by M. J. Konkel
“You two stay under there until I tell you it’s safe to come out,” he ordered the kids. His heart was pounding as he walked up to the raptor lying on his lawn.
“Is it dead, Daddy?” Robbie asked quietly from under the truck. The kids could see the downed raptor from where they were at.
“I don't know, but stay there in case the others come back.” Joe examined the downed raptor carefully from a short distance. Its head was lying on the ground, looking up at him with one eye that was large and bird-like – making it appear very alien. And it was still breathing. He put his bow down and took a step closer. He froze as he heard a scratching noise to his left. Craning his neck, he saw it was only a squirrel running along the fence. It was probably making its escape once the raptors were gone. As he turned back towards the raptor, he saw it lift its head towards him. He lifted the ax over his shoulder and swung it up over his head and then back down in a swift motion that split the raptor's skull down the middle. Joe had split a lot of firewood with the ax and, although the motion was the same, the feel was very different. There was much less resistance as the ax went through, and the raptor was alive and intent on eating him and his boys. Blood splattered all over his face and clothes and the raptor's head thumped down on the ground. Joe's heart was pounding hard and he could feel the arteries in his temples throbbing. He took a couple of slow deep breaths and felt his pulse's throbbing lessen and its rate slowing, although he could still feel the effects of the adrenaline in his veins. He examined the creature more closely as he wiped the drops of warm blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. Its blood looked just like his. Up close it didn't look like the raptorsaurs from the movie. It had what looked like green downy feathers, instead of scaly skin, covering a body that Joe estimated at about two hundred pounds. Along its side, it had darker green vertical stripes that probably served as camouflage in tall grass in spring and summer. There was no missing the huge sickle claws on the second digit of each clawed foot. The sickle claws were like a pair of huge curved daggers five inches in length. The claws on the upper limbs looked equally sharp as well, although not nearly as large, and the teeth were not those of a gentle herbivore, but rather meant for the business of tearing up meat. It was an evolutionarily-perfect hunter that was terrifying. It looked like it was still staring back at him, and it gave him goose bumps. After pulling out the arrow buried in the raptor, Joe glanced up and down the alley and took a longer look across each of his neighbors' back yards. He could not hear or see any sign of the raptorsaur’s companions. He wondered where they went, but more importantly, where did they come from? Would they return? Joe's concern for Karen ratcheted up several notches.
“Robbie, James! Get in the back seat of the truck,” ordered Joe. “Keep down until I get back and stay quiet,” he told them before he went back into the house to grab his twelve-gauge shotgun which he loaded with slugs originally intended for deer. He loaded one last thing into the bed of the truck before he opened the garage door to the alley, looked up and down the alley and then jumped into the truck. He placed the shotgun across his lap with the barrel resting on the passenger side seat.
The kids stared out the back window into the bed of the truck.
Chapter 2
The night was black as coal and the wind was picking up, creating choppy waves out on the river. Dick Ville woke as his boat was being tossed by the waves. He had been running his boat up the Mississippi River on his way to Minneapolis and had anchored his boat for the night in the mouth of a small slough that cut parallel to the main channel of the river. Dick transported things – mostly legal things, but not always. He lived out of his 28-foot boat to keep expenses low and give him the freedom he cherished most. He had built up a considerable bank account and stock portfolio and had planned on retiring completely by the time he was forty, so he could just sail to wherever the wind took him. But that was put off a few years by the last large recession. At that moment though, he was more concerned about the weather than his investments. He went topside to see what the storm was doing. His dog, a golden retriever named Nova after his grandfather, Vince Nova, followed. The wind quickly died down and the waves diminished. Dick went out the back of the cabin to check on the back-anchor rope. It was secure.
Splash! Dick thought it must have been a large fish jumping nearby. Splash! Another? Must be silver carp. Dang invading species! Splash! Splash! Bang! Something hit the deck of his boat. Bang! Bang! “Oh, crap!” he exclaimed as he realized he was being bombarded with hail. And by sound of the impacts, he knew they were big. He starting to reach his hands up to cover his head as he headed for the cabin door, but he was too late as a softball size chunk of hail hit him in the back of the head. He lost consciousness and, as he fell, he went over the side of the boat.
*****
Nova, frightened to see his master fall, immediately scrambled out of the cabin and took a glancing blow off his hip by a large chunk of hail. That did not slow him down though as he jumped overboard after his master. The water was freezing cold, but he was a retriever and it was in his blood to be able to withstand the chill. Nova could not see anything in the darkness even though his night vision was better than a human's, but he used his strong sense of smell to locate his master. His head was being pelted with hail, but by then they were just the size of peas – the heavy chunks fell for far less than a minute. The hail stopped altogether by the time he grabbed his master's coat collar in his mouth and started paddling in the direction of the boat, guided by the familiar scents of the boat. Though once he reached it, he realized that there was no way he could drag his master aboard. He struck out in a new direction across the current and he paddled and paddled until his legs were sore and then paddled some more. He could not see the shore and had no idea if he was getting close – everything smelled like the river. He felt the current pick up and then a rock hit his midsection.
