PREDATOR IF IT BLEEDS

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “I didn’t see anything,” Novak said again. “I thought it was just the darkness, the explosion, the noise. But now I wonder about it.”

  “You’re not saying Piss-Bucket was right about you being attacked by a ghost.”

  Novak shook his head. “No, of course not. If a spirit wanted revenge against McBurnie, it wouldn’t have carried him off in a net.”

  Anderson couldn’t argue with that logic.

  “Plus, spirits don’t leave footprints, and whoever’s dragging that net definitely is.”

  “What?”

  Novak pointed to the ground. “I haven’t even had to get off my horse—that net is leaving more traces than a mama grizzly on a rampage. But that there is definitely a footprint.”

  Anderson pulled up his mare and dismounted. Novak joined him on the ground. “You sure it’s a footprint?” He’d never seen a print like this in his life. No man’s foot had ever been this shape. The toe area was far too wide, and the whole thing was nearly twice as long as Anderson’s.

  “Maybe it’s some new kind of caulk boot?” Novak pointed out the strange indentations around the footprint, punctures in the earth like nothing so much as the imprint of four forward-pointing claws and one backward one.

  Anderson raised an eyebrow.

  “Hey, just trying to make sense of what I’m looking at.” Novak gave the print one last look and then got back in his saddle. “I think it’s headed into the next canyon.”

  “At least it’s away from town and the mining camps.” Anderson frowned. He knew that canyon all too well: he’d helped Lars move cattle through it every fall.

  And Eva was bringing the herd there today.

  * * *

  The canyon followed the creek for two miles before it began to widen, the hills peeling back to let the sun play on the packed surface of the Nielssen’s road. Novak kept his eyes on the ground, following the scuff marks the invisible attackers had left. Anderson had chafed at waiting for sunrise, but he knew even a good tracker would have lost the trail in the dark. If the invisible men had left the creek and gone into the hills, they would have just vanished.

  Anderson opened the gate that marked the end of Lars and Eva’s property. The big field stretched out ahead of them, the most open stretch of ground for miles. Here the net holding McBurnie and Mina had cut a swathe even Anderson could follow.

  A massive rumbling shook the ground, followed by a horrible clank and whine. Then the field went silent again.

  “What the hell was that?” Anderson slammed the gate behind him and climbed back on his horse.

  “Some kind of engine maybe? It doesn’t sound like it’s working very well.” Novak patted his horse’s neck. The mare was high stepping, its nostrils flared. Anderson had never seen the creature look so nervous. “I don’t like it. The trail goes over to that side of the field and then just stops.”

  A white horse caught Anderson’s eye. Its rider was pushing it hard. He recognized the diminutive figure in the saddle from her slight build and the blue scarf tying her hat on tight.

  “John,” Eva called out, still a good ways away. “Where’s Lars?”

  A quail shot up from the ground, startled by the horse, and she cut toward the edge of the field to avoid the beating wings. The flapping cut the air like gunfire, and just like that she was gone. No horse, no rider, just grass and sky. The quail soared away, tiny as a sparrow.

  “Eva!” Anderson burst into a run. Had she fallen into a sinkhole? Had the ground simply swallowed her whole? “Eva!”

  With a resounding clang, the top of his head hit something hard and he toppled backward into the grass. He lay still, his head spinning. His neck felt as if it had been stretched double.

  “John, are you all right?” The woman knelt beside him, her craggy face worried. She held up three fingers. “How many fingers?”

  “Four. No, damn it.” He tried to sit up and let his head fall back again. “Three. What are you doing out here?”

  “Looking over the field before we move the herd.” As if in response, somewhere farther up the canyon a cow let out a bellow. “I’ve got Smokey and Gene rounding them up in the upper field.”

  Anderson winced. Here he was, laid out cold, and in a couple of hours, this field would be filled with cattle. He and Novak didn’t have much time to search out where they’d lost the net and its owner.

  The kid Indian’s face filled his field of vision. “It’s a ghost wagon.”

  “What the hell is this kid talking about? You’re the one who hit your head, but he’s the one talking crazy,” Eva growled.

