Thursday, July 30, 1997, 10:22 am
Boerne, Texas
Lucy knocked on the door of Bert’s office and opened it, offering the sheriff a thin smile as she stepped inside. Her neighbors had often described her expression as a “Mona Lisa smile” because she never opened her mouth in a full grin.
Bert beamed a wide smile as he got up to offer his hand. “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes? How are you, Lucy?”
Lucy allowed Bert to pull her into a hug, and she continued to smile, though her eyes were filled with concern. “I’m feeling confused, actually. George hasn’t been by to visit with Max in the last two days, but he didn’t say he was leaving anywhere.”
“Yeah, I know how you feel. He just called me up a couple days ago and said he had to be out of town. He didn’t say where he would be, but I assumed it had to do with his new secret agent friends.”
Lucy nodded, trying not to frown. She’d been out to Rosa’s house, and while most of the vehicles were still in the driveway, the absence of George’s truck suggested that everyone had piled in for a road trip. “So you don’t know where they might be?”
“No,” Bert sighed as his face wrinkled in a look of disgust. “I could use George here right about now, what with me having to suspend John for two weeks.”
“What?” Lucy asked. “John did something wrong?”
“Yeah, we had a set of prints that we ran with the cops for the FBI, and they came back with Dave’s records.” He saw Lucy’s blank expression and added, “Dave Carson, John’s cousin.”
Lucy said, “And John sat on the report to give his cousin time to split.”
“He tried to split, and Jobe and Gavin caught up with him,” Bert said. “The way I heard it, Dave put Jobe in the hospital for a couple days. So I reckon that they’re probably somewhere, looking for Dave.”
Lucy thought, I’ll bet John knows where Dave is.
She tried to fake a relieved smile. “Well, as long as he’s called in, I know George is okay with his new friends. Thanks for taking that load off of my mind.”
She leaned over to kiss Bert’s cheek. “Don’t you and Gina be strangers just because George doesn’t live with me anymore, you hear?”
Bert nodded. “We’ll stop in sometime. Maybe for dinner if you wouldn’t mind grilling some steaks?”
“I wouldn’t mind at all. I’ll see you soon then?” Bert nodded, and Lucy gave him a final wave before she walked out of the office. She waved to the deputies lounging by their desks and thought, Enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts, guys.
***
Thursday, 10:22 am
Texas (I have no idea where we are. I think we’re lost.)
George and Gavin had finished packing the supplies when Jobe returned to the camp. He wore a defeated frown, and his hands were tensed into fists. He was desperate to hit something, but there was no acceptable outlet for his anger.
“Are you okay?” Gavin asked.
Jobe shook his head, waving his arm back in a sweeping gesture. “The tracks split up a mile from here, but both directions are false leads. Dave covered his real tracks and doubled back to make fake trails.”
Gavin’s heart ached for Rosa, but he didn’t have the first clue of what to do to save her. “What can we do?”
Jobe rubbed his forehead. “We’ve got to follow Rachel’s trail first. Maybe Dave just moved her away from the camp, like he did with you.”
They left the camping gear, bringing only food and water to travel faster. Rachel’s tracks changed direction three times before she hit the ground. Dave’s tracks were the only set for several miles before Jobe found the impression where Rachel had been laid.
From there, her tracks wandered off farther away from the camp and deeper into empty countryside.
George laughed, dropping his head when Gavin and Jobe looked at him. “Nothin’,” he said, waving his hand.
“No, go ahead,” Gavin said. “It might help, right?”
George hesitated, and then he said, “I was just imagining Rachel crawling on hands and knees. Only she wasn’t croaking, ‘water, water.’”
Jobe made a quiet, pained laugh. “No, she’d be moaning, ‘coffee.’”
***
Thursday, 11:30 am
Dave’s face tensed into an irritated scowl when the nagging voice of his conscience returned to ask, Do you really believe this is justice? There’s no judge and jury for the orc, just you acting to murder him in cold blood.
“Shut up,” Dave said.
His conscience didn’t comply. You’re using a cheap baiting tactic, and isn’t that a bit amoral, not giving the orc a sporting chance to fight back. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you’re holding a blind woman as a hostage.
“Rosa’s not just a blind woman anymore,” Dave said. “She’s a werekin, and she wants to keep the orc alive.”
You’re a werekin too, his conscience insisted. What do you think will happen when you turn yourself in? Jobe will get a hold of you, and you’ll probably have to face Rosa again. You’ll have to become a member of their pack anyway.
“Never.” Dave’s head blurred side to side in emphatic denial. “I’m never joining them.”
Why not? His conscience asked. Gavin and Rachel work for the government. Jobe works with them as a consultant. Doesn’t that make them the good guys? But you assaulted them, and you threw Rosa down into a hole, twice.
