The Flock

by James Robert Smith

  “Just part of my job, old man. Part of the job.”

  For a moment, the two merely stood on the porch, out of the hot summer sun. Off in the distance, in the far pastures, cattle were slowly chewing their way along; some lying in the shade trees spaced here and there, some wading in the ponds. The politician sighed and took it all in. “Wonderful place you have here,” he said. “I’ve been sorry to hear about your problems with those developers at your doorstep, but you know how things are.”

  Grisham put his hand on Cauthen’s shoulder. “And I’ve appreciated your sympathy, and all the help you’ve given me.” He followed Cauthen’s gaze out toward the pastures and all of the cattle. “I assume this visit has something to do with that?”

  “Winston, I’m not even here. I have a dozen witnesses who’ll swear on a stack of Holy Bibles that I’m in my offices in Tallahassee right this minute. The waitress who serves me afternoon pie at my favorite diner will state that I was there an hour ago eating blueberry cobbler and had four cups of black coffee.”

  “I understand, Davis.”

  “Frankly, you’re going to receive an offer of some import in a few minutes, but I don’t know anything about it and won’t until it becomes a matter of public record some months from now.”

  “I see.” Grisham stood even straighter and taller now. “Should we sit here on the porch and discuss it? You know the only ears in this household are right here on my head.”

  “Well, I know that, Win. But let’s go to your office so you can see what’s in this briefcase you’re about to get. And then, after that…well, even from way out here I can smell a good meal cooking. What’s Mazie got for me this time?”

  The soldier laughed, and slapped his friend on the back. “You’ll just have to wait a bit longer. I’m not going to spoil Mazie’s surprises. She’d have my hide, you know.”

  “Well, let’s get this business over with as quick as possible. That cobbler just didn’t hold me, for some reason.”

  The two men chuckled as they vanished into Grisham’s offices.

  Long after Cauthen had left, after returning to his viper’s nest in the state capital, Grisham sat at his desk and reviewed the papers, the photographs (which he was instructed to destroy), and to muse over the offer. It was beyond tempting. It was a taker. It was almost a dream come true.

  His fingers traced over the crown jewel in a heap of glittering finery. The Berg Brothers Studio, which had first refusal on roughly 100,000 acres of what would be real estate prime for development, had deeded over to him a 15,000 acre tract of that land that abutted his own acreage. It would serve as a true buffer between his holdings and those that would soon be homes and businesses and streets and parking lots and well-groomed parks. He would still have his privacy and he would still have plenty of room in which to flex his military muscle. Seventeen thousand total acres was more than enough room in which to continue to train and to prepare. So what if filthy Jews were handing over the land to him? It was still going to be his.

  Added to that was that he wouldn’t have to pay for it. Not a dime. The studio would settle his suits, out of court, by buying the land and signing it over to him. The title would be his.

  And all for doing something for which he was uniquely prepared to do. Something which he would actually enjoy doing. “Lock and load, boys. Lock and load,” he muttered, thinking of what was to come. Who would have thought that he’d be given everything he currently wanted, all for merely killing some big game and a few troublesome idiots?

  He moved the land offer away; stacking the papers neatly in a pile to his left, and took out another set of papers. Grisham had been instructed to destroy them, also, but he wanted to linger over them, observe them. They were photographs of a most amazing sort. The pictures looked to have been taken in a hurry, and most of them were not well structured, and most of them were not very clear. But what they showed was something truly shocking.

  Whoever had taken the pictures had come face-to-face with a creature stranger than anything Grisham had ever seen. And he had once killed a tiger in Vietnam, a tiger that had come into his camp one evening to drag away one of his junior officers. He’d killed the thing with a burst from his M-16. When they’d measured it, the thing had taped out at sixteen feet from nose tip to tail tip. He’d been told it would probably have been some kind of record, if he’d saved the skull and weighed the thing. But all he had to record it was a grainy photograph of himself and his men standing beside its hoisted corpse. But this…this was something else, entirely.

