“What if someone finds out we did it after he was gone?” Joule looked up at him again. Her hands were on the hunk of meat in front of her, with pop-up germ-killing wipes sitting next to her.
Cage had wanted to shrug. “But that’s just it: he's not dead. It doesn’t become a problem until they can prove that he died and when. Well, even then, maybe not.” He was thinking it through. “Dad did give us permission to access these accounts. We have his password. So we're not actually doing anything illegal. Maybe just a little sketchy.”
He looked at his sister, sitting at the table. It was once again covered in plastic as she baited a tracker to catch a killer species. Colorado had avalanches. DC was having problems with bees. Florida was slowly disappearing under the sea level—exactly as predicted. His father’s bank accounts were really no one’s first concern these days. “Honestly, the way things are going, I don't think anyone is going to come after us. Kind of like the house.”
He looked up. They had not yet even received their first message of an overdue payment. But he was waiting. “Should we pay the house? I’m thinking if we can take out the hunters, the place will be valuable again.”
“I don't know,” his sister replied. “I mean, there's particle board over the big front window. The hardwood has scratches all over it now. Even if we take out all the night hunters, I don't know that the housing market is ever going to recover—or at least not in our lifetimes.”
“Well, if it comes to it—if we change our minds and we're still here—we have enough to back pay the mortgage.”
“True point,” she said, and she went back to looking at the hook and the meat system she’d designed.
“Are you trying to catch it like a fish?” Cage asked.
“No, that's the problem. I don't want to catch it. I just want to feed it. I think I need to cut off the point of the hook and push the wire back around so that no night hunters can get caught on it.” She looked at the piece, balanced up on one end on the table, and turned her head this way and that as she analyzed it. “I think,” she said, pointing, “I need to put a small slit here and push the tracker in right to the middle of the muscle.”
They still had no idea if the night hunters would even fall for it. But it was worth trying.
Once she had it done and strung up, they’d had to go outside and build the contraption to make it dance. With a pulley and nylon cord, they strung the meat to a motor that wound and unwound a small amount at various random times. Cage programmed it so the motor would never go longer than four seconds without moving. Though the meat would only move only up and down, he hoped the randomness would be enough to get a hunter to bite into it.
Joule pointed upward into the tree, but away from the pulley. “We can put up a second pulley over here. The single motor could still then move it back and forth. But as it would hang at the bottom of a V of cord, which would give it a little more lifelike motion.”
“True,” Cage had said, considering her upgraded option, but he was already wiping sweat from his forehead and in need of a shower.
There were now more and more things to do during daylight. And though the summer days were getting longer, which was helpful, he and his sister had lost their ability to stay up and read at night or do anything after dark. So he compromised. “Tomorrow. If this doesn't work, we'll do it your way tomorrow.”
His phone pinged then, giving him the break he wanted as he pulled it out.
“Dr. Christian,” he said, absently telling his sister what he saw. Then he held up the message. Though she was a few feet away, she had excellent eyesight and could probably read it fine.
The email contained pictures of the application as though Dr. Brett just wanted to be sure that they knew that he had sent the form in with their information and wasn’t exchanging it for his own. The second picture showed where he’d created several slides from the blood. He’d used supplies from his own office and covered the mailing, which Cage thought was very generous of him.
The email also included a date when the doctor would come by again, next time bringing the Warfarin in his preferred brands of rat poison. It would take a few days, since he often only found one kind at a store, and he didn’t want to trigger any questions if anyone he knew found him buying that much poison.
Cage replied to the email, agreeing to the ideas.
Dr. Brett must have been online and watching his email come in, because just as Cage had turned away, his phone dinged again. He pulled it out again and called up the return email, once again turning and holding it up to Joule.
“I was thinking through the things we saw during the necropsy,” Dr. Brett had written. “Those feet. Remember I told you I recognized something familiar about them? Well, I found something interesting. Look at the pictures—”
Several pictures of mammalian feet showed on the screen. Cage was looking at foot pads from a variety of species, even though he couldn’t have named them by their feet alone. Dr. Brett had circled the pads in several of the images. In a few others, he’d marked around the scoop-shaped nails.
Cage held up the phone, showing the pictures to his sister. “That’s a really interesting option.”
54
Joule stood in the woods, feet planted, arrow notched into the bow, string pulled back ever so slightly. As ready as she could be, she scanned her eyes first left then right.
Though it hadn't happened the last time she'd been out, or even the time before that, having seen one night hunter walking during the daytime was enough to keep her vigilant. It had been in this section of the woods, too. She was not going to get caught unaware again.
She was also concerned this time because they were making noise.
Cage stood behind her, swinging the radio receiver one way and then another. It was a very simple system—the closer the signal, the higher the frequency. But this meant it was difficult to know which direction to go—a dangerous game of warmer/colder. It involved a lot of Cage waving the receiver at arm’s length, trying to pick up the differences in signal.
