“It’s just Roma. He and I are buds.” I take a bite then break off another piece and hold it out to him. He sniffs it and turns away. “Not red meat. Not part of his dietary requirement.” I hand a second one to Mandi.
“Thanks.” She opens it and takes a bite, wearily watching Roma. We move on.
We apparently get off track a little, bearing to our left, and come out at a water fall. Mandi doesn’t recognize it at first as we approach it from the opposite side from where we viewed it the day before. “Silken Skein,” I say.
“Oh, yeah.”
Suddenly Roma lets out a hiss and growl and pushes us back behind a stand of bushes. “What! Oh, Jesus! Oh, God! Down! Down!” I grab Mandi and drag her down into the grass. Roma is already lying as low as he can get, his ears back. “They have guns and they’re after the cats.” Even with my eyes closed I can see them. “They’re like desert commandos in video war games.”
Mandi gets to her hands and knees and peeks through the branches of the bush. “Ah, Reba. I think you’ve flipped. Those aren’t commandos. Those are a man and a woman, and they aren’t carrying guns.”
I crawl up next to her and take a look. Across the waterfall and creek is an elderly couple, at least fifty years old. They are each carrying a walking stick. The guy has his over his shoulder. The woman has a camera hanging around her neck. She leans her stick against a tree and takes a picture of the falls. She says something and points. The man walks toward the falls and then turns around and poses. She takes more pictures. Neither of them notices us.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Don’t understand what?”
“There were two men with guns. I swear it.”
“There’s no way you could mistake her for a man. She’s carrying a couple of watermelons on her chest.”
Mandi is right. “What the heck did I see?” I look all around, expecting to spot others. There is no one. “I don’t get it. The men I saw were wearing camouflage; dark green like special force soldiers, and their faces were painted camouflage, too.”
“Hunters?” Mandi suggests.
“This isn’t hunting season. Besides, they have to wear orange or red or something.”
“Not bow hunters.”
“This isn’t bow hunting season either.” I look at the couple again. “There is no way I could have confused those people. There is someone else here, and they’re hunting the cats.”
“How do you know that? What gave you that idea?”
That makes me sit back. “I don’t know. I saw them and I knew. I’m weird, okay?”
“No argument. Where did you see them?”
“Right over . . .” I look across the creek. The two people are standing side-by-side looking at the cascading water. “There’s no snow!”
“No, there isn’t. We left that stuff way back up yonder.”
“When I saw them, there was snow; lots of it; more than what we’ve been in today; really deep.” The man turns his back to the waterfall and puts the walking stick over his shoulder. Suddenly the two people disappear and the two men I saw a few minutes earlier reappear. “There they are again!”
“Where?”
“My God! It’s in my mind! The snow and everything.” I block the image and clear my head of everything else. The couple is heading away, back toward the main trail.
“What do you mean?”
Another picture jumps into my mind, this time the men are pointing their sticks at us. Part of me knows the sticks are guns. Another part sees them as just sticks. There are shots, they sound like trees snapping under a great wind, and there is lots of motion and I am running, running, my brothers around me, running with me. We’re all moving fast and I’m keeping up, like I’m one of them. “Holy shit!” I put my hands up to my eyes and the image keeps on; like a movie running in my head. It turns dark and it is snowing hard, big fat flakes. But I can see in the dark, almost as good as the daylight, and we keep on running. There are four of us.
Mandi grabs my arm. “Reba!”
I push her away. I don’t want to stop the movie; I need to see where it is going. There is pain. It is not my pain. It is one of the others. I know of the pain because he tells me in his thoughts. We come to a fast moving creek, plow right through the freezing water, breaking the ice along the edges. I feel the cold of it only for a few minutes. Our fast pace keeps my body temperature high. We follow the creek for a while and then turn away up a long slope, and break over the top; the wind drives the snow into our faces. We keep on going until we drop down below the wind, into the cover of trees. For miles and miles we keep on going, never stopping, never tiring. We’re not fast, our short front legs a hindrance against speed, but that is okay, because we have great endurance, great power. I’m in the lead now. I stop and look back at one who is lagging, the one who is in pain. I wait. We wait. We rest. There is blood. I clean the hurt with my tongue, but the blood oozes out, won’t stop. I nudge my brother and he rises. We move on. I know he is my true brother because we were born of the same mother at the same time.
More miles, another creek which we leap easily. Another few minutes and then we skirt an open field along a high rock wall. Trees, massive trees with great boughs hug close along the wall. We squeeze between the wall and the trees and soon are inside the mountain, the air warm under our heaving, sweating bodies.
“Holy mother of God!”
“What?” Mandi kneels in front of me, her eyes like saucers, her mouth hanging open. “Holy mother of God, what?”
“I know why they’re here. Roma just showed me.”
“What?”
“They’re being hunted. One of them, Edik I think, has been shot. I watched it all happen.”
“Wow! When?”
“I don’t know. I think they’ve come here to find me. They think I can fix Edik. Probably not long ago. How long would it take them to get here?”
“I don’t know,” Mandi says. “Didn’t you say it was about three hundred miles?”
