He whooped and strutted up and down and did a little dance. “I am gonna cut me a piece of that hair pie. Good god yes! I need it, I love it, I want it! What a man won’t do for some hair pie, eh?”
He stalked off toward the Impala. Ramón watched him go. “What do you think, Joe?”
Joe smirked. “A fine example of Cro-Magnon man.”
“He’s quite the philosopher, isn’t he?”
Joe nodded. “I found the part about the hair pie especially enlightening.”
“How long do you think before Lupita kicks his ass?”
“Any minute now,” predicted Joe
Joe watched as Ryder approached her. She had her back to him as she lifted a shotgun from the hidden case built into the floor of the trunk. Joe and his brother Keith had made many special modifications to the vintage car when they had used it to smuggle guns. Hefting the shotgun, she checked it, set it down carefully in the trunk, and went for another. Ryder hovered over Lupita’s shoulder. Joe and Ramón waited expectantly.
“Good god almighty,” they heard him say. “Someone has been blessed by the Titty Fairy!”
“Smooth opener,” Ramón commented.
They could see Ryder’s eyes riveted on the two enormous mounds of flesh straining against the fabric under her camouflage t-shirt.
“Okay, here it comes,” Joe said, savoring the moment.
Lupita just walked away, not even deigning to acknowledge the crude remark. Ryder watched her go with a wistful expression, and then strutted off to his bus, dancing another little two-step boogie and humming to himself, proud as a peacock.
“Maybe next time,” Joe said. Shifting his attention to Colgate, he asked, “How goes the struggle, Karl?”
“Oh, I did a dandy interview with the demi-god over there,” growled Colgate, indicating Ryder. “Caught him in about a hundred lies and falsehoods. He thinks I am gonna powder his ass. Ha! Wait until he reads the article I’m gonna write. Did you know that he dodged the draft to avoid serving in Vietnam? He forgets he admitted it back when that was the fashionable thing to do. Now he drapes himself in the flag and runs around telling kids to join up and go kill ragheads.” Colgate snorted. “It’s sickening. The hypocrisy is just plain sickening.”
“Cheering people to war while sitting safely on the sidelines is an old trick, one of the oldest,” claimed Ramón.
“Yeah, it seemed to work pretty well for John Wayne and Ronald Reagan,” Joe commented wryly. “They won World War Two without ever leaving California and no one ever called them on it.”
“Well, I am gonna call Ryder’s bluff when I include him in my story. His Tarzan of the Woods act is about as convincing as Donald Trump’s toupee. You should hear the crap he spouts these days: ‘Before I kill an animal I bless the beast, and when I eat him and shit him out later it is a sacred part of the circle of life, and my turds are proof of the unity of all things in Nature’…that whole Native American noble savage horseshit. He’s even been busted for poaching numerous times. Poaching! The child molestation of the sport hunting world!”
“You write an article like that and you will get fired again,” Ramón warned him.
“Bah!” Colgate huffed. “I don’t soft pedal the facts.”
“Perhaps that is why you keep getting fired,” suggested Ramón.
“Come on,” Joe said, walking to the Impala.
After arming himself with his beloved Winchester and checking the shotgun to see that it was fully loaded, Joe slung it over his shoulder. He filled all four pockets of his M-65 field jacket (an old souvenir from the Army) with extra shells, a lot of them. It always took more than one shot to take down a chupacabra.
Lupita handed the other short-barreled shotgun to Ramón, who checked it and then kept it ready in his hands, barrel pointed at the ground. She handed him a bandoleer with extra shells and he draped it crosswise over his chest like an old time bandito.
Lupita let the dogs out of the car. They hit the gravel with soft thuds, then circled her and sniffed the air, cocking their heads with curiosity. Lupita waited a few tense moments. With a disinterested snort, Duke settled back on his haunches and looked quizzically at her, as if to say, You woke me up for this?
Behind him Panocha walked to the edge of the front bumper. Sniffing the air, she sat down and watched Ryder’s crew check their cameras and sound equipment. After a few moments, she wrinkled her nose, blew through her mouth, and then returned to sit beside Duke with a guttural grunt.