Because they’d turned the volume up to hear the distinction in the frequencies, Joule was even more nervous. She pulled back on the bow string just a little harder, even though she hadn't seen anything.
The butcher-meat bait had been successful on their first try, and Joule had been incredibly pleased. The night camera had shown that the meat raising and lowering on the pulley system—even as slightly as it did—had been enough to attract the attention of the hunters.
The only thing that had gone wrong was that the eight-hundred-pound test rope of nylon had not held up to the canines. They’d frayed it, then snapped it and pulled the meat down, torn into it and left the broken cord and bone behind.
Between the detritus of their work in the morning and the camera, Joule had enough evidence to be convinced the tracker had been consumed.
The second camera—now aimed down the street—had shown their street fighter had come out again. He appeared to be carrying a broadsword, which Joule found more than a bit inefficient. He’d come a little closer to their camera this time. It was enough to identify the person as male, but though Joule didn't think it was her father, she didn't yet have enough information to completely rule that out. She had to admit, the broadsword was the best evidence against it being her father. He would never have thought such an unwieldy weapon was in his best interest.
“Shh! Stop!” Joule hissed.
It felt like it took milliseconds too long for Cage to turn off the receiver, for her to perk her ears and reach for the sound that she thought she had heard. They stayed like that for a while, quiet and only listening, ready to act. But whether it was thirty seconds or three minutes, she didn't know.
When they didn't hear anything, she relaxed her shoulders a little bit. “I'm sorry. I thought I heard something.”
Cage looked at her, his frown almost chastising. “Don't be sorry. We have a tracker. We're getting close. We have scholarships to Stanford. We’re going, a
nd this is how: we're going to be overly cautious. We’ll stop and listen a hundred times and be glad if we don’t hear anything. We're not going to make the same mistakes…”
He trailed off. He didn't add “as Dad did.” But she understood.
“Thank you,” was all she said. In her head, she heard her mother's voice, reminding her that her brother would be her best friend, if the fighting kids could get their crap together. No one would ever understand her the way her brother would. Not only had they grown up together—same house, same experiences, same parents—but they had the advantage of being twins, the same age, neither being the older or the younger child.
Though Joule was two minutes older, her mother had broken her of the habit of lording it over her brother a long time ago. That had been wise, as Cage had ended up a good four inches taller than her.
With a breath, she nodded to him. “Now you can turn the receiver back on.”
She lifted the bow and they walked about five feet in the direction they agreed the sound was indicating. They had a few more hours of sunlight to operate. They’d gone to school, taken their Geography test, and she was confident she’d done well. When her brother texted her at lunch, it seemed like a good idea to just disappear.
They never would have gotten away with this kind of truancy, even last year. Last year, they'd missed just as much school, but that had been days the school declared off—not skips. The school board had used up every single snow day, but they'd had heat days and cold days, and flood days and high wind days.
Still, the students had all missed those days together. This year, they were missing randomly, but no one complained. So Joule and Cage had snuck out to the parking lot at lunch and come home. They had bigger fish to fry. And only four days of class left.
They walked another fifteen slow feet, her muscles tense, her body tight. This was her workout these days. When they were kids, she and Cage had taken karate classes, and both she and her brother each held a second-degree black belt in mixed martial arts. They had used some of that when fighting the hunters with their dad.
But after that second black belt, they’d both left the program. Though their parents had encouraged them to keep exercising, neither of the kids had felt any burning need to get to the gym. Right now, Joule’s tension was burning calories. She could feel it.
While she had the bow and arrow in hand, she was ready to roundhouse kick a hunter, if that was the better option. She would happily make use of the hard heel on her shoe—a shoe she’d chosen for just that purpose—and kick one of these night hunters upside the head.
Three more turns, fifteen more minutes of getting deeper into the woods, of going the wrong way, realizing the frequency was dropping, and turning back, and Cage finally held the receiver up. “This is close. Very close.”
“I know,” Joule was whispering, despite the fact that her brother wasn't. “Where are they?”
“Who knows? There’s only one tracking device. And there’s not more than one hunter hiding right here… is there?” He was turning again, looking up in the trees, down at the ground. None of it made sense. Despite the clear signal from the meter, there were no night hunters.
Joule felt the same confusion. “I just assumed they would sleep in packs and during the day, because they’re up at night. It makes sense they would sleep now. We know they hunt in packs.” She too stared at the forest around her. “Are we looking right at them and not seeing?”
That had been her concern all along, that the brindle-like coloring on the creatures would blend right into the forest floor. That she could stub her toe on a sleeping evil before she even knew she was on top of it.
She and Cage walked the full circle, and the indicator was very clear that they had gone all the way around the tracking device. It was functioning perfectly and it was right here.
But there was no night hunter here.
Not a pack, not even a single one curled up on the forest floor.
Cage’s words were long, drawn out, and questioning. “Do you think it's just the tracker that's here?”