“That’s by road. They’d come straight probably, maybe two-hundred fifty miles.” I try to do the mental calculations. Mandi beats me to it.
“A couple of days. How long do you think they’ve been here?”
“No clue.” Roma still lies next to me, relaxed now that the people are gone. “The man with the walking stick made him remember the men shooting at him. He played it back and I got to see it all.”
Mandi looks at Roma with huge, shocked eyes.
“There were four of them, and we ran forever.”
“We?”
I look at her, questioning her question. “Yeah, we. It was like I was there, like I was one of them. I was Roma racing through the snow, through the creeks. I actually felt the cold water, felt the sharp rocks on my paws, tasted Edik’s blood when I tried to clean his wound.”
“You tasted? You mean you licked him?”
“How else am I going to help him. Cat’s clean each other.”
Mandi shakes her head and shivers. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t either. I felt exactly like one of them. I had their eyesight, their sense of smell, their sense of hearing; I felt their pain.” I put my hand on Roma and run it down his muscled body. “I felt his power.”
“So, what do they want you to do?”
“Help them of course. Roma knows that Edik might die. He thinks I can save him.”
“Can you?”
I jump to my feet. Roma and Mandi rise with me. “No, but I know someone who can, if it’s not too late. I’ve got to go there.”
“Now?”
“Yeah! Now!”
Chapter 9
We chase the sun out of Bozeman on Interstate 90. The CD player is loaded with good folk music: Terri Hendrix, James Lee Stanley, Cosy Sheridan. Mandi insisted on her Canadian blues: Brian Blain, Carlos del Junco, Mem Shannon. The backseat and trunk are loaded with about half of everything we own. We hit Bob Wards Sporting Goods on the way out and added a few necessities
for our adventure, such as serious packs and cooking gear, freeze dried food, and a GPS, plus a topographical map. Although I know where the sabre-toothed cats are living, finding my way there may be tricky. While running from the bad guys last summer, Sam helped us load the waypoints and route into Matt’s GPS, to what we thought at the time was safety. We didn’t know until we got there that it was the hideout for the sabre-toothed cats. That hideout is not exactly where they are now, as that place is buried under rocks and water, and contains my mother’s remains. I’m hoping Matt still has the unit, and that he hasn’t cleared it. I also know that it will be anything but a day hike, especially if there is snow. We picked up snowshoes as well, something I know nothing about, but which Mandi does. Her stepfather taught her snowshoeing before he raped her.
My account is down better than a thousand as a result. I tried to talk Mandi into not going. She insisted, which of course I hoped she would.
I’m both excited and scared, and I don’t know why I’m either.
After the amazing discovery that I was able to see what Roma was remembering, it took me a good half hour to figure out how to tell the big cat that he had to take the others back to Vadik and Edik, and that I would come. I still don’t know if I was successful. He finally took off back up the mountain and Mandi and I headed for the car. I’m guessing that they will get back before I arrive there, unless Tricia slows them down. I worry that she won’t be able to make it, that she will give up and die somewhere along the away. There is nothing I can do about that.
“A lot of traffic tonight,” Mandi says.
I glance in my rearview mirror. There are a half dozen sets of headlights spread out a mile or two behind me. There are two eighteen wheelers poking along in front of me. I change lanes and whip past them on a curvy steep grade that seems to go on forever. “What do you mean a lot of traffic?” I say. “If it was like this around Fort Worth we’d be sure that the rapture had taken place.”
She laughs. “It’s all relative.”
We finally crest the top—a sign says Homestake Pass—and my ears pop. “Wow! Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“The pressure change. My ears popped.”
“You’ve never felt that before?”
“In airplanes. I didn’t realize it could happen in cars.”
She laughs at me again. We start down from the pass.
Suddenly there are lights ahead and below us, city lights; and then gradually there is an entire city filling what must be a bowl-shaped valley. “Is that beautiful or what?” I pull onto the shoulder and stop. After a truck blows past we both get out. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is that Butte?”
“I think so.”
I take some pictures with no idea whether they’ll turn out. We get back in and continue down the mountain, and into the city. Our visit here is strictly for food. We take the Harrison exit and start looking for a fast food place. We bypass a couple, neither of us apparently wanting fast food.
“What’s a Pork Chop John’s?” Mandi asks.
“I don’t know.”
“A pork chop sounds better than a Big Mac.”
“I can’t eat a pork chop while I drive!”
“The sign says pork chop sandwiches. You can eat a sandwich.”
“Whoever heard of a pork chop sandwich?”
“Whoever heard of a hamburger sandwich before it was invented?”
I try to analyze her logic. It’s there somewhere but my brain is fried and my stomach is growling. I pull into the parking lot. There doesn’t appear to be a drive-up window, so we go in.
It’s not real big, but not small either. There are four tall tables surrounded with a bunch of short tables. It must be a slow night as only three tables are occupied, though there are a couple and a single woman ahead of us. We find a menu, make our decisions and then wait our turn. After we order, we stand and wait. By the time the food lands on the counter in front of us we have both decided we’re too tired to get back in the car. We pick a low table, sit, eat, and talk.
