When my senses begin to return, Aileen is yelling at me to get off of her again. I try but the agony in my groin is overwhelming. “I’m hurt,” I say. “I think I strained something trying to open the door.” I manage to move a little so that my weight is not on her.
“As soon as you can move, here’s what I want you to do,” she says quietly, as though she is speaking to a child. “Turn the door handle until it unlatches and then open the door. Don’t panic again. The door will open.”
I move a little more and then reach up, turn the handle and push. It’s a heavy door, but it does open. “Oh,” I say just as quietly. I let the door down and then slowly, as the decreasing pain allows, shift my position.
“Please be careful where you put your hands and feet this time,” she says.
“I’m not planning on molesting you,” I return.
“Just get out, now!”
“I don’t know what your problem is. You’re the one who rolled this unpadded cigar box. Just because I accidentally placed my hand on your breast doesn’t mean I’m trying to molest you. I did that once. You don’t have to worry that I’ll try it again. I’m hurting like hell and all you think about is yourself. I might have ruptured something.”
“Damn it, Zach. You didn’t rupture anything. I punched you in the nuts. Now will you get the hell out?” She’s screaming again.
“Why the hell . . ?”
“GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”
“ALL RIGHT!” I scramble as best I can considering that the lingering pain in my groin is still contributing to a wobbliness in my legs.
“And don’t step on me!”
“I won’t!” The door is heavy and I have to navigate myself out as I push on it in order to gain leverage. The hinge is designed so that the door opens all the way, thus when I get it past the vertical it keeps going and slams against the vehicle. Aileen mutters something. I lift myself out and carefully drop to the ground. By the time she’s out I’m walking up and down the trail, feeling a little better.
“Where’s the radio?” she demands.
“How the hell should I know? It’s probably in pieces in there somewhere.”
She glares at me and then starts pulling on the ATV in an attempt to put it back on its wheels. Attempt is the prime word here, because she’s getting nowhere. “Would you get your sorry ass over here and help?”
“Why in the hell are you pissed off at me?” I demand. I get on one end and she on the other and on three the ATV falls back to its wheels. “You were the one driving and then for whatever reason you hit me.”
“While you were shoving against the latched door like a crazed idiot, you were bracing yourself against my neck. I thought you were going to kill me. I slammed you in the balls to save both of us.”
“Oh.”
She climbs into the ATV and mucks around until she finds the radio. She comes out holding it to her face and saying, “Matt! This is Sam!” She stares at it and then punches some buttons. “Shit! I think the radio is toast.” I raise my eyebrows at her. She hands it to me. “The GPS still works, I think.” She gets in behind the wheel and starts it. “You coming or what?” she says.
I climb in and buckle up. “I smell gas.”
“Probably the chainsaw,” she says. “No big deal.” Suddenly we are screaming up the trail again. I look around and see the chainsaw I hadn’t noticed before. The Rhino has a little bed behind us with a heavy wire cage around it. The saw is bouncing around.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
She says nothing. Instead she slams on the brakes and we slide up against a fallen tree that is partially blocking the trail. Before I can blink an eye she has the saw on the ground and is yanking on the cord. It roars to life and she starts cutting the big log into smaller logs. As a chunk drops off I shove it aside. She cuts a total of four and then we are moving again. “How far?”
“Point four one.”
“Let me know when we’re at 300 feet.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Any sign of them.”
I flinch from a bush we blast straight through. We leave the ground and I tighten my death grips, praying that there isn’t another sharp turn when we touchdown. My Prayer is answered, although we do bounce several frightening times into an open meadow of sorts. It’s the bottom of a hillside at the top of which are huge boulders. I feel like Crocodile Dundee racing through the Outback. Actually she’s Crocodile Dundee. I’m just the bumbling sidekick—what was his name? He was smarter than he looked.
“And for signs of Smilodon,” she adds.
I’m suddenly paying close attention again. “Why?”
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?’
“It was clear as day. Sabre-tooth.”
I’m watching and thinking now. I remember the words radar booth. It could have been sabre-tooth. Of course it was sabre-tooth.
“My hunch is they’ve gotten themselves somewhere that the cats can’t get to them, but they’re trapped, and since the radio reception was so bad I’m thinking it’s a cave.”
“Where are there caves around here?”
“None within an hour or two hiking distance that I know of. Definitely none right near these coordinates.”
We leave the meadow.
Chapter 28
Reba
We both hear it at the same time. By the time we scramble to our feet and rush to the entrance, the sound of the engine is fading away. “Hey!” Matt yells into the radio. “You just went by us. Up in the rocks.” We listen but there is nothing. Not even the static of a broken transmission. “Shit! Hey!” he hollers at the entrance. “We’re right here!”
“They can’t hear us over the engine,” I say.
“They’re going to the coordinates I gave them. They’ll never find us unless we can get out of here and wave them down.”
“Let me see that.” I snap the radio from his hands.
“Hey!” He tries to take it back.
I glare at him and he backs off. I navigate to the track. Just as I suspected.
“What are you doing?” He sidles up next to me.
