Target Response Read Online Free Page B

“You take it. My sense of balance is a little shaky. I wouldn’t want to fall in and foul it.”
    “You won’t,” Kilroy said, but he took the weapon, slinging it over his left shoulder.
    Raynor went first, stepping up onto the fallen tree.
    “Easy,” Kilroy said. “Take whatever time you need.”
    “The longer I stand here dicking around, the more likely I am to fall,” said Raynor.
    “Cross it on hands and knees if you have to.”
    Raynor shook his head. “My best chance is to scoot across.” He stood sideways, leading with his left side. His legs were spread wider than shoulder width apart. “Here goes nothing,” he said.
    He edged across the tree like a basketball player moving sideways downcourt. He lifted his left foot, moving it forward, planting it securely before lifting his right foot and advancing it. A mechanical style but it seemed to be working for him.
    He reached the midpoint of the tree before his foot slipped. He cut off a choked cry, fighting for balance. He regained his footing and sidestepped quickly, hurrying to the far side.
    Raynor had reached the opposite bank when he pitched forward, falling headfirst toward the serpentine tangle of dirt-encrusted roots that spread umbrella-like from the base of the downed tree.
    His right arm flailed around seeking a handhold to arrest his fall, not finding one. He fell heavily on his left side. Gnarled roots cushioned his fall. Still, he shrieked with pain.
    His outcry pierced the thick, oppressive air.
    A troop of monkeys clustered in a nearby tree fled, startled, loosing a chorus of shrillings and chatterings as they scrambled to the tips of the boughs and flung themselves through empty space to a neighboring treetop.
    Kilroy nimbly crossed the tree bridge to the opposite side. Raynor lay still, unmoving, tangled in brownish-white root work. His eyes were squeezed shut; pencil-thick veins stood out on his forehead.
    “Bill. Bill!” Kilroy said in a hoarse stage whisper, gripping the other’s right shoulder.
    Raynor stirred, groaning. His eyelids fluttered, opening on pain-dulled orbs. “Huh?…Must’ve blacked out for a second,” he muttered.
    Kilroy helped Raynor extricate himself from the mass of roots. He held him under the arm, steadying him. Raynor shivered. Kilroy guided him to the tree the monkeys had quitted, easing him down so he sat with his back propped up against the trunk.
    The monkeys swarmed the upper boughs of a nearby tree. They were small creatures, each measuring about eighteen inches long from head to toe pads, with long, thin, curling tails. They had short brown fur, black snouts, and gray bellies. Still agitated, they howled and screeched down at the human intruders.
    Dusk was falling fast; shadows thickened in the basin’s gloom. In the thinning light Kilroy eyed Raynor.
    Raynor’s bitten left arm was grotesquely swollen from fingertips to shoulder. His hand was thick and clumsy as if covered by a gardening glove, with fingers the size of sausage links. Beyond the arm itself, the creeping red flush denoting the poison’s progress had spread to his neck and the top of his chest.
    Kilroy started at what sounded like distant shouts. They were hard to distinguish over the monkeys’ clamorings.
    Alert, intent, he listened for a repetition of the shouting. None came, and he’d almost convinced himself that his ears had been playing tricks on him when there came the sound of a shot.
    A dull, flat cracking report that came from a good distance away, but all the same, a shot. A few beats later, a second shot sounded, as if in response to the first.
    With no visual referents it was hard to determine from what direction a sound emanated, but it seemed to Kilroy as though both shots had come from somewhere to the west, beyond the basin.
    The reports further stirred up the monkeys, sending them into fresh screams of outrage and abuse.
    “We’re in for it now,” Raynor said. “Sorry.”
    “Can you walk?” Kilroy