by C Sharp
Chloe could hear what sounded like a yawn over the phone.
“I was wondering if you were around tonight to hang out or something—help keep me awake for a few more hours?” he asked. “I could tell you all about the trip.”
Chloe was about to blurt “YES” before she caught herself. I can’t do this to Stan again! “I would love to hear about the trip, but I kind of already have plans…with Stan,” she said weakly.
There was a hushed pause on the other side of the line. “Stan, huh?”
“Yeah, but maybe you could come with us?” she found herself suggesting.
“I don’t know. What are you doing?” asked Kirin skeptically.
Oh boy. “It’s kind of a funny story, actually. You know how sometimes an absurd idea can get so much talk that it kind of steamrolls out of control until you wind up following through with it?” What am I talking about?
“What are you talking about?” he echoed over the phone.
“Good question,” she said with a glance out to the barn through her bedroom window. “We’re going on a video stakeout of a secluded cattle farm to try to catch the Cow Thief on camera,” she said rapid-fire. She shut her eyes for the moment of silence that followed.
“Huh,” replied Kirin. “That’s pretty cool… If you’re serious about me coming along, I would totally do that.”
“Really? I mean, excellent! Yes, I’m absolutely serious.” Stan is not going to like this. “We’re meeting over at my house at eight.”
“Cool. Should I bring anything?”
“It’s gonna be a proper stakeout, you know, so bring snacks and maybe some cards or something,” she answered with the butterflies in her stomach taking flight. “And you should wear black,” she added.
“And you’re sure it’s okay that I’m crashing your thing with Stan?” he asked.
“Absolutely!” she replied too emphatically. “I think you’ll really like Stan; he’s hilarious, you’ll see.”
“Okay, I’ll see you at eight,” he said before hanging up.
Chloe was rocking jauntily on the heels of her feet as she lowered the phone from her ear. There was no movement in the barn, and she hadn’t seen Uktena for more than twenty-four hours. As she turned away from the watch, she caught her reflection in the mirror on the back of the closet door. She was not impressed by what she saw.
Her hair was unwashed, and she was still wearing her pajama pants and a tattered old T-shirt. She wiped the smirk from her face and squared off with the judgmental gaze that looked back.
“What?” she challenged. “If it’s the end of the world, I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
• • •
And so it was that at a quarter to nine on the first Saturday night of November, Chloe found herself perched on a hill beside an unlit stretch of road with her secretly gay and increasingly stoned friend on one side and her increasingly exhausted semisecret crush on the other. A small HD camera with a night-vision setting sat atop a tripod before them. The wide-angle lens was pointed at the vast stretch of cow pasture beyond the wooden fence that spanned half a mile in each direction and contained the impressive herd of resting cattle below.
There had been no mention on the Saturday evening local news about the award-winning cow that had vanished from this same field the night before, and Chloe was hoping that no one had yet noticed the missing piece of Mr. Roberts’s bovine collector’s set. She searched the woods and hills before her and scanned the surrounding skies for movement—lost for a quiet moment in the way the moon’s light reflected off the grass along the crests of gentle hills.
Kirin was staring at her out of the corner of his eye. “You really are the Cow Thief, aren’t you?” he whispered.
She was dressed in head-to-toe black with her red-cheeked face shadowed within the recess of her hoodie. Still her smile showed through the dark. “As I see it, we’re all Cow Thieves now; you fools are complicit.” She hoped to bridge the frosty gap between the two boys with humor. So far, it wasn’t working.
Stan was doing his best to ignore them both as another skunky waft of white smoke drifted toward the field. His typical flow of banter had gone stagnant with Kirin’s unexpected inclusion in the evening. Chloe needed the return of his easygoing wit to fill the numerous awkward silences that passed between the unlikely trio—which was pretty much the only reason why she wasn’t vehemently opposing his passive-aggressive drug protest.
He turned toward them with the curl of his grin starting to re-form. “You guys sure you don’t want some?”
Kirin and Chloe both shook their heads.
“More for me,” Stan shrugged and took another long pull of the joint.
Chloe watched the orange flare at the tip and pictured the glowing pulse of the diamond shape in Uktena’s head instead.
“So your big plan is to just sit here until the Cow Thief, whatever it is, shows up to take a cow?” chuckled Kirin.
“Yeah, kind of,” said Chloe, realizing how weak a plan it would be without the insider tip of a relative time and place for the next strike.
“Or until bedtime,” added Stan unhelpfully. “My curfew is eleven thirty.”
Kirin laughed. “Wow, you two are a couple of detectives; this is like CSI Charlottesville. The Cow Thief doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Okay, how would you suggest we proceed, Mr. Genius Sleuth?” she challenged.
“Well, first off, I don’t believe in aliens, and I think the whole thing is a bunch of nonsense with a strange but perfectly mundane explanation for why cows are vanishing.”
“I never said aliens,” Chloe retorted. “But let’s just pretend, for the sake of argument then, that there is something taking them,” she suggested. “Then what would you do?”
Kirin chewed his lip and thought about it. “What do you know about it?”
