The Thing in the Alley (Anomaly Hunters, Book 3)

by J. S. Volpe

28

  Donovan started to roll away from the pouncing leucrota, but then realized it was too late. The leucrota was too close. If he tried to evade it now, all he would do was present it with his side or his back and make himself an easier and far more short-lived target.

  Instead he remained on his back and tried to kick it in the belly as it landed atop him, its hooves crashing down on either side of his torso. All he got for his trouble was a glancing hoof-blow to the side of his already twice-injured knee, which made him cry out in pain yet again, his leg dropping back to the floor.

  The leucrota lunged for his face, jaws wide. He raised his left forearm just in time, catching the leucrota across the neck and stopping its onrushing muzzle only inches from his face. Snarling, the leucrota pressed downward, trying to get at him, its bony plates gnashing and snapping, its throat muscles shifting and bulging against the side of his forearm. Its face was so close to his he could smell the Mace and the vanilla-hazelnut air freshener on its fur and the rancid stink of rotten meat on its breath, a combination of smells that made him gag.

  It kept pressing forward, its hooves scrabbling and clacking on the concrete, and Donovan’s forearm began to bend back under the monster’s onslaught. He wasn’t going to be able to hold it off for long.

  “Help!” he shouted. “Help!”

  “Help!” the leucrota cried in Donovan’s own voice, its stenchy, humid breath washing over him like corpse-gas.

  He heard no one coming to help. Where the hell was everybody? What happened to Brandon and Lauren? Shit. It looked like he was on his own. His arm sagged another inch, and the leucrota’s razor-sharp teeth drew another inch closer to shearing his nose off.

  He thought about trying to punch it or gouge out its eyes. But he had seen how fast this thing moved; if he brought his hand too close to its face the leucrota would probably just chomp it right off. He needed a weapon of some kind, one with some reach.

  He looked around in desperation, hoping against hope that Violet’s carving knife had landed nearby when she fell. All he saw were things that had spilled from his pockets. His Yoda action figure lay on its side a few inches away, its green, serenely smiling face fixed on his. Donovan grabbed it and chucked it at the leucrota. The figure bonked off the leucrota’s muzzle, making the beast flinch with a startled grunt.

  Emboldened by this tiny victory, Donovan groped around for another impromptu missile. His fingers fell on the red plastic squirt gun. He pointed it at the monster’s leering face and squeezed the trigger. Nothing came out but a puff of air. Empty. Shit. He pegged it at the leucrota. It rebounded off the furry forehead with a hollow pock. The leucrota growled, droplets of saliva spattering Donovan’s chin.

  Donovan groped around some more, panicked, desperate. Every muscle in his forearm was screaming now, and under the leucrota’s unrelenting pressure it was drooping like a tree branch under a heavy weight of snow.

  Donovan found his address book and chucked it at the leucrota. This time the leucrota whipped its head around, caught the address book between its mouth plates, and in two quick bites reduced it to ribbons.

  Snarling, angry, the leucrota renewed its assault, forcing back Donovan’s arm farther than ever. Donovan frantically looked around for something else to throw, but he was out of ammo. Sure, there were still plenty of objects lying in view—a plastic packet of Kleenex, his earmuffs, the pen he had loaned Cyn the other day in the park—but all of them were well beyond the reach of his free arm.

  No, wait: In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of something on the floor above his head. He groped wildly for it.

  A cramp struck his left arm, and his arm folded back a fraction more, bringing the leucrota’s gnashing jaws to within an inch of his face. Any second now it would start nipping bits off him.

  His hand fell on the item above his head. It was soft and lumpy and plastic-covered. In his panic, he couldn’t imagine what it might be. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything very useful. Nothing that could stab or bludgeon. Still, anything that might buy him an extra second or two of life was a godsend right now.

  He snatched up the object and flung it at the leucrota’s face. It was his bag of pot. Like the address book, the leucrota caught it in its mouth and scissored its bony plates, shredding the plastic baggie. Marijuana spilled into the leucrota’s mouth and rained down onto Donovan’s face.

  The leucrota didn’t seem to like the taste. It drew back, Donovan forgotten, as it huffed and snorted and swirled its tongue around in an effort to sweep the pot from its mouth.

  Seizing the opportunity, Donovan slugged the leucrota in the nose. Blood squirted from both nostrils like juice from a popped berry, and in its pain and surprise, the leucrota instinctively swallowed the mouthful of bud with an audible gulp.

  Donovan punched it again. More blood splattered from its nose.

  “Ha!” he shouted into its face. “Take that, Rin Tin Tin!”

