Pete could have sworn the creature was looking right into his own eyes. “Wow, I never even considered that,” he said as he watched her urinate on the compound floor.
“I would probably have to go pretty bad myself after a few million years,” Batter chuckled. “The next thing I would want is a glass of water or a Bloody Mary and a big-ass breakfast.”
“No kidding,” Pete said heading for the stairs. “Please, excuse me.”
Chapter 19
Good Ole Truck
Alex and Mot put the finishing touches on the camp, doing their best to erase any obvious evidence that they had ever been there. Mot was very familiar with what Alex was trying to accomplish. The Arzats attempted to always leave as little trace as possible after a hunt, and especially a kill. There were too many competing tribes and too many scavengers to advertise success. He had expertly managed to remove any signs of blood from his kills by carefully scattering desert dust over the area. When he was finished, there was no indication that anything had happened. He showed Alex how he covered his own footprints, and put her to that task with the shovel.
For Alex, removing any sign of her camp was simply a matter of trying to keep Mot’s existence secret as long as she could. Her big advantage, if she had one, was that, for the moment, everyone probably thought she was dead. That would give her some time, but Tom or someone else was sure to eventually come looking for her dig site and start snooping around. She made a mental note to call him as soon as they got to the ranch.
“Mot, are you ready?” Alex was standing by the driver’s door of the truck.
“Yes.”
“Mot, remember when I was trying to describe just how different this world is?”
“Yes, Alex.”
“Well, if your mind wasn’t already blown by what you’ve seen so far, meet this thing we call… well, we call it a lot of things actually, but let’s just call it a truck. My good ole truck,” Alex said, and gave the side a nice open handed pounding.
“Good ole truck,” repeated Mot, confused again. What he really wanted was something else to eat, and he had no idea what Alex was talking about.
“Mot, I imagine that you did a lot of walking where you are from, and we humans do too, but we also have invented several faster ways to get around from one place to another. This is one of them. Nothing to be scared of, OK?”
“I am not fearful, Alex.” Mot said, standing by the driver door of the truck, watching her, wondering why they hadn’t started walking.
“OK, good. I am going to do what we call ‘starting’ the engine. There is some noise and stuff that happens but don’t worry.” She got in the truck and turned the ignition. The old Ford’s starter hesitated at first, then caught the beat and spun until the engine fired, much to Alex’s relief. When she looked up, Mot was wide eyed. He cocked his head—a habit Alex noticed was indicative of him listening to something intently—and flicked his tongue.
“See how I am sitting? I need you to come around the other side and get in and sit like me.”
Mot tentatively made his way around the truck as Alex reached over and opened the passenger side door. Good thing this isn’t a compact, she thought. Even so, Mot was about all the old Ford could handle even with the seat all the way back. The truck’s suspension sank under his weight as Mot awkwardly climbed in. He was barely able to get his feet on the floorboards and his knees in front of him. Mot placed his huge hands on the glove compartment and waited. The smell of the truck’s exhaust was interesting, if not overwhelming—like fire but with a sharp after-bite. Mot suddenly worried that the odor was going to make him sick.
“Ready?” Alex cautiously asked.
“Yes, ready Alex,” Mot said, hoping she would hurry with whatever she was doing. He thought they were going to leave, not sit here roasting in this noisy metal box.
Alex pushed in the clutch and jammed the transmission into first gear. The truck protested as Alex let the gears take hold, and then it began moving forward. She was trying to be as smooth as possible so as not to alarm Mot, who was sitting stoically, suddenly wide eyed. Alex thought that, if she could see deep enough below his green and blue skin, she might see a lot of white. He might be scared right now, but he is going to love this later when he gets the hang of it, she thought.
Mot felt his hands and feet digging for a better hold. The ‘good ole truck’ began moving at a pace that would equal his best for a long hunt, yet he was doing nothing.
“Is this magic Alex?” he asked overwhelmed. There seemed to be so many things in Alex’s world that were completely inexplicable.
Alex laughed, “No, Mot, when we get to my father’s ranch, I will try to show you how this works.” They were on a long section of the dirt road that had originally led Alex down to her camp. She was keeping an eye out for the dead men’s vehicle. They must have driven something to get here, she thought, now where was it?
Finally, just before the highway, she spotted a brand new Chevrolet pickup parked far off on the side, well out of view of the main road. That must be it, she thought. Alex considered stopping to take the registration and the license plates, but she was too worried about someone else coming by. She would just have to take her chances that no one would spot it for a while and get curious. Besides, someone was probably going to have to report the men missing before they came looking, and she doubted that anyone was going to miss those two very soon. She shuddered again when she thought about how her encounter with them might have turned out had Mot not been there.
Now that they were about to get on the highway she was about to have another problem. If anyone saw Mot, they were not going to mistake him for just some ugly kid. “How ya doin’, Mot?” She looked over, he seemed better, but his eyes were locked on the road.
“I am fine, Alex. I wish to know what makes this move.”
“I promise I will explain everything when we get to my house. In the meantime, I need to hide you,” she said pulling on an old Indian blanket that was draped over the seat, “so can you kind of duck down a little and put this around your head.” Alex helped Mot make the blanket look like a shawl.
