by Chris Hechtl
“The worst I've ever seen,” he said. He looked over to the teens. One was talking rather animatedly with someone on his cell phone. He kept telling the girl to take pictures or video, but she just shivered.
“I don't know. I've watched all the CSIs, and I love horror ….” My God!” Bobby whispered when she rounded the cop's vehicle and got a good look for the first time.
Shirley looked over her shoulder and coughed. “Yeah, I'd say bad. I've seen stuff like this after an IED went off but … damn.” She cleared her throat a few times but refused to look away. The smell was atrocious. The insects were already starting to swarm in the area.
They were met at the kill site by Mister Wallace, the chief game warden of the Preserve. “It's all an animal. Nothing to see here. You folks are trespassing,” he told them.
Shirley had butted heads with Wallace a few times. He was a tall beefy guy with broad shoulders and a cold attitude. He was prickly and looked down at her and the other deputies as hired help. He also treated them as such, and sometimes as particularly stupid hired help. That didn't sit well with the deputies.
Shirley looked at the man with slight disinterest. She studied him, her training kicking in to see what he was hiding. It +was pretty obvious from a cursory look around that he was lying and hiding something. Protecting his ass came natural to him she knew. He was sweating and looking about the bush nervously. She could see his Adam’s apple work a few times. He was pale and shaken but determined. “Nothing to see, just the kids got a little drunk and jumped to conclusions,” he said.
“An animal, huh? Since when do animals wear Rolex watches?” the forensic tech asked holding up a shredded wrist complete with a bright gold Rolex. The chief gagged and then turned to the bush to barf. When he was finished, he wiped at his mouth and then staggered off.
They found evidence of four people dead and drag marks for four more. They couldn't make sense of the scene, Bobby shook her head. “You've got four dead hunters, four missing, and you're telling us this is all an animal?”
“It's nothing. We've got it,” Norris said.
Bobby shook her head and turned to Shirley. “It's been gone over by other people, Shirley. Someone even raked the clear areas,” she murmured in an aside, discretely pointing to a few locations, “or swept them with their foot.”
“Great. So either our overzealous cop did it or ….”
“Or Wallace knew about this and was trying to cover it up when those kids stumbled into it.”
“Right.”
They combed the area while they waited for Brenda, the coroner. “These people were definitely killed by an animal. More than one,” the forensic tech nervously told them.
Shirley nodded. There were claw marks on the ground and bodies, that much was obvious. And only a particularly demented individual would cut a person up and chew on them.
They looked around and found claw marks on nearby trees as well. A hundred yards beyond a thicket of trees, they found a broken tree. It had fallen near the moat to overshadow it like a widow maker.
“It's not safe here. I'll have the grounds people clear that up first thing,” the chief said desperately.
“Uh huh,” Shirley said, looking the tree over. She saw claw marks going up the tree and along the limb. Her eyes traced it. She wasn't sure what weight it could hold, but the fact that it was hanging over the wall didn't bode well for her.
They could hear the occasional growl and caw in the distance but couldn't locate the source. Wallace wasn't willing to say what they were either; he only tried to get rid of them. The security team on the other side of the fence suddenly heard it as well. “But … shit, it’s coming from outside the Preserve!” Norris said, turning to face the forest. He then swore viciously, taking his hat off to beat it on his thigh. Bobby, the cop, the kids, and Shirley looked around nervously.
“You're telling me they are out of the perimeter?” Wallace demanded, voice rising. Shirley looked at him. They heard a long stuttering cry. It was long enough for everyone to focus on its location. Bobby pointed out beyond the wall.
“Oh my God,” a guard breathed softly.
“Let's get back to the bodies and get what we can. We've got a hunt to organize,” Shirley said. She tried to use her radio to call in backup, but the trees blocked the signal. She grimaced. She'd have to wait until she was back at the clearing.
She was tempted to climb the tree, but the drop on the other side of that wall was a good twenty feet. Whatever had done it hadn't been bothered by that fact. That did disturb her though.