It is almost 10:00 as we pull onto the interstate again with something like 250 miles to go. “How did we lose so much time? I thought we were going to get it to go?”
“We were tired and it was an interesting place,” Mandi says. “It’s my fault. Sorry.”
“No, it’s not your fault. I was tired, too. Great sandwich. We ought to have one of those places in Bozeman.”
“We do.”
“We do?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you see on the back of the menus? There’s one in Bozeman, on Main Street.”
“I didn’t know that. Goes to show you how much I pay attention.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Wonder if they’re all over the country?”
“Nope,” Mandi says. “Just four locations in Montana. It started right in Butte eighty-five years ago; some guy selling pork chop sandwiches out of the back of a wagon. I read about it while we were waiting for the sandwiches.”
“I’ll bet his name was John.”
“You are quick, girl.”
“What’s with the girder golf?”
“Huh?”
“The guys on the high rise girders teeing off, about a million miles above the city. The big poster on the back wall.”
“I guess I didn’t see it. Was probably too busy inhaling my sandwich.”
“You probably didn’t see the one of Armstrong placing the flag on the moon.”
“Nope.”
“I’ve always liked that for some reason.”
Mandi puts in one of her blues CDs and soon music fills the car. A three-quarter moon hangs high in the west pulling us toward Missoula.
Chapter 10
The Missoula stop is quick: A tank of gas, a bathroom break, a couple of cappuccinos. A few miles past Missoula we turn north onto Highway 93. The moon is much lower now, settling into a bank of clouds. It is midnight, and the road is suddenly very long and dark.
“Where exactly are we going to stay tonight?” Mandi asks.
I don’t answer her at first because, basically, I don’t know.
“Are we crashing at Matt’s house?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. It’s actually his mother’s house and I doubt she’d welcome us. I’m to blame for her husband’s death.”
“Why you?”
“Well not me alone. She blames Dad, too, and Sam.”
“What about this Victor guy, and his goons? They’re the ones who actually did the killing.”
“Yeah, but they wouldn’t have shown up if I’d stayed in Texas. I’m the one who ran away and got everything started. Dad’s the one who actually pulled Brian, her husband, into it looking for me. Sam’s the reason Victor Vandermill’s men showed up and started killing people. Matt is the only innocent victim.”
“Her wonderful, perfect son.”
“He’s a nice guy, Mandi, who was along for the ride with his dad and my dad. He watched his dad get killed and then nearly got killed himself trying to save all of us.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re right, in a sense. He is his mother’s little boy.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty . . . twenty-one. Not sure.” We come into something called Ravalli. My heart beats twice and we are past it. “Was that a town?”
Mandi looks behind us. “Yeah, I think so.” She turns in her seat. “So, we’re going to go knocking on Matt’s door tomorrow and ask him to go with us to help a sabre-toothed cat that’s been shot.”
“That would be today. Basically, yes.”
“I haven’t slept yet so despite what the clock might say, it’s tomorrow. What is his mom going to say about it?”
I give her a quick look.
“She’s going to tell us where we can go, right?”
“I imagine so. I guess we’re going to have to call, and get Matt to . . . Shit to Hell!”
I slam on the brakes because there are three deer standing on t
he highway. Something from the back seat slams into my elbow. The deer don’t move; their eyes glow at us like a half dozen little flashlights. I press harder on the brake, push against the steering wheel, and scream. None of it helps. One deer moves. I steer toward the left lane but only wind up going sideways. We continue sliding. Two deer run off the road, but one remains. I think we will stop before we hit it, and then there is a bump against the passenger side back door. Something else slams against my hip. All motion ceases.
“Jezz! You all right?”
Mandi picks up the GPS box from where it landed at her feet. It must be what flew from the back seat. “Other than a little whiplash, I’m fine.” The GPS itself was sitting on the console between us. I have no idea where that went. She throws the box into the back.
I open my door, get out, and limp around the back expecting to see a dead deer lying next to the car. Mandi gets out. I look under the car. “Where did she go?”
“Over there,” Mandi points.
Coming out of the other side of the ditch, barely visible in the glow of the taillights, is the deer I hit. “I didn’t kill her!” As I watch, and feel, I wish I had. She isn’t the graceful animal I’ve become used to seeing. One leg isn’t responding and she slips and falls back into the ditch. I know her pain; I feel it in my own hip. I start to go to her, limping like crazy. Mandi grabs me.
“No! Don’t! She can hurt you. Let her be.”
I know Mandi is right, but my insides twist. I understand the deer’s frustration, confusion. She lies still for a time and then gets back to her feet facing back down the road. I hold my breath. Suddenly she whips around and starts running our way, sees us and turns and scrambles up out of the ditch, heading for the trees. There is a barbwire fence. I take off after her. “Don’t!” I scream. She leaps, but the injured leg buckles and she falls into and then over the fence. “Oh God!” I feel all her pain, every barb that slices into her flesh, the slam of her body against the cold ground. She leaps back to her feet, stumbles, and then disappears into the darkness and the woods. I drop to my hands and knees in the ditch; the cold mud seeps into my jeans. My stomach heaves and then I expel my pork chop sandwich and cappuccino.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 94