“Boy, you make one ugly looking woman, Mot,” she laughed when she was finished.
“I do not understand, Alex,” Mot said, looking back at her with his reptilian eyes, his forehead shrouded by the blanket.
“Never mind. Let’s just get you home.”
When they reached the highway just south of Vernal, Alex made a right toward Price. It was about 110 miles to her dad’s ranch, about two hours if she drove fast. Alex was exhausted and she just hoped that she had enough adrenaline left to get them home before she passed out. There weren’t a lot of cops out in the middle of the desert, which was good for fast driving, but she had to make sure that she didn’t get stopped by a patrol car. That would be a disaster.
As the truck’s speedometer climbed past sixty, she looked back over at Mot. He was still staring straight ahead. “Home sweet home, here we come,” Alex said with much more enthusiasm than she felt. Mostly she was nervous. There were a million more bad things that could happen along the way.
This is much faster than I could run, thought Mot, mesmerized by the pure speed. He was relieved to find that the sickening smell had more or less disappeared as the wind flew through the open window of the truck. Mot stuck his arm out and was surprised when the wind slapped it back. He had never felt anything like it. As he sat there, trying to imagine how the truck worked, a similar metal box buzzed past them going the other direction. Mot looked at Alex expectantly when this happened, imagining for a moment that they would collide.
Alex was busy looking forward, and sometimes glancing into a shiny object above her head. She appeared to be worried, but not at all concerned about the thing that had almost hit them. Mot was very confused again, but as they drove on, the blanket was making him warm and the steady hum of the tires on the road was making him sleepy.
“Alex?”
“Yes, Mot.”
<
br /> “Will there be food there, at this place you call home?”
“Yes, Mot. I have a freezer full of venison that I think you are going to really enjoy.” Alex made a mental note to check when she got the ranch, but her caretaker tended to hunt deer at night with a spotlight, and he liked to keep his stash at her house in her dad’s old chest freezer.
“Hum,” Mot grunted, having no idea what venison was, but imagining it was meat of some kind. He was still very hungry. “Alex, how long until we get there?”
“I am not sure how to answer that Mot. How do Arzats mark time during the day?”
“We refer to all times as animals that are common to my world.”
Like the Chinese, Alex thought. “How many animals do you have for the day?”
Mot held up both of his giant hands and stretched out his fingers—this many for day and again at night.
OK, thought Alex, so we have twenty four and Arzats have sixteen, roughly eight to our 12 for daytime hours, and eight for night. Seeing Mot hold up his hands that way went a long way to explaining their base eight numerical system. “Probably then, just about one of your ‘animals’ to get to my father’s house,” she finally answered.
“Will your father be there, Alex?”
“No, Mot, my father died some time ago.”
“Do you have other family? Siblings, children, a mate?”
Alex shook her head, “No, Mot. I used to have a husband but no more.”
“Husband?”
“Mate. I used to have a mate but no more.” Alex said, thinking about Tom. She wondered what she would say when she called him.
“You must be very lonely. In this, we are the same,” Mot said absently, looking out the side window.
Alex did not answer.
Mot felt his eyes becoming heavy when, just for a moment, he thought, that he could feel the very vague presence of another Arzat far, far away.
*
Alex didn’t relax until they were only a few miles out from the ranch.
Mot had been asleep for a good part of the trip despite his interest in the truck and its workings. Fortunately, there had been very little traffic as Alex had pulled through Price, and then through even-smaller Wellington, where everyone knew her and definitely knew her truck. She was low on gas but decided against trying to fill it at the only station in town, and having to risk explaining to Sally the station owner just what was really under the blanket. There was a two hundred gallon tank of fuel at the ranch if they could manage just a mile or two more. The gas needle sat precariously on E.
Just past the south side of town Alex turned off the road and stopped-the sudden change in pace and the gravel crunching under the tires waking Mot. “Here we are,” Alex said, relieved to be home. “Wait here, Mot. I am going to open the gate.” She opened the door and slid out of the truck seat and walked forward.
An old wooden sign hung in the western style above the road at the main gate with block letters IN SITU carved into it. You more or less had to be a scientist to get it, but the term meant “found and left in its original place,” undisturbed, not moved-just where it belonged; like Alex’s fossil before Tom and his guys destroyed it, like this home in the desert her father had created for Alex after her mother’s death.
Alex could still remember watching as old Simon had patiently carved the words into wood with a hammer and chisel in his shop. She had been around the world and back again, but the ranch was still her favorite place on the planet. She had loved the place from the first moment she had seen it.
The ranch encompassed a full section of land-six hundred and forty acres-a mile by a mile of beautiful desert. The entire property was loaded with fossils and all kinds of great finds that, as a child, Alex had proudly hauled back to show to her father. “What have you brought me this time, Alexandra?” she could hear him saying.
As Alex swung open the gate and was just about to jump back in the truck, she spotted a sheriff’s patrol car coming around a bend in the road. Her worst fear, it pulled off directly behind her pickup and stopped.
