[align=left] The man reached up and grasped for a handhold in the rock.
He could only find one within reach, a narrow jagged edge no larger than his palm which jutted out and upward from the cliff. The edge was sharp and serrated, and dug into his hand as he pulled himself up. The blood seeping from the cuts it made in his palm made it slippery, and he lost his grip just as his foot found the spot his other hand had been holding to keep him from falling.
He reached upward again.
And again.
And again.
Every breath was one more stretch upward, one more desperate scramble to find a surface that he could use to pull himself up, one more risk at slipping, one final mistake without a chance at salvation.
He reached upward, and pulled himself up, and over the lip of the cliff.
He ran.
The dense foliage of the forest alternated between crackles and crashes and cushioned silence as he passed.
He paused near the base of a tree that was three times the diameter of his own height.
He sensed no animals. Not even insects buzzed near his face, when they should have been attracted to his heaving exhalations of carbon monoxide and the waves of heat coming off his body.
He looked up towards the sky but could only see the canopy of the dense forest, a horizon of green instead of blue.
He pushed away from the trunk of the tree.
He ran.
He felt it now, although his senses told him nothing.
He saw no movement.
He heard no footfalls.
He smelled nothing but his own sweat.
But he felt it.
A hunter knows what it is to be hunted. He was being hunted now.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose up off his skin, and his adrenal glands pumped out their final reserves.
It was there, just beyond his senses' limits, pacing him, measuring him, calculating the moment of his final weakness, preparing for the fatal lunge.
He knew, because he had been a hunter too. He knew that the only chance of a prey that could not outrun, outfly, outclimb, outburrow, or outfight its hunter was to outwit it. Prey that could do the unexpected could escape.
He had seen it many times : a fleeing deer that was about to be overrun by its feline adversary instinctively felt the final leap of the predator and suddenly changed direction, leaving the snarling cat to sink its claws and teeth into empty turf, unable to overtake the deer's new lead.
But he couldn't maneuver fast enough to escape that way.
He was left with only one other choice : to become the hunter again himself.
He had no weapons.
A human's claw and tooth had been left in the distant past of survival once man learned to wield a club or sharpen it into a spear.
He had no time to fashion a weapon, and he had not even seen a stone jutting above the leafy matting of the forest floor.
He was left with only one option, the final recourse of a desperate animal that could flee no longer.
He spotted another giant tree and angled his course towards it.
He slowed as he reached its base, and turned to face the direction he had come from.
He slowed his breathing to listen.
The silence of the forest was deafening. Not even a breeze stirred the leaves. The forest absorbed all sound like the void of space dissipated heat, leaving nothing in its place.
He waited, counting his breaths, looking intently back the way he had come, forcing his body to lean forward, his shoulders rounding and his back slumping, his hands relaxed in the perfect image of exhaustion and defeat.
He breathed in as deeply as he could and held his breath, forcing his lungs to take up all the oxygen they could from that one breath.
He let his left leg tremble and buckle as if his body was finally giving out. At the last second before he lost his balance he forced the air from his lungs in an explosive exhalation and spun his body to the right while pushing off from his left leg.
He hurtled through the air towards the hunter turned prey, the forest's silence split open by his scream of rage and murderous intent.
The scream echoed off the bulkheads of the small room, reverberating back and forth like a coin tossed into a small bottle.
He lurched up instantly, his forehead striking the low ceiling of the sleeping alcove with a crack that knocked him back down into his mattress.
The searing pain even drove the ability to curse out of his mind.
His open eyes searched the darkness, but the only source of light they could find was the two dim buttons of the comm unit set midway up the wall beside the bunk near his head.
His right hand went to his forehead, massaging the shallow tissue gingerly.
He could taste the scent of death in his mouth, the biting, bitter taste of blood that drove carnivores wild with hunger, and the rest of the animal world wild with fear.
I am the hunter.
In his mind he said the words to himself several times, his personal mantra against surrender.
Fear was the predator's most awesome weapon.
Fear triggered the body's fight or flight mechanism, causing the adrenal glands to pump tremendous amounts of stimulating hormones into the bloodstream. Those hormones supercharged the body, letting it do what it normally could not.
But it was also short lived. The heightened rate of activity drained energy away faster than it could be replenished.
Ultimately, without an avenue of escape, fear paralyzed, immobilized, pulverized the will to fight or run until the prey lay trembling, helpless, as the predator approached salivating.
He would not run; not from man; not from beast; not from dreams.