“It’s been tracking from the time you turned it on to radio your dad the position of the scat. That means all I have to do is follow the track to where we broke from the trail to enter the rocks, set a waypoint and transmit it.”
“Oh.”
With the waypoint set I quickly punch through the alphabet to give it a name, and then hand it back. “Send it. I don’t know anything about the radio part.”
“It’s probably not going to go anywhere with these rocks.”
“Send it anyway. We have to try.”
He sets it up then scoots halfway out the opening and stretches his arm as far as he can. He transmits and then hustles back in. “There are two out there now.”
“The others are probably scouting for alternative cuisine in case we aren’t available this evening.”
“Sure.” His voice lacks any humor. He slides to the ground just inside the entrance. I do the same on the other side. Together we pray for the sound of the returning Rhino.
Chapter 29
Zach
“Point one four,” I announce. No more than twenty seconds later I say, “Two hundred fifty feet.” She slows. “One eighty . . . one thirty . . . one ten . . . eighty . . . fifty . . .” We’re barely above walking speed. “Twenty-five.” She stops and turns off the engine. For a full minute we look and listen, and then she opens the canvas bag I saw her carrying from the house. She extracts a gun and hands it to me.
“Mace,” she says at my shocked face. “This is the latest for discouraging wild animals. It’s illegal against humans, even by police, although I’m sure some carry them like unlicensed backup weapons.” She extracts an ammo belt loaded with a dozen six-inch long cartridges. “Out!”
We get out of the ATV. I meet her at the front where she whips the belt around my waist. It’s buckled before I can ask her why I’m
the one wearing it. “This is a quick-reload mace gun. Press this to release an empty cartridge.” She shows me and a cartridge drops to the ground. “That one is empty. Shove the new cartridge in until you hear a pop. Load it now.”
I put the GPS in a pocket and then shove a cartridge into the butt of the gun. I hear the pop.
“You’re good for about twenty feet for about fifteen seconds. Keep your wits about you.”
“Will this actually stop one?”
“Don’t know.” She points to a button on the gun. “That’s the safety. Take it off, now.” She starts up the trail, looking down at the ground.
I look at my belt of mace bullets and say, “What about you?”
“I won’t need one.”
I stand with the gun pointing toward the treetops as though I’m about ready to storm a nest of ugly outlaws. My mouth is hanging open and I’m trying to make sense of her words, ‘I won’t need one.’
“Here it is,” she says. I step up beside her and look down.
“Grizzly scat?”
“Exactly.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping there’d be something more obvious when we got here.”
I walk up the trail a little farther where instead of grass there is only dirt. There are also boot prints. I call to her and then we both step off into the grass and study the prints as though we’re considering lifting them for forensic purposes. She points. “Going up the trail here, and then coming back here. I think we’ve come too far.” As we walk back to the ATV I remove the GPS from my pocket. There is a second symbol on the screen, and a two-word label.
“Aileen!” I say excitedly.
“Don’t ever call me Aileen. My name is Sam, forever and ever.”
“Sorry! You’ve got to see this.” I hand her the GPS unit.
Her face lights up as she reads, ‘HELP REBA.’ “They sent another waypoint!” She’s suddenly punching buttons, and then turns and faces down the trail. “Point one one. We must have gone by them.” She hands it back and runs to the ATV. She starts it and turns it around, and then impatiently waits as I latch the door open and then clamor in.
While glancing at the GPS and giving distance reports, I watch the trees for signs of the kids, and the trail for boot prints. At four hundred feet we enter the meadow and she slows. The arrow on the GPS has been shifting its point farther and farther to the right of the trail. Now it’s pointing north, up the slop. “Up in those rocks I’ll bet.”
We creep farther along until we’re straight down from the rocks, and in an area of prints and flattened grass. We stop and I look down at the ground on my side, at numerous boot prints and larger cat paw prints. “You were right,” I say with a catch in my throat.
“What?” She leans across me, her hand on my thigh, her hair in my face, her aroma filling my senses. If not for the situation I would be sure the move was calculated, designed to whip up my male hormones. “Crap!” she says at the sight of the tracks and drops back into her seat. She turns off the engine and slides out.
“Becky!” I call as I do the same.
Aileen walks around to my side. My mace gun is pointing straight in the air again. It seems to do that of its own accord. “Matt!” she calls.
“Up here! In the rocks!” We take off on the run and then they yell something again and all I hear is, “Sabre-toothed cats in here.”
“Damn!” Aileen says. I slow down
“There are two sabre-toothed cats in here, and one is now heading out to meet you.”
“Are you guys all right?” Aileen yells. I’m staring at the entry into the rocks where all the tracks and flattened grass lead. She slows to a walk.
“We’re okay. We’re safe where we are, but don’t come rushing in. They can’t get to us.”
“Dad?” Becky yells.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“There’re two more somewhere.”
“Two more?”
“There were four. We only see two now.”
“Hang on. We’ll think of something.”
One appears in the entrance and suddenly my legs won’t move. He drops his head until his sabres nearly touch the ground, then backs in as far as he can and still be able to keep his eyes on us. Aileen continues moving forward as though not afraid of him. Still frozen in place I slowly turn and look around. I see no others.
