And then the lights go out.
The gate stops.
I punch the button. Nothing happens. I push it over and over, and then rip away the tape holding it on the dash, stick it out the window and push it another dozen times.
I sit back and throw the remote onto the dash. They’ve killed the power. I would have been out by now if I had seen the remote earlier and not fooled around getting stuck. Instead, I gave them plenty of time to think of disabling the gate.
I close the window and return to my position behind the wheel of the still idling truck. Can I get this thing unstuck? Going forward doesn’t appear productive. I’d probably end up somewhere that even the chains couldn’t get me out. I can’t see much in the glow of taillights behind me, but I believe it’s a very small drop-off which then rises a foot or so onto a low bank. If I can back up until the chains start digging into the bank that may be enough to get the front wheels onto the road. Then it’s just a matter of putting it in low and climbing completely onto the road where I can return to plan A; back up and then ram the gate. With it being half open, that should be easier.
I put the truck in reverse and start applying gas. It moves a couple feet and then starts digging. I let off and the truck returns to its starting point.
I remember rocking to get out of such a situation, so I apply gas and clutch to move a few inches back and then allow it to rock forward, apply gas and clutch again to rock back, release and apply, over and over. The rocking gradually builds up momentum without digging down anymore. I can’t feel what’s happening back there but I keep rocking, each time giving just a little more gas until I seem to overcome something and shoot back a couple more feet. Both front wheels are on the road now. I hold her in place with the brake, shift to low, crank the wheel all the way to the right and then gun it.
When I get the truck stopped again, the left front is off the road but all others are on. I crank the wheels the other way, reverse and pull the truck square onto the road. Without stopping I continue to back as I did before until I’m as far away from the gate as I think I can comfortably get. I don’t wait for courage or more butterflies. I gun it forward, shift to second and leave it there, and steer to strike the gate on its edge to gain the greatest moment of force. With thirty feet to go I shove the accelerator pedal to the floor.
I must blink because one second the gate is standing straight and the next it’s coming directly at the windshield. I take one last look at the second gate, and then duck while trying to keep the steering wheel steady and the pedal to the floor. There’s a crash and then something slams against my back; cold air flows in around my neck. The truck bounces and sways and keeps going. I bring up my head in time to see I am sideswiping the fence. The driver side mirror disappears in a screech and I jerk the steering wheel to the right. The chains are still grabbing and digging but something is dragging the truck down. Maybe the gate has hooked on and it’s now a tug of war. Just as it seems the truck is going to stop, there’s a snap and it jerks forward under the power of the roaring engine. I duck again as the truck plows into the center of the outer gate.
When everything stops hot air is blowing around my feet and cold air is flowing in around my head. The only sound is the idling engine and the humming of the heater fan. Three quarters of the windshield is gone and when I lean back I find a chunk of it between me and the seat. I throw it on the floorboards. The laptop bag is covered with glass but otherwise seems undamaged. I’m outside the sabrelock, parked on top of the toppled gate.
No time to sit and contemplate my success. Failure could interrupt at anytime. I shove the transmission down into first and press the accelerator. The truck barely moves. I try the rocking technique but after a minute of that I know the truck is going no farther. The chains have probably gotten a hook onto the fence and have pulled some part of it into the wheel wells. I shut the truck down, extinguish the one undamaged headlight, and then lean back in the dark and try to ignore the intense pressure and butterflies doing somersaults in my chest.
I haven’t yet escaped. The only thing I might have going for me is that Vandermill’s gang probably thinks they had me trapped when they killed the power to the gate, if that’s any consolation. Unfortunately I’m trapped in the truck because I’m sure the cats are still around me, getting hungrier by the second. This is worse than what I had before. I counted on the truck taking me all the way to Kalispell. I’ll still be here when the other Huey shows up. They’ll shoot me where I sit or drag me out and feed me to the cats.
The cats! How long will they hang around with all of Montana to explore? Lots of beef and sheep out there. Just their curiosity alone will have them out and gone in short order, except for the pregnant females. How long before they give birth? Days? Weeks? Will they venture away from the warmth and comfort of the garden?
“Hey you! In the truck!”
I rise up from my slouched position and look out. I don’t see anyone.
“This is Sheriff Shwartzberg of Flathead County. Step out of the truck with your hands where I can see them.”
I role down the window and yell back at the sheriff. “No! It’s dangerous! Get back in your car!”
“I say again. Step out of the truck, now!”
“I can’t get out,” I yell. I stick my head out the window and see him, a dark form halfway between me and the tree-line, left off the road. I don’t see any cats but I know from what I am feeling that they’re working him right now. His death is imminent. I look around but see no sabres. But I do see what I assume is a deputy coming around on the other side.
“Sheriff!” I’m on the edge of panic because I’m scared as hell for these two lawmen. “You have to listen to me.” I open the door and step onto the running board.
“Step the rest of the way out.”
He’s only thirty feet away and it appears he has his service revolver trained on me. I look beyond him but still see nothing sneaking up behind him. My chest is past butterflies and pressure. I can barely breath with the pain. “There are cats!” I force the words. I fear for the deputy. “Dangerous man-eating sabre-toothed cats.”
