Wild Meat

by Newton, Nero

  Her decision to drive north earlier than planned had come the night before, at the end of her second day living in the place Rita called “the safe house.” She’d called Stephen about an hour outside of town, and he’d suggested meeting at the diner because they could sit there right through the dinner rush and be ignored if they wanted to.

  Stephen pulled a flash drive out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The whole package, as promised. Everything I was able to photograph from the Baja envelopes.”

  Amy pushed aside the ketchup bottle and sugar shaker and the little stand with the laminated ad for the week’s specials, and made room for her laptop.

  “I’ve also printed copies of everything that’s on that flash drive,” he said. “Here’s a set for you.” From an army-style duffel bag on the seat beside him, he produced a stack of folders about ten inches thick, fastened with rubber bands. It felt to Amy like at least fifteen pounds of paper. “There are translations of more than half the texts. The others I haven’t had time for yet.”

  While they waited for the files to copy from the flash drive, Amy filled him in on the break-in at her place and the email from Equateur. His expression told her that he grasped the implications of both events.

  “What drives me crazy is that I saw a chimp in the bathroom window, but I swear there was something else on the big guy’s shoulders, something with a tail.”

  Amy looked through the folders as she spoke. There must have been a couple hundred images. He’d printed close-ups of many, sometimes placing two or three on the same page for comparison. Descriptive captions were added to about a third of them. He’d been busy.

  “And speaking of shoulders,” she said, looking at a close-up of a paw, “this reminds me.” She slid off the long-sleeve shirt, leaving only her tank top. With her shoulders exposed, she explained how the claw marks had gotten there.

  “You didn’t mention this on PrimateWeb.”

  “I left it out on purpose. I figured that saying I’d actually been attacked by the mystery beast would only make the story sound crazier than it already did.”

  “Probably a good call.”

  “Here’s another thing about that night in the truck cab when I got clawed. After I read about ‘ruby’ on that forum, and figured out that the drug probably comes from our animal, I also realized I must have been sprayed. I woke up when the thing’s claws dug into me, and the smell was already there. Just as I shook the thing off, the stink disappeared all at once. After that, the air smelled like a steamy bathtub, which was exactly where I was dying to be. I’ve found more online commentary about it, and one of the things the ‘ruby’ users all agree on is that the stuff only smells bad until you’ve experienced its effect; after that, it smells like whatever you want most.”

  “So maybe what you remember as a chimp looking in the window was actually one of the blood rats. And it wasn’t a dream; you were really awake, trying to get that door open and let it inside.”

  “That has to be it,” she said. “Until the other night, I would have said it was impossible to mistake one of those things for a chimp. But unless there were two different animals at my house during that break-in….” She slapped the tabletop. “Oh. And after I left the truck and walked up the logging road, these really sick-looking chimpanzees started to follow me, sniffing like crazy at my shirt. Definitely chimpanzees that time; I’m positive. It was broad daylight, I saw them from multiple angles, and there’s no question that they were big adult female chimps. They were only interested in the side of the shirt that would have been hit by the spray if it came from the slightly open window the night before. Some of the spray must have dried on it, and it was driving these chimps crazy. They were rubbing their faces all over that fabric. I think they were addicted to boof, and smelled it on me.”

  “How did the right side of your shirt smell to you?” Stephen said.

  “Clean,” she said. “Freshly washed. When I held it to my face, it felt like I was in my back yard in the foothills on a sunny October day. Exactly where I wanted to be. I don’t think there’s another substance out there like this stuff. The online talk is that it’s addictive like smack, but also produces long hallucinatory trips like psychedelics. And just like with acid, it can occasionally trigger a real breakdown, or shift in personality – depending on things like your mental state at the outset, any personal crisis, or who you’re with and where you are.”

  Stephen drained his beer, then held up the empty glass to signal for another. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to show up early. I’ve discovered some interesting things about the nature of the animals, but that can wait until tomorrow, if you’re tired from the drive.”

  “All I feel is wired. I’m a lot more interested in listening than in sleeping.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” He shuffled through the folders and

  found a drawing that depicted a Catholic priest addressing a throng of Native Americans gathered in the courtyard of a mission. The priest was pointing to an animal bound upright to a wooden post atop a mound of firewood. The top half of the creature’s face looked nearly human, as though a man’s head were erupting from within an animal’s, but otherwise it was definitely one of the mystery animals.

  At the bottom appeared a lengthy caption in Latin, which Stephen translated. It declared that God, through His servants, hereby demonstrated the power of the Holy Church to defeat the demons these Indians had been worshipping for centuries. Merciful God had delivered one of the wicked creatures into the hands of His messengers, who would today destroy it on the very site of its own temple, a hilltop now purified and consecrated in the Holy Spirit.

  The signature, which consisted of several cursive letters scrawled over and around one another, looked like a squished and dried-out dragonfly.

  “Is this a picture of the place you visited? Where you found all this stuff?” Amy asked.

