“Damn it!” I shouted, again trying—and failing—to get the Plymouth’s engine to turn over. “I’m taking you to the hospital anyway! Just as soon as I can get this flicking car started!”
Harper shook her head. “Not a good idea, Robby. By the time we find a hospital, the police are likely to have found those two men over by the bushes—and they’re liable to find out quickly that they both died of snakebite. Do you want to try to explain to the police how I happened to have been bitten by the same kind of poisonous snake?” She pulled away from me, pressed down the handle on the passenger’s door. “Now, I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Don’t leave without me.”
“Harper!” I said, once again grabbing her left arm and yanking her back toward me just as she shoved the door open. “I just don’t want to take the ch—!”
The juggernaut of fur, fangs, claws, and bunched muscles hurtled through the area in space where Harper’s torso had been just before I’d pulled her back, and I heard the distinct click of fangs snapping on empty space just before the lobox crashed into the side of the door, driving it back and springing it off its hinges. The metal’s screech mingled with a sound from the lobox I had never heard before, a sound other men may have heard only a brief moment before they died, a kind of high-pitched, almost human-sounding cry that was somewhere between a growl and a roar.
The lobox bounced off the door, its killing scream turning to a yelp of pain, surprise, and frustration. It hit the ground just outside the door and lay there on its side, momentarily stunned, as I desperately grabbed for the nearest gun on the seat, the Colt. I sprawled across the seat, atop Harper, in order to get a better shot at the lobox, aimed the weapon dead center at the animal’s head, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; I had forgotten to deactivate the safety mechanism after Harper had declined the gun.
As I swiped at the safety catch with my left hand, a second, tawny head suddenly appeared in the doorway, its saber fangs only inches from my face. Now, with the animal in a killing rage, the thick ruff around its neck stood on end all around the head with the golden, curiously human eyes, reminding me of a hooded cobra.
Not one but two loboxes had been primed and sent, one for Harper and one for me. With its extended ruff, the head of the lobox in front of me filled the entire doorway, blocking the sun.
The lobox snapped at me just as I managed to draw my head back out of the way. I released the safety catch on the Colt, brought the gun up, and fired. The report of the weapon in the closed space slammed against my eardrums, and I felt a stabbing pain in both ears. The head was gone—but I knew I hadn’t hit anything; the beast, apparently recognizing the danger posed by the gun, had, with incredible quickness and agility, ducked and bounded away a split second before I had fired the bullet that would otherwise have gone right into its gaping maw and exited through the back of its skull.
Something thudded hard against the side window on the driver’s side, right behind me, shaking the car and cracking the glass. Instantly, I twisted around, raised the Colt, closed my eyes, and fired. Powdered glass sprayed over my face and chest, but there was no spurting blood, no animal howl of pain; once again, the lobox had bounded away just before I had fired. I desperately wiped the debris away from my eyes, sat up, switched the gun to my left hand, and used my right to push Harper off the seat, down into the well beneath the dashboard. Then, in a near panic, I blindly pumped three bullets into the open space on the passenger’s side when I thought I caught a flash of movement. But there was nothing there. I swiped more powdered glass away from my face, picked up the automatic, then lay down on my back on the seat, my cheek pressed against a section of the steering wheel, as I aimed the Colt at the empty space just above my head, and the automatic out the open door.
It sounded like a hive of bees was buzzing around inside the car, but I knew that it was just ringing in my ears from the firing of the gun. I could feel blood trickling out of my left ear, but it was impossible to tell whether it came from a shattered eardrum or a nick from a stray piece of glass.
“Cover your ears!” I shouted over the ringing in my own head as I put my hand on Harper’s shoulder and shoved her even further down into the cramped space under the dashboard.
I heard a thump, and then the scratching of claws on metal at the rear. I glanced between the seats, saw the head and shoulders of one of the loboxes standing on the trunk of the car. I poked the Colt between the seats, squeezed off a shot. I missed the lobox, which had darted off the car as I’d aimed, but the rear windshield exploded under the impact of the bullets.
The Colt was empty. I shoved it aside, gripped the .45 automatic with both hands, swept it around me in a series of arcs—back and forth, up and down, the empty spaces to my rear, the side, and at the back of the car.
Harper was sobbing hysterically, but there was nothing I could do at the moment to comfort her. Mongo the Magnificent was, I thought, currently being outsmarted by two overachieving animals, ancestors of the wolf. So far, in what was probably less than a minute, the two beasts, using their incredible agility, had managed to get me to shoot out most of the glass in the car, removing that barrier between their fangs and our flesh. And at the same time I was using up bullets.
They couldn’t intentionally be suckering me, I thought. Two animals couldn’t possibly have the intelligence, or the communications skills, to coordinate an attack like that; they couldn’t plan to make me keep wasting ammunition until we were defenseless and they could easily get at us. The damn things couldn’t possibly be thinking things out, working together to inexorably close a killing trap.
Or could they?