As the officer exited his car, she was relieved to see that he was an old friend of hers, but she was worried about Mot. She gave him a silent warning not to move and hurried to the back of the truck to get between it and the patrol car.
“Hey, Gus!” Alex said, giving him the familiar hug of an old friend.
“Well, hey there, Alex, haven’t seen you in a while.” Gus still thought Alex was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. They were just about the same age, had gone to grade school together, and Gus had always had a mad crush on her. Alex’s dad had often invited the kids in town to “big” science events at the ranch, which Gus had always attended, despite having no interest whatsoever in Simon’s lectures. Gus spent the time secretly fantasizing about marrying Alex when they got older, but had eventually given up on that idea when Alex moved away. He had ended up settled down with Sally, another local girl who had been part of his very small graduating class at the high school in Price. Now she helped her parents run the only gas station and convenience store in town, and Gus was the local cop.
“I’ve been up north on a dig for a week or so.” Alex said, trying to distract Gus.
“Find anything good?” he asked.
Alex felt herself blush, well aware that she was a terrible liar, and nervous that Gus would look toward the cab of the pickup. “No, not really,” she said as convincingly as she could.
“Well, that’s too bad.” Gus seemed suddenly preoccupied, looking around in the bed of the pickup that was full of Alex’s gear. “Hey, must be the first time I ever seen you go out without a dirt bike in the back. You haven’t given up riding have you?”
Alex tensed, she felt any minute now Gus was going to look towards the cab. “No, no. I’m still riding. You?” she added quickly, trying to steal his attention.
Gus kept looking around, uneasy. “Well, I’m still trying to talk Sally into that Harley that Hank Mitchell has been trying to sell, but….”
There seemed to be a sudden gust of air, then everything was still again.
Alex and Gus both looked toward the source of the sound. The passenger door of the pickup had swung open.
Gus stood motionless, peering at the door, sure and not so sure that he had seen something move there. Whatever had happened, it had raised the hair on the back of his neck and his hand had instinctively felt for his gun. “What the heck? That is just about the weirdest thing I ever….”
Alex knew that Mot was going to be discovered and felt helpless to do anything. She watched as Gus pulled his gun and flipped off the safety. He cautiously walked up toward the open door of the pickup. Alex was about to intervene as Gus reached the cab, but something told her not to. She was surprised and relieved when Gus, looking in the cab, showed no reaction. She walked over and looked in herself. There was nothing in the cab but the old Indian blanket lying on the floorboard.
“You didn’t have anyone with you, did ya Alex? I mean, I could a sworn I saw something, but it was just too fast. Did you see it?” he said, swinging the door of the truck back and forth as if he were testing it.
“No, Gus,” Alex said honestly, in shock herself over Mot’s miraculous disappearance.
He pulled off his hat and wiped the sweat off his brow. Alex noticed that he was prematurely balding.
“I still can’t figure it. I had a mountain lion do something similar to me one time. Never saw her. Knew she was right there. In fact, I thought she was going to kill me. This felt just like that.”
“Might have just been a gust of wind,” Alex offered.
Gus stood staring out into the desert for a minute. “Yeah, guess you could be right, Alex. But damned if I ever seen wind open up a car door. I seen it shut a few, though.” Gus looked back at Alex and smiled. “Well you look tired, and I best be getting back up to town. Anyway, it’s great to see you,” he said, giving her an awkward hug.
“You too, Gus,” Alex said, still not bel
ieving her luck. “Say hello to Sally for me.” She gave him another quick hug then jumped back in the truck and started it.
“Hey, Alex,” Gus said, suddenly back at her driver’s side window.
Alex gulped and almost pissed her pants again.
“I near forgot,” he said. “The real reason I stopped was to warn you about something.”
Alex gulped again. Did he already know something about the men they had just killed? She looked at Gus and let him continue.
“There was a prison break down in Gunnison. Five convicts escaped, and so far they only rounded up three of them. Apparently, a father and son got away, and ended up killing a couple of people in Mount Pleasant, then stole their truck. Word is they started out north from there, an’ that means they could come through here, ‘specially if they’re thinking to get cross’t into Colorado. I just wanted to warn you to keep an eye out. They are very bad men, Alex.”
“Thanks, Gus.” she said, relieved. “I’ll let you know if I see anything suspicious.”
“Well…. Good to see you again,” Gus said, patting the edge of the window. “I’ll go ahead and get that gate closed back up. You take care all right? I don’t want to have to worry about you being out here all alone.”
“Thanks, Gus. I… I’ll be fine.”
Alex pulled the truck forward and waited as Gus swung the gate back in place. She gave him a little wave and rolled off, leaving Gus staring after her with his hands on his hips. Now, she thought, where the hell is Mot?
Chapter 20
A Rose Is Still
“Doc, you can’t just go in there!”
“Just do as I ask, please,” said Pete. It was a nicer way of issuing an order. He was standing near the entrance to the enclosure.
“But that’s like going into a lion’s den not knowing the lions!” said Paula, the team member that had patched up his eye after the accident. Besides her skills as an amateur nurse, she was actually an animal behavior specialist. “Doc, you can’t go in and just introduce yourself to an unknown predator with a piece of raw meat.”
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