  Anderson forced himself upright. He rubbed the side of his aching neck. “What do you mean, Novak?”

  “Piss-Bucket called it a ghost, the thing that attacked us last night. Remember? And I didn’t see anything. Not a thing.”

  “You two are looking for a ghost?” Eva looked from one to the other. “And where the hell is my husband?”

  “Oh, Eva.” Anderson reached for her wrinkled hand. He told her what happened during the night. His eyes filled up with salt. Lars was gone. His friend and deputy was really, really gone.

  She pulled her hand out of his grasp and covered her face. For a moment, she was motionless. Then she brushed her cheeks dry. She gave a fierce sniff.

  “I’m so sorry, Eva.”

  She shook her head. “There’ll be time for that later. Your little girl is still out here somewhere. We’ve got to find her before something happens to her.”

  “I think I know where she is,” Novak said.

  Anderson had almost forgotten about him. He turned around to see the kid lying on his belly, his face close to the ground.

  “The soil’s dry enough it doesn’t take much of a print, and the ghost was walking careful here. It wasn’t dragging the net at this point.” He pointed at something Anderson couldn’t make out. “He stood here a moment, waiting for something.” The kid sprang to his feet. “I can picture it.”

  “What?” Eva snapped.

  “I spent some time on the docks when we were in ’Frisco,” Novak said. He jumped back a few feet, nodding. He pointed to a patch of broken grass, then a gopher hill. “I’m sure you did, too, Anderson, back when you were a kid.”

  Anderson got to his feet. “Yeah. So? What’s your point?”

  “The ships put out a gangway so they can load up their cargo, right? Like a big tongue coming out of the ship.”

  Eva got up, running her hands along the air beside her, stroking something she could feel even if she couldn’t see it. “A ghost gangway for a ghost wagon.”

  “Right!” Novak grinned at her. “I was doing the same thing, Mrs… erm…”

  “You can call me ‘Eva.’” She rounded a corner and the top half of her disappeared. “You can’t see it, but you can feel it.”

  Anderson put out a tentative hand. “A ghost wagon.” He stroked the side of the thing. A slippery kind of warmth bit at his palm. He could feel his nerves crackling in his skin, as if he’d touched a very tame form of lightning. “You’re saying Mina and McBurnie got loaded up in this invisible ship like a load of beaver pelts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got to get in there.” The angry cow bellowed again. It sounded closer. Anderson smacked his hand against the invisible ship. They didn’t have time for this shit.

  Eva reappeared. “How? There’s not exactly a door to knock on.”

  Novak grinned. “I might have an idea.”

  * * *

  The back end of Eva’s herd looked more formidable than Anderson remembered. The times he’d ridden beside Lars urging his cows into the big field, the work had seemed boring, frustrating, the mass of cattle a wall of balky, plodding flesh. Now Anderson saw them as Novak had described them: a wall, alright, but a wall that could pulp a man in its path. A wall that could break open anything, even a ghost wagon.

  Novak grew up listening to stories about walls of flesh like that. His Shasta grandmother had married a Sioux miner w
ho’d come down out of the Dakotas looking for gold in the rush of 1849. The great herds of buffalo dotting the Dakota plains dwarfed Eva’s herd by a thousandfold. His grandfather had been only a boy when he’d helped process the massive meat harvests, but he’d never forgotten it, and now Novak wanted to repeat history.

  “They call it a ‘buffalo jump.’ They’d just stampede the buffalo right off a cliff,” he explained. “Like a waterfall of animals.”

  Eva had held up a hand. “Is this going to wipe out my herd? I’m counting on taking these to auction next week.”

  Novak shook his head. “You felt what the ghost wagon is like. Top heavy. When the beeves hit it, they’ll knock it over. At the speed they’ll be running, it ought to smash right open.”

  “What if that doesn’t do anything?” Anderson asked. “Or what if Mina gets hurt?”

  “You got a better idea?” Novak shot.

  Anderson had to admit he didn’t. Even right now, facing three hundred head of cattle, he couldn’t think of anything.