“What? Man-eating what?”
“Sabre,” is all I get out before the deputy screams, “Oh, shit! What the hell is . . .” And that’s it. The pressure in my chest flares and then disappears and the night turns quiet.
“Mike!” the sheriff yells. “What the hell is what?” He moves a bit toward where the deputy’s voice was. “Mike! Answer up.”
“Sheriff,” I yell. “He’s gone. You’ll be next if you don’t get back in your car.”
“Get the hell out of that truck, now!”
“They’re sabre-toothed cats, Sheriff. They’re man-eaters and if I get out I may be next along with you.”
“Get out of the truck now or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
I consider my options. Somewhere, not far away, just down the road out of sight is his vehicle. Together, if he listens to me, we might be able to make it. Better off than sitting here until another cat takes him out. Without thinking more about it I grab the strap on the laptop bag and drag it and glass out of the truck with me. “Okay, Sheriff, I’m coming but you’ve got to listen to me. Out in the open we are both in danger. We have got to get to your vehicle fast.” I shut the door.
“Slow and easy,” he says. “Step this way.”
“We don’t have time for slow and easy.” I’m talking too fast now. “Victor Vandermill has been cloning sabre-toothed cats. There are five of them around us, or maybe just four as one is busy carrying off your deputy. I’m Zechariah Price. We met when you were investigating the death of Thomas Holm. There’ve been at least three other deaths in recent weeks and since I figured I was next, I tried escaping. I’m on your side, Sheriff. You’re who I was trying to get to until I got tangled up in this fence.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You have everything to lose by not believing me because these cats will take you down and you won
’t see them coming. Believe me and do what I say and both of us may get out of this without becoming cat food.”
I know he’s thinking, but there is no time.
“I’m coming toward you on the road,” I say. “Come up onto the road where we can walk easier.”
“Get your hands out where I can see them,” he orders.
“Put your gun away, Sheriff. It’s not going to do you any good. These cats run from four hundred to seven hundred pounds. If you shoot one, you’ll probably just piss it and the rest of them off and then we’re certainly both dead.” I’m standing on the road now, looking slightly down at him at twenty feet away. My hands are extended away from my sides. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end and I feel like a kitty play toy. “There’s a way we can protect ourselves if you get up here with me.”
He is cautiously, slowly moving in my direction, half keeping an eye on me and half looking around.
“Please, Sheriff.” I start to step off the road to go to him.
“Stay where you are,” he orders. Instead of pointing his service revolver at me, as he has been, he points it straight in the air and starts moving toward me, high stepping through the snow. I start turning in slow circles, looking everywhere. I see no cats, no shadows of cats, nothing that would tell me they are stalking us. When the Sheriff steps onto the road, he says, “Let’s just pretend that I believe you, that there are dangerous animals ready to attack us. What would be your plan to get us out of it?”
“A trait of these sabre-toothed cats is they only attack from the rear. They don’t like the human face. They will not attack if they can see your face. Back-to-back, we can walk out of here.”
“Holy shit!” he says and I see he is not looking at me. He is looking past me, toward the truck.
I look. It is two of the triplets, one on each side of the truck. “Sheriff, do as I say, now. Turn around and put your back to my back.” He surprises me and does just that. “These two you just saw are not the ones who’ll attack. Their jobs are to hold our attention while the killer approaches from the rear.”
“Jesus Christ! Then I’ll see him coming at us.”
“No. What we have done now is present two fronts and no backs. He’ll not attack as long as he can see a face.” I start pushing against him. “Let’s start walking.” To my relief we start moving.
“How many did you say there are?”
“Actually there are nine. Two are pregnant so I doubt they would be involved in this hunt. Two are kittens about the size of dogs and not much of a threat. The other five are males, two of which are full grown adults. Three are still young, but as far as we’re concerned, just as dangerous.”
“Those two we just saw—those are the adults, right?”
“No. Those are the young ones.”
“Holy shit!”
“They work together as a team and have some kind of ability to silently communicate. I don’t know how they do it but they do. It’s like telekinesis or something.”
“Are those two still by the truck?”
“One is,” I say. “The other is circling somewhere. I’ve lost him. You’ll only see them if they want to be seen.”
We move one slow step at a time. The young triplet sabre follows, keeping his distance and his head low. “My deputy,” the sheriff says. “He just got married over Christmas. His wife is pregnant.”
“I’m sorry.” What else can I say?
“Will we ever find his body? What am I going to tell her?”
We continue in silence for a half dozen more steps. “Let’s hope we get out of here alive so you can tell her.
“Yeah.”
I guess that we have closed half the distance. I continuously look to my left and right and then back to the sabre walking in our tracks. Even in the weak moon-lit night I can see the power in the muscles across his shoulders and around his jaws. I picture the lion tamers sticking their heads into the mouth of the lion. I can see here, knowing that they can open their mouths one hundred-twenty degrees, such would not be a problem at all. Death would be quick, if that is any consolation.
“Oh Christ! There’s one. He’s huge!” The sheriff stops. “I thought you said they couldn’t be seen unless they wanted to be seen.”