“I didn’t say I was the good guy!” Dave stood up, pacing even though he was blowing his cover.
His knees ached from crouching from hours, and his whole body was tense and sore from sitting in the same spot.
But he was also tense because he kept arguing with himself. His conscience nagged, No, and if the cops are the good guys, then you’re just a selfish bastard who’s going to be a murderer soon.
“When did I ever claim to be a good guy?” Dave clenched his fists, almost giving in to the urge to punch himself. “I’m in this mess because I was hunting out of season, so I’m no saint. I’m out here now for revenge, and yeah, I dropped Rosa in a hole.
“But, fuck, look at her! There ain’t nothing I did that can compete with those guys. Even the orc could show her mercy, and I can too. I’ll take her out of here tomorrow morning, and when I kill the orc, I’ll turn myself in. But that’s the best I can do, because I ain’t no nice guy. And fuck you, because you keep throwing that in my fucking face.”
Silence followed for only a moment before his conscience asked, But who are you fighting with?
“I’m fighting with…” Dave’s scowl crumpled into a red-faced glare as he slung his arm up and punched the side of his head. He did it again with the other hand and began stomping at the ground. “Would you fucking shut up already?”
***
Thursday, 4:56 pm
Rachel heard someone call her name, and she shuffled in a slow circle, raising her head to find three familiar faces several hundred yards behind her. She thought about walking back to meet the men halfway, but she chose to sit down and wait for them.
She was beat, and she kept herself walking on the hope that she could find a road before nightfall.
Her lips were cracked and her mouth and throat were parched. Her empty stomach had long ago given up on gurgling, and her head pounded from hunger and dehydration.
Gavin and George dropped on either side of her, looking almost as tired as she felt. Jobe knelt in front of her and held out a canteen of water. She drained half of it before her mind nagged at her to stop and pass the water to someone else.
While Jobe tore open a package of beef jerky, Rachel asked, “Where’s Rosa?”
No one would answer her, but they didn’t have to. Their pained expressions told her the truth.
Rachel tried to get up. “We have to go back—”
Jobe grabbed her wrist, pulling her down. “We’ll rest here for an hour, and then we’ll start heading back. We have to gather the supplies before we can look for her, and Dave knows that. He’s scattered us to buy more time, and he’s succeeded.”
Rachel said, “But we can—”
“Even if we run back to get our supplies, he has a head start,” Jobe said. “You’re too tired to run, and we don’t need to be compounding our problems by draining ourselves. We need to be sharp when we catch up to Dave, or he’ll run through us like a third grade bully in a kindergarten playground.”
***
Thursday, 6:05 pm
Boerne, Texas
John stayed in his garage after dinner. Sharon was still mad at him for being suspended, and he felt safer working on his “special project” rather than sit in the living room under her brooding glare.
It wasn’t like anything good was on TV anyway.
He worked under the car, a 1958 Chevy Bel Air that he’d rescued from his uncle’s yard. Leon was too old to drive or to maintain the car, and it had started to decay with constant exposure to the elements.
John was working to remove the exhaust manifold, and he’d started by applying Naval Jelly to the bolts to clear away the layer of rust locking the nuts in place. The jelly had dried, and he was using a wire brush to clear the mess.
Under the hissing rasp of the brush scraping the metal, John thought he’d heard the garage door open, and he lifted his head, pulling down the shop glasses to check. The door was closed, and he was alone. He reset his glasses and looked up.
A hand closed over his ankle to yank him out from under the car, and John yelped like a terrified child.
The rolling trolley squealed as John shot out from under the car. His heart seized until he recognized Lucy. Dropping his hand to clutch his heart, John let go of a breathy, relieved laugh. “Oh, hell, I thought…Lucy, what are you doing here?”
Lucy didn’t return his smile, and she continued to glower as she leaned over him. “I want to know where Dave is.”
“What?” John sat up and frowned. “Why are you looking for him?”
Lucy said, “I think you should answer my questions first.”
John shook his head. “No, that’s not how this works.”
Standing up, he tugged off the paper mask covering his nose and mouth. He pulled down the shop glasses next and let them rest around his neck by their elastic strap.
“How do you think this works?” Lucy asked.
John hesitated, thrown off by the icy tone of contempt in her voice. Shaking himself, he said, “I’m a cop, and you’re a civilian. That’s how this works.”
Before he could tell her to leave, Lucy stepped closer to John, her pupils stretching into black pits. “Are you a cop? You sat on a report to protect Dave, and that strikes me as something a real cop would frown on.”
Backed against the car, John’s mouth flapped as he stared at her eyes. “How did you know—?”