  He swiveled in his saddle. Novak stood beside a long, low heap of straw and wood that all but closed off this end of the field. He gave Anderson a nod and struck a match.

  Everything was ready. Anderson pulled out his revolver and shot three times into the air, startling the animals nearby. Novak dropped the match into the straw.

  The match hit the dry tinder and caught immediately. In less than a minute, flames began to run along the side of Novak’s firewall. Anderson shot at the sky again, but it wasn’t necessary. The cattle were already surging forward.

  Anderson urged his horse forward. The pounding hooves vibrated his very bones. Eva’s hired hands whooped and waved torches, encouraging the cows into the side of the field where the ghost wagon sat.

  The terrible grinding and whining sound repeated itself, frightening the cows into a more desperate run. A blue crackling lit up the first wave of cattle.

  For a second, Anderson hardly understood what he was seeing. Something had appeared where the invisible wagon ought to be, a vehicle twice the size of a Conestoga wagon with a smooth, arched back. But what dazzled his brain was the gigantic man emerging from the trap door in its roof. His hair—was it hair?—swirled around his strangely deformed face as he sighted down the ugliest rifle Anderson had ever seen.

  Bolts of white light shot out at the first wave of cattle. A cow’s skull burst. The animals screamed and ran even faster.

  They hit the ghost wagon in a crash and shriek of metal and hooves. Anderson covered his ears, reeling at the sound.

  The giant man—no, by God, that face couldn’t belong to a man—appeared in the middle of the herd, firing lightning bolts like a god with a vendetta. Anderson’s revolver was suddenly in his hand. The tusked monster’s head was a hell of a lot bigger than a can of tobacco.

  The revolver bucked in his grip and the thing dropped. The cows trampled on, headed for the open grass.

  “Mina!” Anderson dug his heels into his horse’s side. The river of cattle had flowed on by the ghost wagon, and he had to get inside.

  He didn’t bother tying his horse, he just jumped off, running right into the dark mouth of the wagon’s hatch.

  It was as if he’d entered the steaming mouth of hell. A low red light suffused the space, and a dense, acrid fog filled the air.

  “What the hell is this?” Novak whispered. Anderson hadn’t heard the scout catch up with him.

  “Mina!” Anderson shouted.

  Novak shook his arm. “Look.” The kid pointed to a clear box lying at their feet. “That’s a man’s, ain’t it?”

  The raw meaty thing in the box took a moment to resolve into a familiar shape. If Anderson hadn’t helped Lars with the butchering, he might not have recognized the string of knobby bones running into the still-bloody skull. How you got a man’s spine out of his body without disconnecting it from his skull, Anderson didn’t want to know.

  “Anderson! That you? Help me!”

  McBurnie’s voice came from the other side of the strange cargo hold. Novak kicked aside a pile of boxes full of more bloody trophies, revealing a black crate made of some slick material Anderson couldn’t identify. A few narrow slits revealed McBurnie huddled within. He pushed his fingers out through one of the gaps, desperate for human touch.

  “Is Mina in there?”

  “I don’t know what that thing did with her.”

  Anderson dropped to his knees. “Oh, God. Mina.”

  “Daddy?” A tiny figure popped out from a dark spot in the wall—an open cabinet or a ventilation shaft, maybe. “Daddy!”

  Dirt coated every inch of his little girl, but when he swept her into his arms, she felt whole. She trembled and clung to him.

  “Mina.” The voice came from behind them.

  Anderson spun around. The figure silhouetted in the open hatch was far too large to be human. Novak reached for his rifle.

  “Mina,” the thing repeated, its voice a perfect mimic of Anderson’s. It stepped inside but made no move toward them. It took another step sideways, moving into the darkness beyond the foggy cargo space. “Mina,” it said yet again.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Anderson said.

  “Wait! Don’t leave me,” McBurnie begged. His fingers closed on the fabric of Novak’s jeans.

  Novak wrenched away. “I’m done with you, McBurnie, you murdering, kidnapping bully.”

  Anderson grabbed Novak’s arm. “Let’s go!”