<)>~^^~<(>/
When Matt pulled up to the scene in his truck, they spooked. The chief glared at him.
“The gate guard was an ass, but he knew something was up so he let me through. So, what's going on?” Matt asked as he climbed out of the truck. Shirley silently pointed to the bodies and then to the tree that had come down to allow the animals to escape. Matt looked it over, whistled, and then shook his head. “I'll call all hands on deck,” he said with a scowl. “With the woods around here ….”
“Yeah, they'll love the overtime,” Shirley said snidely.
“Shirl, behave,” he scolded. She nodded.
Grimly the deputies realized the animals were on the loose and endangering the public. “We've got to call him anyway,” Matt said, pulling his phone out. Shirley winced as he hit speed dial and then waited for his father to pick up.
“No Dad, nothing's wrong with mom,” he said. He grimaced. “Yes, there is a reason; no, I'm not checking in. We've got ourselves a situation.” He filled him in with the details then warned his father that there were several man-eating predators on the loose.
He nodded grimly, eyes cutting to Shirley. He nodded a few times, winced once, then exhaled slowly. “Will do.” He hung up.
“Let me guess, keep a lid on the story?” Shirley asked sarcastically.
“No. The first priority of any sheriff—hunt the damn things down and kill them,” he said, pulling a shotgun out of the rack in his truck, He checked it over and then nodded to her. She nodded back.
“I'm going to check the perimeter. You watch your ass,” Matt said.
“Will do. You watch your own,” she said, nodding her chin to him. He grinned at her then went into the bush.
While Shirley secured the scene, the female tech Bobby collected evidence and images and waited for the coroner to arrive. They couldn't touch the body until the coroner arrived. Bobby idly noticed feathers, a few downy feathers drifting in the air, but a few were on the ground covered in blood. “Cat must have made a kill here,” she said, pointing it out.
“Huh?” Shirley asked. “What's that?”
“Cat. Oh never mind.” Bobby dismissed the idea. The coroner called and told them that if the body was in pieces, then to tag and bag. Bobby grimaced but went to work. She photographed everything once more and then went about with large bags to pick up the body parts. She took her time, documenting where each was found and what it was. She even drew them on her sketch of the scene. She confirmed their suspicions of a large animal attack but pointed out that the tooth marks and claw marks weren't normal. “This is not a cat; the jaw is all wrong. The dentures don't look like any sort of cat I've seen,” she declared, holding a plastic wrapped limb up. “The claw marks are longer too, the wrong shape. Something's definitely hinkey here,” she stated.
They found the hard shell of a claw nearby. The outer sheath was longer and not curved and hooked like a cat's claw. Bobby picked it up with her gloved hands and turned it over and over examining it. “Weird,” she drawled. “Wicked. I'd hate to run into the rest of whatever that was.”
<)>~^^~<(>/
“What are we after? What escaped, Wallace?” Matt demanded of the chief game warden as he stood there fuming.
“I can't tell you that. I signed an NDA,” Wallace said, stonewalling.
“Don't dick with me, Wallace. You so don't want to play games,” Matt growled, eying the other man. “We've got a serious situation, a
nd I don't have time for that crap,” he growled. They had found a body in a tree or at least pieces of it. All the soft easily edible tissue had been stripped away.
The other three bodies had been found scattered in various pieces under bushes as well.
Just as Wallace opened his mouth, a pair of gloss black Cadillacs pulled up. “Ah, great, the suits have arrived,” Shirley observed sarcastically. “I wonder what rock they crawled out from under.”
“They certainly took their time getting here,” Wallace said in relief. He nodded as the lead counsel waved him over to him. “Excuse me. I need to see my attorney,” he said snidely.
“Yeah, you do that,” Matt sighed.
The lawyers refused to allow their client to talk to the deputies for fear of incriminating himself in any sort of investigation. They immediately tried to browbeat the cops off the Preserve and surrounding area. One even came with an electronic court order. The deputies laughed.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Shirley said. “We've found human remains. Any sort of trespass is out the window, and you know it,” she explained. “Which means this area is an ongoing crime,” she said. “And you are in it,” she said, eyes narrowing at them, “and interfering in an official investigation.” They took the pointed hint and backed off to consult once more.