Joe and Lupita touched eyes. Both were thinking the same thing: if the dogs weren’t on point then the creatures had moved last night and were now sleeping elsewhere. The team would have to begin searching afresh.
“Let’s go make the rounds, see if we can’t sniff them out.” Joe unlimbered his Winchester. He refrained from working the slide just yet. No need to get Ryder and his crew all excited.
Too late.
Cavcey came running up, video camera in his arms. He had a guy wearing earphones and carrying a mic on a long boom with him who looked like Jesus in blue jeans.
“What are you doing?” Cavcey demanded.
Joe kept his eyes on A wing, with the gaping front doors. “We are going to let the dogs have a sniff around the buildings. See if we can’t turn up something for your boss to kill. ”
Cavcey hoisted the camera onto his shoulder. “Okay, we are good to go.”
Lupita moved to the other side of the car with the dogs as Joe regarded Cavcey skeptically. “What’s this? You pull double duty as cameraman, Mr. Producer?”
Cavcey nodded impatiently. “It saves money. Keeps the crew small and manageable.” He pointed to Ryder’s bus. “That’s a mobile studio. Editing bay, soundboard, the works. We have access to satellite uplink—”
Joe held up a hand. “I am not ready for my close-up, Mr. Deville. No one said anything about us being on camera.”
Cavcey sighed and took the camera from his shoulder and cradled it in his arms. “I told you before, if we don’t film it, it didn’t happen.”
Joe gave him a smarmy smile. “If we are going to be on camera, then we’re going to need more money.” He heard Lupita snicker. Ramón went and stood next to her, nodding his head in agreement.
Cavcey puffed up indignantly. “This is extortion.”
“No,” Joe said, “it’s show business, and I am told there is no business like it. If you want our help selling Jet Ryder records, then ante up, you cheap bastard. You already stiffed me for your breakfast.”
Cavcey twitched, running a hand over his forehead. His bald head gleamed with sweat. “Actually, Ryder is selling copies of his autobiography right now. Jet, White, and Blue is going to be a best seller, even better than his cookbook, God, Guns, and Grilling.”
“Hooray for him,” Joe snapped. “Either cut me another check or get that camera out of my face.”
Cavcey excused himself and ran off, leaving the sound guy standing there. Joe checked him out critically. The guy was in his late twenties, wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, sandals, and blue jeans, with long dark hair and a thick beard trailing down his face. Joe studied the headphones clapped to the man’s ears and then barked, “Hey, Sunshine Superman. Are you recording me?”
The guy shook his head and walked over. “I’m Eric Johnson. Don’t lump me in with the rest of these guys, okay? I am just picking up a paycheck.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “I don’t like Jet Ryder’s music or his dumb TV show. But they pay me fifty bucks an hour to do this.”
“Okay, I can see where you’re coming from,” Joe told him. “How long you been doing sound?”
“For Ryder?” asked Johnson.
“Yes.”
“This is my second season. We shoot twelve episodes per season. This is the first episode of the new season, so this is my thirteenth episode.”
“Great, an unlucky number,” Joe remarked. “Take my advice and stay out of our way when we are working. I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but this job tends to get crazy supe
r quick. It’s a lot more dangerous than sticking arrows in wild pigs or shooting down helpless deer from three hundred yards away. Sometimes we need to move very fast.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Lupita’s voice drifted over. “Check out Strawberry Shortcake.”
Joe turned his head and saw a redhead in a ranger’s uniform strolling toward them. She waved at them. “I hope you’ve got your hunting license,” she called.
“We are not hunting,” Joe told her. “The one you want to talk to is Jet Ryder. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He’s the big deal around here.”
“If you are not hunting, then why do you have those weapons?”
“Oh, you mean these?” Joe said innocently, holding up his shotgun. “These are for self-defense.” He jerked his chin at Ramón and Lupita. “Come on.”
With the ranger’s words of protest fading behind them, the three hunters moved to stand in front of the shuttered building. Joe pointed to the open doorway of the administration wing. Lupita approached it with the dogs. They sniffed, alert, but not on-point.
Lupita shook her head. “Not in there.”