  He pulled the best of the nine photographs to him and eyed it carefully. Almost, he chuckled. Whoever had taken the picture had done so on Grisham’s own property. In the background, just behind the creature’s big head, was a posted sign, and a tree with a length of barbed wire coiling skyward. That sign was his, marking his property line. That tree with the barbed wire on it was growing not more than two miles from his very house. He knew, because he’d been there just a few days before, when he’d stumbled upon the reporter, that Dodd fellow.

  Well, he knew who had taken these pictures. And he knew who had been found shot through the head two nights ago, a corpse left behind by a stupid idiot of a mechanic who should himself be dead now if he had been working for Grisham.

  Grisham continued to peruse the photo. This thing looked, at first glance, to be a dinosaur. But after studying the photograph for a while, Grisham could see that it was some kind of bird. A bird with arms instead of wings. A bird that stood, if he was measuring his reference points correctly, probably ten feet tall. A bird that size most likely weighed in at something around a thousand pounds. And all he had to do to take possession of 15,000 acres of land was kill it, destroy it, sponge its existence from this Earth.

  Of course, where there was one, there were more. He had to eliminate them all to get what he wanted, what he needed. It wouldn’t be difficult. He had a most impressive armory at his disposal, and he currently had some of the finest military men one could hope to gather staying right there on his farm. He would choose a team, arm them appropriately, and they would sweep the wilderness until they found and killed each and every one of these mad, glorious creatures.

  And of course he’d had to agree to take care of those fool environmentalists who were causing so much trouble. That part also would not prove to be terribly difficult, since they would have inside help. He was never surprised to learn that those left-wing ideals could be bought with good, capitalist money.

  Well, he had a job to do. He had to kill some people and exterminate an entire species.

  It would be a pleasure.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  This time, Ron did not have to wait in silence and frustration outside the gates of Holcomb’s compound. As he and Mary arrived, the gates were opening to allow a pair of ATVs to leave. One of the small, yellow six-wheelers carried two passengers and Holcomb was alone on the other. Each pulled an even smaller trailer filled with closed nylon bags packed full of supplies and equipment of unknown variety. In the action and noise, Kate had tried to yell a request at Ron. It had been Mary who had understood and had retrieved a backpack from the tailgate of one of Holcomb’s pickup trucks. Mary took a look at it, ran her hands across the fabric, and then handed it over to Kate who grabbed it without so much as a glance at Mary before rushing it over to the ATV being piloted by Vance Holcomb. Despite the fact that these people were moving about in full daylight, Ron was curious about their intentions, and was suspicious.

  “Nice pack he’s taking. Wonder where the hell they’re going,” Mary said to Ron as he pulled to the right to allow the squat vehicles to pass by them.

  “Well, whatever it is they’re doing, they’re not paying us any attention. Look at ’em go.”

  In fact the ATVs were heading out at some speed and soon left the narrow road on which Ron and Mary had arrived, quickly vanishing into the forest. Both watched the trees swallow up the bright yellow vehicles. When they turned their attention back
to the compound, Kwitney was standing at the entrance, appearing out of the clouds of sand and dust the all terrain vehicles had left in their wakes.

  “That’s Kate, eh,” Mary said. “Can’t be too many women around that damned tall.” Or, unfortunately, that good looking, she thought. Despite her better judgment, she felt jealousy welling up.

  “Oh, that’s her, for sure. One of a kind, I assume.” Ron walked away from his truck without another word and walked toward her. Just behind her was the Seminole she had pointed out to Ron the first time he’d been there. Billy, his name was. Riggs didn’t know the man’s last name, and again he felt the twinge of guilt he often got for knowing so little about that side of his heritage.

  Before he had halved the thirty feet between them, Kate spoke. “You go straight to the cops?” There was a hard look in her eyes. Again, Ron was a bit disturbed at his inability to read her, but that was also part of the fascination he had for her.

