced off needle littered ground. More needles than had been in here the last time he visited several days back. Even if he did slow down to try and inspect the trees, he'd have no earthly clue what to look for. Something wasn't right.
"Norah!" Marcus called out, a hopeless plea for a territorial roar. What he would have done for her to pounce on him from around the corner in that moment. Had she ripped him to pieces right then and there, it would have been preferable to what came next.
The sickly sweet smell replaced the pine, like meat left to thaw only for you to get called out of town and not return for several days. The buzz of the drone grew a little louder as Curtis piloted it between the trees. Marcus slowed as the smell got stronger and somehow more familiar with each step. He pushed through a cluster of trees, beautiful blue and gold fur sticking out from the other side of a fallen tree.
"Norah…" he repeated, stepping around the log to kneel beside her. She didn't move, though her eyes shifted enough to look up at him. Beautiful, bright turquoise irises stared up at him, but the usually red veins that played through the eyes ran black with rot. A knot formed in his throat as he sat on the frozen ground and lifted her head, easily the size of his torso, up onto his lap.
"Sweet girl…" he whispered, digging his fingers into the fur at the top of her head. The pain was clear in her eyes, but he didn't know how to help. He didn't know what was wrong with her. She opened her mouth to pant, too warm tongue flopping out onto his arm, as an even heavier dose of the rotting flesh scent hit him.
She was rotting from the inside out.
Norah had thrived for seventy-seven years. No record of a single problem with her. He was finding it hard to believe that whatever this was just suddenly…
His fingers slid through the fur along her neck and found something odd. Rimeclaw skin was always well below freezing, but there was a tiny cut that felt hot on his fingertips.
And then another.
And another.
He pulled his hand back, and his eyes went wide before he instinctively rubbed the thick black blood from his fingers onto the fell tree trunk. Shifting enough to get a better look, but not enough to make her uncomfortable on his lap, Marcus parted her coarse fur to examine the wounds close. Burning hot flesh surrounded dozens of tiny bite marks.
This was Norah's specific biome. There was nothing in here that posed any threat to her. Or there wasn't supposed to be.
He glanced up at the drone, his eyes filling with tears as he shook his head. If he could get his mind to focus, he could probably identify what did this to her. Whatever it was, was too far along. The reserve's oldest, most iconic inhabitant was rotting from the inside out.
The drone rose slowly, its camera rotating to focus on the two of them for a few more seconds before lifting into the sky and zipping off. He gave a silent thanks to Fielding for the privacy before turning his attention back to her.
"I'm sorry, Norah," Marcus whispered, stroking her cheek as he pressed his face to hers. Eyes closed tight, leaking wet tracks into the fur, he blindly opened the leather case. His fingers adjusted two thick glass bottles before grabbing the syringe. "It's gonna be over soon," he whispered, voice breaking.
Walking into any situation with an apex predator required certain precautions. For the rimeclaw, a fairly basic sedative would calm her down enough for them to do any maintenance that had to be done. Marcus filled the syringe with the liquid until he couldn't pull it back any further.
He sunk the needle into the jugular and pressed down on the plunger.
Norah purred softly in his lap, her normally freezing sandpaper tongue licked his forearm. No longer able to control the quick, jerking sobs, he tossed the syringe away and held her. He continued to stroke her face gently until the purrs faded and her breathing stopped.
Marcus gripped the fur tight, like the harder he held the longer she'd stay with him. His body shook in attempt to hold back what erupted as a muffled, but primal scream. It didn't make sense. Nothing in here should have even been able to get close enough to bite her. Even if it had, her body would fight off any infection or venom. He tried to rack his mind, but all he could do was sob and hold her now flush to his chest.
The reappearance of the drone alerted him to something being wrong before the sound had. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there, but his muscles ached from the cold as he sat up straight and wiped at his eyes. The drones weren't outfitted with anything to transmit audio, but the quick jerky movements from its operator indicated something was off.
It took him a second, but he crawled out from under Norah, his eyes scanning the little clearing they were in. At first, he didn't see anything. Just the dense layer of needles between the trees and the ever falling snow. Then there was a tiny twig snapping sound. Shuffling through the needles.
Then the forest floor moved toward him.
Tiny bite marks oozing thick black blood.
An illness that could bypass even the relentless immune system of a rimeclaw.
"Fuck…" The word came out with a mixture of grief and absolute terror.
Marcus turned toward the portal and ran.
The forest floor trembled at his sides, moving with him. Toward him. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny black shapes converging on one point.
Him.
The cold threatened to tear his freezing, unstretched muscles as he sprinted as hard and as fast as he could. The pain in Norah's eyes in her last moments filled his mind. If he was right, this wasn't an accident. Someone had done this to her. There was no reason for them to be in this enclosure.
A black blur flew in his direction, and he ripped the baton from his pocket, extending it at the last moment to collide with the tiny creature. It flew back, but the mass was gaining on him. This was not how he was going out. Not today. Not with what happened to Norah.
He pushed harder, freezing air filling his screaming lungs as his calves and thighs complained with sharp, tight pain. The trees suddenly ended. He could see the portal a couple hundred yards ahead.
Immediate regret shot through him as he chanced a glance over his shoulder. Hundreds of black furred rodents were mere paces behind. Their scurrying feet and gnashing jaws creating a horrifying melody with the dry grass crunching under his shoes. Marcus dove through the portal back into the containment field room.
"Seal it!" He was already screaming before he hit the ground.
Curtis' hand slammed down on the big red button. The portal froze midshimmer and a heavy metal door dropped in front of it. "What the hell is going on?" Curtis snapped at him, but Marcus was already back on his feet and at the drone controls. A thick black mass writhed against the dormant portal, twisting and gnashing. As he inched closer, each individual body became more succinct.
"No fuckin' way.." Curtis moved up to the screen, studying it. "Are those…"
"Blightshrews." Marcus' voice was low and flat. "They killed Norah."