“And that one wants you to see him. This is good, Sheriff. They’re confused by our two faces. Watch your sides. I don’t know if they’ll try hitting us from the blind side. Rotate your head back and forth, and let’s keep moving.”
“But he’s right there, on the road, in our way.”
“He’ll move as we get closer.”
“You’re not going to try and tell me he’s as scared of us as we are of him, are you?”
I laugh. “I’m not that crazy, Sheriff.” We continue in silence for a few more minutes, making no more than another twenty feet. “Sheriff.”
He grunts past his focus of walking and watching for cats.
“If you get out of this and I don’t, you have to take Victor Vandermill down. I have reason to believe he personally killed Doctor McCully. I also believe he somehow, and I don’t know how, but he somehow had something to do with the death of Thomas Holm. Lester the security guard whose last name I don’t know, is dead but that I’m sure was an accident. I believe that Wolf Oberlin is dead at Vandermill’s hand, although the story is that he returned to his home in India. Aileen Bravelli is dead, but he had nothing to do with that. The cats got her without his assistance.”
“My God!”
“In addition to bringing the sabre-toothed cats back from extinction, he and Doctor Jacob Zitnik have been running a baby factory.”
“Baby . . . factory? What?”
“Baby factory. They’ve been using the cloning procedure they learned from the cats to make perfect babies for wealthy clients.”
“You’re shit'n me!”
“They’ve been using Mexican women smuggled in illegally as the host mothers, upwards of two dozen pregnant at a time. He’s developed some system to later meld them and their families into the American culture with fake citizenship and identification. He’s been doing this for ten years now.”
“How?” He stumbles and almost falls. We’re nearly to the tree-line. “How can this be right here under my nose and I not find out about it?”
“He doesn’t use local employees. Everyone that works for him is imported from another state and lives on the premises. The only way in and out is by helicopter. He pays them very well for their secrecy. I have a feeling Peter McCully was about to spill the beans. That’s why Vandermill killed him. The same with Thomas Holm, and maybe Wolf Oberlin.”
“This is going to be a mess. Why are you here?”
“Vandermill hired me to write a photo documentary about the company.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“If it’s such a secret, why write a book?”
“It’s been a mystery to me. Yet even when I tried to escape once, during which Aileen was killed, my wife broke her back and I lost an eye, he still wanted me to write the story, but this time he called it a fictionalized accounting. While I did my research, people just kept dying around me.” This time I’m the one who stops walking. Inspiration suddenly hits me. “That’s why he hired me!”
“What.”
“Holy shit! I wasn’t supposed to finish writing anything, and what I did write was never to leave the complex. He was using me to flush out the dissidents.”
“Huh?”
“He knew there were some who were no longer in agreement with what he was doing. Bring a reporter in and see who comes and talks to him, then eliminate them. That’s what he did. He used me to find his weak links. Once he was sure he had them all, he would eliminate me. Shit! I’m the catalyst. When I signed on, my days were numbered.”
“Let’s keep moving,” the sheriff says. “Just another thirty feet or so. Is the one cat still back there?”
“Yes. How about yours?”
“No
. I’ve lost him in the trees. We’re coming to the trees ourselves. Do you think it’s safe to use my flashlight?”
“Point it at the ground. I wouldn’t want to take the chance of blinding one to the point that he can’t see your face.”
“Right. Good point.”
Light blossoms around us.
“Hell these are big paw prints!” he says. “At least as big as my face. Do you think they could take down a grizzly?”
“Put two of these sabres together, the grizzly would be so focused on one he’d never know about the other until it was on his back and drawing its sabre-teeth through his jugular and windpipe. He wouldn’t even have time to fight back.” There is the sound of a helicopter in the distance. “Let’s hurry. That’s Vandermill’s other helicopter, probably coming to search me down.”
“Twenty feet. What do you mean his other helicopter?”
“I stole one of them but they shot me down. After I crashed it I ran back and stole the truck.”
“God I hate this,” he says. “I can’t see beyond my flashlight and I think I’m about to drop a loose load into my boots.”
“I’ll never tell anyone if you do. Even sheriffs are human.”
“I think I’m going to like you if we get out of this.”
“How far?”
“Less than ten feet. We’re approaching the driver’s side. You get in and crawl across. I’ll climb in behind you.”
I hear something, probably the flashlight, bang against the side of the vehicle. A couple seconds later, we are both alongside the truck. When I’m able, I open the door. Light spills out. I virtually crawl across on my hands and knees, lifting my laptop over the crowded center panel. The sheriff is in and the door shut before I can get situated and sitting. I put the laptop on the floor with my feet on it. He starts the truck. “Leave the lights off,” I say.
A searchlight appears. It dances around the abandoned truck for a time and then follows the tracks up the road toward us. When it reaches the tree-line it returns to the truck and then suddenly is on the area where the deputy last stood. Even from here we can see the crimson snow in the bright white light. The light moves around a bit more and then goes out. A few seconds later the taillights of the helicopter appear as the bird moves away toward its nest on Sans Sanssabre’s roof.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 37