Nova could not know it, but he had gone over a wing dam just downriver from the mouth of the slough. Wing dams were piles of rocks that jutted out into the river with the supposed purpose of keeping the river's center channel deeper by funneling most of the current to the main center channel. Most wing dams were submerged with the tops coming close to the surface. They didn't really work in keeping the center channel scoured deep though. They did serve well at providing good habitat for a variety of fish species and for stealing outboard motors from unsuspecting boaters.
Nova's midsection hurt badly but he held on to his master. He was in danger of drowning himself when his paws started hitting the bottom and soon he found himself on a sandbar. He could only drag his master part way out of the water. He shook his fur to shed some of the water and then lay down with his head on his master's chest and panted – he needed time to recover and he hoped that his master would too.
After a while, he sensed something was wrong. His master had stopped breathing. Nova was scared for his master and scared for himself. His master had hemorrhaged in his brain and suffered hypothermia from the freezing cold water and had died. Nova knew his master was gone but he continued to lie on his chest and protect him anyway. It was all he could do, but his night was to become even more miserable. Freezing rain began to pour and drench him while the sky was lit up continuously and ear-splitting booms of thunder echoed in his sensitive ears. After a while the rain stopped and it got warmer for some time, but then cooled again. He was freezing when dawn came.
He had to leave his master as it was no use staying. He felt alone and lost with a heavy heart. He trotted along the sandbar to where it met woods. The woods were dark and full of fallen timber. He sniffed the ground and he sniffed the air. He froze. There was a strange odor in the air that he didn't recognize, and it made the hair on his back stand up. There wasn't anything moving, but there was something in the woods and an innate sense told him it was danger. He turned to follow the beach instead of proceeding into the woods. He heard a twig snap, and he took off running. His paws dug into the wet sand of the beach as a creatu
re came tearing out of the woods and then another and then a third. He glanced back as he scampered over fallen trees. The creatures looked like giant birds without wings to him. But instead of beaks, they had mouths full of sharp teeth. They came after him and they were fast – bigger and faster than he was. These were raptorsaurs like those that attacked Joe and his boys. Nova would have been caught had he not veered off the beach into the woods, under and through a large brush pile and a thicket of undergrowth where his pursuers couldn't follow. He thought they had given up finding a way around when he no could no longer catch of trace of their scent. After Nova no longer felt the pursuit, he stopped to pant – he was no longer freezing. But he was frightened – he had never been pursued before and he was alone now. He had to go somewhere safer – find a new pack. The world was now a much more dangerous place for a lone dog.
He went back to the beach and followed it downriver for a distance until he found a trampled dirt path that headed away from the river and up towards the hills. It had the odor of people. He took a path over a set of railroad tracks and then up a steep climb to a highway road. He looked up and down the road and then at the house across the road. He decided to try the house – maybe there would be someone friendly there. He walked up to the house, waving his tail in a friendly gesture. He smelled strange odor here too, although this one was very different from the last one. He deeply sniffed the air. The odor was coming from somewhere on the other side of the house, so he carefully stepped forward around the side of the house. Curiosity getting the best of him. He poked his head around the side to peek into the back yard and saw a strange creature very different from those that pursued him. He moved forward a few steps to get a better view. It rather had the appearance of a strange gigantic turtle to him. The creature spotted him, and its tail went up. Nova then saw how its end was a big club. It started swaying back and forth, hitting a large tree hard enough to knock a bird feeder out of it. Then its tail went through a window of the house, demolishing the window. The creature was turning broadside to him and the clubbed tail was getting closer. Nova, realized the creature was probably slow-moving, albeit dangerous, so he turned and circled the house. He came up on the other side and watched with curiosity as the creature ambled away into the woods behind the house. Under different circumstances it might have been fun to torment the creature by barking at it and then jumping out of the way before it could swing its tail. But his ribs and hip were hurting, and he needed a safe place to just rest and recuperate.
Nova sniffed the ground around the house. People had been there, although not recently. He found a forgotten old ice cream bucket filled with rain water by the back door. He lapped it until his thirst was quenched and then jumped through the broken window.
Chapter 3
Johnny Faberley had been on the road for close to two hours and had many more to go. He had just come from Madelia in southwestern Minnesota – the hometown of his fiancée, Tiffany. He needed to get to downtown Chicago before mid-morning to be at a job interview and he really did not want to mess it up. He estimated he would arrive around six in the morning, plenty of time to get some coffee, breakfast and a newspaper. He and Tiffany had agreed that once he had a solid job, earning a decent wage, they would set the wedding date. And the interview was for a good solid job, assistant reporter, for the Windy City Tribune. That is if he got it. He would arrive having slept only a couple of hours the evening before, but he preferred it that way. He would be less likely to be nervous and would react on instinct to whatever was thrown at him. He usually did his best when he was following his instincts, although there were times that got him into trouble instead.
