Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,1

detritus-coated, downhill-sloped forest floor. There was nowhere to go but down.

And then where? The river was two days out on foot and from there it was a week, at least, to the nearest pocket of civilization. And what weapons did they own that could defeat such a group as this?

None.

Hopelessness settled in and his limbs grew weary. He thought of his wife and only regretted not having been able to tell her how angry he was that she’d left. In the end, she had grown to hate him and taunted his profession; said that being a cryptozoologist was a job far better suited to children or imbeciles prone to flights of fancy. He thought she’d understood him, but he’d been wrong. And he would have never known if not for—

Shaking his head, Weston banished his thoughts of his wife. She was not the image he wanted to see when he died.

With sure footing beneath him and the slope growing steeper, Weston felt himself moving faster. The pain in his lungs began to subside and the sweat on his forehead evaporated before it reached his eyes. He’d never before experienced a second wind but recognized it, and for a moment, felt some degree of hope.

That’s when he saw the flickering shadow surrounding him, as though something above were blocking out the sun that filtered to the forest floor between breaks in the canopy. He glanced up into a pair of red-rimmed, deep yellow eyes. The beast shrieked at him and reached out. Its fingers found his field vest and gripped tightly. A moment later, Weston’s feet left the earth and he found himself airborne, propelled through the air with stunning ease.

As the forest spun, he saw the entire group descending toward him, some charging, some taking to the trees, and some rolling clumsily through the brush. What may have been a ten-foot flight took Weston much farther as the ground continued to drop away. Twenty-five feet later he landed, but the same grade that made his fall farther also minimized the force of his impact. He rolled and slid another fifty feet and came to rest at the foot of a tall, slender Aquilaria tree.

Weston knew he was lucky to be alive, but even luckier to not have sustained any broken bones. He hadn’t even lost consciousness. He struggled to his hands and knees, acutely aware that the wave of hair-covered flesh roaring down the mountain was almost upon him. He stood on wobbly legs and held the tree for support. It was shaking.

Weston looked up and found the same deep, red-rimmed eyes staring back at him. The creature, suspended upside down on the tree, reached out and backhanded Weston’s head. He fell to the ground, stunned and despairing. They had him. Escape was impossible.

He began weeping as the creature climbed down the tree with an agility he’d witnessed all week. In many ways the creatures were more suited to a life in the trees than on the ground. Once on the ground, the beast stood erect, stretching its height to a mediocre five feet. If not for their physical strength, Weston might even have been able to fight his way out. But he remembered how easily he’d been thrown, as though he were but a child.

As the beast stood above him it hollered to the others, who quickly surrounded his prone body. They hooted and slapped the ground in a wild display, the likes of which he had not observed in the last week, even when they were hunting. A few stayed in the trees where they shook branches and shrieked. The one who had caught him, Red Rim, stood above him and looked into his eyes. Red leaned in close and smelled him, moving slowly from his feet to his head, sniffing diligently.

Perhaps they’re trying to decide if I’m edible, Weston thought. He tried to think of a way he could make himself less appealing, but that was impossible. Inside his pants, his legs were already coated in shit, and his urine had leaked through the front. He smelled terrible; though, he noted now, not as terrible as the creatures standing guard around him. Their scent was fecal and raw, like moldy egg salad. As Red sniffed Weston’s head and blew its breath onto his face, he could taste the decaying flesh of some previous meal that clung to its two-inch-long canines. While Red sniffed his hair, Weston became aware of a gentle caress upon his chest. He glanced