“Okay.” Joe unslung his Winchester and worked the slide. Stepping onto the cracked concrete pathway, he moved to the left toward B wing. The dogs came along quietly, moving easily through the knee-high grass poking through the gaps in the crumbling walkway.
B wing’s doors were chained, the windows boarded up. No sound but the wind whispering through the grass. No one was surprised when the dogs failed to detect the presence of chupacabras. Slowly, they made their way to C wing. It was in the same condition as the B building: doors securely padlocked, windows nailed shut with plywood. Joe moved off toward D wing.
The dogs growled, a low rumbling in their throats like approaching thunder. Joe froze and then swung around to stare at Duke and Panocha. They were pointed at C wing. Ramón and Lupita brought up their weapons and worked the slides. The sound echoed metallically in the afternoon air, menacing and dangerous.
Duke’s ears were flat on the sides of his head, lips pulled back, teeth showing. The muscles in his neck were bunched. Next to him, Panocha crouched, lips curled, fangs exposed.
Joe scanned the building for signs of entry. The front door was chained. The windows all along the front of the structure were boarded up tight with plywood. Motioning for the others to follow, he crept around the side, checking windows as he went. The trees fluttered in the distance behind the overgrown football field. It sounded eerily like a crowd applauding. Joe moved slowly, carefully, gravel crunching under his boots.
They made a full sweep of C and found no sign that anything had forced its way inside. But Duke and Panocha stayed on-point, growling, which meant that chupacabras were in there. Somehow, the creatures had managed to gain entry to the building. Joe wondered about the roof—maybe there was a hole up there?
It wasn’t easy tracking animals that were capable of flying. Sure, chupacabras were as smelly as garbage dumps, but their scent went pretty cold once they launched up into the sky. It was only when they came down to nest and sleep that the trail could be picked up again— another reason why Joe and his team hunted during the day. It was like chasing vampires—and if you thought about what chupacabras ate, it was rather close to the truth.
But sometimes the creatures savaged a body instead of drinking the blood. They went into some kind of frenzy—like sharks—and attacked anything that they could reach. In such moments they were berserkers, mindless killing machines, doing it not for hunger or defense—but seemingly for the sheer visceral enjoyment of it, like battle fury.
When they returned to the front walkway, Cavcey, Johnson, and Ryder were there. Karl Colgate hovered in the background with Sheriff Walters and Ranger Singer next to him. Ryder had a compound bow in his hand and a quiver full of arrows strapped across his back.
“Are we a go?”
Joe held up his hand. “Not yet. We can’t figure out how they got in there.”
“What difference does that make?” Cavcey asked, shouldering the camera. He got a shot of the exterior of the school and a few random shots of the derelict houses in the distance. He circled around the group of hunters.
Joe glared at him. “That thing had better not be recording.”
Ryder stepped forward. “Hell, partner. We can pay you each an extra thousand dollars to appear on camera. No sweat. No problem at all.”
Joe raised his eyebrows at Lupita and Ramón and they both shrugged, very much in keeping with their national character. Mexicans can shrug like no other people on Earth, the meaning of the gesture dependent upon the context in which it is employed. It can mean “yes,” it can mean “no,” it can mean “I don’t care,” it can mean “go fuck yourself.” Joe took it for consent this time.
“Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal,” he told Ryder, then turned and pointed to the front doors of C wing.
“The dogs have hit on this building here. But there are no signs of forced entry.” He turned and smiled for the camera. “A mystery.”
“Could they be wrong?” asked Ryder, watching the animals with interest. Duke and Panocha were wary, eyes riveted on the structure. Their ears moved back and forth, scanning like radar dishes.
“Never,” said Lupita without looking away from the school.
“Well if you say so, beautiful, then I’ll take it as the Gospel,” cooed Ryder, trying to catch her eye. Behind him, both Cavcey and Johnson rolled their eyes. She ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken.
Joe slung his shotgun and trotted back to the Impala. He returned with a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters. He looked at Lupita and Ramón. Lupita unhooked Duke and Panocha from their leashes. Both she and Ramón took a firing stance, weapons at the ready. From the corner of his eye Joe saw Cavcey point the camera at him. The sound guy pushed his boom mic above Joe’s head. Joe felt ridiculous.