  Donovan cocked his fist to hit it again, but the leucrota recovered its wits and lunged at his face again. Donovan barely got his left arm up in time to block it.

  Almost immediately pain lanced through his arm, and the arm began to buckle. This was it. He didn’t have the strength to fend it off anymore. The leucrota’s maw, now reeking of the thick, herby aroma of Mary Jane, drew inexorably closer.

  The cone of light from Violet’s dropped flashlight wobbled, then rose four feet and fixed directly on the leucrota’s face, lighting up every tawny hair in pinpoint detail and making the monster’s pupils contract to dots. Growling, the leucrota broke off its assault and turned toward the newcomer.

  Donovan felt a gush of relief, not only that the leucrota’s attack had stopped but that someone had come, that he wasn’t fighting this damn thing alone anymore.

  “Hoo-rah, fuckface!” Violet hollered as she kicked the leucrota in the side of the neck. The leucrota emitted a harsh, choked cry and rolled off Donovan, who quickly scrambled to his feet. His relief increased when he heard the clatter of footsteps swiftly approaching. Flashlight beams speared through the darkness, growing brighter by the second as they converged on the battleground.

  Back on its feet again and looking none the worse for Violet’s kick, the leucrota glanced at the approaching lights, then glared at Donovan and Violet, who stood shoulder to shoulder in front of it. Its lips curled back from its bony plates, to which a few small wads of pot still clung.

  “Look at you,” it said in that sludgy, resonant voice. The sound made Donovan’s arms break out in goose-bumps. It was the sort of voice death metal singers dreamed of having. “I have not seen the likes of you in all my long, long years upon this earth.”

  The leucrota crouched, muscles bunched, preparing to spring at Donovan and Violet. The duo tensed up, ready to fight as best they could.

  And then the leucrota froze, blinked twice, and made a small, choked noise and a quick, full-body jerk that looked suspiciously like a hiccup.

  Lauren and Brandon burst from a nearby aisle. Lauren trained her flashlight on the leucrota and raised the Jart she had grabbed off a shelf on their way over here. Brandon gripped his tire-iron in both hands like a baseball bat.

  A moment later Calvin, Cynthia, and Tiffany appeared, coming up the wide aisle that ran along the building’s outer wall. Calvin was moving at a rapid hobble, his legs having improved a bit since the trio set out from the office. They added their flashlights to those already trained on the leucrota, which was now as brightly lit as if it were standing under a spotlight.

  It barely seemed to notice. It just stood there, swaying slightly, its eyes unfocused. Every now and then it jerked with another hiccup.

  “What happened?” Calvin asked. “Did somebody do something to it?”

  “Uh…” Donovan licked his lips. “Kind of.”

  “What do you—”

  “Fuckface!” the leucrota cried in Violet’s voice. It craned its head forward until the cords in its neck were taut and straining, and then its sides began t
o bellows rapidly.

  “Oh, shit, I think it’s gonna—”

  The leucrota vomited a stream of dark-green slush that bore an uncanny resemblance to cooked spinach. The puke splashed across the concrete, wet green gobs spraying everywhere. Everyone took a big step backward to avoid getting it on their shoes and pants.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Lauren asked.

  At the sound of Lauren’s voice the leucrota whipped its head around and stared at her, a string of green drool hanging from its lower lip. She shrank back and raised her Jart higher, afraid the leucrota was going to attack. Instead, after blinking stupidly at her a couple of times, it hiccupped again.

  “Is it sick?” Cynthia said.

  “Did it eat something?” Calvin said.

  “Kind of,” Donovan said again.

  “Burn it down,” the leucrota muttered in a man’s voice none of them recognized. It staggered a few steps, its hooves clocking softly, then opened its mouth and retched.

  “What do you mean ‘kind of’?” Calvin asked.

  “Well, um, I had a bag of pot that it sort of accidentally wound up eating.”

  “It ate a bag of marijuana?” Lauren said.

  “Seven ounces.”

  “Oh, man,” Violet said. “That was some good shit, too.”

  “I know,” Donovan said sadly.

  The leucrota staggered again, this time nearly falling, and then stood there wobbling unsteadily on its hooves for a couple of seconds. Then it raised its head to the unseen rafters high above in the darkness.

  “Twelve thousand years!” it intoned in that now-familiar deep, sludgy voice. The words echoed and re-echoed through the warehouse: “Twelve…elve…ousan…years…ears…ears…”

  Tiffany stiffened with a faint gasp that only Calvin heard. Calvin stiffened, too, recalling once again what her father had said about twelves being prominent in her psych-ward scribblings.