  “Well…no.” He could see surprise flash for a second upon her face. “But that’s what we’re doing here unannounced.” Ron indicated Mary, who was coming up behind him. “This is Mary Niccols. She’s the trapper we refer for business.”

  “I’ve seen her work in the papers,” Kate said, her voice flat and unemotional. “Thanks for grabbing Vance’s pack for me.”

  “S’okay,” Mary said.

  By then, Ron was next to Kate, could smell her: a scent of soap and a mild perfume, and a bit of sweat. Her pleasant odor excited him. “I need a favor,” he said.

  “What kind of favor?” She stood her ground, unmoving, watching Mary until she had joined them there at the gate. Behind her, Billy observed them soundlessly, no indication that the two Seminoles knew one another.

  “I need to use some computer equipment, and I don’t need anyone poking their noses into what I have to do. I figured this was the best place to come.” He held his hands out, palms up.

  “What kind of hardware?” she asked.

  Reaching into his shirt pocket, Ron produced the envelope and quickly tore it open. He showed her the small disk. “I think this is from one of those digital cameras,” he said. “Can you download the contents and show me what’s on it?”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  He didn’t answer her for a few moments. They were all quiet while he thought about what he was going to say. Finally, he just blurted it out. He never was any good at oblique strategies. “Tim Dodd gave it to me. Yesterday morning. I don’t know what’s on it, but I would guess it probably has something to do with his death.”

  “You sure?”

  He could tell Kate wanted to take the disk from him. Her shoulders flexed for a brief second, as if she were going to reach for it. “I’m pretty sure. Two classic goons showed up some time after you called and tried to disconnect my head from my shoulders.” He jutted a thumb at Mary. “If she hadn’t shown up, I would have given the disk to them and no telling what might have happened to me. They might not have believed that I didn’t know what was on it. Obviously, they beat it out of Dodd that I had it, or they would never have known to show up at my house.”

  “Obviously,” Kate said. Once again she eyed Mary, giving her a good look. Ron wondered if Mary was jealous. He’d not considered the emotional tension of the two being together. Kate looked hard, unreadable again, and then she softened. “Come on in. Let’s see what’s on there.”

  “Thanks, Kate.” As soon as she turned and headed for the near building, Ron and Mary fell in behind her. At their rear, Billy remained to close and lock the gate. As the three went through the door and inside, the Indian was still outside, securing the garage from which the ATVs had come. Ron turned and gave him a final look, and saw that Billy was looking directly at Mary, even as busy as his hands were with work. For a second or two their eyes locked. They must know one another, Ron mused. And then he was inside, leaving Billy out there.

  “Holcomb coming back soon?” Ron asked. They were heading down the long, wide hallway toward the millionaire’s great office. Cool air surrounded them; soft fluorescence lighted the way.

  “No. He and the others are going to be out in the bush today.”

  “Research?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Wish I could have gone with them. But I had to stay behind.” She was walking fast, and Ron could tell she was as anxious as he was to see the contents of that disk. “Lucky for you I was here.”

  “Lucky for me,” Ron said, wanting to touch her hand.

  They came to a locked door and Kate pulled a keyring out of her front pocket and soon had the door open. This was not the room Ron had noticed during his first visit, but it was home to an even more impressive array of computer hardware than the other one had been.

  “We’ve got our mainframe in here,” she told them. “But we won’t need that for your little disk there. If it is digitized photographs, as you say, then all we’ll need is this handy-dandy Mac over here. It’s my favorite machine for graphics.”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing to me,” Mary admitted. “I’ve pretty much resisted the computer age, myself. My cousin does all of that stuff for me. Does the books, types the bills, handles the correspondence. He even built a website for the business.”

  “I didn’t know you had a website,” Ron said.

  “Sure. Landed a couple dozen jobs from it last month.”

  Kate was soon seated before a computer and monitor at one of a dozen similarly equipped desks. The machine was already booted and warm as she tucked her long, shapely legs under it and made herself comfortable. “Give me the disk,” she said, her hand waiting for the delivery.