“Okay,” he said, trying to ignore the video crew. “I am going to get these doors unlocked and then I want everyone to stand back.”
He glanced at the overcast sky. “It’s still pretty bright, so I don’t think they’ll come out and attack…but you never know with these things.”
He checked his wristwatch and confirmed that it was early afternoon. They had plenty of daylight left, even if it was coming through a darkening layer of fast-approaching thunderclouds. The wind was picking up too. It looked like a storm was brewing.
Joe clamped the cutters around the chain holding the door shut. Grunting, he worked the handles and the blades bit into the metal. With a sharp snap, the chain slithered to the concrete. Joe grabbed the handles and flung the double-doors open, and then stepped back quickly.
All eyes were on the dogs. Duke moved forward slowly, nose to the ground and ears pinned, with Panocha close at his heels. They paused in the threshold and then growled softly.
Joe turned to the TV crew. “Stay here.”
When Cavcey began to protest, Joe said, “We just want to make sure they’re in there. We won’t engage. We will just find them and then come get you, okay?”
He came up to the dogs with Lupita and Ramón a step behind him. Lupita made a clicking sound and Duke and Pancho padded inside. Joe and the others followed the dogs into the building.
The musty smell of dead air greeted them; cobwebs, mold, fungus, and rot. A hallway stretched out before them, long and dark. On either side were doors leading to empty classrooms. Small beams of light stabbed through the edges of the plywood covering the windows, crisscrossing the hallway with thin shafts of yellow.
With his shotgun out in front of him, Joe crept down the hall, watching the dogs. Duke and Panocha moved very slowly, very deliberately, placing their padded feet carefully on the cracked tiles. They passed the first two classrooms without breaking stride. Then Duke stopped, sniffing the air. Panocha came abreast and joined him in testing the air. A confused whine escaped Duke’s lips and he tilted his head. Joe watched them, frowning. Had they lost the scent?
To L
upita he asked, “What’s wrong? I’ve never seen them act this way before.”
“I don’t know,” Lupita admitted.
Duke walked in a small circle, nose to the tiles, growled again and then moved off, creeping down the hall, his head moving back and forth. Everyone followed, their boots echoing off the tiled hallway.
They came to a T-junction. A sign pointed one way to the bathrooms. The other sign said “maintenance” stenciled in big red letters under a layer of grime.
Duke stood at attention, nose working, breath chugging deeply in his nostrils. He sounded like a train, chuffing his cheeks, tasting the air. Panocha whined softly beside him.
Lupita and Ramón stared down the corridor, eyes searching the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The light was very poor, gray darkness deepening into solid black.
Joe brought out a mini flashlight and snapped it on. A sharp yellow cone of light blazed out, thrusting back the darkness. He worked the beam over the walls. Nothing.
Looking down at the dogs, he asked them, “Which way, Duke?”
Duke slowly stepped to the right, toward the area marked “maintenance.” He and Panocha growled, jaws working. Then they stopped, turned to give Joe a hesitant look, and whined; another uncharacteristic move. They slowly began creeping forward again.
Joe shared a look over his shoulder with the others and then followed the dogs. Another door loomed ahead at the end of the corridor. Joe waved Lupita up to him and she clicked again with her tongue. Instantly, the dogs froze. Lupita whistled softly and the dogs padded down to stand with her.
“Stay here and keep them back,” he said, pointing to Duke and Panocha. The dogs looked at him with expressions that seemed to ask, Don’t we get to share in the fun?
But Joe didn’t want a repeat of last night; the dogs were for tracking, not fighting. Lupita had chosen Argentine Dogos because of their excellent mixture of qualities. They were originally bred to track and hunt large game like pumas and wild boar. They were steadfast and brave and would willingly fight to the death to protect their owners, but they were also capable of being loving and gentle. However, it was their remarkable sense of smell that he most wanted to utilize. The dogs were the best early warning detection system for chupacabras in existence. Duke and Panocha were too valuable as trackers and sentries to be put at risk needlessly. If someone was going to imperil their life going toe to toe with the creatures…well, that was Joe’s job.
Fury of the Chupacabras Page 12