“We know that it hunts at night and has come to this spot most recently,” Chloe stated, realizing only after she’d said it that half her statement had no public evidence to back it up.
“Really?” chimed in Stan. “I hadn’t heard about any new cows for more than a week.”
“My friend Liz got a text from Kendra about a prize-winning cow going missing from here last night,” she lied. “This herd belongs to Kendra’s father.”
“And does the thief typically hit the same spot a few times in a row?” Kirin continued.
“Nope,” interjected Stan, as if determined to highlight their strategic failings. “I’ve charted it out according to news stories, and it’s been pretty random so far.”
“Okay, is that all you have?” Kirin dug into a bag of pretzels.
Chloe could only nod.
“We know it can fly and that it’s big enough to snatch a cow from the wing,” added Stan while holding in another hit.
Chloe shot him a warning look.
“Err…probably.” He slipped into a barrage of hacking coughs.
“That sounds to me like aliens again,” said Kirin with a shake of his head.
“Call it whatever you want,” Chloe cut in. “The facts are that livestock have been removed from open fields or pens without any tracks or witnesses…how many times now, Stan?”
“Eleven separate confirmed incidents,” Stan answered.
“Eleven times,” Chloe repeated, “and no trace at all of any chase or struggle except a few drops of blood from one of the sites.” She had a smug expression of her own to counter Kirin’s. “That sounds like aerial removal to me, and it would have to be pretty big to take a four-hundred-pound cow without landing.”
“And in one of the earlier incidents, there is some speculation that two cows may have been snatched at once,” Stan offered.
Kirin fished another handful of pretzel rods from the bag and yawned. “Yeah, I’m still not buying it.”
“Now you’re just being difficult,” Chloe protested with a playful edge.
Stan tamped out the joint on the bottom of his shoe and rose abruptly. “Well,
I’m going to take a piss and let you two figure it all out,” he declared as he sauntered down the hill toward the fence.
Chloe and Kirin were left alone. They volleyed casual glances back and forth across the pronounced silence.
“You still haven’t told me about your trip,” Chloe said. “Did your grandmother make it back with you okay?”
Kirin nodded, suddenly more serious. “She’s moving into the guest apartment above the garage, but she’s still shaken up by what she went through. There’s nothing left from her seventy-five years in China.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must be,” Chloe admitted.
Kirin put the pretzels down. “We went to Xining to try to recover her photo albums and letters,” he said quietly. “I never would have believed how bad it was… There was nothing but bodies and rubble. It didn’t even look like a city had ever been there except by the sheer number of the dead.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say.
“TV can’t really do justice to that level of misery,” he added with a hollow gaze. “Makes me wonder if the world really is coming to an end soon.”
“If you knew that it was, what would you do differently?” Chloe murmured.
Kirin turned to find her stare within the recess of the hood. His own perpetually glassy eyes were filled again with the sadness that he’d carried at their first meeting, but there was something else in the look besides. “I think maybe I’d ask Stan to leave.”
Chloe started to feel like she was vibrating. Please. Please. Please.
Then the sound of Stan hocking a loogie and zipping up his fly carried up the hill from the fence line.
Kirin broke the gaze between them and looked off toward the noise. “But I think the world is going to keep on spinning, and I don’t want to be a jerk to your friend,” he whispered hoarsely as the intensity in his eyes faded.
“He’s kind of not representing himself very well tonight,” Chloe whispered.
Stan shuffled back beside Chloe and dropped in a gangly heap. “If I was a giant aerial hunter, I’d totally grab that big, black bull down there on that first little ridge,” he blurted with a follow-up point to the field, where the prominent curving horns of the bull stood out in contrast to the dark surroundings. “Think about it,” he challenged. “From the sky, if you could, wouldn’t you just have to swoop down and latch a claw around those horns?”
Kirin hoisted himself up with an impossible-to-read chuckle. “My turn,” he said before heading up the hill in the opposite direction.
Chloe watched him walk away before catching Stan’s study of her from the corner of his bloodshot eyes. She gave him a scowl in return and sank deeper into the shadows of her hood. Maybe the end of the world wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Did I interrupt something?” asked Stan.
Chloe hugged her knees to her chest. “No.”
“I think he’s into you, dude, congratulations,” he said with an edge.
“Please shut up,” she hissed. “And since we’re on the topic, what’s gotten into you? I don’t know if you think this is some sort of drug smoking competition, but just so you know, you’re the only one competing.”
“Hey, sorry, I’m just trying to tune out and leave you two to your big night,” he said.
“I’m sorry I invited him without asking! I know I’m kind of a hypocrite, but I couldn’t help it!” Chloe said in her defense. “But at this rate, you’re not going to be able to walk, let alone drive home.”
Stan winked. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage; lots of practice driving home alone as my friends run off with their lovers.”
Chloe considered kicking him in the leg but refrained. “You can be a real manipulative jerk, in a slightly cute, underhanded way.”
“Oh, I’m just getting warmed up,” Stan grinned. “And just so you know, YOU can be a little judgmental and self-indulgent, but I still love you.”
