McKean S01 A Dangerous Breed

by Thomas Hopp

  “Vince Nagumo!” McKean replied as the FBI agent came out and shook our hands. “What brings you here, as if I didn’t know?”

  Nagumo, a slight Amerasian fellow with an intelligent face and surprising green eyes, gestured inside the house and said, “This, and your call last night about the human coyote, and something you probably don’t know. There’ve been two other murders just over the Adams County line: one at a farmhouse, one at an all-night convenience store. Same MO. Bones everywhere. The attacks seem to be centered on the wildlife refuge. Governor’s calling in a National Guard containment effort on whomever, or whatever, is doing this.”

  Tanner slipped his hands into his back pockets, spat off the porch and nodded toward the plowed fields. “Nice thing about land like this, you can see a lotta footprints. Guess what kinda footprints are out there.”

  “Coyote?” McKean responded.

  Tanner nodded.

  “You know what else?” the sheriff asked.

  “What else?”

  “Nuttin” else. Tracks go up over the swale to the north, heading back to the wildlife refuge. About twenty, twenty-five animals. That’s a huge pack. Now, seein” as this scene’s still pretty fresh, I got a notion to drive up that way and try heading “em off before they get back into rough country.”

  “Absolutely!” McKean exclaimed. “And we’ll follow, won’t we, Fin?”

  I swallowed hard. “One of these days, Peyton, you’re gonna get us into some real trouble.”

  My Mustang’s air filter ate a ton of dust chasing Tanner’s patrol car over a dozen washboarded farm roads following the coyote tracks. The sparkling metalflake midnight blue finish on my hood and its airscoop turned a dreary slate gray under a coating of fine pulver and I turned on the windshield wipers occasionally to push the accumulating grit out of my view. Eventually we crested a hill of dry wheat and drove down into the channeled scablands of the wildlife refuge, where the road turned into two dusty ruts winding between mesas and ponds. I began to get a claustrophobic feeling as the cliffs hemmed us in on either side. Several miles in, Tanner pulled over beside a small saltpan and I stopped behind him. Before McKean or I could get out, Tanner leaped from his patrol car, drew his pistol and fired two quick shots at something hidden in sagebrush on the far side of the saltpan. We got out as he crossed the saltpan and hauled out of the brush the carcass of a large coyote, freshly bloodied with a bullet hole through its chest.

  “Caught him off guard,” Tanner crowed. “There’s more but they ran off.”

  McKean knelt and inspected the carcass. “Looks like pure coyote except for its large size. That size may be due to hybrid vigor.” Its paws twitched as if the impulse to run still glimmered in its nervous system.

  “Hybrid vigor?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “A common finding when distantly related animals interbreed,” McKean expounded. “The offspring possess positive traits of both parental lines and the result is often a vigor greater than either parent had, based on the combination of both parent’s positive traits. Larger size is one of the most frequently encountered of such new traits.”

  I queasily scanned the surrounding sagebrush for signs of trouble. “You’re saying there’s a bunch of extra-large coyotes running around here?”

  “Quite possibly so,” remarked McKean, “based on this example.”

  Tanner said, “I’m gonna bag him and take him back in my trunk.”

  “Good plan,” McKean agreed. “Its DNA will probably be a genetic mix, despite its coyote coloring.”

  “Looks like a regular coyote to me,” I said, still unable to quite accept what I was hearing.

  “And perhaps that will turn out to be the case,” McKean agreed. “But any sort of coloration is possible in the F2 generation.”

  “F2?” I questioned. “Explain what that means, Peyton.”

  “The second filial generation. This appears to be a young animal so it may be a grandson of dog 106. ‘Grandsons’ or ‘granddaughters’ are the very meanings of the term F2. In a mixed population like we’re dealing with, traits like fur coloration can re-assort, combining and re-combining with other genetic traits. This animal may represent back-breeding into a form that looks like its original coyote ancestor.”

  “So, if it’s pure coyote again, it’s no threat.”

  “On the contrary,” McKean said with an intellectual glint in his eyes. “This animal may be pure coyote on the surface only, while other genetic traits have mixed and matched as the chromosomes sorted and rearranged in the sperm and egg that created him. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, although he looks like his coyote ancestor, he nevertheless possesses a number of Border collie genes.”