  Even though he was in a position of having to trust her, and even though he had no reason to distrust her, Ron felt a tug of reluctance as he transferred the item from his hand to hers. She took it so quickly from him that their flesh never even made contact. In a few seconds she had the disk inserted in a zip drive and was downloading the information it held.

  “How long will this take?” Ron asked.

  “Depends on what’s on here,” she said. “But even if it’s some complicated graphics it’ll only take a minute or so.” While the machine whirred and purred, Kate turned in her swivel chair and looked up at Ron. There was an expression of concern on her face. She reached up and gently brushed his chin with the tips of her fingers. “Are you okay?”

  Ron rubbed his lips and drew his hand away. “Oh, sure. One of the guys slapped me a couple of times. Once to get my attention after one of them suckered me with the proverbial blunt instrument.” He reached back and touched the swollen flesh on the back of his neck. Kate winced as he did so. “And again when I didn’t react to his question fast enough.”

  “But don’t let that fool you,” Mary said. “He was getting ready to sing.”

  “The Barber of Seville, if he’d asked me to,” Ron admitted.

  Kate smiled and chuckled lightly. “You guys are a couple of jokers. Been pals a long time, have you?”

  “Entirely too long,” Mary said. Which made Kate laugh aloud, and Ron wince.

  “Just pals?” Kate added the question; it exploded like a landmine underfoot.

  Before Mary could react, Ron said, “Just pals.” Mary said nothing, but Ron could see the muscles of her jaws tensing.

  “Well,” Kate said. The computer had ceased to purr and hum, and had beeped at them briefly, getting their attention even over their shared unease. “Looks like the files are all downloaded.” Her hands played over the keyboard, and soon she was pointing the mouse hither, thither, and yon.

  “What is it?” Mary asked.

  “Well, it’s just as Ron thought. Photographs. These are the contents of a digital camera. Good one. Fast, with lots of memory.”

  “Much there?”

  “Sixteen files, Ron.” She was poking the little arrow and clicking.

  “Can we see them? I want to see what got Dodd killed,” Ron said.

  “So do I. So,” she pointed and clicked again. “Let�
�s see what we shall see.”

  The screen then began to slowly fill with an image, line by line. The photo grew smoothly, in grainy colors, as the file uploaded to the video terminal. Soon, they were seeing the green in the center of Salutations, what appeared to be a turtle crossing the sidewalk and moving toward the classically constructed bandstand. “What the hell,” Mary uttered. “A tortoise?”

  “Good eye,” Kate admitted. “Gopher tortoise. A big one, too. Probably pushed out of its home by someone building a house over its burrowing ground. Salutations is displacing all kinds of animal populations. You’d be surprised at the things we’re documenting.”

  “What do you mean?” Mary asked. “Most of that place was a military base for sixty years or more.”

  “Longer than that,” she said, bringing up the next image, this one an alligator in a drainage ditch. “But the base was pretty compact. Most of the construction was very limited. Not much of a human population was here after about 1950, and before that it wasn’t much to talk about and they were packed in here in some old Quonset type barracks. But now the studio boys are really creating some urban sprawl out here. They shouldn’t be allowed to, but they are. Government’s working hand in hand with them,” she added. Once more Ron did an inward wince.

  “Look,” Mary offered. “Why don’t you skip ahead a few pictures? Whatever got him in trouble was probably later on.”

  “Good thinking,” Ron admitted. “Try that, Kate. Let’s see what’s on the ninth or tenth shot.”

  “Will do,” she said. And soon they were looking at what appeared to be a hastily taken shot of bear grass and palmettos.

  “Nothing there,” Kate said.

  But Mary’s dark index finger was jotting at the screen, actually touching it. The terminal shivered each time she poked. “No. Look there. What’s that? At the bottom. There.”

  “What the hell,” Ron said.

  Kate froze. And even Mary, who was not watching her every move, as Ron was, noticed.