I remembered Nate Button’s photographs of the recently discovered cave paintings at Lascaux, the utter terror radiating from those primitive people’s rendering of the hunter-killer beast they had probably worshipped as a god …
Humans appeared to have a primal fear of wolves, I thought, and now I had a pretty good idea where it had come from.
Wolves hunted in packs, and I recalled that they had been observed to cooperate in complex ways that were astounding to their human observers. If wolves cooperated, why not loboxes? And why should I be surprised if loboxes did it a hell of a lot better? These two had, after all, sneaked up on us, totally undetected, during the night, recognized that Harper and I were in the car, and then waited patiently just outside the car for one of us to make a mistake, open a door … and let them in.
Not too trashy for an animal, I thought. It seemed that the lobox was, indeed, a pretty smart cookie, a savage merciless killer, a most formidable opponent. I had a sudden image of two or more loboxes escaping from the Zelezians, slipping their psychological leashes, to run off into the wild. Then humanity would have its own very special natural enemy for the first time in tens of thousands of years of unfettered trampling over the flora and fauna of the planet.
The woods would certainly be empty of hunters during deer season, I thought with a grim smile—and every other season. A lot of human behavior would change, for better or worse, at least in North America. And all because of a beast genetically retrieved from the past to serve as an advanced weapon of assassination. If these things ever got loose in the wild, there would be many changes in the way human beings did business.
In the meantime, Harper and I were trapped in the confines of a car with most of its glass shot out and one door hanging open, and I had seven bullets left.
A giant, tawny head with gaping maw, quivering nostrils, and expanded ruff suddenly appeared at the open door. I squeezed off a shot, missed again as the lobox ducked back.
Six bullets.
All together now, children: If you go out in the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise …
Suddenly there was the thump of something heavy landing on the hood of the car, the grating of claws on metal. I twisted around on the seat and aimed the gun at the front windshield, but there was nothing there.
A thump at the rear. I twisted again, glimpsed a tawny shape
on the trunk, squeezed off a shot between the seats, hit nothing.
Five bullets left.
Things were not working out at all.
“Harper, I’m going out.”
She looked up at me, her maroon eyes swimming with terror. “Robby—?”
“I’m just telling you what I’m going to do so you won’t be surprised and maybe try to come after me. I’ve already wasted too much ammunition. Going out is the only way I can get a clear shot at those damned animals. If we stay in here, we’ll die; if one of those things comes sailing in through a window while I’m looking the wrong way, it’s all over. I have to go after them.”
“No, Robby! Please don’t leave me!”
I shoved her back under the dashboard, sucked in a deep breath, then quickly flopped over onto my belly on the seat. I braced my feet against the door on the driver’s side, pushed, and slid across the seat on a slippery carpet of powdered glass, out the door. As I fell out of the car, I did a half twist, landed on my left shoulder, rolled forward, and came up on my feet with the automatic in both hands, sweeping the space in front of me. I had five bullets left; since I didn’t know how many bullets it would take to bring down a lobox, I couldn’t afford to waste any of them. With both of them, I would go for nothing less than a head shot.
A huge head with great black leather nostrils and gleaming saber fangs poked out from behind the rear of the car. I swung my gun in that direction, and the head ducked back.
The head of the second beast poked out from behind the front. I swung my gun that way, and it too ducked back.
The damn things were smarter than a lot of people I knew, and that probably included me.
My little offensive maneuver was indeed proving to be a good defense, but it wasn’t good enough. It was too static. Right now it looked like a standoff; they wouldn’t come out into the open where I could get a dear shot at them, and I couldn’t risk going around to the other side because it would leave Harper, crouched only inches from the jammed-open door, exposed to a quick, deadly sweep of razor-sharp claws.
But I wanted the damn things dead, and I didn’t feel like standing around for a couple of hours waiting to see what they would do next.
I couldn’t walk around the car, but I could go in another direction—up—and still have a line of fire on the right side of the car. I had stepped back a few paces in order to improve my angle in the event they both came at me at once. Now I ran forward, leaped up on the hood of the car, jumped to the roof.
What I saw was the two loboxes, ruffs now flat to their necks, running flat out, side by side, toward a field of tall grass two hundred yards away. They seemed as fast as greyhounds, for in only the two or three seconds it had taken me to get up on top of the car, they had raced almost half the distance to the grass—and then, only after they had instinctively reacted to the sense that my position above them meant death, and after they had made the decision to run.
Not bad for animals, I thought; but, considering the fact that the two of them had been intent on slashing Harper and me to bloody pieces, I was beginning to take the bad attitudes of these otherworldly creatures just a bit personally.
“You fucks!” I screamed as I went down on one knee, aimed, and squeezed off a shot, sighting between the two of them. Dirt kicked up just to the right of them, and I squeezed off two more shots.
I was rewarded with a piercing howl. The animal to the right stumbled, fell, and rolled over, but was almost immediately on its feet again and running. I debated firing the last two bullets but decided not to.
I was almost convinced the two creatures would somehow know my gun was empty.