  “Including the human genes?” I felt palpitations stirring in my chest.

  “He could very well have those too,” McKean said, his eyes cast skyward, his mind in an intellectual ferment as great as the emotional shock building in me.

  “All of the human genes?”

  “Answer: yes.”

  “So you’re telling me human Cog27 DNA may have made it all the way into something that looks like a coyote?”

  “That’s right.”

  I felt dizzy. “That’s beyond creepy, Peyton. ‘The horror of this story keeps getting worse by the minute.’

  “I suppose so,” he said as if the idea that this was a potential catastrophe had somehow gotten lost in his intellectual curiosity about the genetic aspects of the case. Now his expression clouded as his superactive mind turned to that issue and found its ramifications less than pleasing.

  Tanner went to his car to get a body bag and McKean and I got into the Mustang to escape the late afternoon heat.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “That’s one out of twenty-five animals that broke into a house and killed two people this morning. There are still twenty-four of them loose out here.”

  “Maybe more,” McKean mumbled, his mind preoccupied with a mental calculation. “I’ve done a little web searching since this all began. Well-fed coyote packs can raise eight pups per female per year, and dog 106 has been missing for four years. Assuming half the pups were female in each generation, then that’s four-times-four-times-four-times-four, or 256 transgenic pups under optimal conditions.”

  “The opposite of optimal, if you ask me,” I said with my stomach churning faster.

  Suddenly McKean gripped my arm. “Look, Fin! There’s another!”

  A coydog with Border collie markings stood by a sagebrush thicket watching the sheriff return to the center of the saltpan with a black body bag. I rolled my window down and called to Tanner, “Watch out! There’s another one.”

  Tanner quickly drew his pistol, bent into a firing stance and squeezed the trigger. The dog was already in motion as the shot rang out, leaping sideways into the cover of the sagebrush. Tanner fired several more shots but there was no yelp to indicate the bullets had found their mark. A moment later however, staccato yapping calls emanated from brush in the area where the animal had disappeared. “Yip! Yap-yap yip!”

  Immediately, another animal colored entirely like a coyote appeared at the other edge of the saltpan directly behind Tanner. It uttered a single sharp “yip!” and Tanner wheeled and fired. Again, the animal seemed prepared for the shot and leaped out of its way. Tanner fired two more shots, ineffectually.

  “Sheriff!” I shouted. “How many bullets you got in that gun?” He didn’t answer because yet another coydog, looking mostly collie, had jumped onto a big basalt boulder off his rear quarter and issued more rapid yipping calls, causing him to spin and pull off another wild shot. The animal leaped away and the bullet went wide. Tanner turned to me, suddenly wide-eyed scared. “Ten shots,” he answered as more yaps, sounding like commands spoken in an entirely new canine language, cut the air. Instantly, the bushes parted on his left and half a dozen snarling coydogs came at him in a massed charge. He fired a shot and one of the animals went down yelping. The others scattered. Then, more staccato yaps
sounded from the sagebrush thicket and a second group of coydogs charged from behind Tanner, their actions coordinated by the yapped commands. His pistol clicked on an empty chamber as the pack closed on him in a unified assault. I opened my door with an instinct to help Tanner as he went down under their combined weight but McKean grabbed my shirtsleeve and held me back. “Watch out!” he cried. I immediately saw that he was wise to caution me, as my emergence from the car was greeted with more yapped commands and two more animals charged from the brush across the saltpan and raced toward me.

  I slammed the door but my window was open. I shoved the key in the ignition, fired the engine and pushed the window-up button on my door. The glass rose with agonizing slowness and was only about halfway to the top when the animals sprang for me. I ducked as they hit the gap jaws-first, snapping and snarling inches from my neck. I held my finger on the button until the window closed and they fell back, leaving rivulets of slavered drool running down the window.

  “More of them!” McKean shouted. On his side, a group of five coydogs charged in unison, having worked their way behind us as we watched Tanner. McKean’s already-closed window kept the snarling animals at bay. I glanced at poor, bloodied Tanner, who was trying hopelessly to rise while a dozen coydogs bit and tore flesh from him in chunks. “My God!” I gasped. “They’re eating him alive.”