Johnny was using back roads as he preferred them – never knew what he might see. The back roads rarely had police on them, so he could cruise above the speed limit with little chance of a ticket. On this trip, it was also going to be a more direct route, not having to have driven north up to the freeway before driving south again later. In the summer, he had to watch for slow moving vehicles, mostly tractors. But in March and this late at night, there would be no tractors. He only had to watch out for deer which were quite common in the area, the slick conditions on the road from the early evening’s storm. But then a mysterious fog suddenly started limiting his visibility. The fog was more than a little weird. He could have sworn that it faintly glowed a green color for a few seconds. Maybe it was just some odd manifestation of occasional lightning flashes he saw through it. He knew the county road he was on from several previous trips. Normally, it was a beautiful stretch with several stunning vistas of the Mississippi River valley, but it was too late at night and too foggy to be able to see anything this time. The road he was on would next swerve west and then descend to meet with Highway 11 just before the highway started its ascent to the summit of the ridge-line. Highway 11 then wound its way from there two hundred-fifty feet down into the Mississippi River valley. At that moment though, his car’s engine started to sputter and then stalled. He slowly coasted to a stop on the side of the road and then tried to restart it. But the starter just whirred around and around without a sputter of engine life. A particularly strong gust of wind rocked his car and then the fog was gone almost as fast it had appeared.
Johnny was more concerned about his car than the weather though. He got out and kicked the front left tire. “Worthless piece of shit!” he swore at it and then cursed himself for kicking the tire as his big toe began throbbing. He had no idea why the car wasn't running, but it was going to make him late. It had been a faithful car to a couple of owners before him, but it was old with a lot of miles on it. When he got a real job, he would buy a new car – one that he could depend upon. He pulled out his cell phone, intending to phone for a tow truck. He hoped he had enough credit left on his credit card to get him through this latest crisis. But his phone displayed 'NO SERVICE AVAILABLE'.
“Shit! This has got be the last place on Earth that doesn't have cell,” he muttered.
He looked up and down the unlit road before starting out. There was hardly anything to see in the dark, but there was a light ahead – maybe about a quarter of a mile, but it was hard to tell distance in the dark. He headed for it, checking out his cell phone every hundred feet or so to see if his signal returned. It was nearly impossible to see anything in the dark of the country night, especially with the overhanging clouds that had quickly rolled in. He used his phone for a little light, but wished he had downloaded one of those flashlight apps. The light appeared to be coming from a farmhouse just off the county road. Maybe he could get help there and use of a phone to call for a tow.
*****
Anne’s parents had just bought her a new laptop computer, so she would have her own when she started college in the fall. It had arrived in the morning, but she had been in school all day and then at basketball practice, the last of the year before the tournaments started the next day. Then came dinner and her chores so it was late by the time she could sit down and play with her new toy. There was a small corner desk in the large kitchen, and she set the laptop on it. The computer booted up, but the mouse did not seem to be working. She called the support number listed in the owner's manual After answering a long list of questions to the automated system that promised that her answers would help them serve her better, she was finally talking to an actual live person. She had started combing her long wavy reddish-brown hair with the fingers of her free hand, but was soon twisting it into knots as the man asked her the same questions that the automated system had asked. Finally, he asked about the mouse.
“OK, so we established that the cursor is not moving. What kind of mouse is it?”
What kind of mouse is it? Anne was confused. “What do you mean? I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Is it a new mouse?”
“It's the one that came in the box.” The doorbell rang. “Could you hold for just a minute?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer from the tech guy on the phone, she put the phone down and ran to the door. Sh
e felt her action was rude, done out of frustration. Then she started to feel a little guilty about it. She decided she should apologize once she got back on the line.
The porch light outside the door was on, and she could see through the window that there was a very wet young man standing out on her porch. She instantly forgot about the tech guy on the phone. She opened the door a crack and just quizzically stared through it at the stranger. She was especially wary as her parents were spending the night down in Iowa. One of her dad's uncles had suffered a heart attack and had died earlier in the week and the funeral was to be held Friday morning. Her dad had been close to the uncle when he was younger and felt obligated to be there for the services. Her mom accompanied her father, but Anne stayed at home because she still had school in the morning and the first game of the conference tournament in the evening. Besides, she hated funerals. Her parents would not have approved of her opening the door, but the young man (barely older than herself) was just standing on her open porch, drenched and shivering from the cold rain that had suddenly started falling. He was taller than her by an inch or two which put him over six foot. Even drenched, she could see that his brown hair had curls and when her big brown eyes met his bright blue eyes, his gaze held hers. He was rather cute and that is important if you are eighteen.