  The creature made some kind of sound as they passed it by, but they were moving too fast to understand if it was words or a threat or some bizarre alien call.

  They burst into the sunshine, gasping for air. The hatch closed behind them. There was another horrible grinding, whining sound, and then a rushing whoosh. The ghost wagon vibrated and shook. Then it leaped into the air. It hovered for a moment, and then it streaked into the sky, a bird, a star, gone.

  Eva walked toward them, her face streaked with smoke. “You all okay?”

  Anderson nodded, not sure of his voice. Not sure of his eyes. What had he seen in there? What did that thing want with McBurnie? Why hadn’t it hurt Mina? The whole day and night had the weird unreality of a nightmare.

  Mina squeezed her arms tighter around his neck. “I knew you’d come for me, Daddy.”

  He tightened his grip on her. He’d changed his life to give her a better one, and his past had nearly gotten her killed. He wasn’t sure if he deserved any of her faith, but at least he hadn’t let her down. “I love you.”

  Novak looked from Eva to Anderson. “Either of you have any whiskey? Because I sure could use some.”

  Eva laughed and put her arm around the kid’s shoulder. “You’re all right, Novak.”

  “Yeah, but now I don’t have a job.”

  Anderson looked up from kissing Mina’s head. Eva was giving him a hard look.

  He’d been just like Billy Novak once, a lost, scared kid looking for a better life. And Lars Nielssen had convinced the town of Coyote Creek to give him one.

  “I’m down a deputy,” he said. “And I could use someone who knows a thing or two about tracking.”

  Novak’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Anderson understood. It was a big jump from outlaw to law enforcement.

  While the boy flapped, Anderson settled Mina onto his horse. “I brought something of yours.”

  He pulled the corn dolly out of his pocket and watched her cover it with kisses. The smile on her face could’ve touched the heart of any kind of monster. He glanced at the sky.

  Any kind of monster.

  DRUG WAR

  BY BRYAN THOMAS SCHMIDT AND HOLLY ROBERDS

  Chirping birds, insects, animals, and bustling traffic mixed with the lilting of people chattering in Portuguese all around him. The smell of mangoes, pineapple, exotic fragrances, piss, and petrol filled his nose—the marks of big city life. Retired LAPD captain Mike Harrigan felt like he was in a different world until he stepped inside the modern co
nvention center and heard a familiar voice.

  “Weapons of the future! The best new technology! Load ’em up, blow ’em away!” It was a voice he hadn’t heard in twenty-five years and never thought to hear again. Not since his time with the Los Angeles Police Department, a voice from a time of one of the biggest crises in his entire forty-year career. But here he was, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of all places, and the former Fed, Garber, was standing right in front of him, under a bright neon sign that read: LEGENDS, INC.— Legendary Tech, Legendary Power.

  After what they’d both barely survived in Los Angeles, all they’d seen, Harrigan was a burned-out ex-cop who occasionally got invited to speak at urban police conferences like this one, and Garber had moved on to selling weapons and high-tech destruction. Harrigan wondered which of them had learned the most from their experience with the alien bounty hunter.

  Vendor booths lined both sides of the long entryway leading to exhibit halls, theatres, meeting rooms, and more of the Rio de Janeiro Convention Center. Crowds of cops, military types, private security, mercenaries, and more examined the wares.

  As Garber hefted a long, sleek, heavy-looking weapon—a rifle of some sort with laser scope, attached grenade launcher, and two cartridge bays—a chubby, sunburned, flowery-shirted American tourist poster child and his shorter, round wife stopped and smiled.

  “Awesome!” the man said. “Me and my Pebbles need something just like that there back in Texas!”

  Garber smiled his best salesman smile. “Totally legal, folks. I can set you up today.”

  From behind the Americans, a tall woman with long black hair and seductively tan skin approached with her companion, a shorter, bulkier, older man with a well-developed paunch like Harrigan’s. Both wore sidearms holstered at their belts, despite their three-piece brown suits, and as they turned, Harrigan spotted badges hanging from their belts: detectives.

  “Amigo, what is that thing?” the woman asked in the lilting Brazilian accent that had grown so familiar.