  “No, no. This is way bigger than that little mission in Baja. Probably somewhere in central Mexico, maybe near present-day Mexico City or Puebla. The drawing’s got to be from the 1600s, maybe even the late 1500s.”

  A few native people at the front of the crowd, wild-eyed and frantic, reached out toward the creature as though to save it from the flames to come. They were blocked by a much taller indigenous figure in the cloak of a Church novice, extending one arm in the universal traffic cop’s gesture for “stop.”

  “Funny how the face looks partly human,” Amy said. “You suppose it’s meant to represent the hallucinations that the spray causes?”

  “No. The drug was mainly used in the preparation for the shows. They would nab some of the native pagan priests and hold them for a while, lock them up and expose them to a blood rat or two, so they’d not only get hooked on the spray, but they’d also associate the animal with the fix they were craving. In this scene we see the native priests shivering in the throes of withdrawal, shrinking from the light, and at the same time, reaching out to the animal that’s tied to the stake. Smells awful to everyone else, but the pagan priest is drawn to it.”

  “Clever,” Amy said. “That would have made it easier to convince people that the animal really was some evil spirit.”

  Stephen nodded. “An evil spirit that the native priests had been communicating with. The pagan deities would be equated with this smelly little monster.” He looked intently at her and drew a slow breath. “A little off the subject, in the last couple of days I’ve discovered some things about the nature of the animals that—”

  A loud crash and some angry shouting erupted over at the diner’s long counter. From the snarled words that followed, Amy gathered that a homeless man had been arguing with the waitress about her refusal to serve him beer, and a very drunken customer had intervened on the waitress’s behalf.

  She turned back to Stephen. “Maybe we could go somewhere else?”

  “Okay,” he said. “The libraries are all closed, but some of the coffee houses over at the waterfront stay open pretty
late. Or there’s my apartment, which isn’t in the most elegant neighborhood, but it’s about a two-minute drive away. I walked here, so there’s only your car….”

  “Your place sounds okay,” she said. “You don’t seem like a psycho killer so far.”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  It was close to nine o’clock when they parked curbside next to a graffiti-covered concrete light post. The light above wasn’t working. Stephen led Amy to the front of a two-story late Victorian flat that looked like it had never been repaired in the hundred-thirty-odd years since its construction.

  “I’m on the upper floor,” he said.

  Amy looked up and saw that lights were on behind all of the visible upper-story windows.

  Stephen started up the stone steps to the wide front porch, then stopped.

  “Something wrong?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t know.” He nodded toward a white-haired Hispanic woman in her fifties or sixties who was standing on the porch, barely illuminated by one of the few working street lights. She clutched a bathrobe to her tightly.

  “You know her?”

  “She’s my downstairs neighbor,” he said. “I’ve never seen her out after dark. And she’s looking at us. She never looks at me.”

  “You think she’s okay?” Amy asked.

  “I can never tell. She doesn’t speak. This neighborhood…there are a lot of people like her living on government subsidies, halfway between institutions and the outside world. Social workers make the rounds throughout the week. Lucinda here sits and watches the street all day.”

  He went the rest of the way up onto the porch and Amy followed.

  The neighbor still didn’t speak, but looked at them as though trying to communicate. She nodded at the overhang above the porch, then pointed up.

  Stephen looked at Amy. “I don’t know what it is, but let me go see.”

  The doors to both flats were side by side in the middle of the porch. Stephen opened the screen door and reached for the inner door to his apartment, then stopped.

  “It’s open,” he said.

  “Then don’t go in,” Amy said. She leapt down the three stone steps and took her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll call the police.” She looked at the second-floor windows and saw that someone had just turned off a light in Stephen’s place.

  Heavy footsteps were coming down the inside stairs now. Amy had her keychain out in half a second, beeping open the locks on her car. She bolted toward the Buick and shouted for Stephen to follow her.

  The screen door banged open and a deep male voice shouted, “Freeze!”

  Then Stephen was calling after her, “Amy Amy AMY! Stop!”

  She halted halfway to the curb and turned around to see two police officers. One of them, a crew-cut blond, was already aiming a pistol at her. He shouted for her to lie on her stomach, hands over her head. The silent neighbor was just disappearing into the lower apartment.

  “Wait, wait, officers,” Stephen said. His own arms were raised in a big ‘V.’ “I live here, and she’s with me.”

  Amy had already sunk to one knee when the blond cop lowered the gun. The other one, also crew-cut, but with dark hair, aimed a flashlight in Stephen’s face. “You Stephen Stokes?”

  “Yes.”

  The beam moved to Amy’s face next. “Your name?”

  “Amy Kellet.” She squinted against the bright light.

  “You live here too?” The flashlight beam moved away.

  “Visiting.”

  By the time her eyes recovered, both guns were holstered again, and Stephen was showing his ID.

  The blond cop said there had been a report of someone going into his place through a side window.

  Amy and Stephen followed the officers back up into the apartment. It was obvious where someone had gotten inside. A window had been broken, and someone had reached through to undo the latch.