  “We’d better look out for ourselves,” McKean muttered.

  He was right. The coydogs hadn’t quit attacking my Mustang. At the front and rear they snapped and tore at the tires as if they understood their vulnerability to puncture.

  McKean exclaimed, “If they get after the valves - !”

  I glanced again at Tanner. He’d stopped fighting and lay flat on his back with arms and legs outstretched. A huge dark coydog was at his throat.

  “He’s gone,” McKean asserted. “Leave him!”

  I jammed the shifter into first and floored the gas. The Mustang’s wheels spun and we raced forward, accelerating on the rutted road accompanied by a chorus of snapping, yelping coydogs. I shot a last glance in Tanner’s direction and slowed, despite my pursuers, when I saw a riveting sight. A lone coydog sat on a boulder above the saltpan, observing the sheriff’s demise. The white Border collie markings on its face were terrifyingly familiar. “The Death’s-Head dog!” I cried.

  “That’s the alpha bitch,” McKean stated analytically. “The leader of the pack. The one who’s giving the orders. Look at her belly!”

  Visible on the animal’s underside between her front legs were rows of teats heavy with milk. Seeing us looking, she snarled, baring fiercely sharp teeth. Then she let out three short yips. In response, several of the animals attacking Tanner peeled away with regimental precision and rushed to join the animals beleaguering my car.

  I floored the gas pedal and raced off with coydogs pursuing on both sides. Not wanting to risk turning around where the ditches might trap us I went forward, deeper into the wildlife reserve. The road eventually straightened and I sped up to leave the coydogs behind. McKean punched 9-1-1 on his cell phone with no luck. “All it does is tell me calls in this area are subject to roaming charges.”

  As I followed the road around rock outcrops and low mesas I wondered aloud, “Do you think we’re getting ourselves into more trouble by going ahead instead of turning around?”

  “Answer: unknown,” McKean replied. “Highway 262 is ahead of us and not too far away. Eventually we may find a through road.”

  “Maybe not,” I hedged. Around another curve, we came in view of a challenging length of road. In a low area lay a stretch of windblown sand, in which the road became nothing more than two long dents.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” I muttered but I pressed on into the sand ruts, slowing somewhat. The Mustang’s undercarriage scraped along the sand mounded between the ruts but we moved forward and crossed nearly the entire hundred-foot stretch. I was just breathing a sigh of relief when the Mustang wallowed and its rear wheels dug in and began to spin. We ground to a halt agonizingly close to solid rocky ground.

  “Now what?” I asked bitterly as the sinking of the Mustang made me finally let off the accelerator. I put in the clutch and pounded the steering wheel with both palms in frustration.

  Without answering, McKean opened his door and stepped out onto the sand, looking around quickly for trouble. “We’re okay,” he said after a moment.

  I left the engine idling in neutral, got out beside the Mustang and knelt down to look underneath. Not only were the wheels half covered by sand but the undercarriage was high-centered on a large mound of sand between the ruts. I stood and turned off the ignition and took the keys and opened the trunk, where I keep a small army shovel. Then I went to the front of the car and sprawled myself on the sand and began digging the center mound away in hopes of releasing us. McKean joined in, kneeling beside me and scooping with both hands. We made progress slowly, moving sand by the ton, until McKean paused and sat up for a moment. He pointed to the west. “Sun’s going down.”

  “Great,” I muttered, digging with renewed effort until I was stopped by a spine chilling sound - the call of a coyote. We spotted it on top of a nearby mesa. It was a small one, sitting on its haunches, muzzle high, yipping and howling shrilly. McKean murmured, “He’s calling the pack.”

  “I know,” I replied, digging frantically as the lone coyote’s cry was answered by a chorus of howls from behind us at some distance and several nearer howls off to each side, as if they might be fellow members of a search party.

  I dug far under the front of the car to clear sand that had piled against the transmission and then backed out from underneath and sat up. “Any sign of the pack?” I asked McKean, who’d stopped digging to keep a lookout.