His voice locked when she opened her mouth in a snarling expression, exposing her fangs. Lucy drew up on her toes, leaning over John. She only had a few inches of height over John by doing so, but she used them to her advantage, looking down on him.
“A real cop would hunt down his cousin and talk some sense into the man before he does something even more stupid than assault a federal officer. A real cop would stand by the letter of the law, not aid and abet a fugitive.”
“I…” The objection died on John’s lips. He had no way of knowing if Lucy was reading his mind, but he couldn’t deny that he’d done everything she’d accused him of. “What do you want with him?”
“I want to find Dave before he hurts anyone else,” Lucy said. She stepped back, letting her eyes return to normal. “I want you to do your job and arrest him, and if you won’t help, I’ll make you suffer.”
John thought over his options for less than a second before he said, “Let me go get my keys.”
Lucy said, “Pack a bag. We may be camping for a while.”
***
Thursday, 8:01 pm
Texas (Hey, look! That’s a cave! So that means…nope, we’re still lost.)
Url woke up and scratched his massive backside as he propped a wide forearm under himself. The sun was just setting, and the orange hues of light magnified the red color at the mouth of the shallow sandstone cave.
His stomach gurgled, but then ever since the beast form had taken him, his appetite was much larger than normal for his people. To soothe the knot, Url needed to look for one of the deer as a snack before he could venture across his territory to look for a cow in the human buildings.
He was getting better about avoiding the humans, and he was fast in his kills, dropping the cows before they could utter a warning call.
Url had discovered that despite their awful flavor, humans had many admirable qualities. For one thing, they had buildings where they held cows for the night. His people would have never thought of holding and breeding the cattle. It was easier just to hunt things down in the wild to an orc’s mind.
But here, in this human-infested world, the cows didn’t need to be captured. The humans had convinced them to walk into the buildings at night.
It was absolute genius.
Once Url recognized the buildings where the cattle were kept, he began taking advantage of the convenient food source. Getting into the buildings had proved to be a challenge, but Url sorted out the simple latches and let himself in.
He clubbed cows with tree branches to knock them out. He carried his prize away, and none of the other cows alerted their owners.
It was free food, and while Url wished he could return home to be with his family, he didn’t really mind living alone in the human forest.
Outside the cave, Url jumped up to grasp a tree branch. The limb groaned under his weight, but he was already swinging to propel himself forward.
He reached out with his other hand to grab another branch and swing under it. Then his forward momentum was so great that gravity never had a chance to drag him down. The branch barely creaked as he swiveled around it, and the same was true of each branch thereafter once he was moving at full speed.
In his native world, the canopy was far too high to attempt such a feat, and even the low hanging branches of the elf world were too thick for an orc hand to close around. The smaller Earth trees still should have been out of his reach, but the beast form brought with it unusual gifts. Among them was an enhanced strength, and a heightened sense of agility and spatial awareness.
As if to prove this observation to himself, he turned a full somersault in the air before his arm shot out to catch the next branch.
The beast form was painful to put on, but when it slipped away, Url was amazed by his enhanced body.
He found a stream and dropped into it with a resounding splash. Blocking the water flow with his scarred side, Url wallowed in the muddy gravel while he laid back to watch the sky change colors. He grabbed a handful of mud and slathered it across his neck, enjoying the cool, gritty sensation.
But his hands stilled when the stars began to shine. Url had lived in a forest with an enclosed canopy for all of his twenty-five turns as a hunter in the elf world. He had caught only brief glimpses of the sky on the elf world, and most of the time, it had been veiled by cloud cover. Here, the human world afforded him uninterrupted views of the naked heavens above.
Url wondered where it all ended. Perhaps beyond the veil, there was something else, like his father had often suggested. And perhaps there was nothing, a vast span of nothing that stretched on and on until the beginning of time.
It was a deep thought, and Url meditated on it for some time before his stomach reminded him that it was time to find a deer. With his mud bath done, sneaking up on the wary animals would be easier.
He knew deer from Lissand, but the animals on Earth were smaller, and they were a lot more skittish. On Lissand, Url would expect a stag to charge him and put up a fight. But even the heartiest stag in the human forest turned to run at the first sign of trouble.
Which was why Url liked them. The cows were his main food source, but they required no effort to find, and very little work to carry away.
But those deer! They could run so very fast on their stick-like legs, and just when he thought he had one, they seemed to veer in midair to slip away from him.
When he finally brought the animals down, they struggled fiercely. Though they were crude fighters, their teeth and hooves had left wounds in his hide before he could strangle them.
This was good.
In his own simple way, Url loved Earth, even if he had no idea where he was.
Wandering away from the stream, he found a fresh set of deer tracks. Staying on the ground, he followed the tracks until he picked up a familiar scent.