She knew she'd gotten only a momentary reprieve before they tried another tactic. She turned to the tech. “What do you think, an hour or so, Bobby?” she asked.
“Yeah, Shirley, I can get it done then,” the tech nodded. She was checking out the lawyers though, watching them. Shirley turned back to them. They were nervously watching the woods around them. “Can we take this inside?” a woman asked.
“Why? It's a nice night,” the deputy replied, “unless of course there is something you're afraid of. Are you afraid of the dark?” she asked snidely.
Matt came over to her side and gave her a warning headshake. She grimaced. They turned as they heard a distant snarling caw. “You hear that?” Matt murmured. “That ain't no big cat. No way,” he murmured. They heard a shuffle and turned to see the lawyers bolting for the safety of their SUV. The deputies exchanged looks.
“What was that about? Were they really afraid of a boogeyman?” Shirley turned in place to look at the cringing lawyers. “Should we be?”
“I don't think they will tell us even if we ask,” Matt said, turning to look at the group of lawyers. “But I'm not going to complain about them being in there right now. They've done enough squawking of their own.”
“True.”
The trail went cold, so they planned a perimeter to hunt whatever had escaped. Once the planning was started, Shirley knew it was barely a Band-Aid on the problem. “We're going to have to do this by day. There is no point doing it at night,” Matt said. “They'd have the advantage. Our people are nervous enough as it is; they'd be shooting at shadows.”
“Or each other,” Jessie agreed.
“Too true unfortunately,” Matt said. “Pack up. We'll call in some additional support. I'll get Eddie or Monica to call the homes in this area and warn them to be on the lookout.”
“That's it?” Jessie said, sounding annoyed.
“For now, yes. Look kid, we're all tired ….”
“I'm not.”
“The energy of youth doesn't cover it. You've got to pace yourself,” Matt said. Jessie frowned but nodded. He wasn't necessarily listening to the voice of wisdom, more likely just nodding along to get Matt to move on. Matt shook his head. “We're going to bed down for the night at the station. Feed up in the morning, coordinate, and then hit the trails fresh when we can see what we're doing.”
Jerry stumbled on a rock and fell nearby. They turned as he wearily got to his feet. “I'm okay,” Jerry said. “Skinned something though,” he said with a grimace of pain in his voice. “Damn, cut my palm up something wicked,” he growled.
“See?” Shirley demanded, nodding her chin to Jessie's twin. “Now imagine someone doing that with a shotgun?” Jessie winced and then nodded.
They would have to check the game trails and watering holes on foot or on an ATV, not a pleasant thought. Once they had a rough plan, they got some food and then rest at the station. Shirley curled up on a couch and let herself drift off.
Chapter 2
Shirley muzzily woke to the sound of someone insistently talking. She opened her eyes and followed the sounds of the conversation to find one of the lawyers talking quietly with Molly, the lab tech. She went over to the guy and looked him over. “What's going on? You're not supposed to be here,” she said pointedly.
The guy looked up in alarm. “Ah, sorry, just leaving.” He stroked his tie and then brushed past her.
He left quickly. She turned and watched him go with a frown. She turned back to Molly, but the woman wouldn't meet her eyes.
A few minutes after she got cleaned up, she checked her mail and found that she had gotten a report from the tech. Molly was nowhere to be found though; she'd apparently finished her shift and taken off. When she opened it, she stared. It didn't match anything they had gotten in the prelims. She was confused, but then remembered the visitor. That got her to scowl as an unwelcome thought hit her. She went to Matt. “Matt, something's fishy going on here,” she said, holding up the printed report in one hand and the prelim report in the other.
“You mean something's rotten in Denmark?” he asked smiling. “When is that not news?”
She snorted and poked him. “No, Molly had a visitor, and now her labs don't jive.” She handed him the report and then pointed out the problems with it.