“I don't know.” She was looking around as though she might just spot the tiny thing. “They ate it. We saw it on the video. Do you think he didn't really swallow it and spit it out over here? Or barfed it up?” She was wracking her brain for scenarios that made it possible for the tracker to move from the meat in the yard to here, but without a canine attached.
“That's a long way to carry it,” Cage put in. “Do you think he crapped it out?”
Joule shook her head. “That's the very first tracker. We only put it out less than twelve hours ago. I mean, they are a different species, but I don't know any mammalian system—except maybe a newborn puppy—that could poop something out that fast.”
Cage was reaching down to the forest floor as though to scatter the leaves and see if he could spot a tracker the size of a pill. Joule was shaking her head at him, her hands still occupied with the bow as she spoke over her shoulder. “You're going to put your hand in poop.”
“I'm being careful,” he protested.
But he was cut off by the growl from behind them.
55
Joule swung around sharply. She had the bow string pulled tight, ready to let the arrow fly. Sure enough, she was staring into the eyes of a night hunter, the broad daylight making its almost black irises glossy.
It growled at her and her brother again.
This one was larger than any she'd seen before. She thought for a moment of her father's notes saying that he'd seen some of these bigger ones. Was this species getting larger? Could it happen this fast? She didn’t know. Dr. Brett had said evolution was revolution.
But this wasn't the time to figure it out.
Throwing her shoulders into it, she pulled the bow tight as she could.
“Now,” her brother whispered.
She couldn't afford to look around and see if others were coming or wait and analyze this one’s actions. She let go of the bowstring.
With a thunk, the arrow buried itself deep into the canine’s neck, aiming back toward the chest.
It squealed and tried to toss its head back. But she must have hit some important muscles, because—though it tried to move its head—it couldn’t. The front legs came up into the air, almost like a horse pawing at the sky. However, the vocal cords remained intact and it let out a hideous sound somewhere between a howl and a scream.
Joule yanked another arrow from the quiver on her back, notched it, pulled back, and swung wide. Cage faced down the now-injured hunter with the receiver in one hand and his dagger in the other. At least now he faced a disabled animal.
She was going to watch his back. It was hard to turn away, but this was the plan. Despite the fact that her father hadn't followed what he'd said, he'd been right.
Stick together.
She and Cage had added two more rules.
Stay in formation.
Don’t let them get behind you.
Working with that plan, she scanned the area in front of her, her eyes alternately focusing and glazing with the hope that she could catch movement. Hoping she could spot things that were too well hidden to see with her normal vision.
This was her big concern. If she was standing in the middle of the street and a pack of night hunters came toward her, she couldn't miss them. But here in the dappled light of the woods, the creatures could hide right in front of her.
This one had come up behind them, and they wouldn’t have known it was there if it hadn't growled. If it had jumped first, one of them might have gone down. She almost hyperventilated with the thought, but then reminded herself that it hadn't happened that way, and they would use this mistake to prepare better for next time.
She both heard and felt her brother working behind her. He grunted as he jabbed the hunter harshly with the dagger. In turn, it squealed and she heard the sound of flesh being struck.
With her scan completed, she rotated back quickly to check on her brother, to be sure he
was holding up okay. From behind, she watched his shoulders as he put in the effort to pull the dagger out of the hunter and then to jam it in again.
This time, the night hunter fell over.
Cage breathed an audible sigh of relief that the job was done.
Joule turned another full circle before she looked again—at her brother and at the creature lying on its side, its rib cage moving rapidly as it waited to breathe its last. Cage, too, was looking around. They could not afford to rest. They could not afford to be surprised again.
She wondered if her brother would stab the hunter again, put it out of its misery, but he didn't seem to have it in him. The creature wasn't long for this world.
“We need to get out of here,” she told him. “Before more find us.”
“Yes, but this is our new one. This is our fresh skin sample. We need to take him home.”
“He's still breathing.”
“Not for long,” Cage replied, right on the heels of her words, and he was right.
“We don't have any way to get him home.” He doesn’t even have a stupid collar like a real dog, she thought, so we could drag him. But she didn't say it. Even if there was something so silly as a collar on a wild animal, she wasn't going to put her hand that close to the mouth—not while it was still alive. It had taken her a while to get used to getting close to the gaping jaws of the ones on the table, and they were well and dead.
“We also need video,” she said, pulling out her phone and starting a film of the night hunter. Lying on its side, breathing heavily and harshly, her arrow still sticking out of its sternum, it blinked one eye rapidly. The gaping holes in its side predicted a quick death. Cage had done his work.
Keeping at a suitable distance, in case the dog jumped up and snapped at her, Joule walked a full circle around it. If she could have, she would have flipped it over and gotten video of the other side. But it wasn't dead yet.
“We need to go home and rig up a way to get it back,” Cage said, and she mistakenly caught her brother’s voice on film. She clicked it off.
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