  “Answer: yes,” he said softly, pointing a long forefinger down the road behind us. There, a hundred feet away in the lengthening canyon shadows, the skull-faced female watched us with keen interest. She yipped sharply to one side of her and the sagebrush there rustled as if several animals were moving into rapid action. McKean went to his door, saying, “You’d better get in, Fin. Quickly!”

  He hurried into his seat and I got in on my side, throwing my shovel onto the back floor. We quickly closed our doors and, within seconds, a dozen growls broke out on either side of the Mustang. I turned the key in the ignition just as coydogs threw themselves against McKean’s side window with an impact great enough to split the glass from top to bottom. It didn’t shatter but I heard and felt the impact of a half-dozen bodies against my window an instant later, accompanied by the hellish sound of snarling mixed with yelped commands from the Death’s-Head dog.

  I revved the engine and let out the clutch slowly despite my panic at the coydogs inundating the car, slavering against our windows, jumping onto the hood and trunk, snapping at the tires. The wheels turned slowly, slippingly, but made progress forward until the ground firmed up and became rocky enough for traction. When the rear tires bit in, I floored the accelerator and the Mustang jumped forward. Seconds later we were a quarter mile down the road, careening along the ruts, trailing dust, and leaving the pack behind.

  As I raced ahead, the low sun touched a cliff top in the west. After another dusty mile it had gone down and twilight silhouetted the dark mesas. I pressed on, forcing myself to careen along the tortuous ruts as daylight faded, despite any sign of a major road ahead. I began to worry we’d be lost overnight in the heart of the refuge. I turned on my headlights. Shortly after that, as if to confirm my worst fear, the road entered onto a broad shield of hard volcanic stone and seemed to vanish into a maze of sub-trails where the tallest plants were tufts of grass and boulder obstacles made the way circuitous and confusing. Finally I rolled to a halt and admitted, “I’m lost.”

  McKean looked up at the sky through the windshield. “According to the Big Dipper and North Star, you’re headed a little north of east. Does that help?”

  “No. As I recall, you said the scablands go all the way to Spokane in that
direction.”

  “True.”

  We sat for several minutes discussing what could possibly go wrong next. Then I noticed something moving off to the left outside the light of my headlamps and my heart rate picked up. The form, silhouetted in twilight gloom, appeared shapeless at first. Then it seemed to become a coyote, amplifying my anxiety. Then gradually the form clarified into the shape of a man walking toward us.

  “Charlie Moses!” McKean exclaimed just as I recognized the friendly, smiling face in the glow of my headlamps. Moses came to my window and I rolled it down.

  “You fellas lost?” he asked.

  “How’d you guess?” I responded.

  “Everybody gets lost in here,” he said. “Come on, follow me.”

  He turned and walked away and I drove behind him until he came to the brink of a low ledge overlooking a small pond. On some open ground was a lean-to made of twigs and tule rushes. In front of it glowed a small campfire.

  I stopped the Mustang at the brink of the ledge and called to Moses. “We were hoping you’d show us how to get to the highway.”

  “In the morning. Come on. Eat some food. Pond water’s good to drink.”

  “We’re not safe here - ” I began.

  “What you mean, ‘we,’ white man?” Moses replied, laughing huskily, his broad smile lit in the fire’s glow. I shut off the engine and got out.

  “I’m dying of thirst,” I suddenly realized. “I’ve got sand in my mouth and dust in my throat.”

  “Drink all you want,” Moses replied, gesturing to the gravelly shore of the pond, where a small iron saucepan sat, lit by the fire’s glow. I took up the pan and dipped out a large portion of clear water and drank heavily. McKean did likewise. As we returned to Moses’ campfire a coyote howled, far off.

  “They’ve been chasing us,” I said without trying to hide the fear in my voice. “They want to kill us!”

  Moses looked into the darkness and said, “You’re safe here. Sit down, I’ve got fresh-cooked goose.”

  Firestorm

  With a few sticks, Moses had rigged a rotisserie over the campfire. A goose hung on the spit, browned and dripping juice and smelling like a camp cookout in heaven. Moses sat down on a cottonwood log, unsheathed his knife and began carving off big pieces of dark breast meat and piling them on a wooden plank.