  “Whose voice is that?” she muttered.

  The leucrota stood there, still staring at the ceiling like a pointer scenting its prey amid the stars. Its body swayed drunkenly.

  Then its head swung around in a broad, drooping arc, its chin nearly grazing the floor at the arc’s nadir, and came to a stop pointed straight at Calvin.

  “I think things are about to get very interesting,” the leucrota said in the sludgy voice, its tone thoughtful and darkly amused.

  And then the leucrota hiccupped one last time and collapsed on its side with a meaty thud.

  Everyone stared at the leucrota in silence. Its body, lit clear as day in the combined light of the five flashlights, lay perfectly still.

  “Is it dead?” Brandon asked.

  “It must be,” Calvin said. “It’s not breathing. Its chest isn’t rising and falling.”

  “Was it breathing before, though?” Cynthia asked. “Did anyone actually check to see if it breathed?”

  “It must have breathed,” Calvin said. “In order to talk it must have been drawing air into its lungs and releasing it.”

  “Okay,” said Cynthia, gesturing at the body. “If you’re so sure, then by all means, please be the first to go over there and check for a pulse.”

  Calvin stared at the leucrota for a moment, then shrugged and said, “Okay.” He strode forward.

  Cynthia made a frustrated “uh” sound.

  “I was kind of, you know, kidding,” she said. “To make a point.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I’m sure this thing’s dead.”

  He stopped beside the body, his shoes less than a foot from its head, then crouched down, wincing at the pains in his thighs. He waved a hand above the leucrota’s face, watching its eyes closely to see if they moved. They didn’t. The leucrota’s pupils had dilated to the size of silver dollars despite all the light shining on them.

  Calvin pressed his fingers to its neck to feel for a pulse, its short fur coarse and bristly against his skin. He felt nothing, but he realized he wasn’t sure where a quadruped’s carotid artery would be situated.

  “Does anybody here know anything about animal anatomy?” Calvin asked.

  “Oh, sure,” said Brandon. “I took a class on that: Doggie Doctor 101.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  He continued to feel around under the leucrota’s jaw, moving with more assurance with each second the leucrota didn’t stir. He didn’t feel so much as a single flutter.

  “Well?” Cynthia said.

  Calvin grabbed the leucrota’s right ear between his thumb and index finger and pinched it hard. No response. He looked at its eyes again, at those dilated pupils rimmed with yellow-green. He could dimly make out the reflection of his own face on the black pupils.

  “It’s dead,” he said. “It’s gotta be dead.”

  He started to stand up, but halfway there his aching quadriceps gave out. He wobbled for a second, then toppled backward with a clipped cry, sure that after having survived their brutal battle with the leucrota he was about to dash his brains out on the concrete in a display of grim cosmic irony. Instead, arms caught him under the armpits, and a pair of soft, warm breasts pillowed his back. He looked back over his shoulder. It was Tiffany.

  “I’ve got you,” she said quietly as she helped him up.

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling at her in a dreamy, contemplative way, the rest of the world suddenly far away, unimportant. He realized he was already in love with this girl.

  She smiled back, her eyes telling much the same story.

  “So, what, a bag of weed killed it?” Lauren said, unwittingly breaking the moment.

  Calvin tore his gaze from Tiffany’s.

  “Um, yeah,” he said. “It sure looks that way.”

  Lauren shook her head. “I’ll leave it to someone else to make the ‘Just Say No’ joke.”

  “Death by Mary Jane,” Brandon said with a chuckle. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

  “It makes sense, though,” Calvin said. “Whatever that anomaly in the woods really is, I think it’s safe to say the leucrota wasn’t native to our reality. So it stands to reason its body wouldn’t be adapted to stuff we take for granted. Like how the Martians in War of the Worlds had no defense against the common cold.”

  “I don’t think you even have to go that far,” Cynthia said. “I mean, some normal terrestrial animals can be poisoned and killed by things humans eat every day. I think I read somewhere that tomatoes can kill cats.”

  “Yeah,” said Lauren, “and chocolate is poison to cats, too.” She frowned. “Or, wait, is it dogs that can’t eat chocolate?”

  “So who’s up for helping me move this thing into the back of the van?” Calvin said, looking around at the others.

  “I am not fucking touching that thing,” Violet said. “No fucking way. I mean, you might say it’s dead, but since when are you the expert on alien dogs? You couldn’t even find its fucking pulse.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind her. She’s just a fulgurous perambulator. I’ll help you move it.”

  “Fuck you, you skanky crackwhore!”

  Calvin sighed, both relieved and dismayed that things were already returning to what passed for normal.