  The 911 call had come from someone in the next building. The burglar had parked a vehicle on the street with the stereo cranked up and thumping, presumably trying to mask the sound of the glass breaking. It would have worked, but the neighbor had been on his own roof having a smoke and had heard the glass go. He’d looked over just in time to see someone slipping in through Stephen’s window. Right before the police arrived, the same neighbor had seen someone charge away from the front of Stephen’s building, hunched over and carrying something bulky, but still managing to run. The thumping music had receded down the street.

  Books were all over Stephen’s floor, and above the largest pile of them were three empty shelves.

  “Computer gone?” one of the police asked, pointing at the bare spot on the desk and the cables that were left behind.

  Stephen nodded. “And maybe some of the books, but I can’t tell yet.”

  “Was the computer worth much?” the same officer said.

  “Not really. It was a couple of years old. It wasn’t worth half as much as the monitor.” He pointed toward a 34-inch flat screen. “Or the printer. I wonder why they didn’t take those instead.”

  Amy was beginning to think she knew why someone had taken the computer. The TV was still in the room, and so was the stereo. None of it looked like very expensive stuff, but someone might have gotten a couple of hundred for it. If Stephen’s computer was a few years old, it probably wasn’t worth fifty bucks to people who buy and sell what burglars have to offer.

  Stephen walked to the window and look out. “How on earth did he get up here?” he wondered aloud. “Did he bring a ladder along?”

  “Burglars can be pretty resourceful,” the blond cop said. “A lot of them are small and light, and they can get in and out of places you wouldn’t think a cat could squeeze through.”

  Stephen’s eyes widened and he muttered, “Cats.” He raced over to a door that was already ajar, pushed it open, flipped on a light. Amy followed and saw him drop to the floor, searching under a double bed. One cat was perched on the pillow but fled when it saw her in the doorway. Beyond the bed, on a dresser, she could see an iguana sitting on a mound of clothing. Its eyes were open, but it seemed unperturbed.

  Stephen stood up and said, “They’re all here.”

  “You have three, right?” Amy asked. She already felt awful about the possibility that she’d lead her pursuers here, although she didn’t know how that could be. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going, not even Rita.

  “Yeah, three.”

  “Oh, good,” Amy said. “I’d hate to think….” She stopped herself, probably too late, because Stephen and the cops were looking at her now.

  The dark-haired, less talkative officer spoke up. “Anything you need to tell us?”

  Before she could answer, Stephen said, “Amy, there’s no way this could be connected to the break-in at your place. L.A. is four hundred miles away. And besides….” He turned to the officers. “Burglaries aren’t exactly rare around here, are they?”

  The blond cop shook his head. “Not even slightly out of the ordinary. And I meant to tell you a minute ago – you were wondering why they only took your old computer and nothing else? Well, a lot of times they come back to the same place to get what they couldn’t carry before. I mean a lot of times. So I’d do something about that window, and maybe see if you can get a burglar alarm or something installed in here. Or you might think about having someone be here at times when you can’t, just so that if the thief does come back, he’ll see that there’s always someone around and hopefully just give up on the place after a while.”

  “Thanks,” Stephen said.

  The dark blond officer sat and took information, then gave Stephen a copy of the report form and pointed to a line near the top.

  “There’s my name, in case you have any questions or if you think of any more information that’ll help us. And there’s the case number. We’ll send someone out to try and take prints. He’ll call you tomorrow to set up a time.” He turned to Amy. “If you just had a break-in, somebody’s probably alr
eady explained to you that we can’t always get reliable prints in a situation like this. It’s not like when you’ve got a bloody murder weapon.”

  “Thanks,” Amy said.

  When both officers were gone, Stephen asked, “Did you tell anyone where you were going? Give anyone my name or number?”

  “No. Not even my neighbor. She knew I was going to see you eventually, but I didn’t tell her I was leaving town today. I even erased your number from my regular cell phone, and I know there’s not another bill coming anytime soon. The only place I have your number now is on my new burn phone, and I’ve got that with me. And I didn’t even know your address, because I must have accidently thrown out the packing paper that—” She fell silent.

  “What?”

  “They found your address at my place.”

  Stephen seemed to think about it for a long moment. “But how could they have known you were coming here? And that you would come today?”

  “No, Steve. They didn’t come here for me. They came for you. They broke into my place to ambush me, and they found the textbook lying open to a picture of a tarsier. It was sitting open right on top of the packing paper, and they found your address that way. They came here because they think you’re onto them. Just like they think I’m onto them because I reported seeing one of their animals dead on the truck. They think that somehow I went to that logging camp to find out about the trade in this ‘boof’ drug, and now they think you’re working with me.”

  Stephen stared blankly at her.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “Why would someone go to all the trouble of breaking into your second-story flat, and then take nothing but an old PC? They wanted you, and they wanted to know what you know. That’s why they took the computer. Now they’re going to look at all your scans of the Baja papers, all your notes and translations, probably all your emails to me…. Shit, Stephen, we’ve got to get you out of here. Pack a bag, get your animals, and let’s go. The cop was right; they’ll be back. But it won’t be for your TV or your printer.”