He felt instant confusion when he realized the eyeless cat-woman was nearby. But that couldn’t be right. She wouldn’t leave her own territory. Url felt certain of that.
His memory wandered back to his first meeting with the cat-woman. She had been wearing some kind of dark glass lenses over her empty eye sockets. He’d mistaken the glasses for the black eyes of a water sprite, and fearing for his safety, he’d attacked her.
But water sprites did not panic upon hitting water, and while Url hadn’t understood the female’s cries, the panic in her voice was immediately evident.
When she broke the surface of the water to scream and thrash, her black glass lenses were missing.
Url realized his mistake and rescued her. He’d attempted an apology, and then left as fast as he could.
When he returned to check on her, he’d found her back in the lake again.
Url’s voice rumbled in a chuckle as he thought, Cat-woman is weird. She not like water, but she live by lake.
But his smirk vanished when he again wondered why she would be so far from her home without any of her pack.
Url ignored his stomach to search for the cat-woman, and he found a strip of fabric that was heavy with her scent. Url sniffed at it, his thick grey lips tugging down around his yellow tusks. His face twisted in a scowl as he closed his thumb over the fabric and rubbed it. The fabric warmed, and he sniffed at it again.
Something wasn’t right. The cat-woman’s odor was strongest, but there was something else, a scent of a cat-man.
Url found another scrap of fabric, and he plucked it off the ground, transferring it to his other hand while he continued searching for any sign of the cat-woman. But each time her odor grew stronger, all he found were more fabric scraps.
Url stopped walking and settled himself against the side of a tree. Uncurling his fingers from the wads of black fabric, he inhaled deeply. Yes, there was the scent of the cat-woman, but there was also another cat.
Url didn’t recall their being a cat-man in the cat-woman’s pack. The two males in the pack were both caniforms, as was the other female, the fox-woman.
Url dropped the scraps he’d collected and stared at them intently. Something was very, very wrong, but he couldn’t piece together what.
He understood clothing and decorations. Before his beast form overtook him the first time, Url had worn a loincloth and adornments made of animal bone.
Because the scraps were laying around in the underbrush, it suggested that the cat-woman had shredded her clothing during a transformation. Pieces could have fallen away as she moved from one pocket of cover to another.
Humans wore so much clothing, so maybe some of the fabric hung over her animal form until later.
Except, it didn’t seem possible that she should keep losing pieces in areas of heavy underbrush. At least some of the scraps should be dropped in the open. For that matter, some of the scraps should have been bigger.
Url leaned over, poking a thick grey finger at the strips to straighten them, and then he saw what was wrong. The scraps were all uniformly square shapes, and they were all the same size too. He could line them up and the rips almost matched.
Url raised his head to look around. The cat-woman had bitten him before. Maybe she was still angry and she was trying to lead him into a trap. It didn’t sound right to him. She’d bitten Url because he threatened her keeper. He understood that.
This was something else, the work of a cat-man, an outsider. The cat-man was setting up a trap. The question was, was the trap intended for Url, or for someone else? Maybe it was a trap for the other members of the cat-woman’s pack. If that were the case, was it his problem?
Url decided that it was.
He gathered up the scraps, tying the ends together to make a bracelet.
Pulling the banded fabric around his left wrist, he looked around for the tallest, thickest tree in the area. He went to it and jumped up to grab a branch and haul himself up. Then, hugging the trunk, he clambered as high as he could go to search the surrounding area.
Nothing. In every direction he looked, there was no sign of the cat-woman. It made no sense. Her scraps indicated that she was moving in a straight line.
Or, someone was making it look like she had.
The line had to end somewhere.
Squinting, he spotted a clearing where an irregular patch of soil appeared darker than the surrounding area.
Url knew a trap when he saw one, and he didn’t like the looks of the setup. Whether the trap was for him or someone else, the cat-man was using the blind cat-woman as bait.
Url didn’t care for that at all.
He slipped down the tree and set off toward the clearing at a crawling pace. His senses were heightened by his feelings of uneasiness, but he didn’t smell anyone else besides the cat-woman.
He stopped at the outskirts of the clearing, and he hunched down, his red eyes scanning the ground.
Here were signs of two people. A man’s tracks, someone big. There were animal tracks too, and they moved in a straight line out of the clearing. The man’s tracks did too.
Url nodded to himself. Instead of walking into the clearing, he would circle the area to find out who waited for the trap to be sprung.
... I write dark fiction in a variety of genres. My blog contains my rants and rambles, and some short fiction that can only be found here.
I can be pretty fucking offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.
Oh Dave is in for the shock of his life, he thought it was a dumb animal he was hunting. Even after learning that it wasn’t he still treated Url that way, boy is he going to be sorry for that mistake.
And how.