“Zach,” Aileen says without taking her eyes off the cat. “I want you to go back and get the Rhino. Bring it up as close to the rock entrance as you can.”
The vibes rolling off of her are weird but under the situation I’m not able, nor am I trying, to focus on reading her impressions or her aura. My attention is on watching for other cats and my thoughts are on how to get Becky out of trouble. I do not want to go back for the ATV.
“Zach!”
“I heard you the first time!”
“I didn’t give you a suggestion. I gave you an order.” She turns and looks at me. I’m immediately reminded of science videos of sun flares bursting from the surface of the sun. Similar flares of crimson are exploding from her, yet her face looks calm and controlled. “You will trust me and do exactly as I say.” The look in her eyes drives me back a step, and for just a split second I sense something deep inside her that gives me the same feeling I’d have if I was standing on a cliff edge looking down at a 1000 foot drop. “When they come out, go back to the house. Don’t wait for me.”
I stumble back under weakened legs and then turn and run for the Rhino.
By the time I have the ATV started, she is just inside the entrance and the cat is out of sight. Her hands are empty. I have the mace gun. I find low gear, take a few seconds to make sure I understand the operation and then turn it up the slope. By this time Aileen is gone.
Chapter 30
Reba
I hear the engine again, jump up and start screaming. “Dad! Dad! We’re in here! In here! In here!” Matt grabs my arm.
“They can’t hear over the ATV. If they got the transmission they’ll be stopping.”
I hold my breath. The engine gets louder, then it seems to stop and idle. “Turn it off, damn it!” My heart is racing, rapidly driving the seconds along with it. “What are they doing?”
“Patience,” Matt says.
I’d sure like to show you patience, I think and then the engine dies. Neither of us moves until they call our names. Matt yells. “Up here! In the rocks! But you can’t come in because there are two sabre-toothed cats in here.”
“Damn!” It is Sam. I’m still angry with her and happy to hear her at the same time.
“There are two sabre-toothed cats in here, and one is now heading out to meet you.”
“Are you guys all right?” she asks.
“We’re okay. We’re safe where we are so you don’t have to come rushing in. They can’t get to us.”
“Dad?” I yell.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
I’m really glad to hear his voice; my anger at him is gone. “There’re two more somewhere.”
“Two more?” he yells back.
“There were four. We only see two now.”
“Hang on. We’ll think of something.”
I’m standing where I can see out. Matt is against me, peering over my shoulder. I want to tell him to back off. Can he smell me? I turn and flatten against the wall so he can see past me. One of the cats has disappeared. The other is on his feet looking after the first. We wait.
“Zach!” Sam says Dad’s name in the way Mom used to yell at me when I was a kid.
“I heard you the first time!” Dad fusses back.
“I didn’t give you a suggestion. I gave you an order!” Their voices drop to a murmur. Matt and I look at each other. What did that mean?
Suddenly the first cat appears, backing in. Dad and Sam must be doing what Matt and I did, coming in back-to-back, driving the sabre-toothed cat ahead of them. The ATV starts up and I’m confused. “Dad!” I scream. “You can’t come in here
by yourself.”
“It’s okay,” Sam says and then appears around the corner.
“Oh my God.”
“What?” Matt says.
“Can’t you see . . ?”
“Yeah. It’s Sam.”
“Of course you can’t see. What am I thinking?” She comes face to face with the cats, puts her arm out and points her finger at them. Dark red flashes of aura are exploding off of her and I half expect balls of fire to go bursting from her finger to smitten the cats where they stand. No such thing happens, but the cats keep backing, until they are out of sight, departing from the rocks and into the upper meadow. “Go!” Sam says firmly. “Get out now!” She goes after them.
The ATV is real close now. We grab our packs. “Wait!” Matt says. “Let me go first.”
Now that they’re gone you jump in as my knight in shining armor, I want to say. Bravo. I say nothing as he crabs out sideways. When I get out he’s turning in circles, looking everywhere at one time. “We’re fine.”
“You’re going to get dizzy,” I tell him. “Let’s go!”
He stops and then weaves a little. “Yeah.” He looks up one more time and then skitters to the corner, peaks around it. “All clear,” he says and disappears.
I start to follow.
“Reba.” I turn to Sam who has come back. Waves of blood-red are boiling off of her; not nearly as explosive as before. “Go with your father back to the house. Wait for me there.”
I walk up to her.
“Go!” she orders. “They may return.”
“Maybe, but I think you’d be able to protect us.” I reach out and touch her aura, expecting to feel heat, or a shock or something. I feel nothing.
“What are you doing?” She backs up. “No! Get out!” I force my mind to reach into hers, but what I see causes me to involuntarily stumble away from her. “Get out of here,” she growls and then turns and is gone.
“Holy shit to hell,” I say quietly to the rock walls; impressions of Sam’s mind still floating about in mine.
Chapter 31
Zach
“Where’s Becky?” I demand of Matt when he appears alone.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 55