As they turned back toward the field, a massive dark shadow swooped down from above. Its bat-like wingspan reached almost two hundred feet, but it slid through the sky with little more sound than a stirring of air. The black bull didn’t even look up before the dragon’s down-stretched back claw latched around its head and ripped it from the ground. The snap of the bull’s spine sounded across the field. And then, just as swiftly and silently as it had come, the dragon and cow both disappeared back into the whispy clouds without a single flap of its wings.
Chloe and Stan were rendered temporarily speechless.
“Did you see that?” she finally asked.
Stan nodded.
“Did you get it on video?”
They both turned to the camera sitting idly on the tripod before them. There was no blinking red light and no REC indicator on the open view screen.
“Hmmm,” said Stan.
Chloe felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “You didn’t press record, did you?”
He got on his knees and hovered over the camera with a sigh. “Nope…doesn’t look like it.”
Just then, Kirin strolled back down the hill. “So did I miss the aliens?”
Stan burst out laughing and flopped to his back with a flurry of little leg kicks. Chloe buried her face in her hands and groaned.
Kirin looked back and forth between them and raised an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”
Chloe pointed to the empty grass-covered hillock where the black bull had been. “Just now; it came.”
Kirin looked at the hill and then back to Chloe. She slid the hood from her head and gave him her most convincing nod. “It took the black bull and flew into the clouds.”
“It…what it?” he asked.
There’s no turning back now. “A dragon, like on your dad’s cauldron. It’s why I went to talk to him,” she offered.
Stan just kept on cackling like an idiot.
Kirin wasn’t sure if they were having a laugh at his expense or not, but he didn’t like it either way. “Uh-huh, let me see the video,” he demanded.
Chloe winced. “It seems that someone was too stoned to press record.”
This only made Stan laugh harder.
“What is this, take advantage of the severely jet-lagged kid?”
Chloe popped to her feet. “No, Kirin, I swear! There’s a giant flying creature hunting livestock in Charlottesville! I’ve seen it before, and we saw it again just now!”
He raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
“Kirin, I’m not messing with you!” she insisted.
“Okay, so if I jumped the fence and walked over to that hill, I wouldn’t see the bull hanging out on the other side?” he challenged.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t,” she said before kicking Stan in the leg. “Tell him!”
Stan had tears on his cheeks and a look of pure glee on his face. “Holy shit, dude! I saw a real-life dragon!”
Without another word, Kirin marched past them down the hill and vaulted the fence with a single hand on the top rung.
“Kirin, don’t!” Chloe yelled at his back as he continued to stride across the grass toward the hill. A few other cows turned to look at his advance from the next ridge over.
“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” blurted Stan.
But Chloe kept her eyes locked on Kirin as he bounded up the slope and stood in the place where the bull had been. He looked over the other side, scanning the dark for the animal that wasn’t there, but Chloe knew it wouldn’t be enough to convince him of the truth. “What would make him believe me?” she begged the sky.
At first she didn’t notice the building reverberation that was coming toward them… It wasn’t until Stan stopped laughing and Kirin looked up that she broke from her inner angst spiral and noticed the bright light growing above the tree line. Huh?
Kirin shielded his eyes as a helicopter tore over the field and a spotlight swung its blinding beam upon him. The echoing report of the rotors was disorienting, and he stumbled back from the buffeting wind as it circled.
An amplified voice commanded from above, “Stay where you are!”
Stan scrambled to his feet and started toward his car, but two black SUVs and a Lincoln Town Car pulled up to block the street. Another spotlight burned out from the lead SUV and settled on Stan and Chloe as multiple car doors opened and familiar square-jawed men stepped out. Brent Meeks was frowning as he approached in the lead.
Instinctively Stan and Chloe put their hands in the air.
“I don’t know,” Stan whispered from the corner of his mouth, “this might do it.”
Chapter 22
Threats and Warnings
Chloe cringed as the beam of a tactical LED flashlight shined in her face. The light moved on to wither the gaze of Kirin and then Stan, lined up with their backs against the SUV beside her.
“What are you doing here tonight?” demanded an emotionless Daedalus security goon standing wide-legged before them.
Kirin and Stan had nothing to volunteer.
For a moment, Chloe’s attention lingered on their stone-faced interrogator’s blonde buzz cut. His gaze was buried beneath a thick brow, and there was something weasely about his eyes—colorless and too close together. She scanned his waistline for a gun, but for the moment his weapon of choice was the flashlight, though she got the impression that a choice of firearms wasn’t too far away. “We came out here to try to catch the Cow Thief on video,” she answered.
The painful glare swung back to her. “What did you see?”
“Nothing much before you guys showed up,” she answered flatly. “A bunch of cows and a lot of grass.” She felt Stan’s and Kirin’s eyes on her for a split second before they focused back on the ground.
A walkie-talkie crackled to life from Brent’s belt nearby. “This is Air 1—we’ve got the signal heading west toward the quarry—still no visual.”
“Could you please stop shining that light in our faces?” Chloe asked.
The weasel-eyed man seemed not to hear her as he swung the beam over to illuminate Stan’s toothy grimace.
“Is that how you remember it, long hair?” the goon pressed. “You didn’t see anything going on with the cows either?”