“Oh,” Matt murmured. His face clouded. He didn't like the sound of that. Not at all. Molly was a friend.
They went to the sample room and sent samples to an independent lab. Two sample kits for each lab, a blind study. They worked quickly and quietly. Right after they got the packages on the delivery truck, they got a call from the field.
More deputies arrived on the scene. They set up a field HQ, and then called in volunteer hunters with dogs as well. Jerry was there; his brother had been called in with Eddie to handle the rest of the county.
Two volunteers called in within an hour of the search start. They found a fresh kill, this time a dog. Feathers and flakes of scaly skin were found in the pit bull mix's mouth. “First time I've ever been grateful to a pit bull. Even a dead one,” Bobby said.
The body of the hundred-pound dog had been torn apart. They helped Bobby bag it all and document it. Matt took separate samples and sent them off to an ornithologist he knew. “She's a friend,” he said when Shirley gave him the look. He shrugged her gaze off. “Let's get back to work,” he said after they loaded the body.
“The dogs are a bit put out over that,” Shirley said, nodding her chin to the kill site. “With all that meat from before, you'd think they'd go to ground somewhere. Take a nap or something.”
“Yeah. I think this was a self-defense thing,” Matt said with a frown. “The dog got one of them.”
“So they killed her?”
“Yeah.”
“Pity she didn't get a bigger piece of him.”
“Him,” Bobby said. They glanced at her. “The whatever went for the soft tissue first. That includes the gonads,” she said, giving Matt and Jerry a meaningful look. Both men winced. The ladies shared a smirk.
“Shiitt,” Jerry drawled.
Matt got a call from the sheriff. He held up a finger then wandered off a bit to take the call. “He must have been flying to get here so soon,” Matt said when he hung up and came back.
“Where is he?”
“On his way. We have to go meet him in Flenderson Field,” he said, motioning for her to get in the truck. “Jerry, you got this?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said startled, waving a hand. “I mean, I guess.”
“Don't guess, do it,” Matt said. “You're in charge. Act like it,” he ordered.
“Roger that,” Jerry said.
“He'll be fine,” Shirley s
aid as they climbed into the truck.
<)>~^^~<(>/
They met the sheriff in a field a mile away from their location fifteen minutes later. Why he didn't want to come in to their field HQ and take over bothered Shirley on a few levels. It could be that he wasn't dressed for it; he was in a suit. Or it could be that Richard was just getting old and beating the bush was a young man's game.
“I saw the pictures you uploaded to me. Matt, you've got to be careful about that shit. You know anything on the net can be accessed. Hacked,” he said with a grimace.
“Nice to see you too, Dad,” Matt replied dryly. “I wanted you to see it's not a prank. This is some serious shit, Dad. These things are out there. More than one,” he emphasized. “Working as a pack to attack people.”
“Wonderful. That's all we need,” Richard sighed. He took off his cowboy hat and rubbed his thinning hair. “Fuck.”
“Don't let Mom hear you use that language,” Matt teased.
“Don't tell her then,” Richard said. He opened his eyes. “Chuck's on vacation too. That leaves you in charge of this mess.”
Matt opened his mouth to point out that Jessie was the deputy animal control guy but his father shook his head. Matt closed his mouth with a frown.
“Jessie is a nice kid, but he's green as all hell. He's way out of his league. A couple of times going hunting doesn't cut this,” Richard said. “You've hunted with me for years, Son. Do the job.”
“Yes sir. We've Jerry and Jessie leading posses beating the bush to find them.”
“You're sure more than one?” Richard asked, eying the two deputies. Shirley nodded grimly. He scowled.
“Bobby is. And it's pretty obvious no matter what other people say,” Matt said.
His father's eyes flickered. “Don't piss off the Preserve people; they are a lot of rich and powerful people involved in it,” he cautioned them. “Use their assets and don't get in a pissing match with them.”
“Sheriff, what the hell's going on?” she asked, eying him.
“Just do your job,” he told her coldly, looking over his son to Shirley.