I put the automatic in the waistband of my slacks, jumped back down to the hood of the car and to the ground. I walked around to the open door, leaned in, and placed my hand on Harper’s neck—even as I stared back at the spot in the landscape where the loboxes had disappeared into the grass.
“It’s all right, Harper,” I said softly, gently stroking her neck, her hair. “They’re gone now. We’re safe.”
For a few minutes, at least.
She couldn’t stop crying. I hated to take my attention off the ground behind the car, but it seemed I had no choice; I needed Harper alert and watchful while I attended to the balky Plymouth. I slid onto the seat, wrapped my arms around her, held her tight. Her black, swollen arm was resting on the seat, only inches from my face, and I groaned inwardly at the sight of it. It looked ready to burst. I kept hugging and kissing her, and finally the sobs subsided. I helped her get up on the seat, and she leaned her head on my chest.
“Robby, are we … are we … ?”
“They’re gone, Harper. I think I may even have hit one of them.”
The problem, I thought, was that they probably wouldn’t be gone for long, and with only two bullets left in my gun and a car that wouldn’t start, I wasn’t feeling too secure. There was, of course, always the possibility that they’d hightailed it back to the circus, but somehow I doubted it. They had been trained well and were smart enough to know they had failed at what they were expected to do. As Luther had pointed out, they were tenacious. I was sure they’d be coming back at us, tracking again, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Even now they were undoubtedly resting in the high grass, waiting …
Harper raised her head, smiled wryly. “I peed in my pants, Robby.”
“I won’t tell anybody. Most people in that situation would have done a lot more than just pee in their pants.”
She giggled nervously, held her hand to her throat in a choking gesture. “I was so frightened, everything else went in the opposite direction. I don’t think I’ll be able to go to the bathroom for a month.” She paused, shuddered. “My God, Robby, if you hadn’t grabbed me and pulled me back when you did …”
“Well, they didn’t get you, and you’re safe.”
“For now,” Harper said in a small voice.
“Don’t dwell on it, sweetheart. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. Just hang in there, and we’ll get through this.”
Harper studied me for a few moments, then kissed me, hard. “That’s right,” she said in a stronger voice. “I was the one who said I wanted to get involved in one of Mongo the Magnificent’s bizarre cases, as I recall. You’ve been through horrible things before, haven’t you?”
I smiled, shrugged. “This business ranks pretty high on my horribility scale. I must have bad karma.”
She shook her head emphatically. “You have good karma. And I want to see those men dead, Robby. I can’t believe they planned to leave us out here to die like … that. So horribly. I’ll kill them myself. I want them to meet my pet.”
“Stay cool, my dear. Our first priority has to be concentrating on getting out of range of those things, at least for a few hours, and then I have to figure out a way of getting my brother out of that circus.”
“What do we do now?”
“We can’t do anything until I get the car started,” I said, and got out.
The first thing I did was to step back from the car and again sweep my gaze across the landscape, especially the area where the loboxes had disappeared. There was no sign of them. Next, I put my shoulder to the sprung door and, after a good deal of huffing and puffing, managed to get it shut. Then I walked to the front, opened the hood, climbed up on the fender, and looked down at the engine.
A mechanic I’m definitely not, but even I could tell that the hose hanging down next to the carburetor wasn’t in its proper place. I reconnected the hose to the carburetor, then got back behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition again. After some coughing and sputtering, the Plymouth started up. Around us, for as far as I could see in all directions, there was nothing but what appeared to be wheat and corn fields, and, far to the west, what might have been a grain elevator jutting up into the sky. I put the car into gear, made a U-turn across the shoulders of the narrow dirt road, and started driving back the way we had come, leaving behind an old, rotting circus wagon and tw
o corpses. I was more than a little anxious to put as much distance as possible between us and this killing ground.
Chapter Nine
We found Harper’s purse in the trunk, and my cash and credit cards were still in my wallet. It was some relief.
We reached a main highway in twenty minutes. Except for the assumption that we had crossed into Nebraska, I had no idea where we were. I arbitrarily turned right. A few miles down the road there was a sign announcing that we were seventy miles from the town of Quigley. I came to a gas station just as the needle on the gas gauge settled on the E. The attendant who filled the tank kept glancing curiously at the broken windows of the Plymouth, but he didn’t comment. I hoped he wouldn’t call the police, but knew there was no sense wasting time and energy worrying about it. I paid for the gas, then went into the adjoining convenience store to buy a map, a couple of hero sandwiches and a six-pack of beer, and a bag of ice for Harper’s arm. I kept harboring a notion of taking her to a hospital, but she kept insisting that the danger had long since passed, and that with a bag of ice to reduce the swelling she would be fine. In fact, she did look considerably better, and I decided that she was probably right; we would pass on the hospital. First, there was the danger of her being connected to the snakebitten corpses we had left behind; second, as long as there was a lobox hunting for her, I did not want to leave her alone in any situation I could not control.
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